Differences between men and women

[Minish]

Well for me it's more of a psychological thing than a physical one because you don't need to have a vagina to be a woman or a penis to be a man. Women do tend to have different thought processes than men and vice-versa. Neither is better than the other, they're just different. I'd elaborate but I don't trust myself when I'm tired because I could easily start spewing complete bull so I'll come back some time.

I agree with this.

I think gender roles, society's stand on gender and everything influences it a lot, but I think there are still psychological differences between the way men and women's minds work.

I'm not a scientist, I don't have any clever quotes of scientists to back me up and I don't really know much about the brain or science in general. =P So I'm not claiming to know my stuff. Hence why I'm taking psychology next year.

I've always believed in nature over nurture, as well, and to me this seems the same sort of thing. Although I'm not saying nurture has no or even a small influence; neither am I saying society and all that has no or even a small influence.

Bleh, I'm tired and I make no sense anyway so I'll just stop talking too. I just had to post this since this thread will probably have seven pages tomorrow and I'll have lost it again like usual Debating Hall threads. :/

 

[Amoeba]

I personally don't think there are any real differences on a most basic physical level in the brain. I think we could look at feral humans as an example, without any of the social conditioning they didn't develop the gender roles that we are familiar with (or any differentiation of gender for that matter).

I agree with Dannichu and others that gender roles are artificial, and just part of the culture, not part of the living organism alone. Of course, we are not alone, many other animal species have gender roles that probably wouldn't exist without their culture. Look at bonobos for example, where gender roles need to be taught over the course of a young bonobo's maturity. This would suggest they're not instinctive.

Gender roles were our solution to survival when it was beneficial for males and females to share seperate roles, but as a result it was for a time forgotten that males could just as easily take on female roles, and females could just as easily take on male roles.

That's why I personally think there is very little difference on a biological level. I do think that hormonal differences are real, but I don't think they make a huge amount of difference, since often a person's personality and self-control can override behavioural hormonal influence. Physical hormonal influence is probably the biggest difference, as a female will often need to work harder to catch up with a male in levels of physical strength and fitness.

 

[Alexi]

I do think that hormonal differences are real, but I don't think they make a huge amount of difference, since often a person's personality and self-control can override behavioural hormonal influence.

Or vice-versa: look at how some women become very bitchy when they PMS. My ex is generally a very nice person, except when she's PMSing. Her hormones "override" her personality, I guess you could say.

Men, I'm not so sure about. o_o

 

[Tarvos]

Men have hormones too, you know. Testosterone plays a part in the male thought process.

I think most gender differences (apart from the obvious physical/hormonally determined ones) are social constructs, yes, that usually depend on culture.

I wouldn't mind staying home for the kids.

 

[Mirry]

I think what Dannichu said about gender roles being forced upon people from birth is completely true. In essence there is absolutely nothing wrong with dressing your new baby boy in a pink outfit, except that if you do so people will probably mistake him for a girl and when you have to explain that he's male it might create a bit of an awkward situation. But indeed I think the fact that people assume what gender a child is based on what colored clothing he/she is wearing is very interesting.

 

[Dewgong]

I think the fact that people assume what gender a child is based on what colored clothing he/she is wearing is very interesting.

I agree.

The fact that colors are "assigned" to genders, (like pink is a girl color, and blue/red is a boy color, something like that), really bothers me. Pink is not established in my mind as being a girl color, it's established in my mind as being a color. For anybody. A lot of people seem to agree with me, though.

Boys can wear girl clothing too. :\ (I kind of like it, depending on what it is, to be honest).

 

[Vladimir Putin's LJ]

I find tranvestites awesome (especially old campy drag queens) but transvestism as a whole lights my fire only occasionally. I used to be way into it when I was like twelve/thirteen though, haha :v

I remember this show they once broadcasted, about babies and gender comfirmity and stuff. At one point they dressed the same baby first in pink then in blue (it was a little boy) and the people they showed the child to were all 'awww you're gonna grow up to be a footballer eh mate!' when it was in blue and 'who's the prettiest baby ever you yes youuu' when it was in pink.
I wish I could remember more of the the show, it was super interesting.

 

[Dewgong]

Do you know the name of the show, I want to see it now? D:

 

[Ice tiger]

Women are more likely to help a stranger in trouble then men. I forget why exactly, but the reason men are less likely is that something in their head goes "No don't help them, you don't know them who cares?" And releases some hormone that makes them not care.
And I'm not making this up, it's true.

 

[see ya]

Hmm...I believe it's a bit of both, actually. Regardless of social constructs, men and women do have base differences. I'm not saying that they're absolute and apply to everyone, or that either is better than the other, but yeah. I don't think one can truly say that every single difference between them is socially-influenced.

Speaking of shows on the subject, I remember watching a show about a study where there was a pair of male twins. One was raised as a male, the other was surgically altered and raised entirely as a female. Well...it didn't go so well, especially when the "girl" hit puberty. Despite the way "she" was raised, "she" was aggressive, unbalanced, and felt alienated. Eventually, "she" decided to get a surgery to go back to being male.

Here's the study.

 

[Dewgong]

I watched that, Skymin. It was indeed interesting.

I'm going to quit talking in this thread when I have nothing to say now. :(

 

[Butterfree]

While there are definite physiological differences between men and women, I believe most of what is considered to be "masculine" and "feminine" is imposed on us by society. I can buy a lot of "men tend to be better at this, women tend to be better than that" as being biological: we know that men have more muscle strength than women, just for example, so why wouldn't other things be different? It is a fact that evolution will shape the males of a species differently than the females.

On the other hand, I see no reason to believe that most things that modern society happens to consider "masculine" or "feminine" have any basis anywhere other than in society itself. Why on earth would it be evolutionarily beneficial for men to like blue and women to like pink, or for boys to be more interested in sports, technology and mathematics than girls, or girls to be more interested in cooking, nursing and being flight attendants? There's no reason for that to come from anywhere other than the upbringing. :/

 

[Koori Renchuu]

Isn't the main difference simply: guys have more testosterone, women have more estrogen, testosterone makes you do x, estrogen makes you do y, therefore guys do more x than y, and women do more y than x?

I could be misinformed but :|

You got the letters mixed up. Men are Y, women are X. ;)

They say women are the weaker sex, but the X chromosomes are larger than the Y chromosomes. The Y chromosome is degenerating, human men will vanish from the face of the earth in approximately 12,500 years. Why then do or SHOULD we have male and female differences to begin with? I agree that it is nurture not nature, but nature has a lot to do with nurture. As Butterfree said, men are physically stronger, women have evolved to support children and to give childbirth. Women have a larger pelvis and a lower center of gravity, this helps them when pregnant. But the psychology is too important. I personally feel more feminine than masculine. I like manicures, buffing my nails, a nice salt scrub, etc. I also want to wear makeup, to wear flowing fabric around myself, to polish my nails whatever damn color I want. I'm an interesting example of what can happen when inner gender is different from outer gender. Most men get competitive when depressed, I show female depression symptoms. Any sport is 90% mental, I look at gender the same way.

 

[Amoeba]

You got the letters mixed up. Men are Y, women are X. ;)

They say women are the weaker sex, but the X chromosomes are larger than the Y chromosomes. The Y chromosome is degenerating, human men will vanish from the face of the earth in approximately 12,500 years.

Do you have any sources to back this up? Because as far as I know, this statement is absolutely laughable.

There are selective pressures that will not allow the loss of the important reproductive genes in the y chromosome. Primarily the ability to reproduce.

(And Zeta Reticuli wasn't talking about chromosomes)

 

[Dannichu]

Nah, I read that the Y chomosone is having funky stuff happen to it somewhere, too. Uuuh, the book may have been called something like "The End of Men" or "The Fall of Man" or something, but Amazon's not showing me anything useful. The book definetly exists, but I'm not sure how scientifically backed it is :/

I actually read an article on girls being associated with pink yesterday on the BBC website, here.

It's interesting that they quote magazines from the earl 190s that say things like "The preferred colour to dress young boys in is pink. Blue is reserved for girls as it is considered paler, and the more dainty of the two colours, and pink is thought to be stronger (akin to red)." and see how much it's changed since.

Sure, there are biological differences in terms of muscle strangth and speed, but I have active, fit female friends and lazy male friends who would lose horrendously to the former in a race. Obviously, if a healthy male and female both trained, the male would probably be stronger, but that doesn't mean the female isn't capable of doing whatever the male can (short of running on the male's team in the Olympics); they just have to work harder. Lefties are supposed to be more creative because of biological factors, but that doesn't mean right-handed people can't be artists.

 

[Butterfree]

Very true. All inclinations of one sex towards one thing and the other towards another are merely averages and with such a lot of people in the world, you'll still end up with a whole bunch of athletic women and men who love kids. It never means much for any individual man or woman.

Do you have any sources to back this up? Because as far as I know, this statement is absolutely laughable.

There are selective pressures that will not allow the loss of the important reproductive genes in the y chromosome. Primarily the ability to reproduce.

Actually, there are documented examples of for example lizards whose females began to reproduce asexually, resulting in the males just quietly going extinct. Not that I think that's particularly likely to happen for humans, but it's theoretically possible.

 

[Minish]

I think gender roles are really stupid, too. Hope I didn't sound like I agreed with them or something earlier. XD

On the pink and blue: I used to be under the impression that everyone considered blue a feminine colour. When you just look at the colours themselves, there's no way pink could be considered a feminine colour, not really - I've always been under the impression of yin and yang, day and night - red and blue. Blue has always been feminine to me. But that's just personal, it's not like I think everybody should agree with that. It seems to me that somewhere along the line, somewhere must have just started a trend of girls wearing pink, and boys wearing blue or something, based on just a few people's views.

So stupid. Stuff like this just breeds prejudice.

 

[Dannichu]

This might be going slightly off-topic here, but in regard to the pink=girly thing, I kinda agree. Pink's just a lighter shade of red, which has been accosicated with masculinity since ancient times - Mars is the red planet associated with war, and Mar's symbol is the upward-pointing arrow.

Interestingly, and I'm not sure if this is biological or subtley sociological, I once read a study where loads of groups of kids across ages, gender and location were split into different teams of different colours; red, yellow, blue and green, and in nearly every case, the red team was the most aggressive, while the blue team was the least.

I can support this in as much as my primary school split us up into different house teams (like Hogwards, only without the cool hat), where each team was one of the four colours, and the red team won most sports days and the blue team won least (I was in the Yellow Team and we normally came second XD).

Women might be biologically physically weaker, but they're (generally) much less squeamish when it comes to blood. The reasons are obvious, I guess, but it's great fun to watch people at blood doning sessions; the men tend to look away and wince when the needle goes in, while the women tend to watch with morbid curiosity X3

And if you watch kids when they're playing, a boy's more likely to cry, and for longer, when he falls and cuts himself than a girl is (no scientific backing, just my own observations).

 

[Sandstone-Shadow]

Hmm, interesting question. I think that it's impossible to tell, because even if these traits, like crying in front of people, caring for a child, etc. do have to do with genetics, the traits also have to do with how a person was raised and that person's own values (which, I suppose, ties in with how they were raised and their genetics). So I'd say that being male versus being female could influence how they behave, but yet, how do we really know whether it's genetics or how the person was raised?

 

[Amoeba]

Again, look at case studies of feral children (not the ones raised in basements tied to potties, I mean the ones who lived wild with no human interaction). The only social conditioning that they have recieved is through the wild animals they interact with or are 'adopted' by. As unfortunate as their situations are, they provide an example of whether a trait is aquired through socialising with other humans, or just by pure instinct. There are cases of different ages too, some in or past adolescence.

So far it appears that very little is down to instinct when it comes to differences between males and females. The sorts of differences you see between school boys and girls don't seem to exist in the feral boys and girls. They do have other differences, but there's the probability that those are just down to the different circumstances they grew up in.