Physical Vs psychological difference between the sexes

What is the point of all this discussion about the differences in capabilities/preferences/behaviour/altitude between women and men? What differences would people want to see in our society as a result of recognising that women are innately more caring than men, for example? Are those changes things that feminists currently don't support or argue against?

I believe that the physical differences also sometimes/often are one of the causes for something which looks like a purely psychological difference.

For instance, professions which allow someone to take a few years off and then return without suffering enormous losses of lifetime income are going to look more appealing to women than to men if the society they live in assumes that women stay at home when their children are small. History might be a field like that for teaching, engineering perhaps not, as the science changes more rapidly in the latter. Then you need to add to that the likelihood that women in engineering might face more gatekeeping (as outsiders barging into a very homogeneous occupation) which is an extra determinant for those who don't relish being slightly harassed etc.

The most interesting example of this just might be that early evolutionary psychology study which concluded that men like casual sex with strangers while women don't, and then interpreted this as an evolutionary adaptation.

The study had young men and women (judged good-looking by a panel) picked and trained to randomly pretend to propose instant sex to young opposite-sex strangers on a college campus in pure daylight. The answers showed a large sex difference: Hardly any women agreed to the proposition while some largish percentage of men did.

Perhaps because the creators of the study were men they never seemed to have thought what it means to a young woman to have a stranger accost her for sex in daylight and at a place which is not intended for mating behaviours. The risks of such hook-ups are far greater for women than for men, and certainly the risk of violence is, given the average strength difference. And there's also the risk of pregnancy.

In short, I think there might be fairly important material reasons for some of the differences we see in sexual behaviour between men and women, having to do with the body itself. This doesn't mean that I would preclude possible differences in libido or whatever, but the effects of the environment and of biology are almost impossible to tease apart as easily as we'd need it to be for us to make conclusive judgements here.

I think I missed out

And I think the reason that women, worldwide, have significantly more caring responsibilities (both in the home, and in employed roles) is because, at a population level, we are just bloody better at it. Of course it is impossible to say how much of this is socialisation (a very significant percentage, I'm sure) but I am certain that on the whole women are just better at tuning in to and prioritising the needs of others, and it is an innate ability that has been wired into us over tens of thousand of years of evolution.

I read a fascinating article about changes to womens brains that last for two years during and after pregnancy. They physically change shape.

But similar things happened to men who took on very active caring roles (gay men who adopt/ use surrogates) including changes to testosterone levels. not quite to the same level as women but a significant change.

I'm then reminded of the tribe that is whipped out to "prove men breastfeed" (they don't) where they hold and carry their infants a huge amount - the men too. And it's a very matriarchal/ egalitarian / peaceful society.

The other thing is you can argue the biological differences could result in a completely different set of “psychological” differences.

Because testosterone means men are more aggressive and likely to do more damage if they act on that aggression, they are better suited to non-competitive activities and roles, where their aggression is less likely to be triggered. Caring roles, and non-hierarchical organisations are best-suited for male workers. Their greater physical strength makes them better suited for jobs involving hard physical labour like cleaning
or caring. Men are not drawn to leadership positions because they become irrational when they feel threatened/attacked and that feeling of
being out of control is deeply unpleasant for them.

Women lack physical strength and reach, so they are more likely to be drawn to engineering so they can design and implement tools and adaptive technology. They’re also more likely to excel in theoretical subjects (philosophy, higher mathematics, etc) where there is no requirement for physical strength. Men are more likely to be attracted to “vocational” degrees like gardening, some types of medical roles (orderly, porter, HCA), and some sports (though not competitive ones because of the aggression trigger).

If I was being really controversial, I'd speculate that it is actually socialisation that is driving men and women out of gendered roles.

Think about pack animals like, say, big cats. The mother cat doesn't take her female cubs aside for extra lessons on how to raise cubs of their own. She doesn't praise her boy cubs for being brave and good at fighting other boy cubs and being promiscuous.

Yet instinctively female lions understand how to nurture and protect their offspring. Should the mother die, leaving the cubs orphaned and vulnerable, the father doesn't try and step in, or even appear distressed. He quite literally doesn't give a shiny shit what happens once he's done his bit at conception.

Agree with @pastaandpesto and @WarriorN . It’s just highly biologically improbable that there is no average difference in behaviour (eg effect of testosterone or cyclical hormones in women or menopause changes). But the relevance of these behavioural changes to everyday life (eg would high testosterone necessarily make you a better soldier or police officer? - or might a more calm, less reactive person fare better in certain situations?) and the magnitude of the differences compared to other factors (eg socialisation etc) may not be that great.

So the only identifiable difference is on propensity to violence related to testosterone and so to males?

Is there any other effect that can be reasonably said to have such a clear link to the sexes ?

Nope

In other words the clarity of causal link between violence, testosterone and males suggests that if other effects existed we might know by now

Even if men are innately predisposed to violence, for example due to testosterone, what would we do about that in the real world? People who commit violent crimes should be sentenced for those crimes, whether male or female.

Would men get let off because they couldn’t help it?

Or would women have more severe punishment because their crime was less ‘natural’?

”It's sexist to assume that men and women's personalities are stereotyped to their sex”

We were specifically discussing violence.

Those medically transitioning FtM showed elevated rates of criminal behaviour. One might assume the addition of testosterone might have been a factor.

It is also noted in male dogs that are castrated after puberty, that the removal of testosterone can increase aggression, which is assumed to be because testosterone can give a sense of increased confidence. Similarly those transitioning MtF do not seem to reduce criminal (including violent) offending, which might be related to the above.

I think the assumption that human intelligence means that behaviours are all socialised and none innate is very arrogant. And isn’t it the case that higher rates of male violence are noted in all societies? Surely they aren’t all randomly affected by patriarchy?

I apologize OP. It seems there are some women here who believe that despite anatomy (including brain anatomy) and hormones being significantly different in males and females, that there are no innate average differences in behaviour. Obviously there are outliers, and in an ideal society, people shouldn’t feel constrained by any gendered norms, innate or otherwise. But to deny innate differences exist at all, is a bizarre concept to me. Pretty much the same as suggesting humans are not animals, but instead, some form of higher being.

What difference would there be in the world if we found there are innate psychological differences between men and women? Or if we accept your assertion without evidence, what do you think we should be doing differently now?

The physical differences have a meaningful impact - women and girls can get pregnant; women and girls need their own sporting categories.

But they are indistinguishable, certainly with our current knowledge and understanding. No expert could look at an anonymised brain scan and tell you the sex of that brain.

As many have said, it is almost impossible to separate nature and nurture.

And even if there were, on average, difference in preferences between men and women, the effect sizes are tiny (if they were big, psychologists would know by now). This may means that, even if this is true when you average 1000s of people together, it doesn't tell you anything about one individual.

This blog post describes the stats better then I can. mindhacks.com/2017/02/07/sex-differences-in-brain-size/

Indistinguishable before nurture takes hold ? Probably yes

Just to be clear, I absolutely agree that cultural factors and socialisation far outweigh any innate, population level differences. But I struggle to believe that male and female brains are utterly indistinguishable.

There is an impact of testosterone in men but it's been shown that both negative gender stereotypes can exacerbate this and also that testosterone can be reduced when males take on caring roles.

It's not nature v nurture; it's nature and nurture.

It's an unpopular opinion on this board, but I understand where you are coming from, OP. To me, it just seems so improbable that the evolutionary factors that have driven such profound physical differences between the sexes exerted absolutely no influence on our brains at all. Surely not?

From an evolutionary perspective, females that were most successful at nurturing their infants would be more likely to have genetic progeny.

This is a case for... Gina Rippon and the gendered brain!

www.theguardian.com/books/2019/mar/05/the-gendered-brain-gina-rippon-review

It's sexist to assume that men and women's personalities are stereotyped to their sex.

Society has stereotypes which are communicated very young. The stereotypes are based in / evolved from the fact that females reproduce and are physically different to males but that doesn't mean and shouldn't mean that our minds/ personalities/ likes and dislikes conform to tbe stereotypes.

Some people are more susceptible to their peers' interests and the gender stereotypes they experience within society (media, in the home etc).

Some are less bothered (many people with autism can be less interested in conforming- hence more individuals with autism are being diagnosed with gender dysphoria.)

You should read this thread! Lots of informative posts and links to studies discussing cultural and social factors that contribute.

We're a bit more intelligent than all other animals - so not sure why the behaviour of some species proves a point about some behaviour in humans but I'm sure there's a 'gotcha' you can come up with somewhere.

…you’re…

”Not odd at all. Violence, like any other behaviour, isn't innately male. The causes of male violence are societal - the patriarchy if you will.”

Observations from other mammals might indicate that testosterone plays a significant role. I don’t necessarily agree that it’s proven (or even likely) that male violence is entirely down to nurture, if that’s what your suggesting.

I find this an odd argument on a board where it is regularly and strongly argued that males should not be moved into women’s spaces because men are, on average, more violent.

Not odd at all. Violence, like any other behaviour, isn't innately male. The causes of male violence are societal - the patriarchy if you will.

The result being that women have good reason to be cautious around men.

It doesn't negate the argument that men and women are innately the same psychologically.

The trouble is though that as pp have pointed out, what counts as “work women are drawn to” varies hugely across time and culture. I work in a field that was almost entirely male dominated until about 1970, and now is female dominated. It wouldn’t make sense to say women are drawn to it, when for most of history they haven’t been or haven’t been allowed to be. What about medicine? Used to be almost entirely male, but it’s now starting to be majority female students studying medicine. Are women naturally drawn to it? How could you tell?

There is a lot of research suggesting that it’s only after a profession changes from majority male to majority female that pay and conditions decline relative to more socially coded “masculine” jobs (eg teaching, medicine, etc.). That would make more sense — that society values jobs less well when they become female dominated, and pay declines — than that women are drawn to low paying fields!

I’m not sure it’s very easy to maintain that women are drawn to particular jobs by virtue of innate psychological desire or aptitude, when this is clearly not stable over time, and so many jobs that we tend to think of as “feminine/female” work have not always been so.