differences between men and women

Nothing to discuss.

Hormones, cultural factors and egg white-like (in)consistencies.

ps. Are you enrolled in Gender Studies?

Men are better at discus.

Actually I just fact-checked my facetious throwaway post and found that it is actually untrue. Apologies to all chicks.

Hang on, she threw a ladyweight discuss.

Actually I just fact-checked my fact-checking and it appears that the fairer sex use a discus that weighs half as much as the bloke discus.

Thus a quick calculation readily reveals that there are actually no differences between men and women after all. Top work Cordelia Fine.

hmmm

Tricky business, post-feminism. Dashed tricky.

I agree that the popular press makes way way too much out of studies of differences between male and female brains, but this article distorts/simplifies Fine's viewpoint a fair bit, at least based on a different article I read about her book. She's saying that significantly more data is needed to prove that there are significant genetic differences in gender/brains (which is true), not that there is no significant differences (which would be an opinion based on a reading of the facts).

Most psychology research on gender is correlational, meaning that it looks at the relationship between behaviour/brain and gender. You can't prove what causes stuff with correlational research, only what happens when other things happen. Ultimately behaviour could be caused by society, genes, or a interaction of the two (the last is the most incredibly likely though, considering what genes do). And we don't know enough about genes or society to know exactly how they combine to produce us. How genes work is complicated. How society works is complicated. How genes and society interact is probably beyond a million Stephen Hawkings.

So maybe genes have very little effect on differences in female/male behaviour, or maybe they have quite a lot of effect. We don't know.

Men Are From Mars is still rubbish, though.

Look - you can pretty much learn everything you need to know about gender from Nando's t-shirts.

Also, hillsonghoods said what I said but slower and with more words. Although I am feeling a bit fat today and it would be nice if I'd burned additional calorizzles typing a bit more. Heeheehawhawhahaha!

If there's one thing we can all agree on it is that the next AMP shortlist should contain precisely equal amounts of male, female and gender-neutral indie shite.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/08/opinion/08baron-cohen.html discusses this in his work on why males are more likely to be autistic

All indie shite is gender neutral isn't it?

It has also been found that the amount of prenatal testosterone, which is produced by the fetus and measurable in the amniotic fluid in which the baby is bathed in the womb, predicts how sociable a child will be. The higher the level of prenatal testosterone, the less eye contact the child will make as a toddler, and the slower the child will develop language. That is connected to the role of fetal testosterone in influencing brain development.

Males obviously produce far more prenatal testosterone than females do, but levels vary considerably even across members of the same sex. In fact, it may not be your sex per se that determines what kind of brain you have, but your prenatal hormone levels. From there it's a short leap to the intriguing idea that a male can have a typically female brain (if his testosterone levels are low), while a female can have a typically male brain (if her testosterone levels are high). That notion fits with the evidence that girls born with congenital adrenal hyperplasia, who for genetic reasons produce too much testosterone, are more likely to exhibit ''tomboy'' behavior than girls with more ordinary hormone levels.

Post-cardigan.

See my post above re hormones.

Hey Hillsong, if you're still reading, I find something fundamentally problematic about the current tendency to offload so much responsibility for behaviours onto biology (if that makes sense). Do you agree at all? You know stuff, and I don't.

Is there at all a sense that perhaps this is an ultimately futile line of pursuit? As you say, everyone is presented with an infinitely complex set of environmental and genetic factors and must learn to master them in their own way.

Sorry, I'm a bit hungover. But this topic interests me.

I think the differences are primarily socio-linguistics.

And also genetic. And also neurological.

but definantly not physiological.

i can't tell some apart.

the variations are not neurological....duh

they're radalogical

women = 98 rad points

men - 85 rad points

on average

and obviously - penis and vajayjays

here is a scientific method for distinguishing men and women. (1) place something on their chest (2) if it stays there she is a woman. If there is no shelf and the item falls off he is a man. foolproof.

And also genetic. And also neurological.
but definantly not physiological.

I see you.

I see breasts have appeared in the thread. Good.

But MissAustralia does an injustice to small-breasted women, and men with manboobs and/or epic pectoralis majors. Although tempting, the gender/boobshelf linkage is not so easily drawn.

Hey Hillsong, if you're still reading, I find something fundamentally problematic about the current tendency to offload so much responsibility for behaviours onto biology (if that makes sense). Do you agree at all? You know stuff, and I don't.
Is there at all a sense that perhaps this is an ultimately futile line of pursuit? As you say, everyone is presented with an infinitely complex set of environmental and genetic factors and must learn to master them in their own way.
Sorry, I'm a bit hungover. But this topic interests me.

In the popular press, the focus on such research (especially in dumbed down tabloid versions) generally serves the interests of the establishment, and some pop sci writers - Matt Ridley in particular - make this explicit. In actual neuro-research, the biological focus can be done badly, or well.

To me, we are biological creatures. Our brain is simply part of our body, and genetic instructions crafted the shape and size and structure of our brains the same way they crafted the shape and size and structure of our livers. So, at some level, we could never fully understand human psychology without genes.

But genetic instructions are not set in stone - genes do a variety of things, but mostly they tell cells to produce proteins. Also, in response to different situations, different genes get turned off and on. Whether genes are 'switched on' is influenced by other genes and stuff in the environment - stress will turn some genes on, for example. If we grow up in a stressful environment, it will affect our development in a different way to if we grow up in a healthy environment.

As godzilla points out above, how much testosterone is present in the womb alters the development of the brain, for example. Testosterone levels affect behaviour at some level. But testosterone levels are not always a result of genes - they can be altered by what you eat, and they change in response to situations - if the brain thinks that aggressive behaviour is necessary, we get a shot of testosterone, for example.

My feeling is that our genetics channels us into certain directions of behaviour, rather than fixes our behaviour. So high testosterone levels makes you seek out a certain kind of thing in a given culture, but the identity of that thing varies between cultures, because economics and social conventions differ between cultures. So, in our culture, young men with lots of testosterone might gravitate towards loud hotted-up cars and will cruise around in packs. In another culture, equivalent young men might engage in a display which serves a similar purpose but is entirely different (the young men in Africa who dress up in expensive very-colorful designer gear and strut around). Or, if displays of testosterone are frowned on in a culture, the testosterone in the system will be channelled in different ways.

noneabove said 6 hours ago:
I see you.

You do?

this was one of the most enlightening books I've ever read:

also, I betcha it was a male that caught HIV from a monkey. under mysterious circumstances. just sayin.

MissAustralia2003:

here is a scientific method for distinguishing men and women. (1) place something on their chest (2) if it stays there she is a woman. If there is no shelf and the item falls off he is a man. foolproof.

hmmm...

Best gender wars troll article ever.

BASIC ''female'' skills are becoming endangered with fewer young women able to iron a shirt, cook a roast chicken or hem a skirt.
Just as more modern men are unable to complete traditional male tasks, new research shows Generation Y women can't do the chores their mothers and grandmothers did daily, reported The Courier-Mail.
Only 51 per cent of women aged under 30 can cook a roast compared with 82 per cent of baby boomers.
Baking lamingtons is a dying art with 20 per cent of Gen Y capable of whipping up the Aussie classic, down from 45 per cent for previous generations.
Social researcher Mark McCrindle said: ''Women of today tend to be busier, juggling more roles, and are quite prepared to compromise a bit of the homemade just to save some time.
''They also have a lot more disposable income compared with their mums and their grandmothers so buying a cake mix or lamingtons ready-made is not a big deal.''

Women who can't make lamingtons should be injured.

Being a Gen-Y (albeit at the pointy end) I'd just like to declare:

While I have never made lamingtons (because I juggle roles and have more disposable income to buy store made lamingtons) I bet I could make them if I wanted to.

Hemming a skirt I'll pass on though..