JKR poem to IW - Brilliant

[TwistedWonder]

https://x.com/jk_rowling/status/1890450465063600510

I’ll get screenshots for anyone not on X but I have to love JKR for this ❤️

doh.

"or looks just really dodgy from the start or is correct but is being leveraged in a way that the information should be leveraged."

or looks just really dodgy from the start or is correct but is being leveraged in a way that the information should not be leveraged.

If there's no such thing as male and female brains, why are the vast majority of engineers men? Why aren't there more female mathematicians? Of course, individual women can make top engineers and mathematicians, but there are far fewer of them at the population level than there are male ones.

You don't think sexism has anything to do with this.

When I did A level physics in the late 80's my teacher, in class, said that girls shouldn't be studying physics because we didn't have the right brains to cope.

And girls being influenced by stereotype threat.

And the issues discussed in Caroline Criado-Perez's book Invisible Women.

And family pressures

And early female socialisation.

Etc etc.

By the way, @ThisFluentBiscuit genuinely, if someone asks a question on this board, someone will answer and try to answer with evidence. I have very rarely seen someone reply 'go google it' unless they have reached a level of frustration at a poster who refuse to engage in at least reading what people write. However, I have encountered too many posters who post misinformation that will reply 'google is your friend', of 'I am not going to do your work for you'.

You posted your links and where you got your thoughts from. So, for that, thank you.

Men and women behave so differently and have such different preferences that I can never understand why people try to deny there are sex differences in the brain. At least in general, even if it doesn't apply to every individual. Many parents who have raised both a boy and a girl end up convinced of such.

My brother is adamant that his girl children and boy children are completely different and it's definitely nature not nurture. In other words, girl brains vs boy brains. Apparently I just don't understand this because I only have boys.
Actually, his son is told things like "you can't play with the dolls, they are for girls. The girls are constantly told to sit down and be quiet, the son isn't. Son gets constantly praised for how clever he is, one of his sisters is probably better than him at maths.

It's definitely nurture in their family!

And shut out of education

Pushed into certain subjects during education and away from others and that has happened in my lifetime.

‘If there's no such thing as male and female brains, why are the vast majority of engineers men? Why aren't there more female mathematicians? Of course, individual women can make top engineers and mathematicians, but there are far fewer of them at the population level than there are male ones.’

How about misogyny, how about thousands of years of conditioning by men, who have always, and still do largely, control the narrative? You simply can’t be unaware of this so I hesitate to take your seriously. Men are superior in only one area and that is physical strength, given the differences in skeletal muscularity to women. Men who think they’re women don’t have ‘lady brains’, that is a fallacy put about by them to convince people like you that they are in the wrong body. They’re not.

If there's no such thing as male and female brains, why are the vast majority of engineers men? Why aren't there more female mathematicians? Of course, individual women can make top engineers and mathematicians, but there are far fewer of them at the population level than there are male ones.

Have you ever seen the film Hidden Figures or read the book? If you haven't you should as you will see just how many women mathematicians there were working in NASA, the entire space programme would not have happened if it hadn't been for them and their contribution and why was that hidden you may ask? Two reasons (1) they were women and (2) they were black women. Patriarchy, misogyny and racism at its finest.

And the history of Bletchley Park.

And in the 70s before computers were considered 'cool' there were a good portion of coders and 'computer scientists' who were female. Baroness Nicholson was an early computer scientist.

Yes, Bletchley Park too a huge number of women coders/decoders and they were not allowed to talk about what they did in the War after it ended.

I get so frustrated by this nonsense that the reason for more men in engineering and maths is because women have lesser brains, ffs.

This was an experiment where they gave girls a boys name and dressed them in "boys clothes " and vice versa and then got adult volunteers , who didn't know their true sex, to play with them and give them toys.

I’m one of those who found my boys remarkably ’boyish’ despite my best attempts to offer them full rich environments regardless of their sex. Then I saw my husband play with them (tended to be my opportunity to slope off elsewhere) and realised where they were getting their stereotypical male behaviour from.

One of the moments that make me smile on MN, is when someone fairly new to the field pops up and earnestly explains why there needs to be special accommodation made for trans people, and that while they understand it’s a tricky idea it’s actually based in science.

This latter has been very gracious in learning that there’s exceptionally well researched posters here with anything but a superficial understanding of the field.

Me, I’m an amateur that popped up to say ‘it’s important to be kind when we discuss these things’, about 8 years ago. Wow, was my posterior presented to me, gift wrapped, for future reflection.

I’m in awe of the ferocious intellects, diligent archivists, and persistent safeguarders that hang out round here working on making the world a safer place for women and children. While writing poetry and destroying mountains of tunnocks.

I'm a big fan of what JKR has been doing to support individuals and groups who are suffering from the ideals of gender ideology.

I understand that IW has been very insulting personally to JKR and that she might find IW extremely irritating and be deeply frustrated by the constant jibes.

This aside, I don't like the poem. I think it is better to carry on showing by JKR's actions that they don't need to stoop to IW's level of personal attack.

IW does a fantastic job of showing exactly what sort of person they are in every rant and insult. I would go with Mark Twain "Never argue with idiots, they will drag you down to their level and beat you with their (lived) experience"

I'm committing that mortal sin on MN - posting without having read the whole thread. I apologise, it's not what I'd normally do, but I'm recovering from a migraine and have to restrict my screen viewing.

So I;m coming right in here to say - probably repeating what lots of PPs have said - that this 'male brain/female brain' thing is so outdated.
ThisFluentBiscuit's point about MRI's showing more connections in women's brains is neither here nor there, because they are ADULT brains, which have been through a lifetime of gender stereotyping, in education, books, media, sport, clothing, toys, the way parents perceive them/play with them - no names no packdrill, eh Mr myplace?😄

Connections in the infant brain will have been made or lost through all of this socialisation. An MRI of my brain today shows what my brain is like today [not a good day to look at my brain as half of it is hurting from the migraine - I wonder which half... but I won't derail] not how it was when I was born and they said 'It's a girl!'.

One of the arguments against TWAW is that a man has not been through the socialisation that a girlhood provides - in my case, the stereotyping was energetically opposed because I was a tomboy, but even the horrified 'I'm not wearing that!' response to girly clothing was doing something to my brain development which a boy could not experience.

I hope ThisFluentBiscuit is aware that we've all been over this ground a trillion times already, it's been debunked yonks ago, and I think posters have been very respectful not to just pile on with a chorus of 'FFS's.

I do think that sexism has something to do with it. And what your physics teacher said is terrible. Like I said before, as individuals women can absolutely have fine STEM brains. Bletchley Park and the stories in Hidden Figures are examples.

But if females as a population were just as inclined towards STEM as males, I don't think there would be such a huge disparity in the numbers. I do think that sexism has something to do with it, but I don't think it explains the massive differences. IMHO, it's odd to see such a disparity without some biological underpinning to it.

But perhaps I am wrong. Those are just my thoughts, and I'm not a scientist or a researcher in the field.

@spannasaurus Thanks for that - very interesting, especially about the brain change and spatial awareness.

It is very hard to encourage girls into STEM when there is so much peer group pressure that it is a 'boys topic'. The sexism begins in primary school. I have witnessed girls coming home and telling their mothers that they hate maths because it is a 'boys' subject, why do girls have to do it. And those girls are just now entering university. Not one is doing a maths related topic.

I have also watched the same girls come home and declare a few years later that they must be boys because they like football and Star Wars and can their parents call them '[insert boys name]' and call them boys. More than one girl.

When gender stereotypes have been drummed into our kid's thinking to such a degree, and society is using those very same stereotypes to diagnose 'gender identities' why does anyone think we have successfully fought negative sexist stereotypes in the generation just finishing sixth form or in first year or two of university?

Until you have witnessed this working, I guess it is easy to believe that it isn't happening right now.

I'm good at arts and humanities and not good at maths and science. I don't think that that makes my brain lesser at all. I have much better spelling ability and writing ability than most people I've met who are good at STEM. And I find it easier to empathise, as well. Many people I know who are engineers seem to be somewhat robotic and clueless when it comes to emotions. STEM brains are not better than non-STEM brains. They have different areas of strengths and weaknesses. Sexism is the reason that, say, a STEM degree is valued higher than a humanities degree by many.

I don't know how we tell the difference, and that's a good question. It's a major reason why I am totally against self-ID.

Girls are still not being encouraged into STEM subjects even now?! That astounds me. I assumed it had changed since I was in primary school (which I started in 1979.)

I remember when I was about 10, the girls got to play football one day as a special treat. I really, really enjoyed it. But we never got to play again.

I have 2 boy children. They are also completely different.

ThisFluentBiscuit Many people I know who are engineers seem to be somewhat robotic and clueless when it comes to emotions.

Do you mean male engineers you know are 'somewhat robotic and clueless when it comes to emotions.'?

Because I'm a female [ex] techie and I speak a few languages, love poetry, am a dab hand at embroidery, and I am an absolute sweetie when it comes to emotions

Anecdotal, but my anecdotes are as good as your anecdotes

They are being 'encouraged'. There are programmes especially to do this.

However, the messages of support are being very much mixed up with the peer pressure about 'sex based roles and gender identity'. I have directly seen great programmes to encourage girls into STEM be largely ignored in secondary school and I wondered why. Robotic programmes, maths programmes, even IT classes. When you start to ask why, and the replies start to align with 'these are boys subjects' it is startling.

And I have watched horrified at a primary school where the girls are not allowed to do the free football training because it is offered to the 'boys' only.

I know quite a few techy adult female people who are also very emotionally intelligent and while they lurve robotics as well as coding, they are also very artistic. One even is an apiarist in her spare time.