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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Extreme Male Brain

86 replies

StarshitTerrorise · 15/04/2012 14:52

Can anyone help me put an end to my DH's indoctrination on this matter?

ApParently it makes perfect sense but it sounds about as sensible as when the US started publishing 'evidence' that black people were intellectually inferior.

Many Tia!

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TheFallenMadonna · 15/04/2012 19:21

Balanced E=S

Male ES

Balanced could be high E, high S or low E, low S.

SardineQueen · 15/04/2012 19:21

That makes more sense fallenmadonna.

Certainly some people are shit at systemising and are quite horrible as well Grin

SardineQueen · 15/04/2012 19:23

He had no need to call them male and female did he.

He could have called them a b c or something.

And noted that on average more men were a and more women were c or whatever.

Does he have an agenda/did he do it on purpose or is he just a bit sexist and so it made sense to do it that way and oh look what a surprise it ties in with my view of men and women?

TheFallenMadonna · 15/04/2012 19:31

Like I said earlier, I seem to remember he said something like type S, which we'll call male brains. Type S and type E would do just as well of course. And he spends quite a lot of time clarifying that male brain doesn't mean male, and vice versa. Which just makes me want to shout "so don't use it then".

But not as headline worthy.

I have no idea whether he has an agenda beyond that. I suspect that is sufficient.

garlicnutter · 15/04/2012 19:34

Because it's a proportional thing, SQ - I believe; it's ages since I read it. It's not about having a fixed amount of one quality or another. As you say, 'high' on both would put the result in the middle - ie, they wouldn't actually be high in the given context.

I was responding to the very common complaint about any such system, where people claim they have high levels of both qualities so the system must be wrong.

You're right, it does use 5 different characteristics so it's a sliding scale which allows for a reasonable stab at the the proportional approach. The tests aim to measure a respondent's strength of interest in (drive towards) rule-based structures and their drive towards understanding & interacting with people. As it's all about proportions, the results are given as a quotient.

From the Wikipedia article:

E or S. E-S profiles show reliable sex differences in the general population (more females showing the profile E>S and more males showing the profile S>E).[1]

The E-S theory is a better predictor of who goes into STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) subjects than is gender.[2]

Neither of those statements claim to say whether the difference is innate or learned.
The first one says more men get a high SQ score, while more women get high EQ.
The second says people with high SQ are more likely to go into science than other people, irrespective of gender.

It would have been better if Baron-Cohen hadn't called it "Male Brain" but his data (and subsequent studies) do show that more men than women have a proportionally high SQ with lower EQ.

garlicnutter · 15/04/2012 19:34

Much xpost.

garlicnutter · 15/04/2012 19:36

Does he have an agenda/did he do it on purpose or ...

He's always struck me as a bit of a prat.

A clever prat, mind you.

StarshitTerrorise · 16/04/2012 09:21

I expect he did it on purpose either consciously or subconsciously.

I don't think the ASD world are particularly fond though those with Aspergers are more sold on his ideas.

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StarshitTerrorise · 16/04/2012 09:23

I think though that his determination to prove biological causes for differences and possibly autism isn't a bad thing though. I just wish he'd do more on the hormone stuff and in particular look into what happens at birth hormone wise.

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StarshitTerrorise · 16/04/2012 09:29

Garlic

www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=oxytocin-may-alleviate-some-autism-10-02-16

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garlicnutter · 16/04/2012 10:32

Thank you for the link :)

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