What do men want?

[footfootfoot]

Originally Posted by DanaC

But...is that difference innate or culturally created?

Yes.

Innate and culturally created arise concurrently and each informs the other. I hate to play the parent card, but when you watch kids grow up you see things that surprise you and have no explanation than "That was installed at the factory."

[DanaC]

Oh I don;t doubt that there are different developmental paths. I also don't doubt that a lot of parents will see their youngsters playing out a difference that corresponds with expected gender norms (even if they themselves have doubted those norms are anything other than constructed). But there are also parents who don't see their children play out those differences. Quite possibly a similar number.

Also: you are not watching your children from some external vantage point. You are teaching them, from birth, in ways both conscious and unconscious. They are primed to take messages from the adults (first) and other children (next) around them.

There's also the fact that we almost certainly read behaviours differently according to the gender of the person we're observing. Children and adults alike. What may be seen as one behaviour in a little boy, may be read very differently in a little girl. We are not objective and disinterested observers. We see the world through our own lenses.

My brother's two kids are very different from each other in temperament and personality. There are some similarities but they are very different. Sophie, for example, is absolutely fearless and always has been. The first to try something that seems dangerous and loves physical activities. Amelia was always a little more cautious and less physical.

If they were a boy and a girl, those differences may well appear to be gender based. Just as the difference in how the two girls approach social situations and the way they build friendships. Amelia seemed very much the way one might expect a little girl to be in how she approached these things. Sophie, however, seemed to build friendships and interact with her friends in a way similar to that described by some as typical of boys.

[xoxoxoBruce]

It's the grandparents, it's all their fault, they screw up the kids and send them home for the parents to deal with.

[DanaC]

True dat. :p

[Lamplighter]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

It's the grandparents, it's all their fault, they screw up the kids and send them home for the parents to deal with.

That's one of the few rewards for growing old.

[footfootfoot]

Sophie is the second child and Amelia the first?

The mm is more like Sophie and the inch is more like Amelia.

More on this later.

[regular.joe]

OK, help me out here. Genders ARE different. Dana are you suggesting it is some sort of bad thing to be a man or to be a woman? That somehow society just fucks us all in the proverbial head by suggesting that having a penis or a vagina should incorporate "gender roles"? I hope you are not pushing some sort of genderless utopian society where there are no men or women just humans who happen to be born with a penis and a vagina only to used for making little humans with an equal chance to have a penis or a vagina.

[DanaC]

There are differences, yes. But the idea that men and women think and process in fundamentally different ways because of biological differences is looking less and less tenable with each passing year of research.

There is far more variance between individual brains of any gender than there is between 'male' and 'female' brains. The differences that do exist between most male brains and most female brains do not sufficiently explain differences in behaviour, and so often subvert the models that do seek to explain those behavioural differences as to render them moot.

From http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/...-womens-brains

MYTH 2 Sex-related brain differences explain behavioural differences between the sexes

According to John Gray, author of Why Mars and Venus Collide, men are prone to forgetting to buy the milk because of their more localised brain activity (as quoted by Cordelia Fine).

It’s tempting to see the brain differences between the sexes, mythical or otherwise, and think that they explain behavioural differences; such as men’s milk amnesia, their superiority on mental rotation tasks or women’s advantage with emotional processing. In fact, in many cases we simply don’t know the implications of the sex-related brain differences. It’s even possible that brain differences are responsible for behavioural similarities between the sexes. This is known as the “compensation theory” and it could explain why men and women’s performance on various tasks is similar even whilst they show different patterns of brain activity. Bearing this in mind, readers should treat with extreme scepticism those evangelists who draw on supposed sex-related brain differences to support their claims about the need for gendered educational practices.

It’s also important to remember that behavioural differences between the sexes are rarely as fixed as is often made out in the media. Cultural expectations and pressures play a big part. For instance, telling women that their sex is inferior at mental rotation tends to provoke poor performance; giving them empowering information, by contrast, tends to nullify any sex differences. Related to this, in countries that subscribe less strongly to gender-stereotyped beliefs about ability, women tend to perform better at science. These kind of findings remind us that over-simplifying and over-generalising findings about gender differences risks setting up vicious self-fulfilling prophesies, so that men and women come to resemble unfounded stereotypes.

And from 'Debunking the 'Gender Brain' myth':

Dr Cordelia Fine will present her argument today at the Australian Council for Educational Research Conference in Melbourne on the brain and learning.

"This dialogue about 'boy brains' and 'girl brains' makes us overlook the important point that, although there are average differences, boys and girls are far more similar than they are different," says Fine, from the University of Melbourne.

Fine says many pop science presentations claim that neuroscience has shown important differences between boys' and girls' brains, and sometimes suggest the two should be taught differently, and possibly separately.

"These commentators appear to be getting a lot of attention," she says.

Fine says there are three problems with this trend, which can have damaging consequences - not only in classrooms, but at home and work.

First, she says, claims are often made on the basis of isolated brain imaging studies that have not been replicated, and in some cases have found to be wrong.

For example, says Fine, males are often described as having a "spotlight brain" that processes information such as language in one hemisphere, while girls are supposed to have a "floodlight brain", using both sides of the brain.

As part of this idea of a more interconnected female brain, females are supposed to have a larger corpus callosum, the thick band of neurones that connect the two hemispheres.

She says while older smaller studies support these differences, the bulk of more recent data has found otherwise.

"The data overall just don't support these ideas," says Fine.

However, she says, this has not stopped commentators from drawing conclusions based on the earlier studies.

Behavioural studies
Fine says while brain imaging studies can make exciting news, they overshadow decades of behavioural research that go against the idea that differences matter.

"In the majority of cases, the differences between the sexes are either non-existent or they are so small so as to be of no practical importance in, for example, an educational setting," she says.

"The problem is, when you start talking about girl brains and boy brains, you are actually encouraging educators to do something that all educators understand that they shouldn't do, which is to put people in categories rather than to look at each child as an individual."

Fine says the performance of girls in mathematics is a case that demonstrates the need to look beyond neuroscience to explain what is going on.

"Twenty years ago girls were doing badly at maths, now they're not," she says.

"That must have some kind of correlate in the brain because the brain is the basis of all behaviour. But it's certainly not some enduring quality of the brain."

There are differences. And, you know, that is fine. It works for us, as a species, as a culture and as a society to organise and understand ourselves in such a way. I think it needs tweaking. I think an understanding that profound differences in thinking, talents and proclivities between the sexes is to an extent a chosen thing. Something we have made, rather than something biologically innate. Because if something is biologically innate then changing it is in some sense unnatural. A step away from what we are meant to be.

That logic, the notion that femininity in particular is a natural and necessary property of womanhood has been used to justify a great deal of oppression and injustice. In our culture this is less impactful - women are able to participate in areas of life which had until quite recently been off-limits on the grounds of their womanhood and natural, innate gender limitations. In some countries it still is the basis of much oppression. Why else must femininity be guarded and controlled? There are still cultures who consider women's involvement in politics to be against nature. And it was only a couple of hundred years ago, a mere raindrop in the ocean of human existence, that our own cultures held such assumptions. For women to enter a male preserve was not just to threaten masculinity and male roles, but to threaten femininity. Women who did so were unnatural.

There is a male equivalent, of course. Men who didn't or don't fit society's model of acceptable manhood.

Like I say: I don't mind that there are differences in broadly male and and broadly female experiences. But they are overplayed. And when they are seen as something carved into the stone of what we are they become a trap. Rather than the mostly workable and mostly helpful distinctions we have arrived at as a society. Vive la difference. For those who are different. But let's not kid ourselves that we are more divided by our gender experience than we are united by our human experience.

[Undertoad]

I think we can see answers in the gender differences that have existed throughout all time, in cultures that evolved separately without contact.

I think gender differences make total evolutionary sense because a tribe is more likely to survive if there are different skills guaranteed to exist.

I think we see gender differences in almost every species due to that tactic.

And a male human and female human are genetically more different than a male human and a male chimpanzee.

[DanaC]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

And a male human and female human are genetically more different than a male human and a male chimpanzee.

Bit of a red herring, that one, I think.


http://genetics.thetech.org/ask/ask38

As you know, men have an X and a Y chromosome and women have two X chromosomes. So besides the usual 0.1% (or 3.2 million base pair) difference between people, men and women differ by the presence of the Y chromosome.

The Y chromosome is a tiny thing; it is about 59 million base pairs long and has only 78 genes. If we look at base pairs, the difference between men and women would be 59 million divided by 3.2 billion or about 1.8%. This translates to men and women being 98.2% the same.

Men and women are actually a bit more similar as the Y chromosome has about 5% of its DNA sequences in common with the X chromosome. This would change the number to 98.4% the same.

If the 98.7% number for chimp-human similarity is right, then by this measure, men and women are less alike than are female chimps and women. (More recent data suggests that chimps may be 95% instead of 98.7% the same, but this is still up in the air.)

Now if we look at the gene level instead of at the base pair level, men and women become much more similar. If we assume 30,000 total genes, then men and women are about 99.7% the same instead of 98.4%. (I haven't been able to find a good number for how many genes chimpanzees and humans share.)

So is the bottom line that men and male chimps have more in common than men and women? Of course not. If we take a closer look, we see some of the dangers of looking at raw percentages instead of individual changes.

Another way to think about this is the 55 million or so differences between men and women are all concentrated on one chromosome and 78 genes. For chimps, the 42-150 million differences are spread out all over the chromosomes over many, many more genes.

In other words, while the quantity of changes may be the same, the quality is different. Even though we share most of our genes with a chimpanzee, lots of the chimp's genes have changed in ways not seen in people. These changes make a chimp a chimp and a human a human.

Some of the products of these changed genes in a chimp now do different things, or do things differently, do them in different places, do them more strongly or weakly, or even do nothing at all. It only takes a single DNA change to make a gene stop working and there are millions and millions of differences between you and a chimp. What all of this means is that in essence, chimps have many more "different" genes than the 78 different ones between men and women even though the % difference at the DNA level may be comparable.

[Sundae]

Originally Posted by regular.joe

I hope you are not pushing some sort of genderless utopian society where there are no men or women just humans who happen to be born with a penis and a vagina only to used for making little humans with an equal chance to have a penis or a vagina.

I suspect this is just what Dana is pushing.
She tends to think of humans just as being human.
It's sad when you think about it. But you have to forgive her; she didn't get to push out any babies herself so she has an agenda to push instead.

[footfootfoot]

Where do tomboys and homosexuals fit in your paradigm? Nature or nurture?



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[Undertoad]

If societal, learned gender roles predominantly determine genderish behaviors, where did society learn them from?

[infinite monkey]

Oh fiddle dee dee...

[Aliantha]

I have a response to this thread, and i dont think dana will like it much. lol. I will have to open my comp for it though.

More later.