Men are from Mars, women from Venus?

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New research says there are 'no' neurological differences between males and females at birth. Boys do not develop speech later etc

<a class="break-all" href="http://m.guardian.co.uk/?id=102202&story=www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/15/girls-boys-think-same-way" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">this is the link

I instinctively agree with these findings. Not a very scientific POV obviously, but that's where I'm at. I am glad someone is challenging this "girls are like this and boys are like that" stuff that seems so prevalent at the moment.

Yes I'm glad too. Although intuitively I do see differences berween my girls and their male friends.

But maybe I just see what I want to see. I find it astonishing that conditioning can occur from so early in development though.

Oh this has always been bollocks and John Gray is just as much of a fucking conman as any psychic of homeopath. The 'gendering' obsession these days is really toxic.

Mind you, this week's Observer really does deserve a round of applause for some full on feminism all over the place.

Am at these comments. Am delighted to see that other people see this book for the rubbish it is. IME it's only ever been hailed by people who have major 'ishoos' and are too lazy to bother to try to see things from another's point of view, and that's at best! At worst, it seems to be a bible for the eduacted abusive man who often seems to use it to claim that a woman misunderstood his intentions.

I have always felt that men and women on a similar wavelength will always have more in common and a greater understanding of each other than two men or two women of vastly differing outlooks on life. And I say that as a staunch feminist.

I'm amazed that M&V is so discredited. I see thread after thread on Relationships where its techniques would really help. And it was written in 1992 so it hardly counts as "these days".

I really don't agree it would only be of use to people who can't be bothered to understand other people's viewpoints. I don't count myself as that (do any of us) but I found M&V really useful. (Actually DP and I are from the wrong planets....but it still helped)

It's also written for adults with communication differences/problems, so whether these are due to conditioning or physical differences doesn't really matter, the point is that by adulthood they exist anyway.

M&V is absolute bullshit with no scientific basis at all. It boils down to 'Women! Shut up and suck cock. Whatever a man does is Right because he's a Man and you're only a woman.'
The insistence on gender differences is all about maintaining male superiority - if men and women were equal it wouldn't matter at all who did what, when or why. It's because there is this insistence that everything good is male and everything less good is female that there is this obsession with maintaining the differences - it's wrong for women to try to access male privilege though praiseworthy for them to want to try to be male (imitate your superiors), wrong for men to do anything 'feminine' as it lowers their status and diminishes male collective power... just think of the totally different connotations of 'tomboy' and 'sissy' when talking about children.

'Women! Shut up and suck cock. Whatever a man does is Right because he's a Man and you're only a woman.'

Perfect description of M&V. I was disgusted with it - all that cave shit!

AllarmBells, if your partner and you are from the "wrong" planets, then doesn't that shore up the argument that there aren't innate biological differences? Why not just write a book that says, some people communicate like this, others like that, here's a way to meet in the middle? It's the gendered crap that annoys us.

Tortoise: This is what drives me demented about (to pinch the Observer's magnificent term) neurosexism. Name anything that is supposedly only done by men, or by women, and anyone can think of at least a handful of men/women who do the exact opposite of what their gender-assigned roles should be. That's a LOT of people demonstrating that the 'rule' doesn't apply to them and therefore can't be 'innate' or 'natural'.

Neurosexism! What a great word.

I'm so sick of evopsych bullshit, I can't tell you.

My big sister was very keen on the Venus and Mars stuff, and felt it really applied to her relationship, but what she wasn't seeing is that her and her dh were very different people who had been brought up in very different ways. Sure there was plenty of gender conditioning going on too, but I think it's quite destructive to then say "oh it's because he is a man", or "oh it's because I am a woman", as opposed to we are different, how are we going to work it out.

Good article. The quotes at the bottom....Baron - Cohen is highly lauded a researcher in ASD but i've always thought his theories are heavily biased by sexist assumptions, it's so frustrating!

I'm reading Pink Brain Blue Brain at the moment so I'm hoping to be better able to argue against "neurosexism" when I see it.

As a poster said above Living Dolls shows what shaky ground this book was written on. Baron Cohen also gets something of a bashing in the book.

I agree there are different types of people but naturally this has nothing to do with gender.

I get that feeling about SBC too msrisotto. You read all this stuff about male brains and female brains, and then he pops in to mention oho, of course when I say "male"/"female" I don't mean "only men/women can have these brains", thereby flying in the face of centuries of etymology. Either you're spouting the line - which, astonishingly, we have heard before in any misogyny manual of your choice from the past few millennia - that women are soft cuddly divvers who should be nice to children and animals and not bother our pretty heads with science (leave all that tricky highly-paid stuff to the boys eh?), or you're not, Simon.

I threw out Venus and Mars after giving it due course, ie. gritting my teeth and making it almost to the end of the book. Gray would say, "when the woman says says blah blah blah, she really means bleh bleh bleh" and I would be screaming at the book - no she doesnt you stupid fucker, she means exactly what she bloody well said in the first place! Wish someone had rolled a very bloody heavy boulder over the entrance to good old John's cave while he was in it.

Truth is unless children are reared without any form of human contact, which would be highly unethical, it is impossible to be absolutely sure what is nurture and what is nature.

We unconsciously send signals to our babies and our children all the time and these signals are often gender related.

It should also be remembered that psychology is not an exact science.

:o epicfail

Loathsome book. I didn't see the Observer this week so I shall go and peruse

Elephants - I'm glad someone agrees with me. At uni, he was one who went unquestioned and it stinks in my opinion.

And I don't know where you read him say that women could have male brains and vice versa but it must have been in his later works because the stuff I read was all happy to polarise gendered brains.

Fry's English Delight (a radio programme about language) was about the differences in the way that men and women communicate (or not) and was v interesting in the context of this thread. Really worth a listen download

(ps after this and my rec on the other thread I would like to make it clear that I don't work for the beeb, am just an avid R4 listener :o)

Thanks LB - I'm listening to it now.

Sue McGregor was accused of being a terrorist for having "Ms" on her passport! laugh or cry?

Well, I've just looked at the GLTC catalogue (since chucked in the bin) and they must think male and female brains are different. Because they have lunch boxes: in pink or blue. They have drinks bottles: in pink or blue, and also a desk lamp: in pink or blue.
So this means there MUST be a specific female way of drinking, and also switching on and using a light, and the male way must be different otherwise why have they had to colour the products either pink or blue?
Oh, and swimming goggles, so girls and boys must swim differently too. How can all these marketing people be wrong?!

Pity we don't have an irony emoticon.

E&M - shocking isn't it? It does make you realise how far we've come I guess