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"Think about how Jewish, Buddhist, or Muslim people you know would like being called non-Christian"
This one I have heard a lot and not found it pejorative. Mostly I've seen it used when the grouping made sense.
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But children are mostly treated differently according to their (perceived) gender from birth (babies dressed in 'girly pink' as opposed to 'blue for boys'), so "boys like sports" is implied before they can even walk, and reinforced by the choice of games adults play with them (talking to dolls or playing catch with balls). It's a distinction that occurs very, very early and is very pervasive.
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Though that's sort of flipped, since cisgender is the majority. More like whites being called non-people of colour.There are arguments against "non-transgender" as well, generally that identifying people specifically by what they are not isn't usually a good idea.For those who have a difficult time understanding this, try something: think about how any people of colour you know would react if you called them non-white. Think about how any women you know would like being called non-male. Think about how Jewish, Buddhist, or Muslim people you know would like being called non-Christian. Think about how any older adults you know would like being called non-young.
I bet they wouldn't like it very much.
I listed based on power majority.
Females are also the numerical majority. Older adults are too, in some countries.
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But children are mostly treated differently according to their (perceived) gender from birth (babies dressed in 'girly pink' as opposed to 'blue for boys'), so "boys like sports" is implied before they can even walk, and reinforced by the choice of games adults play with them (talking to dolls or playing catch with balls). It's a distinction that occurs very, very early and is very pervasive.
It is, but do boys like sports because parents assume that they will or do parents assume that they will because boys like sports? Nature or nurture. Obviously its both to some extent but how much?
Trying to keep this on track since its a meta discission about the discussion, but the language of social justice seems to have mostly (if not all) nurture as the answer baked into it. If you don't agree with that idea you have to use other language, which hits a timey whimey ball of implications because the ideas are linked.
Though that's sort of flipped, since cisgender is the majority. More like whites being called non-people of colour.There are arguments against "non-transgender" as well, generally that identifying people specifically by what they are not isn't usually a good idea.For those who have a difficult time understanding this, try something: think about how any people of colour you know would react if you called them non-white. Think about how any women you know would like being called non-male. Think about how Jewish, Buddhist, or Muslim people you know would like being called non-Christian. Think about how any older adults you know would like being called non-young.
I bet they wouldn't like it very much.
I listed based on power majority.
Females are also the numerical majority. Older adults are too, in some countries.
I'm not sure what you mean. Your examples were about referring to the minority group as "non-majority", while with non-transgender, it's the other way around. It's referring to the majority group as non-minority. Thus calling whites, non-coloured is a closer parallel than the other way around.
*Minority used here for the lack of a better term - lower status, historically and/or currently discriminated against group, which usually, but not always corresponds to being a numerical minority.
That was intentional. I was trying to demonstrate in contexts that would hopefully show (in contexts that people are more likely to have experience with), why "non-" is a bad idea in general.
I suppose I could say "non-female", "non-Jewish", "non-elderly", and "non-person of colour", but to be honest this issue (cis-) is the first time I've ever seen the majority so resent a label, so I wouldn't normally use an example based on majority label reversal. I've never seen such vehemence over "straight", or being called "non-" from even the elderly people that I work with. I suspect it's evidence of just how ingrained the established gender binary is to people.
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Cultural gender - The gender that someone's behaviour as perceived as based on cultural norms. E.g. 'boys like sports'.This is what I was disagreeing with before when someone mistakenly thought i was confusing terms: I was not. The vast majority of "cultural norms" are descriptive of underlying biologically driven behavior. The exact form they take is cultural (football, soccer, lacrosse, kicking a ball through a hoop) but "boys like sports" is prevalent in far too many cultures and has too many analogs in our closest relatives to be a cultural phenomenon. Society certainly exacerbates it to different degrees (no women allowed and you will play football boy and you will like it!) but it doesn't do so ex nilo.
If cultures evolved in complete isolation I might agree with you, but they don't. It's not like there is a section of the brain that turns off if you are female and prevents them from enjoying sports.
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If cultures evolved in complete isolation I might agree with you, but they don't.
How far back is it supposed to go? And when did we invite reindeer to the games?
I'm picturing an old man sitting around the fire saying "Grandson, your grandchildren s grandchildren may forget yourname, your gods, and your language, but you must always remember, NEVER let the girls toss the caber..."
I know what you're suggesting is probably less overt than that, but so many cultures all having similar traditions and sticking with it for no reason seems like a pretty far fetched claim and there's no way I can think of to provide evidence for it.
It's not like there is a section of the brain that turns off if you are female and prevents them from enjoying sports.
Thats not remotely whats being suggested. You don't need either absolute on/off OR all men/women like/hate sports. You just need a difference in the averages between the two.
How far back is it supposed to go?
If cultures evolved in complete isolation I might agree with you, but they don't.
Well, everyone from Iceland to Anatolia speaks Indo-European,... As does everyone from Terra del Fuego to Nome. So I'd say it goes back at least 7000 years, possibly more.
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]OTOH, nearly every pre-modern culture goes far beyond what can be taken as innate when setting strict gender roles.
]
ahem.
Society certainly exacerbates it to different degrees (no women allowed and you will play football boy and you will like it!) but it doesn't do so ex nilo.
I don't know why, no matter how many times this gets said, it will be ignored in favor of refuting a binary statement.
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Every trait we humans have is biological, this much should be obvious. Unless we are discussing the "soul" and non-material stuff that makes us decide what to do. I will assume not.
The biological part of human behaviour, as opposed to the environmental, is what sets the outer limits. The stuff we can't really change. Environment affects us only within those limits. When discussing people without serious handicaps: We get a native language, either an already formalized one with rules from our parents, or one that we shape into a formal language if it doesn't have said rules. We learn to walk, lie, imagine abstract things, and so many other things. And we get a sexual identity and a sexual preference. These are not negotiable. Given all this, yes, we can further build on these "core rules" as we and our environment shape us.
What characterizes a purely biological trait? It is absolute, non-negotiable. A human learns to walk. To make him or her not do that, you would have to actively provide a massively warped environment, like tying him down for years. He will likely learn it still, only later. By the same token, a human will always learn some kind of language. The tabula rasa is anything but rasa. And part of that is your sexual identity, and your sexual preference. A heterosexual doesn't stop being so. A homosexual cannot be "cured" despite oceans of effort to the contrary.
Why is not everyone cishet? Well, sexual identity and preference is a complicated thing. A strong sexual identity and a heterosexual preference is likely what maximizes the chance for offspring - so it should be sharply selected for. But it also needs to be different for men and women, so it must be contained in a rather complex machinery - and all such are open to "errors". And so, some will be non-cishet. Or, otherwise put, cishet people would not exist in any large numbers without non-cishet people.
Sexuality is not something we can negotiate. Sure, we are of course able to go through the physical motions of things outside our sexuality, but we are not going to enjoy it like we do things inside it. People routinely risk death and torture for sex. Sometimes they have sex despite KNOWING they will be killed or imprisoned for a very long time for having it. Non-negotiable.
]OTOH, nearly every pre-modern culture goes far beyond what can be taken as innate when setting strict gender roles.]
ahem.
Society certainly exacerbates it to different degrees (no women allowed and you will play football boy and you will like it!) but it doesn't do so ex nilo.
I don't know why, no matter how many times this gets said, it will be ignored in favor of refuting a binary statement.
Because it isn't helpful, insightful, or interesting.
You want to buy a shirt so you go to Walmart. Americans are predisposed to like cotton shirts, so that is what is available here. You want wool or silk? You go somewhere else unAmerican scum.
It doesn't matter that wool and silk are still available to you. What matters is the most-popular supplier has told you that you don't belong. Something is wrong with you. You need to go somewhere else.
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I know it's pedantic, but when I see "non-person of color" I'm thinking of something like a chocolate lab. I am chuckling every time I see it.
[its a meta discission about the discussion,
Dang it, between this and "bubbleosity" I keep finding words and concepts I wish I'd used in my OP!
Well done, BNW...
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]OTOH, nearly every pre-modern culture goes far beyond what can be taken as innate when setting strict gender roles.]
ahem.
Society certainly exacerbates it to different degrees (no women allowed and you will play football boy and you will like it!) but it doesn't do so ex nilo.
I don't know why, no matter how many times this gets said, it will be ignored in favor of refuting a binary statement.
Because it isn't helpful, insightful, or interesting.
You want to buy a shirt so you go to Walmart. Americans are predisposed to like cotton shirts, so that is what is available here. You want wool or silk? You go somewhere else unAmerican scum.
It doesn't matter that wool and silk are still available to you. What matters is the most-popular supplier has told you that you don't belong. Something is wrong with you. You need to go somewhere else.
I read BNW's post six times desperately trying to figure out how the hell this is relevant to what he said.
My conclusion is: It isn't. At all.
]OTOH, nearly every pre-modern culture goes far beyond what can be taken as innate when setting strict gender roles.]
ahem.
Society certainly exacerbates it to different degrees (no women allowed and you will play football boy and you will like it!) but it doesn't do so ex nilo.
I don't know why, no matter how many times this gets said, it will be ignored in favor of refuting a binary statement.
Because it isn't helpful, insightful, or interesting.
You want to buy a shirt so you go to Walmart. Americans are predisposed to like cotton shirts, so that is what is available here. You want wool or silk? You go somewhere else unAmerican scum.
It doesn't matter that wool and silk are still available to you. What matters is the most-popular supplier has told you that you don't belong. Something is wrong with you. You need to go somewhere else.
I read BNW's post six times desperately trying to figure out how the hell this is relevant to what he said.
My conclusion is: It isn't. At all.
BNW says Boys like sports because they genetically wired toward that preference. (Dubious statement but that isn't important to my point) He says that society pushing that position is ok because of the genetic propensity. He discounts the idea that that position is harmful to those who run against that propensity.
I drew an analogy that ostracizing someone for something so innocuous was blatantly stupid. Basically I compared the idea that boys like sports to Americans like cotton.
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As far as sports go... I am a girl and I like sports. Nearly every girl I know likes sports as well. There are outliers, but sports are fun. People like fun regardless of gender. The same was said of video games and clearly we like those as well.
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The difference in raising boys and girls seems to boil down to a few minor differences in mind sets; the biggest of those being that boys are more prone to being violent, aggressive, and risk takers than girls are. A fact I blame on testosterone.
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I don't think he's actually saying it's OK. More just that it's expected - that's why societies push that position, because there's a hardwired tendency. And that's how we know it's genetic, because so many (all?) societies push it.
Mostly many. And if you're trying to fight genetics with socialization socialization is going to lose. You need to find a solution that works with the genetics. You need to work from a solid foundation of the is to get to the ought.
What bothers me about that logic is nearly all pre-modern societies do far more than just push gender roles, they come far closer to mandating them.
They seem to have hit on very similar gender roles. At the extreme end, no society ever barred the men from going to war and sent the women. The answers range from a minority of women to no girls allowed. That seems very unlikely if we're working from a blank slate.
In so far as the nature/nurture debate has been settled, it hasn't been settled in nurture's favor. Defining nurture as the answer via language rather than argument undermines the validity of the reasoning behind it and leaves people working from a counterfactual position.
If we were drawing conclusions from that, before modern experiments with equality, we'd be justified in much stronger ones.
Or you could say that there's no need to enforce gender roles at all they'll happen on their own.
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The difference in raising boys and girls seems to boil down to a few minor differences in mind sets; the biggest of those being that boys are more prone to being violent, aggressive, and risk takers than girls are. A fact I blame on testosterone.
That's a big one but its not the only thing. The brain gets changed even prior to birth to be more violent aggressive and risk prone and then gets the testosterone on top of that. (although that formation is itself triggered by testosterone...)
The aggression thing not only starts a difference on its own but snowballs, building off of itself. Testosterone not only gives you an urge to fight it makes you better at it. So what you have is "I want to fight" followed by "Fighting is fun!" AND "fighting actually WORKS to solve my problems!" along with the cultural "I won the fight now I'm the coolest kid in the class for a few days"
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An interesting development in the study of male/female brain structures
Honestly I'm not sure why they think this is proves some groundbreaking new idea.
Rather, most brains are comprised of unique “mosaics” of features, some more common in females compared with males, some more common in males compared with females, and some common in both females and males.
This kinda proves that there are notable differences between the averages of certain features. I haven't heard anyone who sounds like they know anything about the subject argue that the differences are a strict binary across the entire brain.
An interesting development in the study of male/female brain structures
I question the objectivity of a "science writer" who produces pieces with titles like (I am not making this up) "Scientists examine why men even exist."
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Isn't this thread about the preferred absolute category some humans prefer to be lumped into?
Not being a jerk, but it seems to be the overall topic.
There are arguments against "non-transgender" as well, generally that identifying people specifically by what they are not isn't usually a good idea.For those who have a difficult time understanding this, try something: think about how any people of colour you know would react if you called them non-white...
I bet they wouldn't like it very much.
This is why I hate the term "person of color." It means "non-white,"* but is simply rephrased to avoid the dreaded "non" prefix. It's a category defined by exclusion, pretending to be a category defined by inclusion.
*With the possible distinction that "person of color" can exclude Asians if it suits your purposes, such as when talking about representation in higher education.
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An interesting development in the study of male/female brain structures
For this to be true, the authors write, the differences would have to be consistent: Those who were biologically male would have to almost always have "male" features and not female ones in their brain.
Getting the actual article would cost 10 bucks, but from the description it is, again, going after the strawman of hard gender binary that hasn't been argued for since the 1850s.
To be useful you don't need to be consistent, you just need a prevalent pattern. If you make a chart of something as quantifiable as human height for example you can see the difference. Focusing on either the overlap or the differences is missing half the story. There are tall women and there are short men but the phrase "men are taller than women" is true if you parse it into normal language. The same is true looking at the brain : yes, some men may have a giant corupus colosum connecting the hemispheres but its usually smaller than in women. It doesn't explain how "all men" think but its not supposed to.
It baffles me that the response to a scatter graph trend is a strawman argument against a platonic box system. Its not so difficult a concept that the response is from a lack of understanding. Is it threatening an appeal to nature? Do social justice folks think everything has to be 50 50 or else? Is the thought that socialization may not be able to fix every "problem" being railed against?
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There's some pretty compelling evidence that your gender is hardwired into your brain whether you're cis or trans. That makes it just as biological and far more important than the plumbing.
This is what I think the studies authors are disproving. Yes, there are differences and patterns, but an individual brain isn't predictive of gender. On average, they are identical.
Isn't this thread about the preferred absolute category some humans prefer to be lumped into?
Not being a jerk, but it seems to be the overall topic.
Not exactly the intent, though it seems that, originally, it was taken that way by some*.
More, as BNW mentioned, this was intended as a meta-discussion on the way people respond to language used, and how that relates to personal interpretation and public discourse, and the difficulty in finding language that people can more broadly agree on (even if they disagree on other things), or translating between people who speak markedly different dialects that look like they're similar, and why that causes problems (a discussion that applies just as well to RAW/RAI/Rules debates, religious discourse and intent, or cultural integration).
Though now, yeah, it's kind of lead that way. The internet, you know. :)
(Also about Twilight, for a bit.)
EDIT: * humorously(?) this is because I referenced a topic related to that topic as a method of describing how two different people have really solid points, but because they miss the details of what the other is saying - due to holding their own natural and comprehensible biases about what the other is saying, they weren't engaging each other in a way the other could understand their point. And I made my own point in a way that a solid number of people missed, meaning I needed to work on my own communication skills as well.
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Ahh. There is that. Internet!!
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To be useful you don't need to be consistent, you just need a prevalent pattern.
But you're reversing this. There are a number of "prevalent patterns" that are not, in fact, useful. That's one reasons medical-types make a distinction between "statistical significance" and "clinical significance"; a difference that is statistically robust may not actually be meaningful or useful.
A good example of that is sex differences in IQ. There, broadly speaking, a fairly robust measured difference of about 3 IQ points between men and women when you measure a large enough sample.
This difference, in turn, is about one-fifth of a standard deviation (15 points). This means that in practical terms, the between-group differences are absolutely dwarfed by the within-group differences.
Furthermore, the tests themselves are extremely variable; the most recent reports I've seen suggest that the tests are only reliable to within about 10 points, meaning that if your IQ was measured at 110 today, you have about a 70% chance next week of testing in the range 100-120.
In light of this, saying that "men are more intelligent than women" is a prevalent pattern, but not at all useful. If I point at a specific man and a specific woman and ask you which one has the higher IQ, guessing "the man is more intelligent" isn't really any better than a coin flip. Indeed, guessing "the one who got the higher IQ score on the last IQ test they took" is only marginally better than a coin flip.
Height is not quite as homogenous; the difference is greater (men average about 1.09 times the height of women in the US), and also more robust (men are generally about 1.5 standard deviations taller than women).
So sex is much more predictive of height than it is of IQ -- but in both cases, if you assume that it's actually usefully predictive, you're probably wrong.
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There's some pretty compelling evidence that your gender is hardwired into your brain whether you're cis or trans. That makes it just as biological and far more important than the plumbing.This is what I think the studies authors are disproving. Yes, there are differences and patterns, but an individual brain isn't predictive of gender. On average, they are identical.
Apparently I can get the whole study at work. The data is hard to follow but from what I can tell that isn't what it is saying.
What I think it is saying is that within 1 brain the features aren't consistent, but it does not get into how consistent they are as far as I can see. They studied 7-10 brain regions/features, depending on the sample group, for multiple sample groups of varying sizes that they could get data for. What they found was that very few brains exhibited entirely male or female characteristics in all regions (~1-2%). It did find that there was a correlation between number of "male" or "female" brain characteristics and the person's sex, but I'm having a hard time finding where they actually show data for that instead of just saying it. So a guy with 9 "male" brain features and 1 "female" brain feature by their study is classified in the same group as a guy with 3 "male" features, 3 "female" features, and 4 intermediate features.
Part of the reason it exists is because it describes the people it refers to by their own quality, not just a negation. They are people of color, not "people who are not white".
But the quality it refers to is the quality of being anything other than white. The negation is still built into the term; it's just hidden.
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There's some pretty compelling evidence that your gender is hardwired into your brain whether you're cis or trans. That makes it just as biological and far more important than the plumbing.This is what I think the studies authors are disproving. Yes, there are differences and patterns, but an individual brain isn't predictive of gender. On average, they are identical.
I cannot find anything in the article or the transcript that suggests that. Quite the opposite.
Sex/gender differences in the brain are of high social interest because their presence is typically assumed to prove that humans belong to two distinct categories not only in terms of their genitalia, and thus justify differential treatment of males and females. Here we show that, although there are sex/gender differences in brain and behavior, humans and human brains are comprised of unique “mosaics” of features, some more common in females compared with males, some more common in males compared with females, and some common in both females and males. Our results demonstrate that regardless of the cause of observed sex/gender differences in brain and behavior (nature or nurture), human brains cannot be categorized into two distinct classes: male brain/female brain.
The catagories are real. The solid walls between them are not. This is part for the course in biology. All the "lines" are blurry. Differences between species? What exactly is the difference between an order, super order, and a family? Is a virus life? Is a prion?
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Apparently I can get the whole study at work. The data is hard to follow but from what I can tell that isn't what it is saying.
What I think it is saying is that within 1 brain the features aren't consistent, but it does not get into how consistent they are as far as I can see. They studied 7-10 brain regions/features, depending on the sample group, for multiple sample groups of varying sizes that they could get data for. What they found was that very few brains exhibited entirely male or female characteristics in all regions (~1-2%). It did find that there was a correlation between number of "male" or "female" brain characteristics and the person's sex, but I'm having a hard time finding where they actually show data for that instead of just saying it. So a guy with 9 "male" brain features and 1 female brain feature by their study is classified in the same group as a guy with 3 "male" features, 3 female features, and 4 intermediate features.
That doesn't surprise me. That's more or less what I would expect with a lot of low-level, not-very-correlated features.
If you assume there are 8 independent features, each of which is associated with a specific sex 55% of the time, about 1% of the time, a person would have all 8 features associated with his/her sex, and about 5% of the time, a person would have 7 of the 8.
Turning that around, about 25% of the time, a person would have five or more traits associated with the other sex. And 99% of the people will have "mixed" traits.
That, by the way, isn't neurology, just math.
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Apparently I can get the whole study at work. The data is hard to follow but from what I can tell that isn't what it is saying.
What I think it is saying is that within 1 brain the features aren't consistent, but it does not get into how consistent they are as far as I can see. They studied 7-10 brain regions/features, depending on the sample group, for multiple sample groups of varying sizes that they could get data for. What they found was that very few brains exhibited entirely male or female characteristics in all regions (~1-2%). It did find that there was a correlation between number of "male" or "female" brain characteristics and the person's sex, but I'm having a hard time finding where they actually show data for that instead of just saying it. So a guy with 9 "male" brain features and 1 female brain feature by their study is classified in the same group as a guy with 3 "male" features, 3 female features, and 4 intermediate features.
That doesn't surprise me. That's more or less what I would expect with a lot of low-level, not-very-correlated features.
If you assume there are 8 independent features, each of which is associated with a specific sex 55% of the time, about 1% of the time, a person would have all 8 features associated with his/her sex, and about 5% of the time, a person would have 7 of the 8.
Turning that around, about 25% of the time, a person would have five or more traits associated with the other sex. And 99% of the people will have "mixed" traits.
That, by the way, isn't neurology, just math.
True, but they don't break it down into subsets of frequency, or by feature, so we have no real idea of how each individual feature breaks down or if there is any statistical difference between the groups. To use examples above, we don't know if this falls into a pattern similar to height or IQ.
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To be useful you don't need to be consistent, you just need a prevalent pattern.
But you're reversing this. There are a number of "prevalent patterns" that are not, in fact, useful. That's one reasons medical-types make a distinction between "statistical significance" and "clinical significance"; a difference that is statistically robust may not actually be meaningful or useful.
A good example of that is sex differences in IQ. There, broadly speaking, a fairly robust measured difference of about 3 IQ points between men and women when you measure a large enough sample.
This difference, in turn, is about one-fifth of a standard deviation (15 points). This means that in practical terms, the between-group differences are absolutely dwarfed by the within-group differences.
Furthermore, the tests themselves are extremely variable; the most recent reports I've seen suggest that the tests are only reliable to within about 10 points, meaning that if your IQ was measured at 110 today, you have about a 70% chance next week of testing in the range 100-120.
In light of this, saying that "men are more intelligent than women" is a prevalent pattern, but not at all useful. If I point at a specific man and a specific woman and ask you which one has the higher IQ, guessing "the man is more intelligent" isn't really any better than a coin flip. Indeed, guessing "the one who got the higher IQ score on the last IQ test they took" is only marginally better than a coin flip.
Height is not quite as homogenous; the difference is greater (men average about 1.09 times the height of women in the US), and also more robust (men are generally about 1.5 standard deviations taller than women).
So sex is much more predictive of height than it is of IQ -- but in both cases, if you assume that it's actually usefully predictive, you're probably wrong.
Of course, this example has the added issue of assuming that IQ is a reasonable assessment of intelligence in the first place.
You're right. But the hiding is important.Part of the reason it exists is because it describes the people it refers to by their own quality, not just a negation. They are people of color, not "people who are not white".But the quality it refers to is the quality of being anything other than white. The negation is still built into the term; it's just hidden.
Generally, when I see people using jargon to deliberately hide the literal meaning of their words, it's for pretty slimy reasons.
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There's some pretty compelling evidence that your gender is hardwired into your brain whether you're cis or trans. That makes it just as biological and far more important than the plumbing.This is what I think the studies authors are disproving. Yes, there are differences and patterns, but an individual brain isn't predictive of gender. On average, they are identical.I cannot find anything in the article or the transcript that suggests that. Quite the opposite.
Here we show that, although there are sex/gender differences in brain and behavior, humans and human brains are comprised of unique “mosaics” of features, some more common in females compared with males, some more common in males compared with females, and some common in both females and males. Our results demonstrate that regardless of the cause of observed sex/gender differences in brain and behavior (nature or nurture), human brains cannot be categorized into two distinct classes: male brain/female brain.
Yes, there are differences. But it is just as far a cry from gender being "hardwired" as it is that our brains are identical. At most you could say that gender predisposes a person to certain brain structures or patterns.
It's not really hiding the meaning, since the meaning remains clear and obvious, it's changing the connotations.Generally, when I see people using jargon to deliberately hide the literal meaning of their words, it's for pretty slimy reasons.You're right. But the hiding is important.Part of the reason it exists is because it describes the people it refers to by their own quality, not just a negation. They are people of color, not "people who are not white".But the quality it refers to is the quality of being anything other than white. The negation is still built into the term; it's just hidden.
True. Saying an event or community is "for people of color" has a much better connotation than saying "white people not allowed," even if they have essentially the same literal meaning.
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Yes, there are differences. But it is just as far a cry from gender being "hardwired" as it is that our brains are identical. At most you could say that gender predisposes a person to certain brain structures or patterns.There's some pretty compelling evidence that your gender is hardwired into your brain whether you're cis or trans. That makes it just as biological and far more important than the plumbing.This is what I think the studies authors are disproving. Yes, there are differences and patterns, but an individual brain isn't predictive of gender. On average, they are identical.I cannot find anything in the article or the transcript that suggests that. Quite the opposite.
Here we show that, although there are sex/gender differences in brain and behavior, humans and human brains are comprised of unique “mosaics” of features, some more common in females compared with males, some more common in males compared with females, and some common in both females and males. Our results demonstrate that regardless of the cause of observed sex/gender differences in brain and behavior (nature or nurture), human brains cannot be categorized into two distinct classes: male brain/female brain.
Right, but people are trying to use this article to basically say the opposite, in that sex does not predispose you to certain brain patterns.
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Yes, there are differences. But it is just as far a cry from gender being "hardwired" as it is that our brains are identical. At most you could say that gender predisposes a person to certain brain structures or patterns.
*headscratch*
Hard wired and identical are two separate things. Hard wired refers to an individual. Identical/different would refer to a group. One of the strongest arguments for LGBT rights is that they're born that way, and the early differences in behavior before socialization has had much chance to kick in, and indeed often goes against socialization.