Barring certain reproductive bits, men and women are basically the same. Discuss.

[ElephantsAndMiasmas]

I know we've touched on this on other threads, but I was hoping to troublemake start a discussion on this specific issue. So often I've heard people say "of course wanting equality does not mean we think women and men are the same. We cherish and celebrate the differences between them" and the like.

Well, what are the differences then?

The more I think about it the more convinced I am that men and women are fundamentally pretty much the same, squashy bits aside.

What do you reckon?

dittany,TBH,you should criticise me rather than them as it's entirely possible that I've misremembered that too.
I'm happy to debate/defend what I believe,but I can't really debate/defend something I can't properly remember -and I realise in those circumstances I shouldn't have posted it to start with...
Especially as I am against gender stereotyping.

Here's a thing though - on those tests I've always scored "male" on spatial awareness. And I'm good at reading maps, and have never felt the urge to turn them around to "fit" the direction I was going in.

Except... when I was pregnant. I needed to meet someone, and had a printed out multimap, and it was as though my map mojo had deserted me! I had to resort to turning the map around - something I'd never needed to do before. So that's not social conditioning - hormones I guess?

Yes you should have said it pogleswood, as it has triggered another bit of discussion.

earthstar other things drive behaviour and mood as well - but we don't define people based on those things. Thinking about other brain chemicals like seratonin.

And where does that leave post-menopausal women? A woman doesn't turn more male all of a sudden - I have noticed no difference in peoples behaviour pre and post menopause (a small sample admittedly). My mother isn't a markedly different person as far as i can see.

Dittany is it sacha or simon the autism guy you mean?

I do think hormones, and testosterone in particular, are responsible for the most obvious male/female differences...I think it's agreed that one of the effects of testosterone is that it builds larger, more muscular bodies, which in the vast majority of mammals, just happens to be the male body. A consequence of more testosterone seems to be a greater propensity to aggression. But is it inevitable that the sex with the largest body will always dominate (using physical superiority as a starting point?). Is there a mammalian species where this has not happened?

The spotted hyena is one such exception. Spotted hyena live in clans which are female dominated. The females are so pumped up with testosterone that they even sport a faux penis (which is in fact the enlarged clitoris) and faux testicles. The males are smaller and live on the periphery of the clan. Newborn males are at the mercy of their female siblings....

Well,I'm glad it triggered more discussion,ISNT!
I think it's a bad habit of mine,though,dredging up half remembered facts and using them as if they are gospel,so I was a bit when I did it here....

Xenia did comment further up the thread that there are changes in women post menopause,didn't she?

'Things like spatial awareness which is supposed to be a classic "male" trait can be learnt, even later on in life. It's a skill, it's not innate.'

I don't agree dittany, or at least I partially don't agree. Yes these skills can be learnt, but people's brains are different and some people are going to be innately better at e.g. spatial tasks because for whatever reason, probably hormonal/neurochemical, their brain has is formed slightly differently to others. I believe that some of these difference are going to be gender based. I'm not saying that it is cut and dried, there is a continuum. But it is natural for us to try and fit people into categories, it's not always right, and not always valid, but it is the way we make sense of the world. If we weren't doing it by sex we would be categorising in some other equally invalid way. It is impossible to go about the world without having any stereotypes and any expectations of people. The important thing is we don't let these initial expectations affect how we treat someone, at least not after the initial contact we have with them.

We could probably all sit here an argue till the cows come home about biological/neurological differences or not between men and women. I assume none of us are neuropsychologists (though I do have a degree in it, studied much more boring stuf though) or socio-biologists so we are not going to come up with the definitive answer. But I think we have to separate the issue of neurological (after all, that is the essence of behaviour if we are leaving out socialisation) differences between men and women, and the social value assigned to those alleged differences, e.g. crying = girly and bad.

As an aside: Report of a study suggesting women feel pain in a different part of their brain to men

Incidentally I lose all ability to park the minute I get pg!

Well yes that's where i get my knickers in a twist, is the girly = bad stuff.

I am quite proud that I am not a "girly" girl, and did sciences and so on, what does that say? Nothing good. As it still means that I am as guilty as anyone else of thinking "girly" traits are rubbish.

I have only just realised this about myself BTW - that I feel like that and what it means, so this is all interesting.

OTOH I feel extremely proud that my DH is "nurturing" - and he really is. So what does that mean? All very confusing.

I am still extremely uncomfortable with "men are like this and women are like that" BTW although this is all giving me food for thought.

Have I mentioned how much i love this new topic? it was your idea wasn't it Dittany?

'I am quite proud that I am not a "girly" girl, and did sciences and so on, what does that say? Nothing good. As it still means that I am as guilty as anyone else of thinking "girly" traits are rubbish.'

this is one way in which women can be their own worst enemy!

Well, ISNT you could think of it as men tend to be like this in certain respects, and vice versa, or may have a predisposition to behaving in a certain way...

Of course you don't have to think that at all! It is just my opinion and only in certain aspects.

I think the other thing is that certain personality traits tend to occur together, stemming from the same fundamental personality pole. That maybe why people are classified as 'feminine' or 'masculine', because they have a whole set of those stereotypically masculine/feminine traits.

But dittany, to say that there are innate differences isn't saying 'men can do this, woman can't'. Behaviours and skills come about in all different ways, and I agree with you that the brain is changed by behaviour.

'There are courses at some US universities to give female engineering students the spatial skills of their male peers, erasing the sex difference. If it was innate that wouldn't be possible. ' I disagree with the last part of your sentence. I'm not saying I'm right, but the fact that these skills can be learnt doesn't necessarily mean there isn't an innate factor.

"There are so many things that science could be examining, but still they insist on attempting to prove differences between the sexes in intellect. The question is why, and the answer isn't a good one."

Totally agree with dittany. If neuroscientists themselves admit that they have very little idea of how the human brain works (source: pop neuroscience book by V S Ramachandran) then I wonder what the point is in discussing it at all, let alone pumping research funding into it. I don't know how much funding is put into this kind of research - maybe not that much - but it does make me suspect that any money spent on this is just patriarchy seeking to justify itself

I've always found this sort of stuff highly irritating, I guess because I've always seen it as limiting my options. I (and everyone else) am so much more than just male or female, I am me, a product of my genes, environment and experiences, the choices I have made and the person I am. The men are like this and women are like that stuff just seems to belittle that individuality. But then again I too may feel like that as an untypical woman. But then given that I know lots of untypical women and men, with a whole range of characteristics and behaviours I guess that just reinforces my view of the world.

Having said that my children are incredibly true to the classic stereotypes - in some ways I wish I had had more kids so I could see the differences between them all more.

I do find the because I can have babies I am fundamentally different to all men and similar to all women line a little strange. Like many families we have two children, I spent about two and a half years pregnant or breastfeeding, I can't imagine why that woudl affect my behaviour ten years later.

I don't think it's helpful personally when someone is trying to be honest and they are told they are behaving as womens worst enemy.

Isn't there also a possibility that some traits that are stereotypically female are silly and pointless, and the reason they display them is because they are socialised that as they are women they must spend vast amounts of their time, money and efforts on things that are silly and pointless.

You could go around and around forever.

Anyway.

I can see the points that people are trying to make on here but I just really deeply agree with Dittany, Molesworth etc.

Sorry elephants BTW about the new topic

But Dittany I'm not saying that. The fact that other people say woman can't do certain things is a different issue. Just because I think there are certain difference between men and woman I don't think there are things woman can't do. And I am not talking about differences in intellect.

I also disagree with the notion that because the brain is difficult to study that we shouldn't continue to research into it.

Also, it wasn't that long ago that woman's primary role was to have children and had a lot more than two. Ok, my anthropological knowledge isn't great, but I'm talking about before we had the trappings of modern 'civilised society'. The male/female roles were by nature much more defined. I think that those vestiges of of neurobiology still exist in some ways.

I should point out that I am aware that many mens pursuits are also rather silly and pointless, but no-one expects me to talk about them/join in with them so they don't rile me so much.

I see what you are saying bumper, I think the problem is that innate differences are still being used as reasons to treat men and women differently. And it seems to be taking off a lot at the moment - I see people on threads saying things like "well steve biddulph talks a lot of sense of course it is a fact that boys have more energy than girls and thus must be taken out to do exciting things all the time. For girls they are happy to sit quietly all day and play with a small piece of string" or whatever and it makes me so angry. Yes some boys have a lot of energy, so do some girls. Some boys will play with string. But the net result is the boys (as they always have) are pointed in the direction of the sort of active play which hones all sorts of skills, while the girls have to sit quietly and plait each others hair. It gets on my tits TBH.

I agree,bumperlicious,that just because the brain is hard to study we shouldn't try to do so - and we also shouldn't avoid studying it because we might not like what we find,or even IMO because we think some of the research is being done for the wrong reasons.But I don't think the prime motivating force behind research is patriarchy trying to justify itself.

We are criticising people who look at any research and interpret it simplistically to say "this is what men are like,this is what women are like" and then we are falling into the same trap,and assuming that if differences in brain function are found that is automatically going to have negative implication for women,when (again,IMO)we should be contining to push for individuals of both sexes to be able to do what they enjoy and are good at.

Research showing that women use different areas of the brain to those used by men while completing tasks doesn't actually say anything about whether women should be doing the task at all - it's a different question.

That's wrong - I've just said I don't think we should continue with research because it is difficult, haven't I? Whereas what I meant was that we should continue to research even if it is difficult.....

But women can be their own worst enemy - otherwise why the guiltily proud feeling about having a science degree? There should be no need for guilt.

What I find interesting is gender reassignment - do transsexuals think that men and women are basically the same? If so, then why bother with the surgery? Wouldn't weearing the other gender's clothing be enough? I don't know any transsexuals, hence my curiosity.

I don't think our brains are that different. It's interesting that in Japan where I live, maths is seen as a feminine subject that women are naturally better at because they are more "logical." I have no idea whether this is regarded as a softer subject or not. But I do know that literature (regarding as a soft subject in the UK) is more highly regarded there.

Biologically though, I think we are different insofar as I believe that women are predisposed to care for newborns in a way that men are not. Studies have shown that a mother's stress levels rise dramatically when she hears her newborn cry. Other studies have shown that the bond a child has with its father is completely different to the bond it has with its mother. People used to think the Father-child bond was just a watered down version of the mother-child bond, but in fact it is its own unique bond, completely different. So there are differences.

That's an interesting point,Cyclops.I'd always gathered that transexuals felt as if they were in the wrong body,which assumes that men and women are different..and transvestites don't want to be the other sex,do they?

But when I've been saying men and women are basically the same,I realise I still feel like a woman - just not a very typical woman,and it's that idea of what a typical woman is like that irritates me.So how basic is the feeling that we are female or male?

Hence the guilt about the science degree bit(not that I feel guilty about that but I do feel slightly embarrassed by some of my interests)
Even though I disagree with the stereotypes I am still influenced by them,and the guilt is from not conforming to "society's" expectations.I think that is ridiculous,but it still gets to me!
(and I come from a family where there was very little pressure in that direction,and went to a single sex school where it was assumed gender was irrelevant to what you did.)

My aunt is a transsexual and she certainly wouldn't say that men and women are the same. She wouldn't have gone through all the emotional and physical pain involved to 'become' a woman otherwise - not to mention the almost blanet estrangement from her family (my extended family are Catholic and were extremely disgusted and shocked - they disowned her. I didn't react in this way - I was supportive - I'm an atheist; poss the only one in the family).

I don't know - it's a tough one. I'm not sure what I think. I value my aunt's feelings obviously, and admire her struggle to be as she wanted to be. It doesn't fit very well with this branch of feminism though does it?

Anyone else have thoughts on this? Didn't Germain Greer write quite strongly on the topic? Against transvestites and transsexuals?