5 ms·

Neurosexism: The myth that men and women have different brains

10 points by laurex 8y ago

freedman1611 8y ago
Anybody that's been in a relationship for a period of time knows that it's true. Women will tell you that all us men are stupid lmao, and we'll say they overreact to everything. As the world keeps turning.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
sadris 8y ago
Narrator: there are gender differences in the brain. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2031866/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2031866/
mehh 8y ago
I'm sure I read once that they literally have a slightly different weight/volume (can't recall which) on average (even after you factor in body size). Also don't assume that means anything in regards to intelligence. Would love to know if that is actually true, if anyone out there really knows this stuff?
- zaarn 8y ago
  There are some differences and MRI studies can predict someone's sex with better than random confidence by looking at the brain. However, one should keep in mind that these are after all just averages and statistical models. There is no "typical female brain" or "typical male brain". There is an average with a distribution and even outliers. People like to pretend that this means that females or males have different/worse brains and are offended when statistics produce bimodal effects.
  - natalyarostova 8y ago
    A reasonable interpretation of typical is average.
- rijoja 8y ago
  More neurons on average in a male brain by quite a large margin. I expect this to be fairly well understood and proven by now, as neurons would be a fundamental concept in modern neuroscience and if they can not manage to get this straight everything else is to be put into serious consideration on account of this. It's important to note though that DNA is optimized to use as little information as possible. Hence all the symmetry in the body, since it almost cuts down information requirements in half. This would talk against having vastly different brains in the genome as that would require storing the blueprints for two different brains. That being said cultural but perhaps more so influences from hormones might do their part. So to clarify I'd find it extremely unlikely that the brain would be fundamental different just as the heart or the kidney would be similar between sexes and from data requirements in the DNA it would be impractical out of an evolutionary perspective. The article mentions that in newborns there is little or no difference in brains, which seems to fit with my rule of thumb idea above. Then again in a culturally imposed straitjacket she continues to completely ignore the impact on hormones on the brain. Considering the fundamental ways that females differ from males this seems totally ridiculous and to me it looks like a striking example of ideological kneejerking.
  - speedplane 8y ago
    > Considering the fundamental ways that females differ from males this seems totally ridiculous and to me it looks like a striking example of ideological kneejerking. Her point is not that there are no differences, it's that those differences are negligible compared to societal influence, and people claims to the contrary are often doing so to rationalize their own place in society. We went from loin cloths to rockets with the same genetic code, yet, those differences are often dismissed in the face of minute differences in genetics/nature. > a culturally imposed straitjacket she continues to completely ignore ... This even proves the point. If you're right, and culture is powerful enough to put someone in a "straitjacket", then it can surely explain many of the differences that many claim to be explained by slight genetic/natural differences.
    - rijoja 8y ago
      My point being that even though the brains are similar at birth, the hormones are bound to have effects on it while the individual grows up. As such ending up with a male or female brain, categorized by the amount of testosterone it have been subject to. Anything else is sounds utterly absurd to me. Had I been suggesting that stress-hormones in teenagers would cause changes in the brain I'm sure you wouldn't fall into this predictable nonscientific dogma that everybody is exactly the same. > This even proves the point You could go even further and say that I was critiquing her for trying to replace one set of cultural dogma with another. Nobody questions the influence of cultures upon human being. Not a discussion that I intended, but is it not a good thing that society prepares individuals with fundamental physical differences in different ways. Wouldn't in a sense a culture that failed to inform it's offspring on the fundamentals of their existence be amoral at best and disastrously inefficient at worst? > We went from loin cloths to rockets with the same genetic code, Did we really, this is an exciting scientific discovery that you've made. Please enlighten us on exactly when evolution in human beings stopped? Last but not least I take great offence of being accused of being someone with the hidden agenda of trying to oppress and control half of the human population, for my own benefit. Had I've been doing this for my own self interest I probably had not dared publicly criticized, what many feels to be a controversial issue.
speedplane 8y ago
There is so much discussion today about the natural or genetic differences between groups of people, couched as science, but it's pretty bad science. Humans are genetically identical to what they were 1000 years ago, even 10,000 years ago, yet we've moved from wearing loin cloths to putting people on the moon. I'm sure genetic differences exist, but any nature is ridiculously out-weighed nurture and society, on the scale of 1000 to 1. Folks just look for nature based answers because it gives them an excuse to not examine their own place in society.
- zaarn 8y ago
  We're not at all genetically identical to 10'000 years ago, lactose-tolerance (not intolerance) has developed in that timeframe and even in modern populations, some lack the genetics to produce lactase. Another example is ADH1B, which is also not present in all populations and a fairly recent development. There is fairly well established science outside genetics that establishes that the average distribution of brains in bimodal over female and male sex. An MRI scan can predict your sex better than random choice. There is plenty of people who outright dismiss such results as "bad science" because they interpret the results wrong and draw bad conclusions (mostly that either female or male brains are worse somehow for everyone). These are averages. Lots of people being measured. Nobody who properly reads the studies for this should conclude that there is a typical female or male brain. There are some features that are more likely to be present in either, some less like to be present or differently expressed. On average. It's perfectly possible for a female to have a brain that would have only features that are more typical for male brains and a male may have features more typical for females while they behave perfectly normal compared to a control. There are plenty of features that differ between males and females on average and there is no problem when one has a feature being expressed in a way more typical of the other sex (just think of hip size, hair, height, voice, etc).
  - speedplane 8y ago
    > There is fairly well established science outside genetics that establishes that the average distribution of brains in bimodal over female and male sex. An MRI scan can predict your sex better than random choice. I'm not saying that there aren't differences, I'm just saying they are practically negligible when they are compared to social differences. I don't doubt an MRI can predict sex relatively well, but a far more accurate prediction can be based off of what type of underwear you wear and whether you carry a purse or a wallet. The social constructions and stratifications we have made for ourselves are far more powerful than differences in our own genetic code. It's largely this ability to modify ourselves through society that differentiates us from other animals.
tsukurimashou 8y ago
Men and women are different at many levels, physically and mentally. Recognizing that doesn't mean you're sexist. These differences doesn't mean one is better than the other.
chippy 8y ago
I was listening to the radio the other day on a programme about this as they said (like the article) that the brain is like any other organ like the liver and kidneys and that all observed structural changes was due to nurture and culture. However they said that there was one rarely studied difference in the chemical (or hormonal?) soup that gets given / produced as a baby and that these different chemicals haven't been examined enough when it comes to the difference in brains between men and women. Can anyone expand on my limited and hazy understanding of what I might have heard? edits - I can't find the programme, it might have been during a morning news show on radio 4.

10 points by laurex 8y ago

Anybody that's been in a relationship for a period of time knows that it's true. Women will tell you that all us men are stupid lmao, and we'll say they overreact to everything. As the world keeps turning.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

sadris 8y ago

Narrator: there are gender differences in the brain. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2031866/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2031866/

mehh 8y ago

I'm sure I read once that they literally have a slightly different weight/volume (can't recall which) on average (even after you factor in body size). Also don't assume that means anything in regards to intelligence. Would love to know if that is actually true, if anyone out there really knows this stuff?

zaarn 8y ago
There are some differences and MRI studies can predict someone's sex with better than random confidence by looking at the brain. However, one should keep in mind that these are after all just averages and statistical models. There is no "typical female brain" or "typical male brain". There is an average with a distribution and even outliers. People like to pretend that this means that females or males have different/worse brains and are offended when statistics produce bimodal effects.
- natalyarostova 8y ago
  A reasonable interpretation of typical is average.
rijoja 8y ago
More neurons on average in a male brain by quite a large margin. I expect this to be fairly well understood and proven by now, as neurons would be a fundamental concept in modern neuroscience and if they can not manage to get this straight everything else is to be put into serious consideration on account of this. It's important to note though that DNA is optimized to use as little information as possible. Hence all the symmetry in the body, since it almost cuts down information requirements in half. This would talk against having vastly different brains in the genome as that would require storing the blueprints for two different brains. That being said cultural but perhaps more so influences from hormones might do their part. So to clarify I'd find it extremely unlikely that the brain would be fundamental different just as the heart or the kidney would be similar between sexes and from data requirements in the DNA it would be impractical out of an evolutionary perspective. The article mentions that in newborns there is little or no difference in brains, which seems to fit with my rule of thumb idea above. Then again in a culturally imposed straitjacket she continues to completely ignore the impact on hormones on the brain. Considering the fundamental ways that females differ from males this seems totally ridiculous and to me it looks like a striking example of ideological kneejerking.
- speedplane 8y ago
  > Considering the fundamental ways that females differ from males this seems totally ridiculous and to me it looks like a striking example of ideological kneejerking. Her point is not that there are no differences, it's that those differences are negligible compared to societal influence, and people claims to the contrary are often doing so to rationalize their own place in society. We went from loin cloths to rockets with the same genetic code, yet, those differences are often dismissed in the face of minute differences in genetics/nature. > a culturally imposed straitjacket she continues to completely ignore ... This even proves the point. If you're right, and culture is powerful enough to put someone in a "straitjacket", then it can surely explain many of the differences that many claim to be explained by slight genetic/natural differences.
  - rijoja 8y ago
    My point being that even though the brains are similar at birth, the hormones are bound to have effects on it while the individual grows up. As such ending up with a male or female brain, categorized by the amount of testosterone it have been subject to. Anything else is sounds utterly absurd to me. Had I been suggesting that stress-hormones in teenagers would cause changes in the brain I'm sure you wouldn't fall into this predictable nonscientific dogma that everybody is exactly the same. > This even proves the point You could go even further and say that I was critiquing her for trying to replace one set of cultural dogma with another. Nobody questions the influence of cultures upon human being. Not a discussion that I intended, but is it not a good thing that society prepares individuals with fundamental physical differences in different ways. Wouldn't in a sense a culture that failed to inform it's offspring on the fundamentals of their existence be amoral at best and disastrously inefficient at worst? > We went from loin cloths to rockets with the same genetic code, Did we really, this is an exciting scientific discovery that you've made. Please enlighten us on exactly when evolution in human beings stopped? Last but not least I take great offence of being accused of being someone with the hidden agenda of trying to oppress and control half of the human population, for my own benefit. Had I've been doing this for my own self interest I probably had not dared publicly criticized, what many feels to be a controversial issue.

speedplane 8y ago

There is so much discussion today about the natural or genetic differences between groups of people, couched as science, but it's pretty bad science. Humans are genetically identical to what they were 1000 years ago, even 10,000 years ago, yet we've moved from wearing loin cloths to putting people on the moon. I'm sure genetic differences exist, but any nature is ridiculously out-weighed nurture and society, on the scale of 1000 to 1. Folks just look for nature based answers because it gives them an excuse to not examine their own place in society.

zaarn 8y ago
We're not at all genetically identical to 10'000 years ago, lactose-tolerance (not intolerance) has developed in that timeframe and even in modern populations, some lack the genetics to produce lactase. Another example is ADH1B, which is also not present in all populations and a fairly recent development. There is fairly well established science outside genetics that establishes that the average distribution of brains in bimodal over female and male sex. An MRI scan can predict your sex better than random choice. There is plenty of people who outright dismiss such results as "bad science" because they interpret the results wrong and draw bad conclusions (mostly that either female or male brains are worse somehow for everyone). These are averages. Lots of people being measured. Nobody who properly reads the studies for this should conclude that there is a typical female or male brain. There are some features that are more likely to be present in either, some less like to be present or differently expressed. On average. It's perfectly possible for a female to have a brain that would have only features that are more typical for male brains and a male may have features more typical for females while they behave perfectly normal compared to a control. There are plenty of features that differ between males and females on average and there is no problem when one has a feature being expressed in a way more typical of the other sex (just think of hip size, hair, height, voice, etc).
- speedplane 8y ago
  > There is fairly well established science outside genetics that establishes that the average distribution of brains in bimodal over female and male sex. An MRI scan can predict your sex better than random choice. I'm not saying that there aren't differences, I'm just saying they are practically negligible when they are compared to social differences. I don't doubt an MRI can predict sex relatively well, but a far more accurate prediction can be based off of what type of underwear you wear and whether you carry a purse or a wallet. The social constructions and stratifications we have made for ourselves are far more powerful than differences in our own genetic code. It's largely this ability to modify ourselves through society that differentiates us from other animals.

tsukurimashou 8y ago

Men and women are different at many levels, physically and mentally. Recognizing that doesn't mean you're sexist. These differences doesn't mean one is better than the other.

chippy 8y ago

I was listening to the radio the other day on a programme about this as they said (like the article) that the brain is like any other organ like the liver and kidneys and that all observed structural changes was due to nurture and culture. However they said that there was one rarely studied difference in the chemical (or hormonal?) soup that gets given / produced as a baby and that these different chemicals haven't been examined enough when it comes to the difference in brains between men and women. Can anyone expand on my limited and hazy understanding of what I might have heard? edits - I can't find the programme, it might have been during a morning news show on radio 4.