<p>True and they were an admitted minority among most K-8 aged girls even in my rough old NYC neighborhood. And the female minority who did fight didn’t fight as often as their male counterparts. However, when the fighting did occur, grudges were held much longer and it took on an extra vicious “take no prisoners” vibe which was such that it even scared off many otherwise tough brawler type boys. </p>
<p>Saw a similar dynamic with some girls at my junior high who weren’t from my neighborhood. Some of them were even bullying boys. Funny part was that the one who was the most vicious and combative with others…including brawler type boys at my junior high never had any issues with me. </p>
<p>If anything, we actually got along most of the time and genuinely wished me well when I was admitted to my NYC SHS even when she admitted her own educational and career outlook was bleak due to her academic, disciplinary, and arrest records as a result of her temper and combative streak against others…including authority figures like teachers and cops. </p>
<p>My entire point in bringing that up was to point out that there’s no monolithic stereotype of men or women which can hold up universally. It’s highly dependent on local culture, situational context, and individual factors.</p>
<p>romani, even if the cause of the differences is brain size rather than hormonal, since most men have larger brains than most women, then most men are going to have the one kind of connectivity and most women are going to have the other. Also, since it seems highly unlikely that individuals with different kinds of connectivity are going to have the same strengths and weaknesses, then still most men are going to be better than most women at some things and most women are going to be better than most men at some other things, regardless of whether the differences in connectivity stem directly from the hormones or stem from brain size. So it still puts into question the societal goal of striving for 50 percent female engineers.</p>
<p>I guess if the brain size hypothesis becomes accepted as the better way to understand the differences, then one possible outcome is that people will start talking more about the oppression of small-brained people by large-brained people rather than the oppression of women by men.</p>
<p>Is it likely that women would accept non-bf/gf relationship more than men would?</p>
<p>I have seen a case that a young woman tried to change her relationship from a bf/gf relationship to something more like a brother/sister relationship after some dating. The man seems to be a “keep” for her, but it is only a “keep” for a sibling-like relationship. She seems to have no intention to break up even explicitly to be informed so, but is still interested in communicating on a daily basis (e.g., by texting.) It seems she is more comfortable in keeping a relationship for the “emotional support” purpose as siblings, but not so much for a bf/gf relationship.</p>
<p>I don’t see how this is so upsetting to people. The brain is just another part of the anatomy. There are plenty of other differences between male and female anatomies, so what’s so wrong about our brains being different? </p>
<p>And yes, there are variations within genders. Just like height varies wildly within genders as well. That doesn’t mean we can’t make the generalization that men are taller than women. And it’s assumed that all of these are on average. No one in their right mind thinks that all men are this or all women are that. </p>
<p>Also, some people are saying that the reason for these differences is society. My question is, what if the innate differences between men and women caused society to be this way in the first place? Society encourages men to enter engineering and women not to. Okay. Why? Because it felt like it?</p>
<p>Actually, that’s a good example of immature self-absorbedness on the part of the one changing the relationship and keeping the former SO as “emotional support”. </p>
<p>This is something which almost never ends up well unless the person being used as emotional support after being dumped as the SO is unusually magnanimous or an effective doormat due to puppy love/hormones or the person being the user learns on his/her own or is clued in by other friends/family that this isn’t a cool thing to pull on former romantic partners you’ve dumped unless there’s a cool-off period and the one who has been dumped is willing to be a “friend” and serve as “emotional support”…ideally without any feelings of guilt or thinking this is a good way to rekindle that former dating/romantic relationship. </p>
<p>It’s something which I’ve heard both male and female friends complain about regarding their SOs/former SOs who dumped and pulled this stunt on them. </p>
<p>Sorry, but the way I view it, if you’ve dumped someone as a romantic partner, you’ve lost the right to expect them to serve as emotional support…especially if the expectation’s exercised immediately or not too long after the dumping’s taken place. </p>
<p>Not something I can relate to as much as I don’t feel comfortable doing really deep emotional support type stuff* even with friends unless there’s imminent genuine need** and said friend and I have had a long prior history of close friendship not involving anything romantic or dating related. </p>
<ul>
<li>Partially my NTJ personality and having been socialized during childhood/adolescence where this “just wasn’t done” by “real boys/men” by older adults in my old NYC neighborhood. Been trying for the last 10+ years to overcome the latter…but my personality type inclination to avoid emotionally charged topics/interactions doesn’t help unless I put in an extra effort.<br></li>
</ul>
<p>** Not enough time to refer and/or get friends who are more gifted or “naturals” at serving as emotional support for friends in emotionally tumultuous/painful need…especially if it’s beyond lending a sympathetic ear, giving them constructive “how to fix” practical advice/help WHEN SOLICITED BY THEM FIRST and they give good signs they’re receptive, and wishing them the best.</p>
<p>I think there are gender differences but they are small and would not explain why men have been so dominant. </p>
<p>A couple of anecdotes:</p>
<p>In an episode of This American Life (which I think Ira Glass picked as his all time favorite quote from the show) a man is interviewing a woman who took a lot of testosterone as part of a gender change. She/he said something like “I became a lot more interested in science and for the first time, I really understood Physics”. The interviewer said, “Oh my God, you’re setting us back 30 years!”.</p>
<p>Then, a friend of mine sent her daughter to an all-girls school for elementary and middle school and then switched her to a mixed-gender school. We had dinner with the girl and her friend who had also just switched. The friend said, “Boys are better at math and girls are better at English”. I thought - wow, all that effort down the drain in a week. Doesn’t prove anything, but that was her immediate reaction to being introduced to boys in an academic setting.</p>
<p>Of course there is a lot of overlap and being good at reading faces or maps wouldn’t explain why men make more money, etc.</p>
<p>I could believe that men and women’s brains are wired differently due to the different hormonal environments in utero. Does this mean that brain “training” for one set of skills or the other is not possible post-birth? Of course not. Does this mean that one set of skills over another renders one a superior person (the historical excuse for maintaining an existing power structure)? No. Rather than be insulted, to me this means that the pedagogy may have to be tweaked more when teaching girls subjects boys tend to do better in (and are taught in a manner that favors the way boys learn). Likewise for boys in classes that favor language skills.</p>
<p>Here’s an interesting aside: when I was in college I participated in a psychology experiment dealing with rotating and manipulating images in one’s mind and predicting the next time-sequenced picture in a series of pictures, something males are supposed to be able to do better than females. It was sponsored by the navy. You got paid for each correct answer. I did so well on that task that the experimental proctor asked me, after it was over, if I’d had any training or if I’d just guessed my way to that score and honestly, I had to say no. The answers just seemed obvious. Many years later I read somewhere of the discovery that men’s ring fingers tended to be longer than their index fingers whereas in women it was just the opposite. It said that women whose ring fingers were longer than their index fingers (like the male pattern) tended to have a bit more aggressive way of managing their lives than women who had the women’s pattern, and that it might be due to a higher than “normal” amount of androgens circulating around in the female fetus’ environment, affecting fetal development in this subtle way. I then looked at my own hand and what do you know–my ring fingers were longer than my index fingers. Any relation to my success on that test I took way back? No way to prove it but it did prompt a long “hmmmmmmmmmm”.</p>
<p>My ring finger is quite a bit shorter than my index finger, but I can rotate and manipulate images in my mind extremely well. If I took a test like that one, I’d be raking in money. Like you, I would find the answers obvious. So, at least with me, the higher than normal androgen theory doesn’t hold up.</p>
<p>A high school student I helped with math was having an awful time with three dimensional objects in geometry. He couldn’t “see” them from a different angle. I used blocks, drew pictures, and moved him around the room to see objects from different directions. Nothing worked. I decided (didn’t tell him though!) that some people are just born with great visualization abilities and others will never get it. I am so much that way that I can’t imagine how I would function in life without it. It may have some gender correlation, but the correlation can’t be that strong. I wonder if it’s more of a familial trait.</p>
<p>More aggressive people tend to be more dominant. This applies to male vs male, male vs female, female vs female. Testosterone makes one more aggressive so it would follow that the sex with more testosterone would exert dominance over the sex that has less unless there is social conditioning to keep this in check. A cruder description would be the ones who can overpower the other attain dominance. It doesn’t even have to be physical (assault). It could be psychological as well (the shenanigans that go on with girl cliques).</p>