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I’m struggling to think of a scenario where this analysis of would be more useful than just getting to know a person. The author proposes two scenarios: > Why
by awb 6y ago
I’m struggling to think of a scenario where this analysis of would be more useful than just getting to know a person.
The author proposes two scenarios:
> Why do we have all these studies showing that male and female behaviors are so similar, yet people in everyday life continue to think as if males and females were very separable?
So basically intellectual curiosity. Fair enough, but I can see people using this information to reinforce and perpetuate biases instead of treating it like a factoid. I have a hard time thinking of an area where it’s useful to act on the idea of an “average man” or “average woman”.
> I am a strong believer that individual differences are more important than sex differences. Nevertheless, sex differences are also part of the picture, and may be particularly detrimental to a relationship if all partners go into the marriage thinking that they "should not exist", instead of coming to a healthy acceptance of sex differences, even laughing about them and attempting to understand differences in interests and motivations that fall along sex-related lines.
So, basically replacing one stereotype with a more accurate one. I agree with the author that the individual differences are more important, but they might be all that matters. It doesn’t matter if your partner is highly agreeable because of nature or nurture, does it? It just matters that you’re open to noticing your partner’s agreeableness. Plus, if we encourage people to understand these traits beyond the spectrum of sex, they can now understand agreeableness in any form, wether it’s at work, in the community, with kids or with a partner. That’s surely more valuable than only looking for agreeableness in women, no?
- guerrilla 6y ago> I can see people using this information to reinforce and perpetuate biases instead of treating it like a factoid The only place I can think of is that it might tell you the probability of finding what you're looking for when dating.
- awb 6y agoLike which sex you might statistically be more compatible with?
- username90 6y agoIt is to set your expectations. You can't expect to find a woman who has the same interests as you unless you have relatively girly interests. The further you are from girly interests the more you have to lower your expectations. For example, most relatively nerdy guys will stay single forever if he looks for a woman that likes similar things. If you aren't happy with staying single forever you should therefore realize that you need to compromise and accept that you will get a girly woman rather than the woman of your dreams.
- awb 6y agoI don’t agree with this at all. Almost every couple I know has some shared interest and almost no couple I know shares all of the same interests as their partner. In other words, if you like technology, sports and philosophy, it’s not that hard to find a partner of either sex that will share at least one of those interests. Or if your interests are cooking, concerts and wine tasting, same thing. The compromise needs to come from needing your partner to share every interest. But we do the same things with friends of our same gender. They don’t need to share every interest we have, just one. And I don’t agree that you will be lonely forever if you want a partner that shares a stereotypically gendered interest. I know men that have fallen in love with women over baseball and others over art and others over fantasy fiction and others over yoga. Sure, maybe your odds are reduced but they’re a far cray from “staying single forever”.
- burnished 6y agoWell, a simple use case would be when deciding on policy that interfaces with gender. All else being equal you would expect that in each industry there would be a roughly equal division of men and women, and if it is not, you might conclude that there is a broad scale social problem. But if all else is not in fact equal then you can no longer support that conclusion, and a naive target of 50/50 representation no longer makes sense as a goal. I'm not trying to say that there are no problems, just trying to point out that there is utility in a frank conversation about stuff like this.
- awb 6y agoI hear you, but in the past some bad science about race that was used to justify inequality. And the author admits it’s not clear how much of these reported differences are a factor of nature or nurture: > All of the findings I've presented up to this point are merely descriptive; they don't prescribe any particular course of action, and they do not say anything about the complex interplay of genetic and cultural influences that may cause these differences to arise in the first place. So I don’t understand why people are interested in this correlation when the causation is still up for debate.
- burnished 6y agoBecause they are interested in the debate. You're absolutely right that similar reasoning was used for some pretty appalling shit in the past, which is a reason for caution going forward, not a reason to pretend the conversation doesn't exist.
- kbelder 6y agoI agree, the solution to sexism, racism, and so on, is to ignore those categories and respond to everyone as individuals. But this analysis is useful pushing back against policies that have as their basis the assumption that gender-based differences in personality do not exist, and set measures accordingly. Those are anti-individualist by nature. In other words, there are many policies and some laws in place that care only about crude statistics about aggregate groups, and the idea that there could be real biological reasons that more women prefer (plucking something out of the air) teaching early education than higher education breaks those assumptions. Those policies are working against the real choice of the individual.