Men and women's brains are wired differently. Really..........

[JapaneseMargaret]

BBC article here.

Anyone know where a more in-depth article might be, so that I can come to my own conclusions?

They do say brain connections are not set, and can change throughout life. But absolutely no mention is made of the affects of society and nurture over nature. Both of which have a fundamental impact, surely...?

As a feminist I have absolutely no problem with any properly done research showing eg that on average people with Y chromosomes are better at reading maps. Might be true, might be false. My personal suspicion is that there is a slight bias and would be even if society claimed that map reading was "women's work", but that the difference in the means of the bell curves of ability for the two groups is tiny relative to the spread within each group. If these gender differences are real then I have no interest in denying them, because they have no relevance to how individuals should behave or be treated.

But I am fucking incandescent at coverage summarising these small differences in averages as "women are" and "men are".

I've always been fascinated by the research that University College did about a decade ago, scanning the brains of London taxi drivers who had done "the knowledge" and comparing them with non-taxi drivers. They found the hippocampus (involved in navigation in birds and animals) enlarged in London taxi drivers compared with non-drivers and also that the hippocampus actually enlarged further the longer the taxi drivers drove.

If an activity such as learning all the roadways of London by heart and repeatedly driving the routes can have a pretty profound effect on the structure of the brain it illustrates the brain's plasticity and its ability to adapt to demands made on it. One has to wonder therefore how much the brain adapts when its owner adapts to conform to particular gender behaviour.

Just sent, mooncup - but let me know if it doen't get there as I got an error message the first time.

I am sure there are sex biases in these things, although whether they are due to nature or nurture is unexplained, and also the fact that any differences are as you say "average" and also on the whole quite small is rarely mentioned.

If someone says that I have a female balance of hormones and my brain is likely to be wired in a certain way then OK. If that leads to me being told that I am unsuited to doing the things I do for work, or that my choice of hobbies is unnatural, or that really I'd be best off studying history and french at school rather than maths or physics, well then, not OK. And actually kind of where we still are at the moment and decades of fighting around the world is still trying to get over those ideas and in the main still failing.

It's all rather reminiscent of the studies around race, donkeys years ago isn't it?

YY grimble I remember that research!

Also doesn't a lot of research around ageing show that how you use your brain can have quite profound effects on how it ages?

There was some other stuff as well. To do with brains changing.

Was going to say something similar about bell curves evilringahbitch. For example, page 3 of this has a bell curve comparing male and female maths performance:

www.campbell-kibler.com/Stereo.pdf

The difference is tiny, hardly enough to be noticeable in every day life, yet ask a random member of the public to guess at drawing the curves and I bet you'd see much more separation! What annoys me is that these tiny differences are used to perpetuate the myth that "men are better at..." and "women are better at...".

Plus, it's not nice being a techie woman and forever reading in the media just how you're not wired like other women or you have a man's brain or that women just aren't that great at maths.

Incidentally DH has just said he read this on the BBC as well and he said it was "patent bollocks" and is still ranting on. I hope this is a time where a male opinion on FWR is welcome

oh oh the maths

Around this part of the world maths is seen as a "boy thing" and clearly this "study" backs it up with their "boys are all logical n shit".

However on FWR a while back someone said that in another country (maybe Japan?) maths is seen as a GIRLS subject and their gender constructs take that into account and are happy and comfortable with it.

So there you go.

Well, I now have the full article, most of which goes way above my head . I'm not going to comment on the science or statistics as I am too ignorant, but I noted this final paragraph:

'Thus, the current study presents unique insights into sex differences using structural connectivity and measures de?ned on the connectome. Results are lent credence by supporting behavioral and functional studies. Our ?ndings support the notion that the behavioral complementarity between the sexes has developmental neural substrates that could contribute toward improved understanding of this complementarity.'

Doesn't this suggest that the experimenters have assumed that behavioural differences (or 'complementarity') between the sexes exist, and are now looking for physical evidence to explain them? So, as LRD suggested earlier, they are not exactly starting from a neutral position.

Yeah quite right.

"complementarity" is what they have made up and they are red hot keen on proving their new idea.

They have got it into their heads that when we were "cavemen" or whatever, that we developed different brains to cover off all the tasks. So ,like, hunting mapreading football and playing warhammer went to the men. Childcare being nicey-nicey sitting around and playing games which were fun like knitting washing up and skinning animals came to the fore for women.

One has to wonder how they were dished out, the skills. Maybe on cards, adam and even got to pick one at a time and their brains were wired accordingly?

Has it not occurred to them that humans have always lived in social groups and the successful groups had a predominance / balance of skills required at the time within their community. Hmm?

I probably should have clarified but of course I wasn't saying that everyone lusted after the opposite sex. I was just thinking about those that do, what is it that they find appealing about the opposite gender. Imho it's not just physical at all. Of course one can lust after a nameless model in a magazine but for me, it does go beyond physical attributes alone. I don't think I'm articulate or brave enough to try and explain it other to say that there's a 'maleness' in men's thinking and being that I and other women I know are drawn to. And I speak as an avowed feminist, who had an 'alpha male' father and as a consequence is repelled by any
of the stereotypical 'ultra-masculine' traits.

But I know I am not attracted to men simply because of their muscles and genitals.

Many men (maybe most) are not noticeably muscly or especially good looking, so how do they find female partners who find them attractive? To be crude, it can't just be their cock n balls!?

And as for the crossover between 'female' and 'male' traits, no one had ever denied that there is a spectrum of such traits.

I would be the first to protest against people being limited by gender. I am an 'atypical' female and my DH and two sons are 'atypical' males.

I just think to put all gender difference down to nurture is as extreme as saying it's all down to nature.

Heh I just wiki "complementarity"

If we're not talking physics (and I'm guessing these researchers aint) then here is the definition:

"Complementarianism is a theological view held by some in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam,[1] that men and women have different but complementary roles and responsibilities in marriage, family life, religious leadership, and elsewhere. The word ‘'complementary’' and its cognates are currently used[by whom?] to denote this view. For some of those whose complementarian view is biblically-prescribed, these separate roles preclude women from specific functions of ministry within the Church,[2] with the notable exception of the leadership role of the deaconess, in many Christian denominations.[3] It assigns leadership roles to men and support roles to women, based on certain biblical passages. One of its precepts is that while women may assist in the decision making process, the ultimate authority for the decision is the purview of the male in marriage, courtship, and in the polity of churches subscribing to this view.
Contrasting viewpoints maintain either that women and men should share identical authority and responsibilities in marriage, religion and elsewhere (Egalitarianism), or that men and women are of intrinsically different worth (a position usually known as chauvinism, usually male, although female varieties do exist)."

Well uh-huh things become a touch clearer.

Oh well done NiceTabard! That is quite telling, I think.

I dunno, googlyeyes... I don't think I'm attracted to 'male thinking', however you would define that, so I can't really comment. I like the way some men smell, though!

They do indeed NiceTabard. I was just thinking how "religious" that paragraph Mooncup quoted sounded. Men and women are complementary is what religious books/leaders quite often say. It's shorthand for stay in your box woman and don't muscle in on the big boys' jobs.

Ah googly but that's just you. Other people might have different criteria in selecting sexual / long term / life partners, and that doesn't make them not "wired right".

I also don;t understand what you mean by atypical?

You are a woman, you are how you are. Whatever it is about you that you feel makes you, what, masculine rather than feminine, does not stop you being a female. Assuming you are not intersex, your sex is what it is. You have children (again assuming you carried them and birthed them, apologies if those assumptions are incorrect). You are undeniably a female. This word "atypical". How? (You don't have to say).

Plus if 3 out of 4 of your family are "atypical" - then surely the "atypical" is actually "typical"?

Oh whoops sorry misread.

4 out of 4 of your family are "atypical". I would be interested to know how you are measuring that. And how you come to the conclusion that you are all atypical.

So basically religious right wing "research" has made it into a prime place in many mainstream UK news organisations as "fact".

This is where the US right spend their money so carefully. Moving the overton window, getting strong messages out there etc. I mean someone's given it to the press with a certain spin and knowing they won't read the bloody thing let alone critically analyse it. Who did that. Not a UK university I wouldn't have thought.

ireland

voice of america

india

at which point i gave up

same pics
didn't read the articles but headlines the same
I am feeling a bit freaked out actually

I think I have a sense of what googly is saying.

I totally agree gender isn't purely physical. In fact I think gender isn't physical at all - it is only coincidence and conditioning that makes us associate the masculine 'gender' with the male body. As examples suggest, we could have developed a totally different checklist (being simplistic I know) of 'masculine' qualities and it wouldn't affect our bodies at all.

So if you are attracted to stereotypically masculine qualities yes, I am sure they are not limited to the physical and I don't see why they would be. What I don't get is why that suggests those qualities might be innate rather than conditioned?

That's why I brought up the point about not everyone being attracted to the opposite gender. I'm not just being picky - I really think that shows how gender couldn't possibly be innate.

No, not 4 out of 4. I also have a daughter who is very 'typical'! I apologise for using 'atypical' but hoped the quote marks conveyed what I wanted to get across. I just meant not stereotypically male/ female. Whatever that means! I spent my whole childhood being called a freak by my dad because I wasn't what he or society would have thought of as having typical female traits so I'm about as violently opposed to labelling people like that as you can get. As I said, just not articulate enough to say what I want to say exactly how I want to say it.

Absolutely agree that whatever the fuck I do is 'typically female' as I am a woman. Full stop. But society hasn't always seen it that way.

Out of interest how does the theory re nurture work when it comes to transgendered individuals then? Does that not support the view that female/ male brains are inherently different? My cousin is male/ female transgendered and says he always knew he had a 'woman's brain' in a man's/ boy's body

Just to pick up on the transgender question - I hope you won't mind me responding when this isn't something I know about personally. But there is a woman I know, who I met recently and who is transgendered, and she is not 'stereotypically female' at all. I think that issue is much more complicated than the stereotypes.

From a more simply logical perspective, it would not be proof that all men's and women's brains were inherently different along gender lines if a minority demonstrably were. I don't personally believe that transsexuality shows that men's and women's brains do have innate gendered characteristics. But even if I did believe that, I don't follow why it would be ok to generalize from that small number of people to everyone - surely that would be like me saying 'well I am a woman attracted to women, so that proves all women are lesbians'?

I would like to discuss transgender in the context of this thread but think it would result in it going hopelessly off-kilter - and no-one has to abide by that but I'd rather not go there now.

LRD I don't think that gender has anything at all do do with physical sex. That's kind of the point, for me. The most "feminine" looking women can have the most "masculine" jobs, interests and hobbies and vice versa.

And yes googly I understand where you are coming from but I would like for people to be how they are without all this crap around it. I think I get very excercised by this as it's been a thing that has impacted me since my teens in that I look a certain way but my talents and interests are a different way. I just hate stereotyping, full stop. Being out there in the world and hearing people guessing at other's sexuality, talents, personality and a million other things based on their sex and how far (or not) they adhere to their gender role. It's all rubbish. Just let people get on with it is what I say, and everyone will be a lot happier. (Not aimed at you! Just my view in a nutshell).

What I would like to know is why everyone automatically assumes that hunting is the only activity that develops spatial awareness/map reading abilities.

When the women went out gathering/foraging I'm guessing they didn't find those pinkedy pink berries in their back yard and that there weren't road signs leading the way in the wilderness. That there weren't any nice Waitrose signs saying "Fruit and Veg" this way.

I'm pretty sure that spatial awareness would be a nice thing to have when lost in a three dimensional wilderness.

On second thoughts maybe that's why they developed boobs - to attract the nearest caveman into giving them directions!!!

And to remind everyone that it seems that a right wing christian (probably) group somewhere has commissioned this "research" and the spammed worldwide news with incomplete facts and bollocks conclusions and a nice picture that they all have the same.

This "men and women ARE wired differently" headline has been set deliberately and globally.

Who would do that and why and can we try and work it out would be really meaningful things to try to work out right now I think?

I'm sorry, I may have put that badly, but I never meant to suggest I did think gender had anything to do with physical sex. I think gender is a social construct and sex is a physical characteristic.

All I mean to say is, leaving aside my personal views, it is not logically valid to claim that, because transgenderism exists, therefore there is such a thing as 'the female brain' or 'the male brain', in which physical structure correlates to gendered behaviour.