Can someone kindly point me in the direction of some facts/stats about the physical differences between men & women?

[kickassangel]

Apart from the obvious?

I'm sure I read on a thread here, that women are only weaker physically when considering upper body strength.

So, are women broadly speaking as strong as men in their lower bodies?

I've also heard, but not seen facts about, women being better at endurance sports beyond certain levels (e.g. races longer than a marathon).

Cos I'm thinking that
a) if 2 people (male & female) of same age, weight, fitness etc were compered - would they in fact be similar in strength/speed
b) I'd love to see the results of men & women raised equally to see if they in fact turn out to be more similar wrt height, weight etc.

But I have no idea where to start looking. Please help.

all the definitions of things like gender/sex/sexuality etc should be seen more on a sliding scale, rather than just as a binary division

Its a shame this isn't already blindingly obvious to everyone!

yes, it's just so ingrained that you are either male OR female.

as well as the (fairly rare) examples of people born with genitals/reproductive systems that aren't clearly one or the other, and the people who 'feel' more like they belong to the 'opposite' sex, there's a huge array of people like tomboys, and boys who like to sit quietly etc.

just the phrase opposite sex is a whole discussion waiting to happen. I don't oppose men, why should I see them as opposite? It completely carries the meaning of a dividing line with people staring/glaring across it at each other.

(I'm also thinking that using the word tomboy is fairly offensive as well. dd is a complete mix of stereotypical boy/girl interests. why does she get labelled as a boy cos she likes science? I describe her as wanting to climb trees in pink dresses)

I COMPLETELY understand the Canadian couple who have refused to announce the sex of their baby.

I agree that there are some intersex people who should have a biological sex in their own right, but everyone else is either male or female. But this doesn't mean there aren't discrete groups, anymore than humans with two legs are on a sliding scale between a dog and a slug. There isn't a sliding scale. What on earth would such a sliding scale consist of?

I'm the height of an average men. Are people suggesting that I am somehow less female than a shorter woman, that I fall somewhere along a sliding scale? Or on the other hand, I have large breasts. Does that put me at the extreme end of the female to male scale? Other than putting intersex people on this sliding scale rather than allowing them to categorise themselves, who else are people proposing gets put on a sliding scale for biological sex?

See where all this postmodernism gets you?!?

Male and female are perfectly serviceable words (albeit freighted with all kinds of socio-cultural baggage) and they do just fine to describe 99.whatever of people just fine.

Boys who like sitting quietly, girls who like climbing trees or doing science... They are not somewhere in the middle of a sexual spectrum they are just boys who like sitting quiety etc...

X post millyR

I'd say not everyone wants to be 'feminine' or 'masculine' but 'male' or 'female' is ok. The one's a social construct, the other's just a description.

But whenever someone mentions postmodernism I feel both ignorant and confused, so I may be wrong.

I'm going to go for feeling stupid and confused when people try to explain postmodernism. I am not ignorant of it; I have made an attempt to learn about it but I simply do not understand what I have been read and told.

I missed out on learning it at university, and I think it's too late now! I've read too much taking issue with it, I'd just get more confused trying to separate what it is from what people argue against it.

I'm quite happy to now you gave it a go and gave up, though.

Well, considering the people who don't have a clear-cut biological sex.
There are degrees to which this can happen, so no clear definite '3rd' group which can be proven to be neither male or female, so where would you draw the line for that? It is rare, but it does exist. Why DO we need to declare 'boy or girl' the moment a baby is born? Why does that even need to be recoded anywhere? I'd be pretty upset if people insisted on keeping a record of my sexuality for govt files. Why do they need to know what I keep in my pants?

Also, a larger group of people would fit into 'transgendered'. Again, why do they need to be categorised? Does it matter if they have female reproductive systems but 'fit' better into a more traditional male role. Again, why do we even need to know whether they're m/f to accept them into certain roles? Why do passports need as to been assigned one or the other?

Then there's the huge number of people who are really a mix of m/f interests etc. Hormone levels during pregnancy are influential in this, as well as environmental factors. Nowadays we accept the 'tomboy' and the 'metrosexual' type of person, but that isn't true of everywhere. So if we insist in saying that we are defined to be male or female, then we are making implications about people who show signs of living outside of those definitions.

To really get beyond the idea that our bodies define our roles, we should perhaps stop trying to define our bodies in such absolute terms.

In the context of my work, we were discussing the groups that students sit in at lunch time. By having some fairly rigid patterns of behaviour, some people do feel isolated. There tends to be 2 tables of just boys, 3 tables of just girls, and one co-ed table, which is the 'indie' type people. So, a new girl joined the group. She is v feminine & pretty. She gets on really well with boys as friends. She's not really into the indie scene. Where should she sit? According to the mores of the group, she should join one of the girl tables, but she will find the conversation at the boy tables more to her style, and is likely to be welcomed most easily at the indie table.

The simple fact that we place so much emphasis on m/f differences can cause isolation & polarisation. Ideally, I would like to see us stop having definitions for what is feminine & masculine, but just to see people as people without having to give them a label according to their bodies. (Just as I would relate an anecdote about someone without feeling the need to state their race, I shouldn't feel the need to state someone's sex)

I was taught it on my undergraduate degree. It was on its way out by the time I went back to do my masters. I didn't understand it during my undergraduate degree so made an effort to understand it by reading some books on it afterwards. I still don't understand it.

Maybe because it is very long winded, and it doesn't seem to be something people can break down into a number of simpler explanations so that you can then return and understand the more complex ideas and specific terminology.

I'm feeling old now - I was at college before post-modernism. The only context I've heard it discussed in, was the shooting of U2 music videos in the mid 1990s. They were v post-modern, apparently.

KAA, almost all of your post is about gender. Gender isn't a binary and is a different thing to biological sex.

It is up to people who are intersex to decide how they want to define that and what they want to do about it. Presumably it has particular issues in terms of reproduction. I have heard before that all intersex conditions include a Y chromosone, so I'm not sure how that would relate to a sliding scale.

Race is like gender; it is socially constructed. There isn't a comparison between biological sex and race.

Who are these people who choose to live outside of the definitions of male and female? I only know of people who want to live outside the definitions of masculine and feminine.

Ahh, I remember those videos. But I did not know they were post-modern.

dd is a complete mix of stereotypical boy/girl interests. why does she get labelled as a boy cos she likes science?

Does she really? Who by? Is that one not consigned to history yet?

Whatever post-modernism was, surely we're past it now...

LRD - according to the director they were. Beyond that I know nothing I may not have been listening properly

Millie - There's a couple in Canada who have refused to tell anyone whether their baby is male or female. There was a big thread about it on here a while ago. We can't draw any conclusions, but it's interesting to see what happens.

What I also found interesting was the reaction from people - they were outraged that someone didn't publicly announce whether it was a boy or girl. All sorts of comments about 'it will grow up confused' etc. So when we discuss these things it's clear that the sex of someone almost completely defines their gender from the moment that they are born. Whilst we like to think that we're open minded, there is so much evidence to the contrary that it's really hard to tell whether someone adopts a certain gender role because of their sex, or because society decrees it.

If it is almost all because to environment, then surely it would be best to let babies/children grow up with no real awareness of their sex, so that they don't get pulled into a particular gender role?

Awesome. Next time someone mentions postmodernism I shall nod wisely and say 'ah, like the U2 video' and they will think I am Wise and Cultured.

KAA, no, it would be better to get rid of gender. We shouldn't have to pretend to children that they don't have a particular body simply to avoid a load of nonsense about tiaras and guns. What do you suggest we say to children when they notice they have a vulva and somebody else doesn't? Should we pretend that their future female reproductive potential is trivial?

I'm not saying that applies to the parents of the child. If we are referring to the case, they have told the other children the sex of the baby. They just aren't telling other people.

Milly, I would love to get rid of gender, but really not sure that it's possible without changing our ideas about sex.

As I said earlier, the conference I went to had a speaker who was suggesting that we should be less binary in our descriptions. It will take some digging, but I'll see if I can get some links (may not be able to do it til back in school next week) as I'm sure that she can explain it better than me, as she's written books on this.

I'm not saying that there is no such thing as m/f, just that we shouldn't see that as the only way to label people. That there are people who don't fit that, and perhaps don't want to have to come up with a different label, but just to feel that they 'fit' somewhere along the line of m/f. Also, that gender is so imposed upon people that perhaps having a more neutral view would help to eradicate a lot of the pressures to fit a certain role.

Look at how we describe neutered animals as 'it' often, but still refer to people as he/she, even eunuchs. We just don't seem to be able to even think about people without assigning a sex to them, and with that comes a boat load of gender assumptions.

Even today, adults who are unable to reproduce often express angst about not being a 'real' man/woman, as if our reproduction & sex define us & without them we're not quite human.

I don't want to say that nobody is male or female, just that we should move away from using it as such a strong definition, as if it describes our very essence & humanity, and that without it we're somehow less. People with male reproduction who believe that really they're female, don't want to be defined by their body. Why should they have to choose one or the other? Why can't they just say that they're human?

I think we refer to lots of animals as 'it', not just neutered ones. I would find the idea of referring to a man or woman whose genitals had been mutilated as 'it' very problematic. They would still have male/female chromosomes, for a start.

I do think and hope we can get rid of gender, even though I don't believe we can change our biology.

People who have a strong core gender identity that is different to that of their biological sex generally don't want to be treated as just human. They want to be treated as if they were the opposite gender to their assigned sex at birth. Again, that is an issue of gender but rather a different issue to social gender roles. It isn't something I have direct experience of because I don't have a core gender identity.

As far as I'm concerned, my biological sex is one of the major things that does define me. I have been pregnant and had two children. When I have had miscarriages, pretending that biological sex doesn't really matter and that me not getting to give birth didn't matter because men don't give birth so I shouldn't define myself by it would only have trivialised my experience of having a female body. I do have this body and that is my lived experience. I don't want people to just define me as a human without a biological sex because no such thing actually exists, especially as when people talk about humans they usually mean people who can't get pregnant, as if potentially getting pregnant was some kind of rare disability rather something half the population have to think about for a lot of their lives. Having brown hair is a triviality; pregnancy - either wanting it or attempting to avoid it- is not.

And eunuchs are men. They have a major experience that can only be had by those with a male body.

I think we refer to lots of animals as 'it'
I don't, because it makes them sound like things. There isn't a good gender-neutral personal pronoun in English - wonder if any language does have such a thing?

You mentioned people who don't want to be labelled as male or female but don't want to come with for a label for themselves. I'm not sure what can be done about that, but I don't think expecting large numbers of other people not to label themselves in the way they wish is a plausible or ethical solution.

I can think of a novel where people use 'pers' rather than he or she, which I think would be preferable to 'it.'

Sorry X post.

but milly i'm not saying that we have to get rid of m/f - i'm saying we should include those who are not as clear cut as that & not have the view that people have to be one or the other. that's what a 'sliding scale' type analogy would mean - some would fit into m, some into f, and some would be somewhere in between. it could be that physically they aren't clearly defined, or that emotionally they identify with something different from their body, and would like to be able to claim some kind of 'other' status, without only being able to choose m or f.

At the moment we only have 2 options, with no sense of there being anything other than that, and constantly talked about as if those options shape our lives, when they shouldn't do. And we constantly identify ourselves by the definition we're given.

What if I don't want to be identified as a woman? What if I'd rather that was something that I kept to myself (at least until people met me, or maybe even later if I chose to be androgynous)?

I may at times wish to be overtly female (searching for a partner, trying to get pregnant) but at other times want to be seen as more neutral (work environment). But because we have such fixed ideas, I don't have that as an option.

So I'm arguing that
a) we shouldn't just make everyone fit into either m or f definition, even if that doesn't work for who they actually are, but acknowledge and develop a way to include people who don't fit those definitions
b) we should be able to claim 'neutrality' because the expectations placed upon us, from the moment that other people know our sex, shape who we are.