4 ms·

(By the way, if you ever want a conclusive argument that girls being raised to love pink and hate math is societal The most staggering thing about these assump

(By the way, if you ever want a conclusive argument that girls being raised to love pink and hate math is societal The most staggering thing about these assumptions is not merely how they contradict current scientific understanding, but they contradict reality. Pink used to be a boys' color: the idea of pink as "girly" didn't exist 100 years ago. Ironically, this commonly-given-example is itself a fantastic example of how wrong such assumptions about gender differences actually are. It's rather laughable -- and sad -- how almost every single "scientific study" (often evolutionary psychology, a popular pseudoscience) claiming such absurd biological gender differences just happens to support 1950s stereotypical American gender roles, as opposed to gender roles anywhere else in history, anywhere else in the world. The reality is that the biological differences are negligible in most regards, at least mentally -- claiming "girls naturally prefer pink" is just as absurd as insisting that blacks are genetically predisposed to like playing basketball. It denies the vastly greater importance of societal and cultural effects, dumps blame for problems -- such as gender bias in STEMS -- on biology instead of humans, and is pretty much flat-out sexist.

ericabiz 15y ago
Agreed. Thank you for your post! That's basically exactly what the book I recommended says, except she goes into 200+ pages of detail about it (with much supporting evidence.)
- DarkShikari 15y ago
  It is -- and that book should be required reading for anyone making any comment on this subject. It's shocking how often I see posts, especially on Hacker News, that take for granted "gender differences" that have been proven not to exist! And often by self-proclaimed scientists and skeptics, no less.
  - sudoscientist 15y ago
    "proven not to exist" Are you sure that "real science" (physics, chemistry, biology), allows for such a finding? Does it allow for "proving negatives"? Maybe what you mean is that this concept of "gender differences", however it is defined, was never sufficiently proven to exist in the first instance.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
pbhjpbhj 15y ago
>'The reality is that the biological differences are negligible in most regards, at least mentally -- claiming "girls naturally prefer pink" is just as absurd as insisting that blacks are genetically predisposed to like playing basketball. It denies the vastly greater importance of societal and cultural effects, dumps blame for problems -- such as gender bias in STEMS -- on biology instead of humans, and is pretty much flat-out sexist.' Perhaps instead of picking strawmen then we could address something closer to the real questions being asked: whether girls prefer to mimic nurturing behaviour or act out creativity in their play (and the converse, that boys prefer aggressive or constructive play) and that blacks are genetically predisposed to excel at sports similar to basketball (I'd have probably picked East Africans and long distance running). Surely biologically speaking females should prefer play that mimics nurturing behaviour? (No, not exclusively, nor indeed every female, but generally as a population compared with young males). If males carried the developing human in utero I'd expect it to be different.

ericabiz 15y ago

Agreed. Thank you for your post! That's basically exactly what the book I recommended says, except she goes into 200+ pages of detail about it (with much supporting evidence.)

DarkShikari 15y ago
It is -- and that book should be required reading for anyone making any comment on this subject. It's shocking how often I see posts, especially on Hacker News, that take for granted "gender differences" that have been proven not to exist! And often by self-proclaimed scientists and skeptics, no less.
- sudoscientist 15y ago
  "proven not to exist" Are you sure that "real science" (physics, chemistry, biology), allows for such a finding? Does it allow for "proving negatives"? Maybe what you mean is that this concept of "gender differences", however it is defined, was never sufficiently proven to exist in the first instance.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

pbhjpbhj 15y ago

>'The reality is that the biological differences are negligible in most regards, at least mentally -- claiming "girls naturally prefer pink" is just as absurd as insisting that blacks are genetically predisposed to like playing basketball. It denies the vastly greater importance of societal and cultural effects, dumps blame for problems -- such as gender bias in STEMS -- on biology instead of humans, and is pretty much flat-out sexist.' Perhaps instead of picking strawmen then we could address something closer to the real questions being asked: whether girls prefer to mimic nurturing behaviour or act out creativity in their play (and the converse, that boys prefer aggressive or constructive play) and that blacks are genetically predisposed to excel at sports similar to basketball (I'd have probably picked East Africans and long distance running). Surely biologically speaking females should prefer play that mimics nurturing behaviour? (No, not exclusively, nor indeed every female, but generally as a population compared with young males). If males carried the developing human in utero I'd expect it to be different.