"You have a man's height"

[FermatsTheorem]

Said no-one, ever.

I think these are US statistics, but the same argument applies, give or take a few percentage points, regardless of which population statistics you use.
Men have an average height of 5'9.3", with a standard deviation of 2.92 inches. Women have an average height of 5'3.8" with a standard deviation of 2.8 inches. This means (assuming the distributions to be Gaussian) that a woman who is 5'9.3" (the average height of a man) is on the 97.5th percentile of the female distribution (to change that into frequency terms, because that makes more sense to most of us - that's one woman in 40).

But no one ever says to a tall woman "you have a man's height."

However, alleged studies of brain differences are often spun by the press as "scientists discover the difference between male and female brains." (The latest one, using foetal MRI scans and an elaborate technique which, as far as I could see, came down to calculating pattern correlations between different parts of the brain, then using this as a measure of "connectivity": disclaimer - I am not a neuroscientist, but I do work in the physical sciences and use a lot of stats in my day job).

The point I'm making with the height analogy is that this spin ("scientists discover what makes a brain male") makes no more sense than saying "scientists discover what makes a height male." These studies tell you about statistical features of populations, not individuals. An individual who is an outlier for their sex is just that - an outlier for their sex. Not a member of the opposite sex.

(Important subsidiary point to make: height is far more obviously dimorphic in terms of its statistical properties than any of the putative brain differences. The d-value, i.e. difference in means divided by product of the standard deviations, is usually less than 0.5 for most putative cognitive differences, i.e. to the naked eye, the bell curves lie pretty much on top of one another).

That's a really good point. I've had issues with the "man brain" thing for a while but never had a succinct way of explaining how bullshit it is. I'll use this in the future.

I've said in the past though that if the human brain is so malleable that a person born without hands can learn to eat with their feet do you really think it's impossible for a girl to be good at maths....

People are so rigid on the concept of male and female brains it's quite strange.

Was it just me who read this and thought of the sea captain in Blackadder 2 (you have a woman's bottom...)

Sorry.

Endoplasmic, I was just about to post the same thing until I realised you had!

Excellent points Fermats - I'll be storing this one up for use later.

At 5’11, I often got told that I was «too tall» - for a girl, presumably, as I don’t think anyone would ever say that to a 5’11 man.

Your point is still a good one though.

This is discussed in Angela Saini's book Inferior.

It's a fascinating read, I thoroughly recommend it.

I've got Gina Rippon's Gendered Brain lined up next.

Endoplasmic

"You have a woman's leg!"

On brain plasticity, mentioned by @NappyDisco. In Inferior the discussion on measured gender differences in brains concludes that since these differences are NOT present at birth or in early infancy, they are a result of being socialised into gender roles.

What differences there are (and the "evidence" is woolly and negligible at best) seem to be caused by gender roles, rather than the converse.

She then goes on to explore different human cultures where gender roles differ from typical western, and looks at other primate species.

It really is good!

Oh, and the whole field is clouded by the tendency for confirmation bias among researchers. They are actively looking for biological/structural differences on which to confirm women's inferiority.

(I did think of the Blackadder sketch when I came up with my thread title ).

To add to the reading so far, I can really recommend neuroscientist Lise Elliot's Pink Brain, Blue Brain (which is a debunking of the pink brain blue brain stuff) - solid unpicking of the use and abuse of statistics, lots about brain plasticity in infancy and early childhood (her research specialisation) and lots on the way adults interact with children differently according to their perceived sex, hence the way in which from birth onwards environment plays a massive role in reinforcing/suppressing behaviour patterns the adults round the child deem appropriate or inappropriate.

Very well explained

I'm 6'2. I'm going to have to look at my life!

Could parents behaviour around babies and children trigger confusion about their sex? EG a disappointed mother with several sons treating her new baby boy as if he were a girl?

Or, @T1meForDebate, perhaps denying gendered toys or activities, such that a person believes they have to change gender to access those things? Or worse, such things and the associated gender becomes fetishised?

I'm duch and 5 9 (I think). Which is pretty average here. So are all dutch women men in disguise? How on earth do we have babies?

I've had the man's brain nonsense over and over again having worked in IT for years, especially when I was the boss.
Being tall as well didn't help.

I'm over five foot nine. I've never been told I'm tall like a man. Just that I'm a tall woman.

T1meForDebate I had three significantly older brothers. So all my things were boy things - farm yard stuff, tractors, cars. Not interested in teddy bear until a play mate wanted it (hah!) and no interest whatsoever in barbie or a sleeping doll. From a very young age I did farm stuff, feeding calves, helping milking, calving. Still, no confusing about my sex.

Oh, and the whole field is clouded by the tendency for confirmation bias among researchers. They are actively looking for biological/structural differences on which to confirm women's inferiority.

Discarding 'uninteresting' results is extremely bad practice.
Bear in mind that using the usual 95% confidence limits, a phenomenon for which no difference actually exists would be expected to show a 'statistically significant' difference in one in twenty cases.