Do men recognise the sex of a stranger as well as women?

Copied from Twitter poster is developmental biologist

There is plenty of evidence that even though all humans are really accurate at recognising sex, females are better at it than males. This has been described in one academic paper as an evolutionary necessity for females to avoid “angry, adult males”.

My DH recognises trans women much quicker than me. He does relate well to women though generally.

My husband usually spots them before I do on tv. He is generally really observant though.

I think its hard wired into women and children from an evolutionary perspective to identify the sex of a stranger due to the innate threat they pose.

I dont think men experience the same risk of assault, rape etc so there is not such a need for this ability.
So women can “see” the stance, gait, body shape, hands,feet, head size, brow ridge, jaw line, adams apple etc.

I think there's a certain amount of prey needing to recognise predators in the long grass.

I wonder if it's related to the findings of the very depressing research on men viewing women as objects, and also as disconnected body parts. Does anyone else remember reading abou that? it was based on what brain areas activate when men are looking at women.

If men are just processing breasts/hair/lipstick they probably are impaired in thier ability to determine sex. I do suspect that this male inability to see women as whole people (yes, presumably not all men) is at the root of the ever mysterious question: what the hell are certain middle aged AGPs seeing in the mirror? I'm guessing they are extreme cases of this kind of objectification and are seeing only individual disjointed features of their reflection; they don't realise the extent to which the whole looks ridiculous.

I think there is really a lot of variation on this among men.

But to make a large generalization, I think there are possibly more men than women who do not notice certain things about people, unless something makes them stop and pay attention.

I remember DH being very surprised when watching The Crying Game (obviously, Jaye Davidson isn't trans but the character Dil would probably be described as such now)

I think men only notice other people (both sexes) if they are pretty or alpha/aggressive at first glance.

Women determine threat at first glance (so usually male), then nuance the threat downwards from red alert, amber, yellow, oh...I got that wrong, I can take him on any day of the week

that thread is great
My DH talked about this with his pals & the gist of the conversation was they get distracted by boobs 🙄 but as soon as a *man stands by a woman (or is aggressive which I found interesting) the scales fall very quickly.

(3 of them have safeguarding roles & are very clear on which statistical group people belong in)

They aren't blind. They know full well.
They are just deliberately gaslighting us.