Can women identify sex better than men?

[pippapegga]

I've just finished watching DEVS on BBC with DH (brilliant series if anyone is looking for something to watch by the way).
Anyway, in relation to the character of Lyndon - before any pronouns were used I automatically was referring to her as she etc as I just naturally assumed that she was female. DH didn't know who I was referring to at first and we ended up a 'that's a woman' / 'no that's a young lad' discussion until I decided to just Google it. Now the character is meant to be a male, however the actor is a female. To me it was glaringly obvious that she is a female, although she clearly presented androgynously. But DH genuinely thought it was a man.
It got me wondering whether men just don't have the same instinctual ability to see the subtle differences and are more taken in my how people might 'present'. We see so frequently people really trying to convince us that men in dresses can truly 'pass', and now I'm starting to think perhaps some people can't actually see the difference.
Just for the record, DH is GC and totally supports the radfem movement in relation to gender and modern trans-issues, he's not some woke dude-bro.

You can tell if it’s a man who last used the bathroom though - their wee smells different

I don't think babies smell of anything naturally. They might smell of dirty nappy, or baby shampoo or sick or milk but on their own ? No.

Great! It's not just me digressing down. What about asparagus wee, then? Apparently there are some that can't smell that!

I don't think babies smell of anything naturally. They might smell of dirty nappy, or baby shampoo or sick or milk but on their own ? No.

For sure they do, small babies have a very distinct smell, especially their heads. Mothers can often recognise their own baby's smell, too.

My dog regularly eats the crotches of women's underpants. Never my husband's or son's, and not pre-pubescent girls either. She clearly feels there is some tasty difference.

I think men smell different too. Ive always thought its the testosterone i can smell as it wears off a bit with older men?

In many cases modern soaps and perfumes may disguise them, and many people only detect them on a subconscious level , but they most certainly are there !

But this thread has posters saying men smell differently and there is an unmistakable male smell nothing subconscious about it. I don't detect the slightest difference between how men and women smell which isn't attributable to personal grooming or the lack of.

And I don't think I have a poor sense of smell. I mentioned the fishy electrical smell which no one else noticed. It was a fuse box on a common stair. The electrician I called out told me it could have gone up in flames at any time.

For sure they do, small babies have a very distinct smell, especially their heads. Mothers can often recognise their own baby's smell, too

Guess I'm neither womaning or mothering properly then. I don't think my son smelt any different from any other baby. There's a generic clean baby smell and a generic needs a nappy change smell.

And I don't think I have a poor sense of smell. I mentioned the fishy electrical smell which no one else noticed. It was a fuse box on a common stair. The electrician I called out told me it could have gone up in flames at any time.

This is definitely out of my primary field but I understand that there are heritable abilities to detect specific odours. One example being cyanide. I can smell foods fairly well and identify colognes/perfumes (e.g. noticing when a particular user has been in a room) but, when we used to use cyanides for certain assays, it was rather nerve wracking because I couldn't detect HCN. I also do notice that fishy smell, I believe it's amines released by hot epoxy potting compound.

Guess I'm neither womaning or mothering properly then. I don't think my son smelt any different from any other baby.

Shame on you

What about asparagus wee, then? Apparently there are some that can't smellthat!

I understand there are 2 elements at play there- whether one is in the group of people whose bodies produce that effect and also in the group who can smell it.

One might be in the first but not the second so creating it but not aware of it or alternatively one might not be in the first, so not creating it but can detect it in other people's urine if using a lavatory soon afterwards.

There is a lot of research available on this topic of smell - on babies for example - mothers don't necessarily realise they can identify their own baby - but when it comes to trying to do it, many can.

Or differentiating between men and women. (Dogs can do this very well too.)

I don't think the science around it is particularly controversial.

That many people aren't consciously aware of it isn't that unusual either.

I think men smell different too. Just go in, no past, a teenage boy's unaired room! And their wee smells much stronger.

Everybody has their own smell too. Put in random rooms for a night, I could tell you the next day which of my children had slept in which.

My dog regularly eats the crotches of women's underpants. Never my husband's or son's, and not pre-pubescent girls either. She clearly feels there is some tasty difference.

Oh and I was sooo sensitive to smells when I was pregnant. Artificial smells were the absolute worst but plenty of foods and drinks too. Coffee and bacon were the first things I went off followed by tonnes of other stuff. It calmed down a fraction after the first three months which I think is biologically interesting as that is the period when the embryo is forming as opposed to just growing and it is presumably extra dangerous to encounter a poison or pathogen. I wish there was more research on this but I guess it's a classic invisible women topic.

I've gone a bit off topic. The is a bit of an issue around clothing and cues here. According to that classic web essay somewhere, men have zero problem telling male from female when they're on Pornhub.

Back in the clothed world, men's skills seem more shag potential based, women's more threat potential based for obvious reasons.

I wonder if it's also tied up with the male proclivity towards fetishes again. Due to unfortunate imprinting errors during youth, men can apparently develop arousal to all manner of objects and behaviours during youth, in addition to our standard, culture-based cues of femininity (if straight) such as long hair, heels, stockings and suspenders blah blah blah. Perhaps this may fool them more when they encounter cross dressing because it sets off the culture-based programming and overrides the biological stuff at first glance, whereas women absolutely need to see past window dressing to biological reality in order to protect their reproductive autonomy (i.e. protect themselves from rape).

I'm also amazed at the number of trans gender people some of you see on a daily basis. I rarely see anyone who is obviously transgender.

We have several local MtF who are very obvious. Bless em.

Dido - it probably depends where you live. I live in a very right-on city with two universities, so passing a bloke in a skirt (who may identify as trans or non binary or cross-dressing, and may or may not make other nods to feminine stereotypes such as long hair and make-up, but is instantly recognisable as male) is a very common occurrence round here. There is also a male person with a fondness for pink lycra exercise wear I see quite regularly.

On the smell thing, there have been some studies showing that people can tell the sex of a person who had worn a t-shirt, even when they had used unscented toiletries, eg blog.rsb.org.uk/can-humans-smell-sex-pheromones/

Dido - it probably depends where you live. I live in a very right-on city with two universities

I live in a city with 6 universities (albeit some of them are tech colleges with pretentions) In a normal year I'd be in London every couple of months and most of my holidays are spent in cities. I rarely see any obvious trans gender persons.

And carry on with the men smell differently- I guarantee that unless a garment was drenched in a perfume which I recognised as being for men or women I couldn't tell if it had been worn by a man or a woman.

Guess I'm just not being a proper woman.

And carry on with the men smell differently- I guarantee that unless a garment was drenched in a perfume which I recognised as being for men or women I couldn't tell if it had been worn by a man or a woman.

Guess I'm just not being a proper woman.

No one is saying anything about "being a proper woman."

Just keep chumming the waters, sooner or later someone will bite.

I'm just always amazed at how frequently posters on here seem to encounter trans women- to the point that when I'm in the underground in London I actually look around the carriages- which also makes me feel a bit of a prat.

Never once noticed a trans woman in a public toilet. I can only assume trans people either pass a lot better than most posters on here would have me believe or are actually far fewer in number than posters on here would have me believe.

I used to get both men and women thinking (wrongly! I was male when I was younger.

I also live in London and very rarely notice trans women.

I do know I’m pretty face blind so it may well be linked.

Actually I think that there are some contexts in which it would be difficult to distinguish between trans women and women who are not trans. Love Island is a good example, assuming height/shoe differences are not too large. It may be different without make up. I was interested in Gasp0de's comments about the 1960s and 1970s. Astrid Kircherr whom The Beatles knew in Hamburg dies the other day and Paul McCartney posted some old photos of her.

Nobody could ever have mistaken her for a man I think. However, there is a type of glossy look these days that is hyper feminised and where many people might not realise a person is trans. By contrast, a gender non conforming female might find it harder.

Prawn's suggestion that safety is one reason why women are alert to men in the distance sounds very plausible.