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The cognitive differences between men and women

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Re: The cognitive differences between men and women

#21

Post by Sacho »

ggggtez wrote: post #19
exabrial wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

^ this ^ so much. It makes me very sad to see male masculinity being shamed and female empathy mocked as a weakness. The important differences should be celebrated, not viewed as a superiority contest.

>male masculinity being shamed citation needed... When is the last time you saw an action hero movie with a man who was shamed for being too masculine? Western Culture as a whole views male masculinity as a good thing. Being non-masculine is viewed as weakness. On the other hand, if a woman is masculine, she's assumed to be a lesbian, and otherwise shamed. As a result, women are stuck between trying to be what societ…

Did you not just give an example yourself - the "masculine" startup culture is often in the news as very unwelcoming?

Re: The cognitive differences between men and women

#22

Post by phaed »

closeparen wrote: post #12
exabrial wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

^ this ^ so much. It makes me very sad to see male masculinity being shamed and female empathy mocked as a weakness. The important differences should be celebrated, not viewed as a superiority contest.

How are you going to do that in a way that isn't shitty to "feminine" men or "masculine" women?

You can't save everyone from feeling shitty. It's a similar argument overweight people have against ads showing fit and healthy people, they want those ads removed cause it makes them feel shitty about themselves. What they need to do is analyze why it makes them feel shitty, and if they don't like what they see, rather than try to change everyone else, they should look into changing themselves. If you accept who you are and are content with it, there is no reason to feel shitty in the first place.

Re: The cognitive differences between men and women

#23

Post by aianus »

ggggtez wrote: post #19
exabrial wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

^ this ^ so much. It makes me very sad to see male masculinity being shamed and female empathy mocked as a weakness. The important differences should be celebrated, not viewed as a superiority contest.

>male masculinity being shamed citation needed... When is the last time you saw an action hero movie with a man who was shamed for being too masculine? Western Culture as a whole views male masculinity as a good thing. Being non-masculine is viewed as weakness. On the other hand, if a woman is masculine, she's assumed to be a lesbian, and otherwise shamed. As a result, women are stuck between trying to be what societ…

Who says femininity isn't valued?

Doesn't the popularity of single income families where the woman stays home indicate that men value having their wives around so much that they're willing to effectively lose half their income?

Re: The cognitive differences between men and women

#24

Post by epx »

Men are, by far, more violent. This is a major weakness, or "defect". Why women shouldn't have their own, peculiar, weaknesses? I think that even psychiatric conditions like depression, borderline, ADD, etc. manifest very differently in men and women.

Re: The cognitive differences between men and women

#25

Post by VMG »

danharaj wrote: post #18

1) There are sex-differentiated characteristics of the brain. 2) Those sex-differentiated characteristics tend to be a mosaic in the brain [1]. 3) Despite being a mosaic, statistics can still differentiate sex based on individual brain characteristics [2]. 4) Therefore the current social structures that differentiate the roles men and women play in society are biologically derived /s /s /s /s A long time ago, it was…

> There's just a contingent of people who say that such social parity has already been achieved (or maybe we've gone too far), and another contingent who say that parity has not been achieved.

There also is a contingent of people who say that equal treatment will not lead to social parity.

Re: The cognitive differences between men and women

#26

Post by mempko »

My response here will be unpopular but. Yes, there are cognitive difference, but it doesn't matter. Building software is a complex social event and requires incalculable amount of different skills sets and team effort. To use single differences to claim men are better at software like the Google guy did is just stupid. It's unscientific conjecture born out of likely deep seated issues many nerds, like me and others, have with the opposite sex. In other words programming likely has become a "safe place" for a certain group of people and they want to protect that space. However, in doing so they end up with a bankrupt culture which likely has a negative effect on the quality of the very software they write.

EDIT: in reference to my "Google guy" remark. I think this fight is ultimately about growth vs fixed mindsets. My hunch is self proclaimed "conservatives" have a fixed mindset. Meaning they think people are born a certain way and can't grow.

Re: The cognitive differences between men and women

#27

Post by jackcosgrove »

jostmey wrote: post #5

I'd like to think society can truely embrace diversity instead of uniformity. Sadly, racial and sex discrimination still exist leaving society stuck with imperfect solutions to deep rooted problems.

The problem is that diversity, when encountered in nature, is often accompanied by selection. Some diversity confers no competitive advantage, while some does. In our social species, selection of some and not others is...controversial. The easiest way to avoid controversy is to demonstrate that there is no diversity, as was the consensus on cognitive differences between the sexes that this article challenges. Acknowledging biological differences is opening a door that many don't want to walk through.

Re: The cognitive differences between men and women

#28

Post by forkLding »

aianus wrote: post #23
ggggtez wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>male masculinity being shamed citation needed... When is the last time you saw an action hero movie with a man who was shamed for being too masculine? Western Culture as a whole views male masculinity as a good thing. Being non-masculine is viewed as weakness. On the other hand, if a woman is masculine, she's assumed to be a lesbian, and otherwise shamed. As a result, women are stuck between trying to be what societ…

Who says femininity isn't valued? Doesn't the popularity of single income families where the woman stays home indicate that men value having their wives around so much that they're willing to effectively lose half their income?

Saying that is feminity is like saying women valuing their husbands is masculinity.

Unfortunately I don't associate the two.

Re: The cognitive differences between men and women

#29

Post by rsmuckles »

d33 wrote: post #8
jostmey wrote: post #5

I'd like to think society can truely embrace diversity instead of uniformity. Sadly, racial and sex discrimination still exist leaving society stuck with imperfect solutions to deep rooted problems.

Could you give an example of an "imperfect solution to a deep rooted problem"?

Affirmative action programs are like the canonical imperfect solution to a deep rooted problem, especially for college admissions. Although they certainly help handfuls of disadvantaged minority students achieve higher education and the success that results from that, those fortunate individuals rarely have the power to do anything to resolve the socioeconomic problems that plague the communities that they came from. Having a token minority on your Fortune 500 board is great, but it doesn't do anything to resolve the class struggle in the Americas.

Re: The cognitive differences between men and women

#30

Post by danharaj »

VMG wrote: post #25
danharaj wrote: post #18

1) There are sex-differentiated characteristics of the brain. 2) Those sex-differentiated characteristics tend to be a mosaic in the brain [1]. 3) Despite being a mosaic, statistics can still differentiate sex based on individual brain characteristics [2]. 4) Therefore the current social structures that differentiate the roles men and women play in society are biologically derived /s /s /s /s A long time ago, it was…

> There's just a contingent of people who say that such social parity has already been achieved (or maybe we've gone too far), and another contingent who say that parity has not been achieved. There also is a contingent of people who say that equal treatment will not lead to social parity.

I used social parity as a synonym for equal treatment, as indicated by the word 'such', to make it clear what sort of parity I was talking about.
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