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Comment by turc1656 | Hacker News Reader

This isn't new information. Not even sort of new. This has been known for quite some time (20-30 YEARS). Jordan Peterson has also mentioned it numerous times over the years but the original studies are quite old.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xjvzH24Mwo

Yet people are shocked to learn this because this data/facts aren't liked by politicians and even some scientists so it doesn't get discussed. Not sure why. There's nothing wrong with having different preferences. But some people like to pretend everyone is more or less exactly the same and want to do the same things and the only reason to differ would be societal influence.

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The odd thing is that the same people who talk about there being no inherent biological differences between sexes then go ahead and talk about 'male aggression'. The amount of people that employ mental gymnastics to justify saying both these things is amazing. In fact the attacks I've seen on Peterson have bordered on the downright delusional/incoherent.

It's perfectly possible to consider traits to be culturally assigned to the genders and not biologically determined, and still complain about them. Complaining about innate (and therefore unchangeable) biological traits would actually be somewhat useless.

Besides, nobody denies the existence of biological differences. It's pretty obvious that women tend to have breasts and men tend not to. What's being criticised is:

- Misinterpreting culturally-enforced differences as biological and therefore fixed. Hair length, for example, could be misinterpreted as a difference between the sexes if any aliens did a quantitative study without ever noticing the barbers. Job choices could very well be similar, except the process how they are culturally reinforced are less obvious.

- Making decisions affecting individuals based on group differences (biological, culturally, or imagined): Even if women are 2% at picking stocks, using that information only to hire Alice and not Bob will lead to the wrong decision in 45% of cases because the differences between individuals swamp the group averages.

My point is the article is biased away from any conclusions that are biological.

From the study the article is quoting: > in nearly all countries, more girls appeared capable of college-level STEM study than had enrolled. Paradoxically, the sex differences in the magnitude of relative academic strengths and pursuit of STEM degrees rose with increases in national gender equality

This is only paradoxical if you're presuming men and women are NOT attracted to different things. Experiments with little kids before they can even process coherent though, and across cultures, have produced quite conclusive statistical evidence that there's innate gender differences (preferences of color, of soft vs spinney/mechanical things, etc) that don't fit the 'evil men suppressing women through artificial social constraints' narrative.

It's true that few on the left will assert that there are zero sex-based average behavioral differences, but you can't deny that it makes most progressives...uncomfortable. I'm pretty far left and I've seen it; people won't deny the possibility outright, but they'll look for every other possible explanation first, even if they sound substantially less plausible.

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