Posted on 01/23/2005 12:50:37 PM PST by neverdem
GUEST OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
London — HYPOTHESIS: males and females are typically indistinguishable on the basis of their behaviors and intellectual abilities.
This is not true for elephants. Females have big vocabularies and hang out in herds; males tend to live in solitary splendor, and insofar as they speak at all, their conversation appears mostly to consist of elephant for "I'm in the mood, I'm in the mood..."
The hypothesis is not true for zebra finches. Males sing elaborate songs. Females can't sing at all. A zebra finch opera would have to have males in all the singing roles.
And it's not true for green spoon worms. This animal, which lives on the sea floor, has one of the largest known size differences between male and female: the male is 200,000 times smaller. He spends his whole life in her reproductive tract, fertilizing eggs by regurgitating sperm through his mouth. He's so different from his mate that when he was first discovered by science, he was not recognized as being a green spoon worm; instead, he was thought to be a parasite.
Is it ridiculous to suppose that the hypothesis might not be true for humans either?
No. But it is not fashionable - as Lawrence Summers, president of Harvard University, discovered when he suggested this month that greater intrinsic ability might be one reason that men are overrepresented at the top levels of fields involving math, science and engineering.
There are - as the maladroit Mr. Summers should have known - good reasons it's not fashionable. Beliefs that men are intrinsically better at this or that have repeatedly led to discrimination and prejudice, and then they've been proved to be nonsense. Women were thought not to be world-class musicians. But when American symphony orchestras introduced blind auditions in the 1970's - the musician plays behind a screen so that his or her gender is invisible to those listening - the number of women offered jobs in professional orchestras increased.
Similarly, in science, studies of the ways that grant applications are evaluated have shown that women are more likely to get financing when those reading the applications do not know the sex of the applicant. In other words, there's still plenty of work to do to level the playing field; there's no reason to suppose there's something inevitable about the status quo.
All the same, it seems a shame if we can't even voice the question. Sex differences are fascinating - and entirely unlike the other biological differences that distinguish other groups of living things (like populations and species). Sex differences never arise in isolation, with females evolving on a mountaintop, say, and males evolving in a cave. Instead, most genes - and in some species, all genes - spend equal time in each sex. Many sex differences are not, therefore, the result of his having one gene while she has another. Rather, they are attributable to the way particular genes behave when they find themselves in him instead of her.
The magnificent difference between male and female green spoon worms, for example, has nothing to do with their having different genes: each green spoon worm larva could go either way. Which sex it becomes depends on whether it meets a female during its first three weeks of life. If it meets a female, it becomes male and prepares to regurgitate; if it doesn't, it becomes female and settles into a crack on the sea floor.
What's more, the fact that most genes occur in both males and females can generate interesting sexual tensions. In male fruit flies, for instance, variants of genes that confer particular success - which on Mother Nature's abacus is the number of descendants you have - tend to be detrimental when they occur in females, and vice versa. Worse: the bigger the advantage in one sex, the more detrimental those genes are in the other. This means that, at least for fruit flies, the same genes that make a male a Don Juan would also turn a female into a wallflower; conversely, the genes that make a female a knockout babe would produce a clumsy fellow with the sex appeal of a cake tin.
But why do sex differences appear at all? They appear when the secret of success differs for males and females: the more divergent the paths to success, the more extreme the physiological differences. Peacocks have huge tails and strut about because peahens prefer males with big tails. Bull elephant seals grow to five times the mass of females because big males are better at monopolizing the beaches where the females haul out to have sex and give birth.
Meanwhile, the crow-like jackdaw has (as far as we can tell) no obvious sex differences and appears to lead a life of devoted monogamy. Here, what works for him also seems to work for her, though the female is more likely to sit on the eggs. So by studying the differences - and similarities - among men and women, we can potentially learn about the forces that have shaped us in the past.
And I think the news is good. We're not like green spoon worms or elephant seals, with males and females so different that aspiring to an egalitarian society would be ludicrous. And though we may not be jackdaws either - men and women tend to look different, though even here there's overlap - it's obvious that where there are intellectual differences, they are so slight they cannot be prejudged.
The interesting questions are, is there an average intrinsic difference? And how extensive is the variation? I would love to know if the averages are the same but the underlying variation is different - with members of one sex tending to be either superb or dreadful at particular sorts of thinking while members of the other are pretty good but rarely exceptional.
Curiously, such a result could arise even if the forces shaping men and women have been identical. In some animals - humans and fruit flies come to mind - males have an X chromosome and a Y chromosome while females have two X's. In females, then, extreme effects of genes on one X chromosome can be offset by the genes on the other. But in males, there's no hiding your X. In birds and butterflies, though, it's the other way around: females have a Z chromosome and a W chromosome, and males snooze along with two Z's.
The science of sex differences, even in fruit flies and toads, is a ferociously complex subject. It's also famously fraught, given its malignant history. In fact, there was a time not so long ago when I would have balked at the whole enterprise: the idea there might be intrinsic cognitive differences between men and women was one I found insulting. But science is a great persuader. The jackdaws and spoon worms have forced me to change my mind. Now I'm keen to know what sets men and women apart - and no longer afraid of what we may find.
Olivia Judson, an evolutionary biologist at Imperial College in London, is the author of "Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation: The Definitive Guide to the Evolutionary Biology of Sex."
Sex Ed at Harvard by Charles Murray.
You're kidding me, right?
I'd say there's an obvious difference between men and women. I think those who can't tell that difference are those advocating same-sex marriages.
Do I win a Nobel prize or something?
It's ridiculous that the leftists ignore science and feel threatened by it even. There is nothing threatening about the fact that men and women are different. It doesn't mean that one sex is superior to the other - it just means the sexes are different. As long as sex differences aren't used to justify outright discimination, there is no problem. It's one thing to not admit women to science programs because you think no woman is good at science (because clearly there are many who are - sex differences are generalities after all). But it's another thing to not have many women in your science program because not that many women applied in the first place. We should certainly encourage women to pursue careers in science and math, but if very few are interested, then we shouldn't act like this is the end of the world. As long as the ones who are interested are not discriminated against, there is no problem. Curiously I never hear liberals lamenting the fact that fields like psychology and English are dominated by women. I never hear of pushes to get more men interested in majoring in psychology or English. And even more interesting, no one ever hears a liberal complain about the fact that liberals dominate every field in academia.
Uhhmmm...gee...ahh...hmmm..."keen to know"...well...mmm...oh!, I know...mmm, it's that women can and men can't have, uh,...no, that wouldn't satisfy her...uhhh...let's see..uh, oh yeah, every 30 days or so women have, uh...no, that wouldn't satisfy her either...I got it! Men are givers and women are recievers!(If ya catch my drift)
What nonsense.
FMCDH(BITS)
FMCDH(BITS)
sorry about that.
Recent thread on similar subject
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1325697/posts
Intelligence in men and women is a gray and white matter
Women and men have similar intelligence but clearly different thought processes
What won't those scientists at MIT think up next?
Of course, unlimited funding until we "discover" any differences.
I believe even the French beat us in this discovery.
This is so easy .. even a child can understand it.
When GOD created man - he then took man's rib (from the man's side) and created woman.
If GOD wanted men to rule over women - he would have made the woman from a man's foot.
If GOD wanted women to rule over men - GOD would have created the woman from the man's head.
GOD CREATED WOMAN FROM THE MAN'S SIDE - SHOWING THEM TO BE SIDE BY SIDE PARTNERS IN THE RELATIONSHIP.
Then GOD said - the man is the head. So - while the woman in general is equal to the man as far as GOD is concerned - IN MARRIAGE - the man is the head.
That is so simple - even a child can understand it.
men were groomed to be the ones in scientific and physical strength fields.
Women were groomed to be mothers, nurses, librarians.
These are societal strictures, not physical or mental ones.
All human beings are just as capable as any other. They just have different hormonal levels,behavioural training, pigmentation of skin, hair type flat or round.
Only the mind of the individual controls the appearance and structure of the body, and it's capability.
One day Adam was sitting about admiring His new garden when God dropped by to check some of His earlier work -- which of course was perfect.
"G'Day, Adam," said God, "how's it going? And how are you enjoying my garden?
"I'm just fine, thanks God" said Adam -- "but it gets a bit lonely here in the evening, when you've gone home."
"That's a bit rough," said God, "how'd you like it if I created you a mate?"
"That'd be alright," said Adam, "I'd like that."
"OK then," said God -- "I'll create one and will call her a 'woman.'"
But she's not gunna be FRee. She'll cost you an arm and a leg!"
"Aw Geez," said Adam, "that's a bit steep!"
"What do You reckon you could chuck together for a rib?"
Blessings -- B A
Here's some trivia for ya
In women, the left and right sides of the brain are nearly symmetrical...in men one side is much larger than the other.
In women, the index finger is longer than the ring finger...in men the ring finger is longer than the index finger and in fact, in some males, the index finger is actually the shortest finger on the hand(excluding the thumb of course)...and no one, not even scientists have the slightest clue why this difference in the sexes exists.
In men(caucasian only) the first upper molar, which is the largest molar in the human mouth(not the premolars)has an extra point on it. it is located on the inside front corner close to the gum line. Not all caucasion males have it however. A related bit of tooth trivia: Native americans have "spoon" or "shovel" shaped incisors. Everyone else has chisel shaped incisors. What this means is that the back side of an indian's front teeth are sort of hollowed out. Interestingly, I have this trait even though I am white. So apparently I have a significant amount of indian blood in me.
Males have a very poor sense of smell and taste compared to women. Male eyes have improved depth perception and night vision but impared ability to distinquish between colors compared to womens' eyes. The rate of color blindness is many times higher in men than women. These sensory differences between the sexes are much more pronounces among caucasians.
Pain threshold is significantly different between the sexes. It is not a learned trait, it is biological and is related to the above sensory differences I have described. Pain threshold differences between the sexes is much more pronounced among caucasians.
Our society generally accepts that long leggedness is a female trait. However this is actually biologically incorrect. The female hormone suppresses length of limb growth during puberty and the male hormone magnifies it. Therefore, long legs and long arms are a male trait, and short arms and short legs are a female trait. Also, long eyelashes is NOT a female trait. It is actually a male trait, biologically speaking. The length of limb differences between the sexes are much more pronounced among caucasians.
Men tend to grow fat stores inside the abdomen, around the vital organs and also subcutaneous fat on the neck. Women tend to grow mostly subcutaneous fat stores...and usually only on the rump, thighs, breasts, and just below the belly button. Obese women, however, obviously grow substantial fat stores all over the body...same with obese males.
These are purely from memory so I have no sources.
Absolutely.
Glad to know GOD has a sense of humor - somehow I always knew He did.
<< Glad to know GOD has a sense of humor - somehow I always knew He did. >>
One look in the mirror convinved me!
He's a Great Joker, alright!
Blessings -- B A
Dude, you have to understand you're light years ahead of these people. They've thrown off all chains to the past and are only just beginning to rediscover humanity and civilization. You, on the other hand, seem never to have left in the first place.
Have patience with them. :)
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