Feminism on MN confuses gender equality with men and women being the same

[Bookwormqueen]

Why is it hard for people to conceive that men and women may have innate differences in the way they behave and their preferences etc? After all they are different physically and in their hormones, so is it so difficult to see that their brains may be wired and function differently aswell?
Why does anyone who expresses that they may have different preferences get accused of holding sexist views? To be fair, I only find these views very prevalent on MN and I find this quite naive
I believe in gender equality, but I also believe each gender has its strengths and weaknesses (physically and emotionally) and these differences should work to complement each other rather than competing and trying to be the same in the name of feminism

There's no such thing, at birth, as 'female' or 'male' brain:
www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.newscientist.com/article/dn28582-scans-prove-theres-no-such-thing-as-a-male-or-female-brain/amp/

"women and men are the same once you strip away the socialisation".

NO! I cannot believe what Ia m reading- this is like when I learned actual mothers thought they peed out their vagina

Men and women are different

hear is the one month study

digest.bps.org.uk/2018/01/31/sex-differences-in-brain-structure-are-already-apparent-at-one-month-of-age/

And as to 'socialisation'

Lets look at something less arbitrary than 'empathy' or 'wearing pink'

Honestly this is extremely worrying- people seem to think they are being clever by mouthing this po-mo marxist crap but all you are doing is denying women adequate healthcare. Since the beginning medical trials have been on men as researcher looked to isolate variables and negate the inconvenience of the menstrual cycle. So here we are in a situation where medication is not even trialed on women, dosages are not cr4eedct and womens needs go unmet

post partum depression is real, anxiety is real, baby brain is real

There are dramatic fluctuations of steroid and peptide hormones during gestation and the postpartum period, with some of the highest concentrations of these hormones seen during these stages of the female lifespan. In women, high levels of oestrogen, progesterone and cortisol are sustained for weeks and months at a time during gestation, whereas, at parturition, these steroid hormones plummet with the expulsion of the placenta resulting in a hypogonadal state [1]. Gestation and lactation are physiologically demanding and thus it is not surprising that there are changes in disease risk after pregnancy. For example, there is not only a decreased risk for many reproductive cancers after giving birth, but also an increased risk to develop depression, anxiety, psychosis and obsessive compulsive disorder [2-5]. In addition, the peripartum period is accompanied by changes to the brain [7] and in cognition. For example, overall brain volume decreases across gestation by as much as 8% and returns to preconception size within 6 months postpartum [8]. Intriguingly, the reduction in brain volume coincides with a decline in cognitive function across pregnancy [9] and early postpartum
Hippocampal Plasticity during the Peripartum Period: Influence of Sex Steroids, Stress and Ageing

Sex differences are prevalent in steroid hormone-induced modulation of hippocampus-dependent neuroplasticity and cognition. These findings may be related to the sex-related differences in the incidence and symptoms of neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders. For example, women are more likely to be diagnosed with depression [6] or Alzheimer's disease
Sex, Hormones and Neurogenesis in the Hippocampus: Hormonal Modulation of Neurogenesis and Potential Functional Implications

Women are more likely than men to suffer from stress-related psychiatric disorders, including posttraumatic stress disorder and major depression- not because they are 'inferior' or weak any more than men are any more inferior for being more inclined to colour blindess: biology
functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine brain responses in 96 healthy men and women with commensurable levels of trait anxiety as they engaged in a personalized guided imagery paradigm to provoke stress and neutral-relaxing experiences. During the task, a significant gender main effect emerged, with men displaying greater responses in the caudate, cingulate gyrus, midbrain, thalamus, and cerebellum. In contrast, women showed greater responses in the posterior insula, temporal gyrus, and occipital lobe. Additionally, a significant anxiety ratings × gender interaction from whole-brain regression analyses was observed in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, left inferior parietal lobe, left temporal gyrus, occipital gyrus, and cerebellum (P 

Bravo Mawalls. Excellent post.

That study is infamously bogus downthetown

“a Proceedings of the National Academies of Science paper suggesting that male and female brains are functionally identical spread far and wide, held up as evidence that sexed differences in behavior are entirely, or almost entirely, learned. But when a group of researchers went back and re-analyzed the data underpinning that paper, they found that in fact, ‘brain features correctly predicted subjects’ sex about 69–77% of the time.’” People want it to be the case that male and female brains are or aren’t identical, in other words, and sometimes let that desire get in the way of a rigorous examination of the available evidence.

Nice one Mawalls
Very comprehensive!

Bravo Mawalls. Excellent post.

What, the weird ranty bit or the poorly-referenced cut and paste job?

Are there studies comparing male and female infant brains? I'd be interested to read them because they aren't referenced in any of the papers I've read which all seem to compare adult brains. There are some areas of the adult brain which are known to vary between the sexes. But not by as much as things like height so there is a large cross over. As we don't really know how areas of the brain correlate to behaviour it's a bit academic at the moment. Neuroscience is still in its infancy, a fascinating area where I'm sure we will learn a great deal in the years to come.

To those of you saying it’s all down to socialisation, that is partly true. Socialisation affects all cultures and affects all aspects of human behaviour, not just gender differences
My point is that the ‘feminists’ who blindly deny the differences and say it is all social construct have gone too far, and this has been to the detriment of women sometimes
And I’m not suggesting that our choices should be limited by this knowledge either. FWIW, despite me believing strongly in these innate differences my own family is not an example of extreme gender stereotypes. We have DD who is very sporty and strong in science, and a DS who is musically gifted, arty and not into sports at all. So clearly whilst I acknowledge the scientific differences openly that does not lead to my children being restricted in their choices in anyway

I don't really understand the OP. The title and the OP seem to be flabby and confusing. Feminism on MN? There is no single view but the 'Terf' threads are clear that women are women and men are men and gender is a social construct that is artificial. The tearing down of gender that allows a man to wear silk undies and a woman to wield a torque wrench is all to the good. The idea that we can ignore the experience of people who have been gendered from birth is flawed. The idea that one sex can be another sex is rejected because of biology is flawed. You can live as another sex but you can never be another sex. You can never understand the impact of genderisation of a sex if you haven't lived it. If there was no gender then there would be no expectations. The transgender movement is accepting and enforcing the very idea of gender whereas feminism seeks to reject the idea.
But in the end? Biology. How many TIMs seek menopause?

Bah. I have drunk wine and this sentence is wrong "The idea that one sex can be another sex is rejected because of biology is flawed"
It should be "The idea that one sex can be another sex is rejected because of biology"

Oh sorry, cross posted there. Unfortunately the article you linked to is only in turn linked to an abstract. Even so it shows the limitations of neuroscience right now:

There were a lot of brain areas that differed structurally between the sexes, but it would be irresponsible to draw any firm conclusions about what they might mean for function and behaviour. For instance, what could differences in overall insula size possibly mean psychologically when the area is associated with “compassion and empathy, perception, motor control, self-awareness, cognitive functioning”, “interpersonal experience” and “psychopathology”?

I do totally agree with you that male and female bodies are different, and that medical sciences tendency to focus their research on men (often young men from narrow demographic groups at that) has meant that treatments have been developed that do not work in the way intended on women.

'I do totally agree with you that male and female bodies are different'

Then you are something of a heretic, there are many many people who will passionately deny this and there is a lot of pressure on people to deny this and cease any research

There are also implications for policy when discrimination is allowed in order to achieve an outcome on the basis of flawed ideology

No studies have been done on newborn brains. No way has there been a big enough study to have ‘outcomes’ on differentiating by sex.
When dd2 was brain damaged at birth, the neurologists basically said that there weren’t really enough MRIs of babies brains done to even come up with specific information regarding actual brain damage.

Anyone spouting off about newborn brain studies, links please. It would be enormously helpful in our medical negligence claim.

''No studies have been done on newborn brains.''

digest.bps.org.uk/2018/01/31/sex-differences-in-brain-structure-are-already-apparent-at-one-month-of-age/

''No way has there been a big enough study to have ‘outcomes’ on differentiating by sex.''

a team of 18 researchers led by Stuart Ritchie, a postdoctoral researcher in psychology at the University of Edinburgh. The authors sliced and diced data from more than 5,000 people who agreed to have their brains scanned for what’s known as UK Biobank

it is “the biggest ever single study… of sex differences in the human brain.”

www.nhs.uk/news/pregnancy-and-child/growth-of-newborn-babies-brains-tracked/#what-kind-of-research-was-this

If there is a significant observable difference between men’s and women’s brains that’s fantastic and an end to all the issues with self identification.

No one denies men and women's bodies are different. They function differently, produce different hormones etc. However, organs can be transplanted between men and women. Child development studies show us responding differently to boys and girls from birth, so there is no way of knowing if there are innate differences from looking at adult brains.

However, as Bert says, if the differences are distinct, then hurrah for the trans debate- sorted!

If we accept that there are differences between the brains of women and men, how much of that is due to socialisation?
For instance, the hippocampus of London taxi drivers who have passed 'the Knowledge' have been shown to be larger than the average. The hippocampus is associated with spatial memory, did learning the geography of London increase this part of the driver's brains? If so, could similar effects been seen in, say, a group of women who provide the majority of child-care compared to a group who did not?

Mawalls but that lengthy post refers to physiological and biological differences. I think we know that there are differences and yes, I can imagine that the brains are different.

However, this debate (I think) focuses on something different. It says that because women are X, they are more suited to Y. Historically, this has been that women are more delicate and should be protected from the hassle of getting involved in public life of the workplace. Instead, they should stay in their protected realm- the home. This was often supported with arguments about biology. Because women breast-fed and gave birth, this automatically translated to them being more nurturing, better with children, less ambitious etc. This is what has never been backed up by science. Yes, there are differences in the brain between males and females. But these differences are not such as to confirm as true the socially constructed gender roles. There is nothing in the brain that confirms that men should pay on first dates or that women should not be airline pilots etc.

100 years ago, many men argued ardently that biological differences meant that adult women did not have the mental capacity to vote. Instead, they should accept their lot and leave the important stuff to their husbands and fathers. They couldn't even own property until 135 years ago. I find it slightly baffling that women want to return to that argument about different brains.

I should also say that we can only treat people completely equally once we have complete equality. Giving women time off work for e.g. childbirth or menstrual cramps is not giving women 'special treatment'. It is instead recognising that the 'norm' or 'mainstream' is a person who does not have those biological functions, ie a man. Women have different needs and requirements in terms of biology, but those have nothing to do with their mental capacity or skills.

You do understand that the human brain is made up of "male" and "female" traits, OP?

Mawalls

Your description of these studies is highly misleading. In fact, 143 babies were studied in the first and 87 in the other.

I doubt you have read the first paper as it is behind a paywall. It would be interesting to know if those analysing the MRIs were blind to the child's sex. From the abstract, the main difference identified was size of brain - which is unsurprising as boy babies tend to be larger than girls, and brain size correlates with body size. The only significant difference between sexes that the second study found was in speed of brain growth - again, unsurprising as it correlates with size.

It is not true that a person's sex can be identified from an MRI of their brain, whatever their age. A neuroscientist can say that a brain is more likely to be male or female, but cannot reach a definite conclusion.

Very interesting thread

yes picklemepopcorn, there is, I have posted it several times now

''It is not true that a person's sex can be identified from an MRI of their brain, whatever their age. A neuroscientist can say that a brain is more likely to be male or female, but cannot reach a definite conclusion.''

Yes!

FFS how many times.when a group of researchers went back and re-analyzed the data underpinning that paper, they found that in fact, ‘brain features correctly predicted subjects’ sex about 69–77% of the time.’”

And if you cut one open its even easier.

What kind of difference could they find in a one month old who cannot process images or speech!?

sex matters in different kinds of ways, from the level of the intact human down to the level of ion-channel function, and everywhere in between. Numerous excellent reviews document this striking development (Cosgrove et al., 2007; Jazin and Cahill, 2010; McCarthy et al., 2009). As a recent example, the laboratory of one of us (D.A.) made the serendipitous discovery that endogenous levels of phosphorylation of synapsin I (a major regulator of synaptic transmission throughout the CNS) differ dramatically between male and female mice (Qin et al., 2013). This was highly unexpected because (1) there is no difference between the sexes in total levels of either synapsin I or the kinase that phosphorylates it, and (2) the phosphorylation of synapsin in rodents has been investigated by several researchers over the past 36 years, but in each case, only one sex was used—either males (Strömbom et al., 1979; Yamagata et al., 1995) or females (Iwata et al., 1996).

There are many examples like this across the neuroscience spectrum. Sex influences on brain function have been reported regarding the neural/genetic underpinnings of addiction (Barker et al., 2010), stress responses (Bangasser, 2013), genetic changes with human aging (Berchtold et al., 2008), human brain connectivity (Ingalhalikar et al., 2014), schizophrenia (Abazyan et al., 2014), pre-natal nicotine exposure (Cao et al., 2013), drug responses (Reilly et al., 1990), ischemia (Lang and McCullough, 2008), microcephaly (Rimol et al., 2010), microglia function (Crain et al., 2013), and pain perception (Sorge et al., 2015) to name only a tiny fraction of the extant findings. For a review of sex differences in molecular neuroscience, see Jazin and Cahill (2010).

sex influences not only brain function, but also interactions between the brain and other systems. Sorge et al. (2015) examined interactions between neural and immune function in pain perception. Using multiple approaches, they found that, unlike what they and others had previously found using males, pain hypersensitivity in females does not involve a contribution from microglia. In contrast to male mice, female mice achieve similar levels of pain hypersensitivity using adaptive immune cells, likely T lymphocytes. These results provide yet more evidence that the neural mechanisms of pain differ substantially in males and females.

There will never ever be 'total equality' because woman and men are different, women ill never gamble or fight or rape like men do. Never ever ever. No matter what happens, no matter the technology the political repression it may decline for both sexes but the gap will remain

It really is appalling the level of ignorance that people gleefully exhibit, I could reel off all differences in visual processing, spatial cognition with cross cultural studies and in come a flurry of 'thats not been studied' and start going on about shit like Cordelia Fine! What next?! Some Tedtalk you saw on youtube? Maybe some powerposing

My point is that the ‘feminists’ who blindly deny the differences and say it is all social construct have gone too far

The assertion that feminists believe men and women to be completely the same is one of the largest strawman fallacies to exist, and people who assert it are either ignorant or willfully obtuse, so let me make some things clear to you OP:

1. There may well be brain differences but we will never know what they are until all other things are equal. All other things are NOT equal at the moment. Socialization exists from day 1. It is often subtle, sometimes not so, but it is pervasive. It is practised by people who then go on to believe that those differences are innate without ever knowing that they are part of the problem.

1. The biological differences between men and women have been used in the past - and continue to be used - to subjugate women, to justify their lower pay, to deny them rights and freedoms undenied to men. It was believed that women's menstruation meant they were incapable of rational thought and should therefore be denied the vote. Today the idea of testosterone on the brain is used to justify the lack of women in STEM.

So the pushback amongst feminists against being told that biological differences abound is understandable and necessary if we are going to get to the truth and fairness.

1. The differences are too small to justify the massive gaps we have in society and the variation within sexes is far greater than the differences between sexes. What does that tell you? That socialization amplifies whatever small differences exist. Do we want that? Do we want girls who are gifted at Maths to be turned off because there is a teeny tiny % of boys who will always be better than her?

1. Male traits are always better paid than female traits

It's funny that, isn't it, coincidental? Sportsmen are paid exponentially more than sportswomen (and where they're not - Wimbledon - boy do we get to hear about it!) and this is routinely justified on the grounds that men are more physically capable. Fair enough you might think. Yet in the areas where women are physically capable - childbirth and rearing - well this seems to lead to a pay cut!

Take that wonderful gift of Empathy that women have - and that men are indeed happy for us to have! Well you might think that it would be invaluable in the service-based industries that we have yet customer-facing roles are paid the least. See the lawsuit against Tesco as an example of equivalent skills being valued differently.

It is hard to overestimate the pervasiveness of gendered socialization in our society. It's awful and it's everywhere. Before you supply your reaction of "but there ARE biological differences" tackle the problem of socialization first, because only when it's gone will you know what the real differences are.

There will never ever be 'total equality' because woman and men are different, women ill never gamble or fight or rape like men do

You know, some might argue those are bad things! Yet men do surprisingly well in society.

As per my post above, no one is saying that men and women are the same, just not different enough to warrant the difference in treatment that they receive.

1: There are differences and we do not need men wearing makeup or women running up massive debts at a casino to find them

2: Science was used to push eugenics, times move on. Keep up.

3: The differences are too small to justify the massive gaps we have in society and the variation within sexes is far greater than the differences between sexes

Tells me you dont understand. The height variation within the female sex varies more than the difference between men and women ergo men and women are the same height (Literally you right now)

Do we want girls who are gifted at Maths to be turned off because there is a teeny tiny % of boys who will always be better than her?

What are you on about? Acknowledging that men and women, on average, tend towards different habits and hobbies in no way shape or form suggests girls shouldn't pursue maths and any girl gifted at maths will understand statistical distribution

4: wrong: Not only do women under 30 make more than men and unmarried women under 40 make more than men but part time women make more than men and women in traditional male dominated fields make more than men
www.monster.com/career-advice/article/women-salaries-equal-outearn-men

because only when it's gone will you know what the real differences are.

We know now!

Are you suggesting we should ignore post partum depression now barbecue not enough women are glassing people in the pub? Thats womens chronic pain wont get addressed until women start rapiogn men at knife point, that womens under diagnosis of autism will remain so as long as selfish women wear makeup

You have no control group or reason to suggest socialization is the cause