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Or the innate biological preferences caused by biological sex? Even baby male monkeys prefer to play with trucks while baby female monkeys prefer to play with

Or the innate biological preferences caused by biological sex? Even baby male monkeys prefer to play with trucks while baby female monkeys prefer to play with dolls. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2755553/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2755553/

BeefWellington 5y ago
There are other differentiating factors there that could lead to the preference choice that are not related to whether something is mechanical in nature. Things like color, texture, etc. have been shown to have strong biases between the sexes. A possible control they did not employ during the study would be to have a series of toys that were identical in all ways except color, for example. Also *very* worth noting: As shown in their Fig. 1, when play time with toys is examined in human children (Berenbaum and Hines,1992) and rhesus macaques of all ages, males spend significantly more of their play time with the “male” toy(s) than with the female toy(s), while females spend about equal times with “male” and “female” toys. This is true both for frequency of interactions and in time spent playing (Hassett et al., 2008). **Therefore, one key difference between males and females in these studies is that males actually show a toy preference while females do not!** (Emphasis mine)
bccdee 5y ago
These aren't trucks and dolls though. It's a pretty big leap from "female monkey babies prefer anthropomorphic toys" to "adult women are biologically predisposed to a deeper understanding of textiles." A cultural explanation is much more parsimonious.
- quocanh 5y ago
  I think the point is that a significant part (majority?) of our culture is defined by our biology and nearly all is at least influenced by biology. The ultimate counterexamples would be societies where women are in charge of the engineering/construction and to my knowledge there are none which is a sign that there's something deep within our psyche which drives these interests. I'd love to hear counterexamples if anyone has them though. If we could figure it out then maybe we'd figure out how to get more women into the STEM fields. Lord knows we've been trying.
  - bccdee 5y ago
    > a significant part (majority?) of our culture is defined by our biology That's a very strong claim. Obviously everything's influenced by biology to some extent (imagine what society would look like if we had no thumbs), but "to some extent" is doing a lot of legwork there, and it's quite a reach to say that the majority of our culture is defined by biology based on that. Engineering and construction are pretty modern fields — how many societies have had engineers? Ours plus Rome plus not many others. But look at something like cooking, which is old: There's tons of weird gender stuff there that varies between societies. Why is grilling masculine if baking is feminine? Other societies have similarly odd gender-food rules too.
    - caeril 5y ago
      > Engineering and construction are pretty modern fields The mental tasks required of engineering are far, far, far, older. Things like abstract reasoning, distance estimation and measurement, rotation and scaling of objects, maps, and abstract shapes in one's head, ability to standardize and compute measures and weights, etc, were all adaptations that improved our effectiveness at hunting, building shelter, and both defense against, and offense toward, opposing tribes. Modern engineering is an enormous pile of abstractions on top of "Grog think rock weigh seven stick".
    - quocanh 5y ago
      I'd settle for any society where women built the huts. Nearly every society has needed to construct some form of shelter or build some sort of tool. Basketweaving comes to mind. Grilling and baking are great examples of what I'm talking about. Actually, in the past baking was seen as a masculine activity. Ovens used to be much more dangerous than now. You had a dedicated town Baker just like you had a Blacksmith. Over time with the invention of gas and electric appliances and the proliferation of cheap baked goods, baking became a luxury. Now it's a feminine activity. If danger determines masculinity/femininity, then that would also explain why grilling is considered masculine. I'm sure there's a biological explanation out there for why men are attracted to danger (or at least don't mind it) while women are repelled by it. To find some sort of culture that isn't influenced by biology, we would have to find some aspect of culture that we invented in our heads. For example, religion or philosophy or law. There are a ton of examples out there. But when we examine the culture that organically forms, I think there's a biological explanation for most of it. Maybe even all.
mcguire 5y ago
The ability to recognize verbena as a word is not encoded on the X chromosome.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  Are you sure there's not a gene for fabric preferences?
  - noasaservice 5y ago
    It is your job to prove that. It is not our job to disprove your half-baked suppositions.
    - vineyardmike 5y ago
      Its HN so you never know with things like this, but i think it was a joke meant to emphasize the ridiculousness of the argument that women are genetically predisposed to liking fabric craft.
- HideousKojima 5y ago
  No, but the preferences and life choices that would lead to someone being exposed to and learning that word are in part due to sex dimorphism.
- xdennis 5y ago
  GP is obviously not saying that. He's saying that sex chromosomes cause differences between men and women which also manifest in different preferences which cause a small gap in knowledge between the sexes.
uncomputation 5y ago
> dolls Small clarification: the feminine-analogous toys used in the original (Hasset, 2008 [1]) study were plush rather than the more common plastic dolls sold to children. Although the difference may or may not be minor, it does remind me of the famous Harlow monkey experiment where monkeys showed a preference for the soft “mother” figure over the biologically sustenance “mother” figure. Edit: Another commenter has already perpetuated this very misunderstanding it seems. Out of the Hasset female-coded toys, only one (a Raggedy Ann doll) was “anthropomorphic.” All six others were animals. [1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2583786/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2583786/
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

BeefWellington 5y ago

There are other differentiating factors there that could lead to the preference choice that are not related to whether something is mechanical in nature. Things like color, texture, etc. have been shown to have strong biases between the sexes. A possible control they did not employ during the study would be to have a series of toys that were identical in all ways except color, for example. Also *very* worth noting: As shown in their Fig. 1, when play time with toys is examined in human children (Berenbaum and Hines,1992) and rhesus macaques of all ages, males spend significantly more of their play time with the “male” toy(s) than with the female toy(s), while females spend about equal times with “male” and “female” toys. This is true both for frequency of interactions and in time spent playing (Hassett et al., 2008). **Therefore, one key difference between males and females in these studies is that males actually show a toy preference while females do not!** (Emphasis mine)

bccdee 5y ago

These aren't trucks and dolls though. It's a pretty big leap from "female monkey babies prefer anthropomorphic toys" to "adult women are biologically predisposed to a deeper understanding of textiles." A cultural explanation is much more parsimonious.

quocanh 5y ago
I think the point is that a significant part (majority?) of our culture is defined by our biology and nearly all is at least influenced by biology. The ultimate counterexamples would be societies where women are in charge of the engineering/construction and to my knowledge there are none which is a sign that there's something deep within our psyche which drives these interests. I'd love to hear counterexamples if anyone has them though. If we could figure it out then maybe we'd figure out how to get more women into the STEM fields. Lord knows we've been trying.
- bccdee 5y ago
  > a significant part (majority?) of our culture is defined by our biology That's a very strong claim. Obviously everything's influenced by biology to some extent (imagine what society would look like if we had no thumbs), but "to some extent" is doing a lot of legwork there, and it's quite a reach to say that the majority of our culture is defined by biology based on that. Engineering and construction are pretty modern fields — how many societies have had engineers? Ours plus Rome plus not many others. But look at something like cooking, which is old: There's tons of weird gender stuff there that varies between societies. Why is grilling masculine if baking is feminine? Other societies have similarly odd gender-food rules too.
  - caeril 5y ago
    > Engineering and construction are pretty modern fields The mental tasks required of engineering are far, far, far, older. Things like abstract reasoning, distance estimation and measurement, rotation and scaling of objects, maps, and abstract shapes in one's head, ability to standardize and compute measures and weights, etc, were all adaptations that improved our effectiveness at hunting, building shelter, and both defense against, and offense toward, opposing tribes. Modern engineering is an enormous pile of abstractions on top of "Grog think rock weigh seven stick".
  - quocanh 5y ago
    I'd settle for any society where women built the huts. Nearly every society has needed to construct some form of shelter or build some sort of tool. Basketweaving comes to mind. Grilling and baking are great examples of what I'm talking about. Actually, in the past baking was seen as a masculine activity. Ovens used to be much more dangerous than now. You had a dedicated town Baker just like you had a Blacksmith. Over time with the invention of gas and electric appliances and the proliferation of cheap baked goods, baking became a luxury. Now it's a feminine activity. If danger determines masculinity/femininity, then that would also explain why grilling is considered masculine. I'm sure there's a biological explanation out there for why men are attracted to danger (or at least don't mind it) while women are repelled by it. To find some sort of culture that isn't influenced by biology, we would have to find some aspect of culture that we invented in our heads. For example, religion or philosophy or law. There are a ton of examples out there. But when we examine the culture that organically forms, I think there's a biological explanation for most of it. Maybe even all.

mcguire 5y ago

The ability to recognize verbena as a word is not encoded on the X chromosome.

pessimizer 5y ago
Are you sure there's not a gene for fabric preferences?
- noasaservice 5y ago
  It is your job to prove that. It is not our job to disprove your half-baked suppositions.
  - vineyardmike 5y ago
    Its HN so you never know with things like this, but i think it was a joke meant to emphasize the ridiculousness of the argument that women are genetically predisposed to liking fabric craft.
HideousKojima 5y ago
No, but the preferences and life choices that would lead to someone being exposed to and learning that word are in part due to sex dimorphism.
xdennis 5y ago
GP is obviously not saying that. He's saying that sex chromosomes cause differences between men and women which also manifest in different preferences which cause a small gap in knowledge between the sexes.

uncomputation 5y ago

> dolls Small clarification: the feminine-analogous toys used in the original (Hasset, 2008 [1]) study were plush rather than the more common plastic dolls sold to children. Although the difference may or may not be minor, it does remind me of the famous Harlow monkey experiment where monkeys showed a preference for the soft “mother” figure over the biologically sustenance “mother” figure. Edit: Another commenter has already perpetuated this very misunderstanding it seems. Out of the Hasset female-coded toys, only one (a Raggedy Ann doll) was “anthropomorphic.” All six others were animals. [1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2583786/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2583786/

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]