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Taking Sex Differences in Personality Seriously (2019)

blogs.scientificamerican.com

141–150 of 199 posts

Re: Taking Sex Differences in Personality Seriously (2019)

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. I'm saying that some men live in social groups that think these are women's activities. I'm saying that they're not , so if you're a man and you want to sew, have at it. And of course that means that sewing won't make you understand women. A lot of women can't sew.

So.... what does your reply have to do with what GP has said? He simply stated he doesn't want to risk his health in order to better understand how "women think" by taking potentially life-altering drugd. I'd wager to better understand women you should actually spend time with them and talk to them, not engage in random activities that you yourself said aren't indicative of a certain sex

I was going to write a reply to the same comment then I saw yours and you said it better than I could.

In my experience, the best way to understand how women experience the world is just as you said: spend time with them, talk to them, and - most importantly - listen to them. I think many men could benefit from having more female friends (and I mean truly friends, not secretly trying to get in their pants).

I've learned so much about how differently women experience the world just from befriending many women over the years. It's really opened my eyes to how differently women might experience the same situation. It's amazing how different society treats women and it can be totally invisible to men unless you're willing to look for it. I think it's made me a better husband and father as well.

Re: Taking Sex Differences in Personality Seriously (2019)

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you misunderstood me - OP wrote he doesn't have a concept of sex where he comes from. Since that's the biological term it sounded funny to me. I'm sure he meant to say gender.

What ruszki wrote was "where I come from, this notion is basically non-existent". It's ambiguous whether "this notion" refers to sex, gender, or the distinction between the two, but since both sex and gender are human universals, you should have inferred that "this notion" referred to the distinction.

He literally wrote

> Where I came from, this notion is basically non-existent. I meant sex.

Re: Taking Sex Differences in Personality Seriously (2019)

#143
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument, that it’s the trans community that is intolerant and not those who don’t fully accept trans gender identities as legitimate, is simplistic and in bad faith. The problem is that a lack of genuine acceptance of trans identities (i.e. that trans men are men, and trans women are women) inevitably leads to trans people _not_ being treated the way they want to be treated. The classic examples of these are ba…

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> Attacking people on these two points will be an attack that is almost exclusively on women, and society doesn't tolerate that.

Given the prevalence of sexual violence in our society and the difficulty of getting an appropriate response, I find this statement incredibly ironic. (Out of context, I admit, but it's hard to reconcile the two views.)

#MeToo is one source of evidence that society absolutely tolerates attacks on women.

[1] No citations - live your own life, do your own reading, make your own conclusions.

Re: Taking Sex Differences in Personality Seriously (2019)

#144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Trans people want to use the bathrooms and compete on athletics teams corresponding to their identity. I know I'm not the first person ever one to bring this up, but it's unclear to me how letting someone with (largely) the physique of a man compete against women is acceptable. There's a reason why (competitive) sports are usually divided by male/female, and that reason still overall holds for someone who is trans.…

It seems to me that the only fair way to let trans and cis athletes compete on level ground on the same event is to have a competition that completely ignores both sex and gender.

I would be all for such events, and while you are it allow doping and ban all equipment including clothing. Make it truly even field.

Re: Taking Sex Differences in Personality Seriously (2019)

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What ruszki wrote was "where I come from, this notion is basically non-existent". It's ambiguous whether "this notion" refers to sex, gender, or the distinction between the two, but since both sex and gender are human universals, you should have inferred that "this notion" referred to the distinction.

He literally wrote > Where I came from, this notion is basically non-existent. I meant sex.

Those are two different and somewhat unrelated statements. First, "this notion" is unknown to them. Second, that they previously meant "sex". What does the second statement mean? Let's look at it in context:

-I’ve never heard anybody who thought that there was no differences in women and men behaviours on average.

-those differences you pointed out being connected to gender, are actually due to the sex of the individual, not due to the gender an individual chooses to identify with

-Where I came from, this notion is basically non-existent. I meant sex.

ruszki's comment expressed more verbosely would be:

> This idea that sex and gender are distinguishable does not exist where I come from. Previously when I said "women and men" I was referring to the sexes, not to the genders. That is to say, to me "man" and "human male" are synonymous, as are "woman" and "human female".

You had all the information necessary to interpret what was written charitable, but instead for some reason you decided to interpret it as if they were saying something nonsensical.

Re: Taking Sex Differences in Personality Seriously (2019)

#146
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's a reason why (competitive) sports are usually divided by male/female This division is arbitrary. The reason for this is the premise of fair competition that identical people should compete. Yet white males dominate male swimming whereas black males dominate male sprinting. There have been physiological explanations based on center of mass things afaik. Knowing that, why don't we split the competitions accor…

> This division is arbitrary what the hell, how is Men's and Women's sports categorization arbitrary? its clearly defined who plays in which category.

What the hell are you talking about? Being well-defined and arbitrary are two orthogonal things.

Re: Taking Sex Differences in Personality Seriously (2019)

#147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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> Attacking people on these two points will be an attack that is almost exclusively on women, and society doesn't tolerate that. Given the prevalence of sexual violence in our society and the difficulty of getting an appropriate response, I find this statement incredibly ironic. (Out of context, I admit, but it's hard to reconcile the two views.) #MeToo is one source of evidence that society absolutely tolerates atta…

> Given the prevalence of sexual violence in our society and the difficulty of getting an appropriate response, I find this statement incredibly ironic. (Out of context, I admit, but it's hard to reconcile the two views.)

>

> #MeToo is one source of evidence that society absolutely tolerates attacks on women.

Isn't that evidence that society doesn't tolerate these things? Once it was out in the open, society rushed to condemn it. Everywhere. Everyone.

It could only happen when society did not know about it. When it was kept secret.

Society absolutely does not tolerate attacks on women, as the #MeToo movement showed.

Re: Taking Sex Differences in Personality Seriously (2019)

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Witches were and are real. I know some personally. You may be refering to their alleged supernatural abilities, which are no more real or unreal than the prayers and rituals of any other religion. Some of the greatest scientists of all time were also alchemists and spiritualists, borderline witchcraft imho.

There are people who call themselves witches... but witches in the sense of women who have made a pact with Satan in exchange for supernatural powers are not real. Indeed, if they were real, we would be quite correct to persecute them.

And those that did in reality make such pacts? Whether Satan exists is irrelevant. There have been many witches throughout history who knowingly made pacts and believed themselves to have powers. Alison Device is the classic. She cursed a man. That man heard her curse and almost immediately had what we today would call a stroke, likely in part induced by the panic/fear of that curse. She believed she had powers. He believed she had powers. She exercised those powers and a man died. Call it a placebo effect if you want, but she was a witch who proved able to kill a man with a curse.

Re: Taking Sex Differences in Personality Seriously (2019)

#149
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apologies for what may be perceived as everybody jumping on you. It’s also helping me understand women more. I disagree. I think you're understanding your own experience more, but then you've trying to fit that to what you see or hear about from women based on a lot of assumptions that probably aren't valid. Since we have no direct access to the internal mental state of others (and scarcely that of ourselves sometime…

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Re: Taking Sex Differences in Personality Seriously (2019)

#150
post #88
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think at least some part of the effect for you is placebo for sure. I'm sure not all of it or even the most of it. My wife has lower then normal for women testosterone levels, but she always have been a bit less girly then other females (in behavior, not looks). She felt for example that she had little to no maternal instincts after giving birth to our child.

> She felt for example that she had little to no maternal instincts after giving birth to our child. Do “maternal instincts” exist in the first place, and how do they differ from just parental instincts? Explaining a failure to bond with your child through gender seems very questionable to me.

What? Of course maternal instincts exist and are distinct. The differences in reproduction are the most fundamental basis of sex differentiation in animals.

In some mammals, fathers have literally no contact with their offspring while mothers care for them for years (eg, bears). In others, the mother and father both remain as part of a pack, but the mother does all of the direct care and the father is doing hunting or protection. In some, the father may have a minimal role in early life but then become more involved later as their offspring learn to hunt or fight.

The social construct of both parents having equal and identical roles in parenting at all stages of child development is very new and very culturally unique to Western, industrialized and affluent societies. Across all primates and all evidence of pre-industrial humans, maternal and paternal roles were very different.

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