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Widespread sex differences in gene expression in the human brain (2013)

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Re: Widespread sex differences in gene expression in the human brain (2013)

#11
post #8
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think I ever encountered that argument, and when I see people arguing against it, it always seems to be a straw man. The argument I've encountered goes more like this: Because there has been historical oppression, we can't easily distinguish the influence of that from biology and should remove the oppression before we come up with biological theories that justify the oppression. That seems reasonable to me.

Speak for yourself. I personally know a lesbian couple that forces their boy to wear dresses, play with dolls, and talk down anything traditionally "male". I completely agree with your original post but it's hard to deny there's a turd in the feminist kool-aid bowl and no one is willing to pull it out.

I wouldn't say no one, but it's also true that the Men's Rights movement has a steep uphill PR struggle ahead of them. In part because of active attacks from parts of the feminist movement, and in part because they actively feed into the conflict.

Also, it's a fact of life that men who lose their temper in any he-said-she-said conflict often receive a knee-jerk judgement from those around them, which makes it difficult for onlookers to evaluate their case from first principles. (Such knee-jerk happens to females in other contexts.)

We're still subject to many illusions from the same Victorian age mentality that deemed wolves "bad" and that killing them off was an environmental good.

Re: Widespread sex differences in gene expression in the human brain (2013)

#12
That's exactly why we don't have many women in tech and most readers of HN are guys. All this political correctness and attacks on PG are simply BS: men and women are different. Not better, not worse, just different.

It's evolution of sex, stupid.

PS. My previous comment on this topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7041221

Re: Widespread sex differences in gene expression in the human brain (2013)

#14
post #12

That's exactly why we don't have many women in tech and most readers of HN are guys. All this political correctness and attacks on PG are simply BS: men and women are different. Not better, not worse, just different. It's evolution of sex, stupid. PS. My previous comment on this topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7041221

How does this explain fields where the gender balance has drifted considerably over time?

Re: Widespread sex differences in gene expression in the human brain (2013)

#15
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think anyone is denying physical differences between people with XX and XY chromosomes. I also think it's common knowledge by now that sex influences the development of diseases (which is what the paper is about). What the debate is usually about is inequalities in social power relations and whether these can be attributed to what you call 'social conditioning' or biology. This paper doesn't contribute anythi…

I think what the GP means is that there is a very vocal, very vitriolic subsection of the feminist movement that claim there is NO reason for the differences in men and women, other than the historical repression of women by men. Which couldn't be further from the truth: up until recently, women were very much at the mercy of the groups of men around them (physically), and only recently has the value of women in soci…

> very vocal, very vitriolic subsection of the feminist movement

There's a very vocal subset of any group of people that has extreme opinions. Within the feminist movement, the vitriolic anti-male segment has really shrunk since the 1970's, and if anything there is a much bigger subset today that seek to validate and justify traditional gender roles.

In my personal experience, I've encountered a decent number of men who point to innate gender differences to justify the skewed representation of women in engineering. I have also encountered a decent number of feminists who embrace traditional gender roles. I have yet to encounter any feminist of the vitriolic anti-male persuasion, though I read about them in my American Legal History class. In the mainstream media, I've read a few articles along the lines of Susan Patton's regressive letter urging Princeton women to "find a husband" while they had the opportunity to do so at an Ivy League institution, but none of the vitriolic anti-male screeds that people assure me exists.

Re: Widespread sex differences in gene expression in the human brain (2013)

#16
Note that some of the differences in expression may be the result of environmental factors.

It should also be noted that the average age at death was around 60 years old, which means that most women were post-menopause. The effect of estrogen on gene expression is thus underestimated.

Re: Widespread sex differences in gene expression in the human brain (2013)

#17
post #14
post #12

That's exactly why we don't have many women in tech and most readers of HN are guys. All this political correctness and attacks on PG are simply BS: men and women are different. Not better, not worse, just different. It's evolution of sex, stupid. PS. My previous comment on this topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7041221

How does this explain fields where the gender balance has drifted considerably over time?

Kudos sir or ma'am.

The same argument can be levied at racism. If you go back to the year 1000AD, it's obvious that Europeans are of vastly inferior stock. The Chinese and the Arabs were doing optics and stuff while the Europeans were basically playing in the dirt.

Re: Widespread sex differences in gene expression in the human brain (2013)

#18
post #12

That's exactly why we don't have many women in tech and most readers of HN are guys. All this political correctness and attacks on PG are simply BS: men and women are different. Not better, not worse, just different. It's evolution of sex, stupid. PS. My previous comment on this topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7041221

[deleted]

Re: Widespread sex differences in gene expression in the human brain (2013)

#19
post #12

That's exactly why we don't have many women in tech and most readers of HN are guys. All this political correctness and attacks on PG are simply BS: men and women are different. Not better, not worse, just different. It's evolution of sex, stupid. PS. My previous comment on this topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7041221

But you haven't even tried to make a connection between the physical differences and the social differences. You just assume that all social differences are explained biologically.

Re: Widespread sex differences in gene expression in the human brain (2013)

#20
post #13

Not to be too cheeky here, but what was the null hypothesis? That male and female brains would look exactly the same? Seems a bit like a so-called "straw man" (or straw woman?) hypothesis to me.

In hard science, the null hypothesis is often 'straw-man-like', and that's usually just fine. Because, oftentimes the straw-man haunts by being kind of true, sometimes. Reality is so strange that doing en experiment that controls well enough to (near-) conclusively exclude even a trivial hypothesis is a good experiment. Not the best experiment, but a good experiment.
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