to think that men and women ARE different?

[bejeezus]

I hold feminist views, erring on the side of radical feminist. I dont call myself either, as Im not well read enough, I dont think...

Its an on going theme...that people accuse Mumsnet of being a misandrist site. I dont believe it is; and I agree that the misandrist POV would be those saying 'its because he's a man' 'men do that' etc etc when OPs accuse their OHs of not doing fair share of cleaning/childcare/going to strip clubs etc etc. And the man-supporting POV would be'hes a grown up, of course he should do his fair share' etc etc

BUT...SOMETIMES....I think there ARE valid reasons, that the men in question may appear to be, but not be, useless;

For example, women have evolved to have better peripheral vision and ability to multi-task than men, because of them predominantly doing the childcare

For example 2; my dad and numerous other men I know, who are not sexist or useless in any way cant find things. My dad often calls my mum or one of us to help him-if something is 'not where it usually is'. I dont know the evolutionary (or other) basis for this, if there is one, but in this case it isnt because they believe it to be womens work at all

I have to say, it is difficult to talk averages with someone who doesn't seem to understand what average life expectancy means. I am being harsh here, but I think it actually matters.

Averages are nice, but it's the distribution of things that is important.

Men are on average taller than women. But we can only talk about differences properly if we know how large the spread is and how much overlap there is.

Average height of men (age 16+, measured in 2008, in England) is 5'9, average height of women (same criteria) is 5' 3 1/2. But there are lots of women over 5'9, and some (but I believe fewer) men under 5'3. If we pretended that all men were over 5'6 and all women were under 5'6 (the midpoint, ish) then we'd be wrong fairly often.

Wasabi

(1) Their chances of survival in this day and age are pretty good. :)

(2) Bad boys are not necessarily useless. They move on to make more babies, but babies could be fitter than "regular" males.
And they often trick women into thinking they are good boys.
Plus, there is also the fact that females don't have an obvious fertile period. So, if needs be, they can (and have) make other males think that they fathered their children.

Why could the babies be fitter than 'regular' males?

If the other males are 'regular', how much evolutionary impact does a minority of men have, and why do other kinds of men remain 'regular' if the evolutionary impact of bad boys is significant?

It's difficult to address all points.

Ok, I'll try.

On life expectancy, average life expectancy at birth is very much determined by childhood death rates. But it still doesn't mean that societies with a high infant mortality rate will have a large percentage of old people around. In fact, the death rate is remains high throughout all ages and particularly at weaker stages (pregnancy, birth and beginning of old age).
It is obvious that people don't automatically drop dead at that age, but it does mean that half have died by then.
Not sure how the usual calculations for pre-historic periods were done. If at birth or at age 5 for example, or if they actually reflect the rarity of skeletons of over a given age. I'd have to go and check specialised articles.
The point is still that such societies won't have many older people around, at least for each woman that has her first child. There may be a small number reaching really old ages, but given the wear and tear, anyone over 60 would probably require more caring than they would offer support, then.

Can you go and check these specialist articles, because AFAIK, there is a broad consensus that health was better, childhood mortality lower and life expectancy longer in the palaeolithic than the neolithic. And grandparents were not exactly a rarity in the neolithic.

Can you provide a link please?

But 60 is old for grandparents, surely?

I am sure there are many differences between societies, but although 60 may be quite a normal age to be a granny now, it wasn't always. In the period of history I study, it was quite normal to become a granny in your late 30s or 40s.

Also, we're not talking about contemporary Hampshire so why 60? HG first pregnancy in contemporary society is at about 19 on average, so you'd be likely to be a grandmother at about 38.

Sorry I keep xposting with LRD.

If my maternal grandmother had been alive when I was born she would have been under 40.

(and she and my mum were both married before they had children)

Oh, I should be the one apologizing for cross-posting. I am learning a lot from your posts. Thanks.

This is now really off-topic, but I wonder why we're concentrating on grandparents anyhow? Surely older siblings or cousins would also be there?

There's a book I saw reviewed recently about 'long families' in Victorian times and I've not read it yet, but it got me thinking about how it'd be to have so many siblings and cousins, and very likely overlapping generations in the same family.

All sorts of social set ups should be considered as possible, not just the ones that look most like today (or, worse, most like what we imagine the 1950s were like!).

women and men have biological differences.
we [women] give birth and lactate, so by definition we will have different strengths and weaknesses compared to men.

we tend to have more long-term stamina than men. this helps during birth, and when carrying infants around during daily activities.

and because we have a slower metabolism, we also are usually the last to die of starvation (handy when famine hits and small children must still be nursed, population must eventually be replenished, etc).

but i think in a modern society, these physical differences have little impact.

what i DO believe is that men and women are, generally, raised in completely different "cultures", which are left over from a time when the biological differences did have an enormous impact.

these "cultural differences" are frequently mistaken for physical/biological differences to do with brain chemistry. but i think that in fact, the brain differences we do observe have got more to do with "nurture" factors affecting brain development.

in societies that are more egalitarian when it comes to the sexes (Scandinavian countries come to mind, as does Canada and the Netherlands), there is less violence. i think this is because in these societies, boys and girls are similarly nurtured and both sexes are taught to be conciliatory. so their brains develop similarly.

we are all social animals and when we are taught to get along, we do; when little boys are taught to be violent, they are; when little girls are taught to take violence, they do. i honestly believe that many social problems come from the artificial sex-divide that upbringing creates. this divide pits half the human race against the other, and punishes those who choose not to be violent.

that's my theory anyway.

On references and examples, both "sides" are at fault.

I can't possibly give you a list of all the examples of species, so I mentioned one example for each case, and the examples given by you actually support what I was saying.
You haven't given examples that contradict it.

Male humans are different from women (bodywise), but not too markedly, and the differences they exhibit are compatible with a society somewhere between monogamous and polygamous, plus with testicle size suggestive of unfaithful sex.
Yes, there are exceptions, but that only "proves the rule". It also depends on the society/ethnical background. There are average differences between human groups, particularly if relatively inbred. The tallest male is taller than the tallest female, and the same goes for strength. Adult males in some groups have much more body hair and face hair. Again, the degree of differentiation varies with group.
You will rarely, if ever, any biological measure for which you can't find overlaps between two groups. That is why we deal with averages and statistical differences, not absolute differences.

On references, I draw up from several books and articles I have read, on evolution and related topics, not one. So, top of my head, it's difficult to give you one.

If you have read one book and you liked it, good for you. I recommend that you broaden your horizons.

As with most biological issues, it's not all black and white and it's not a matter of simply saying that men and women are different or similar.
And, again, it doesn't necessarily relate to individual cases, or justifies individual behaviours, but it helps explain why we, humans, came to be how we are. It's up to us to evolve to be what we want as a society. That's why we do have a plastic brain and education is for.
However, the truth is that most of us struggle between our biology and our cultural ideals.

lueji, which of us is 'you'?

I don't really see what the point is in using studies of animal behaviour to explain human behaviour in the past without taking into account the behaviour of actual humans in the most analogous societies now.

I wouldn't attempt to explain how chimpanzees behaved in a particular setting in the past without reference to how chimpanzees behave in similar situations now. I wouldn't instead compare them mainly to gorillas, or to chimpanzees living with some woman in a house in LA. So why do it with humans?

Asides from which, as interesting as it is to compare behavioural ecology of humans and other species, it does remain the case that humans are very different to other animals and exhibit cognitive abilities that are either solely (as far as we can now) exhibited by humans or are only rarely exhibited by other species.

I think possibly the point about animals is a bit confused on this thread on account abs and I were having one conversation and lueji and sea a different one.

I agree about the issues with comparing humans and animals but not humans and humans, though.

I missed taking in a lot of Fine's book because I was so blown away early on by her reporting of a study where males and females performed more according to gender stereotype on tests when they simply had to tick a male/female box at the top of the questionnaire. That's how powerful conditioning is. Priming is enough to alter behaviour, performance and perception and that priming exists from the day of birth.

Evo-psych is nonsense. Dangerous nonsense.

I think there are way more similarities than there are differences.
The differences that you can generalise about tend to be more hormone based.
I saw a programme about a female to male sex change.
The subject reported that when she was given the doses of testosterone, she was startled by how agressive and horny she was!
Having said that many women have higher levels of testosterone than others (I know I do) so it varies.
One thing I do know, is that I can put together a flat pack and ds's dad just can't. Ditto mental arithmetic and logical thinking.

I think Fine's book is so good because she gives her references properly, so it is easy to follow up what she says. Lots of 'pop' books don't do that and it really helped me work out where to start reading (because I'm not a natural sciencey person).

I had the same experience as you though Aye, of reading that book the first time and constantly stopping to be furious and/or incredulous of the shit that gets peddled to us. I had naively assumed that the poor level of logic in popular/media explanations of evo psych was simply an unfortunate coincidence of people trying to translate for the mass market, but it is not.