JKR poem to IW - Brilliant

India's response doesn't quite have the same flow to it, does it. 😂

Thank you ThisFluentBiscuit for sticking with this discussion. I loved your 'snapping back elastic' comment - I think it's a really good way of explaining unconscious bias about all sorts of -isms.

There has been an effort to get more girls interested in STEM, and it has worked to an extent. But alongside this, there has been an un-official campaign against this in popular culture/social media etc. There's an undercurrent of 'brainy girls are yuk' 'boys don't fancy brainy girls' 'brainy girls can't do make-up right' 'brainy girls are lezzies'.

Although we are sometimes accused of being obsessed with transgender issues and dragging trans into everything, there IS a link here because the trans movement has pushed a version of femininity that is exaggeratedly 'girly' - the make-up, the giggling, the head-tilt, the voice, the walk, the airheadedness.
That out of date version of 'how to be female' which feminists hoped had been consigned to the dustbin of history [and then burnt] has now been resurrected and mainstreamed.

The trans version of woman-ing is feeding back to girls - if you want to be a 'real' girly girl, the best-known examples of 'real' femininity are as likely to be trans males/drag queens as real females.

And if 'being a girl' means being as fluffy and twirly and giggly as a transwoman, a girl who doesn't want to be fluffy and twirly and giggly must be a ...boy.

Cue the dangers of transition, puberty blockers, surgery.

Maybe there are broad tendencies towards different psychological attributes in women and men that are based on brain development. We don't really know for sure, as it's so difficult to separate this out from being brought up in a world awash with sexist expectations and imposition.

If this is the case, "female brain" / "male brain" is surely not a helpful way to talk about it.

Average height tends to differ between women and men. But we don't say that tall women have "male height" (or male limbs / spine) and short men have "female height". Instead we talk about population-level differences.

And DrUpton can’t do technology apparently. Needs his wife to help him write an email. Poor vulnerable little dab.

I had to just learn by watching flirts because I asked my father to teach me stuff or to help me build stuff and was told it was not something for girls.

So I watched and learned. I was the pesky girl who watched everyone doing stuff

Is the idea that "lady-brains don't do science" the reason that India thinks he has a cervix? That bit of biology O-Level was just too complex for his pink fluffy lady-brain. OOOHHHH, perhaps he thinks its like a Rolex, but for laydeez. Hence why he says he has one. See also David 'Twit' Lammy....

Isn't there something about equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome?

So we haven’t failed if balance between men and women isn’t observed in every field.

I think women have something unique to offer in the first 6months/year (?) of a child’s life.

Women can definitely do anything men can do, bar certain feats of strength.
I hold to old fashioned expectations of gentlemanly behaviour because I am genuinely short of the energy and strength needed for standing, bag carrying and wrestling with heavy doors. It’s easier for most of them!

Men need a hell of a lot more practice before I trust they have the same skills and flexibility as your average women. But they tend not to recognise the skill needed in home based tasks and so don’t try that hard.

I suggest watching ‘the gender neutral school’. An excellent documentary that showed quite clearly the impact of social conditioning on child development.

I do all the diy in our house. Taught by my granny who learnt during the war. She said they just had to get in with it as there were no men and they realised they were perfectly capable.

@FlirtsWithRhinos "The point is that too many girls don't get as far as discovering they have that love in the first place, because all the subliminal social messaging and role models they are getting are saying "Don't look over there, there's no people like you over there, look over here! Lots of girls over here!" "
I think we need to be really careful with this nature vs nurture debate.
I was at a state girls' school in the 90s and there were lots of programs to help us engage with STEM subjects, and lots of visiting inspirational speakers who said many of the things being said on this thread, about sex differences all coming down to nurture.
We got sick of the implication that we were so weak and pliable we couldn't possibly know our own minds or desires. Which, if you think about it, is also a very longstanding and sexist belief about girls and women.

Things that are typically thought to be "masculine" or more for male people are given much higher value than things associated with female people (eg nursing and teaching).

So there's two sorts of sexism happening at once: these things are only for the male people and these things are only for the female people. But, also, the things that are for the female people are of lesser worth than the things that are for the male people.
We need to fight both kinds of sexism, not give into one in order to tackle the other.

But then there is other research that shows there ARE differences.

So who's right? The monkey toys in the below are interesting.

stanmed.stanford.edu/how-mens-and-womens-brains-are-different/

But if I really wanted to study physics, I don't think disapproval would stop me. I don't think it would get in the way of my love for a subject.

The point is that too many girls don't get as far as discovering they have that love in the first place, because all the subliminal social messaging and role models they are getting are saying "Don't look over there, there's no people like you over there, look over here! Lots of girls over here!"

My husband and I both love tinkering, repairing and making stuff. But he is much more skilled than I am because his dad used to do it with him as a kid and mine didn't. It never occured to my dad to suggest it or me to ask to try. Whereas his dad used to get him (but not his sister) involved when he was repairing things or working on the car, and so DH gained interest, skills and confidence.

There is absolutely no such thing as a male or female brain, @ThisFluentBiscuit . https://theconversation.com/you-dont-have-a-male-or-female-brain-the-more-brains-scientists-study-the-weaker-the-evidence-for-sex-differences-158005

@OldCrone But you've already accepted that women (and men) can have any personalities or preferences, even if they're not typical for their sex, so there can't be any definition of a female brain other than a brain in a female body, can there?

No, I guess not. And maybe all our apparent sex differences ARE to do with socialisation.

@OldCrone Brain in the wrong body? How does that happen? If a female brain is a brain in a female body, how could that end up in a male body? (Unless someone managed to transplant a brain, I suppose.)

Oh, there was a theory that I talk about upthread. Apparently it's wrong. It says we all start off female and then, if a foetus is genetically coded to be male, this happens via a process that kicks off with a spurt of male hormones at six weeks' gestation, and that the body is masculinised first and the brain is affected last, and that it's a complex process that sometimes doesn't complete, but that's how you can end up with a female brain in a male body and is why there are more trans men than trans women.

But like I said, it's apparently wrong.

Women aren’t vastly underrepresented in science subjects now, are they? They were the majority on the science track at my DC’s school in Scandinavia. Most doctors are female in many countries now. When I have to do with science professionals through my work, they’re usually female. Still underrepresented, especially higher in the career tree and especially in maths fields, but the numbers of fields in which that’s true are shrinking and I don’t think ‘vastly’ applies any more.

It’s as ridiculous as claiming to be a woman with a cervix. It’s as if India doesn’t know what being a woman actually involves.

I guess if he sees his transition as a rebirth then he might be gen z? I don't know when he transitioned.

ETA: I. Don't mean that Makes him Gen Z. But it could be his logic.

India makes me laugh. He claims to be Gen Z.

India is 60 this year. He doesn't know what Gen Z means does he? 😂

I'm REALLY struggling with the idea that there's no such thing as brains that are more female and brains that are more male, and that each type usually corresponds to the rest of the body's sex.

For a comment like this to make sense, you'd have to define what you mean by a female (or male) brain, other than a brain in a female (or male) body.

(And yes, if one subscribes to the idea of overall male/female brains, it's a short step from there to believing that you could end up with a brain/body mismatch.)

Brain in the wrong body? How does that happen? If a female brain is a brain in a female body, how could that end up in a male body? (Unless someone managed to transplant a brain, I suppose.)

But you've already accepted that women (and men) can have any personalities or preferences, even if they're not typical for their sex, so there can't be any definition of a female brain other than a brain in a female body, can there?

I suspect that ingrained societal attitudes like those expressed above are why girls perform better in single-sex schools. In my girls' grammar school, there were plenty of outstanding brains doing physics, chemistry, further maths...all that jazz, and noone was telling them that their fragile little girlie-brains couldn't cope.

On the JKR / IW thing, I am fed up of having to go high when they go low.

Bingo.

And there we have more on the still current sex discrimination facing our girls. Or , the still current axis of oppression for them.

I always assumed there were female-leaning and male-leaning brains

Because you assume that females lean towards nurturing and empathy and males lean towards logic and problem solving?

With respect, you really need to ditch these sexist and outdated concepts.

I’m so glad that in the 70s and 80s I had teachers (and parents) that encouraged girls to follow their strengths.

I need to do some reading on this topic. I don't have a lot more to contribute until I do.

You're almost there.

The girl who is really determined to study physics won't be stopped by social disapproval or sexist teachers.

The girl who thinks 'well, there are a lot of other subjects I like' might decide to do something else.

Boys don't have to overcome this disapproval in order to do science subjects. In fact, they're likely to be encouraged to do them.

People like you who insist that there are girls' subjects and boys' subjects are perpetuating the problem.

"you are discouraging girls from being scientists by implying that they're not suited to it (just like spannasaurus's physics teacher - and mine, incidentally, back in the 70s)."

Well, that's the difference between me and your teachers. If I had a girl in front of me who wanted to do physics, I wouldn't dream of discouraging that individual and would make sure she had everything she needed to succeed. There's a big difference between actually telling girls that they're not up to STEM - and seriously thinking that no girls can do it - and noting the tendencies in large populations.