> The issue people take with biological essentialism is that it uses the plausibility of genetic/developmental differences driving sex differences to dismiss or

> The issue people take with biological essentialism is that it uses the plausibility of genetic/developmental differences driving sex differences to dismiss or outright deny the very obvious reality of coercive social forces that also definitely drive sex differences. This is a huge strawman, and fallacies seem to be part of a lack of intellectual rigor from people who object to discussing biological differences. Why not flip your point on its head: can you show me a model of discrimination that focuses purely on the social component, and shows that the results we see with, eg, the wage gap result purely from social components — or have a social component at all? Because what I see is frequent dishonesty — discussing the “wage gap” but not “hours gap” or “risk gap”, for instance — and the denial of inherent biological differences has become dogma to people pushing false social statistics, because an analysis of those differences would show them to be liars. It’s just gaslighting to demand a rigor from people advocating biological differences that’s never been shown by the cultural differences crowd — we have massive evidence of biological differences in evevery system of the body, including the brain; we have no quantitative models for how culture impacts outcomes. (Actually, we have a bit: it seems to be that more liberal countries express greater gender variation between jobs, because there’s less social pressure to accrue power, eg, fewer women go into programming in better off countries. This is what you’d expect, if there’s an underlying difference in biological preference.) The objection to your position is that it’s an anti-scientific, anti-intellectual one that drives you to public dishonesty, such as the fallacies and double-standards made here. It’s entirely political people don’t want to talk about this — sex based differences might imply the ratio of, eg, CEOs is skewed for the same reasons the ratios of top athletes are.