Neurosexism: The myth that men and women have different brains | Hacker News Reader

Neurosexism: The myth that men and women have different brains

nature.com

17 pointsfanf214 comments

Humans exhibit exterior physical sexual dimorphism. Why wouldn't we exhibit it in our neural formations? I'm certain that human brains exhibit a wide spectrum of modalities as well as a innate individual affinities and aversions. Is it nature? Is it nurture? Is it any of your business? The only reason the question is controversial is because fools like to misappropriate scientific findings to make specious appeals to 'natural order' when trying to force their biases and judgements on others.

I think perhaps the physical dimorphism is rather easily explained by the fact women have to carry children. Psychological dimorphism would be somewhat more surprising - after all, both mother and father gain from looking after the children. There's no specific biological machinery required to be a parent after the kid is born.

That all said, I think this is over-individualizing the problem of passing on genes. If you take a dog, and a wolf, superficially they are similar. However, wolves are successful because of their complex social structure. So sexual dimorphism could be really misleading, because it's not the body of the wolf that matters, rather its social network. The sexual dimorphism could be an unimportant, anterior characteristic, a bit like the appendix, or the colour of the fur.

When you take humans, who have an even more complex social structure, and more, one that has been extremely gender dimorphic, then consider the organ that's most obviously affected by social morphisms of all kinds... It sounds like a recipe for bad research. Especially when it's a topic people have an axe to grind about.

The idea that men and women don't have inherent psychological differences is an extreme one yet framed here in this article as sexism. The language alone is problematic, implying that anyone who finds evidence that they are different is somehow hateful.

The differences between men and women aren't extreme. You can't look at a woman or man and assume they would be good at x, y and z. But there are statistical differences, particularly at the extreme ends of the spectrum.

Okay, but are the variations between men and women greater than the typical variations between individuals of any sex, or even of one sex? If not, then it is sexist to harp on the differences because they don't tell us anything really useful. Personally, I think the subject is much more often used in bad faith than in the spirit of scientific inquiry.

> it is sexist to harp on the differences because they don't tell us anything really useful

The people harping on about the differences, or supposed lack there of, are typically people insisting that any statistical difference in representation between men and women, such as the number of CEOs, is due to sexism rather than psychological differences and preferences in life choices.

> Okay, but are the variations between men and women greater than the typical variations between individuals of any sex, or even of one sex?

Yes, it's trivially observable, and it has been established scientifically.

Citation please. Also, I asked about statistical differences, so I don't see how that could be "trivially observable."

Well there must be some differences - otherwise we wouldn't have separate male and female chess tournaments. Plus we know that male and female animal brains differ in structure despite looking similar.

If you have kids, boys and girls, expose them and offer them equal opportunities in various domains, it is beyond obvious that we are different, yes, including in the brain. To me the idea of labeling this conclusion as sexist is simply laughable because any parent who is a neutral and honest observer knows the truth.

I have a simple example of this. Two of my kids, boy and girl, one year apart. They go to school together, play together all the time, we fish, kayak, do martial arts, build stuff and do everything together.

I introduced both of them to Solidworks Apps for Kids (great fun!). I setup their accounts on their computers and also setup a link to a YouTube playlist with tutorials for them to learn the software.

I told them to watch all the videos and start doing as they learned.

They did.

She very quickly levitated towards making pretty things and surface-painting.

He very quickly went towards making more mechanical things and completely ignored making them pretty through painting.

She wants to 3D print flowers and puppies. He wants to 3D print robots, tanks, tools, etc.

No influence whatsoever on my part. This summer they each built beautiful replicas of famous world buildings (check out Machitecture on Amazon, it's great). They both loved it despite the hard work it entailed.

I realize this is a single data point but if you talk to other parents and simply observe reality it is easy to conclude there are differences and they are not subtle.

None of this is to say men and women can't excel at the same things. Not at all. However, pretending we are exact clones of each other would fail to reflect reality as well as provide opportunities to use our differences to deliver better outcomes. Psychologist have studied this in depth. The big five personality traits (Extroversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, Openness to experience) have been quantified and "fingerprinted" across wide populations. The conclusions are inescapable, we are not the same and we don't think or relate to the world in the same ways. And that's a good thing.

Try explaining that to Rhea from RedHat. She seems to believe the opposite

"A skill perhaps, to which women are born vastly inferior. There are separate categories in physical sports for a reason - men and women are not the same, neither physically, nor mentally. In both ways one could say that women are weaker"

https://www.reddit.com/r/redhat/comments/d61qfu/open_letter_...

On the top post on that link:

"Red Hat urges the FSF board to seize the opportunity during its current leadership succession by appointing a president and members of its board that are more diverse, including from a national, racial and gender perspective."

at least in my country's constitution discrimination based on race/gender is forbidden (No person should be limited by law or granted privileges based on his sex/race/nationality/... . Statement like this is exactly that. I imagine other countries have similar laws - how are things like that acceptable?

Since MRI doesn't show "thought patterns" it's just not a good tool to look for differences in such.

How does this fit in with research like this? [1] If all perceived differences in female brain can be explained by social conditioning, how do trans people, who are not socially conditioned, show the same brain differences?

[1] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/05/180524112351.h...

Transgender defenders might disagree

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