Boys are innovators. Girls are compliant. Views?

[WhoTheFriggIsAlice]

I have 2 sons (primary school aged) who are being particularly crazy this summer holidays.

One of my son's was trying to dismantle something in the kitchen.

H said something along the lines of "that's the thing about boys, annoying yes but that's why men are inventors - pushing boundaries"

I said "surely it's just society that means women have had fewer opportunities to be inventors and innovators"

H laughed and said "absolutely not - you see it from such a young age. girls are smarter in a way but naturally compliant, boys don't do as well academically - but they are innovators, disrupters"

I think this is one of many insanely sexist things my husband has come out with in the last few years.

But I wonder what others think? Are his views mainstream./

In the womb is definitely a thing, "kicking like a footballer" etc.

And of course women have been restricted en masse from education opportunities historically and currently. We have been banned from education, from primary up to university level, refused membership of academic communities, prevented from accessing funding and so on and so on. Not to mention considered unnatural, un-womanly, unable to be part of society for trying to do so. And furthermore, had their work and achievements stolen by men presenting it as their work.

Any list of prior inventions by men compared to women needs to acknowledge that fact, and in the light of that, the fact that so many women did invent things at all is significant.

At primary age I’d be nipping that attitude in the bud quick smart …. Otherwise you’ll end up with a teenager deep in the Andrew Tate rabbit hole…that’s far too much sass as well rolling eyes and being cheeky

you need a word with your husband

He rolled his eyes at me and said "I can see I've caused offence again..."

Wow. He sounds deeply unattractive

Spoken to in the womb???

That's exactly what he's saying "men have more extremes of intelligence".

If my husband said something like that I'd be so turned off.

Little girls are told to wear tops that "little angel" etc, where as boys will get "rock star".

I saw a tik tok video the other day of a little girl toddler dramatically falling over, there was an abundance of comments saying "you are going to have fun when she's older" "just wait till her teenage years", all filled with negative connotations that she's going to be dramatic and needs to be controlled. If a little boy did the same in the video, you'd get "what a little show man".

You see it in media, a man can do the most disgusting and depraved things, yes he'll get called out on it, but people move on. A woman gets caught not being perfect, she's absolutely crucified and can never escape the slander.

It's not innate behaviour for women to be more compliant , it's conditioned, as they are aware they'll be punished, slandered and even abused for not being compliant, where as its applauded in men and boys.

Op am I right in saying you have two sons, no daughters?

If you have a daughter as well, it's even more crucial that you nip this in the bud. I'm not sure how.

I'm (selfishly) just so thankful that no one in our extended family talks like this, including my PILs etc.

This!

@WhoTheFriggIsAlice of course he's only focussing on the high end of the curve and not the lower end...

I think men see things in a more straightforward way where if women can complicate something they will, men get on with things women spend aged stressing and feeling judged and finding a way to make it about themselves and how they now feel judged

I presume some of the above is needed in a lot of inventions but not sure how

Even if he is saying that there are more outliers in the very high IQs that are male, how does that relate to your sons making a mess? If the spread is wider, the normal male and female would still be the same. IQ is not fixed at birth anyway, so he can't remove socialisation with that argument.

I think historically there has always been a societal acceptance of quirky (autistic) males, particularly in academia, in the way that there has not been for women. Women are held to much higher standards in terms of social skills and expected to multi-task rather than focus on one thing. This is so men could dump the minor shit on them, while they got on with the "important" work.

Why have you married someone who thinks this?

The biggest procrastinators and faffers in my life are overwhelmingly men

Girls' and boys' innovation and 'disruption' might also just present differently.

Naturally compliant I guess...😑

Obviously I mean your husbands attitude will rapidly spread to your children

Yes, unless your sons both have super high IQs then his argument is invalid.

@Butterflyfern agree.

take the average women on here and what she could achieve in a morning vs her male partner.

I can do numerous loads of washing, clean kitchen, bathrooms, childrens breakfast/ get them dressed, look after baby, cook roast lunch, sort house admin, work emails with children under my feet and a million distractions in the time it takes my husband to have a shower and a shit.

Is that a joke? How can you be married to someone with that ridiculous attitude? It's all society and culture that affects gender role and expectations, it's nothing to with biology. You really need to be very concerned about his views passing on to your sons.

You husband is a sexist arsehole.

A woman wrote the first computer programme, by the way.

I took two ten-year-olds to an event about engineering for kids. One boy one girl.

At the hands-on activity the boy set-to immediately picking apart components left by previous participants and building something that looked cool. The girl looked at the instructions of the challenge, took time to think about the problem that needed to be solved and built something that solved it. Much less flashily than the boy's creation but it got the job done. She was the better engineer.

These are just two individuals. There will be many boys who behave differently from that particular boy and many girls who behave differently from that particular girl. Generalising about these kinds of traits is sexism. Brains develop in the direction that they are trained to develop and ongoing sexism like your husband's will perpetuate sexism into the minds of the next generation too.

@WhoTheFriggIsAlice no, that’s not mainstream. I was the child that took stuff apart. I have nieces and nephews who’d fit that description.

You only have to look at the road safety statistics to see that men are less compliant with rules than women on average. But tell that to Katie Price.

We'll never know for sure whether differences on average between the behaviour and achievements of the sexes are due 100% to socialisation or to what extent biology plays a part. Because we can't raise a representative sized population of babies in a gender-free lab.

But that should make no impact on how we treat individuals. There's far more variation between individual men and between individual women than there is between the average man and the average woman.

Don't fight him on nature vs nurture because you'll never win. But never let him get away with a blanket "men"/"women"/"boys"/"girls". Clock in every single time with "on average". And let him know every time he's verging on Andrew Tate territory.

Unfortunately, it seems that you are married to a misogynist.

The real question is, what are you going to do about it and how are you going to ensure that your two sons don't internalise their dad's sexist beliefs?

This! And I say it as an outlier female.

Stereotypes, whether cultural or biological, exist for a reason. But they shouldn't confine individuals, or limit reasonable expectations of behaviour.

Slightly more boys are born because they're more likely to get killed off doing something stupid.

There's also a tendency to devalue women when saying that they do certain things better than boys - as if female dispositions aren't important.