What are immutable differences between men and women?

[AlinaX]

My problems are:
1. The ease with which so many people step from "On average, men are taller than women" to "Men are taller than women" to "Tall people must be men".
2. Selection bias: "To identify differences between men and women, we discarded subjects of ambiguous nature." Leading to: "We found clear differences between men and women." And to: "Yes there are outliers, but that doesn't change the findings. Look at all these other studies that did the same thing we did."

 

[AG31]

Men don't identify as women because the defining characteristic of men is that they identify as men. Men identify as men.

Women don't identify as men because the defining characteristic of women is that they identify as women. Women identify as women.

Everything more specific than this has exceptions, and exceptions violate the base premise of an immutable truth.

How does the way a person identifies affect whether or not they are sexually attractive to another person?

 

[burgwad]

How does the way a person identifies affect whether or not they are sexually attractive to another person?

You're asking a super interesting question! Gender identity and performance are most definitely important to attraction. Even if we're cognitively very open-minded, the animal part of us will always have a set of presentations it finds enticing vs. a set of presentations it does not.

First and foremost, I think being yourself is important regardless of gender. And don't I mean "being yourself" in a cheesy motivational way. Folks who act in effortless, earnest alignment with their actual wants and passions come across as universally more attractive.

There might be a couple of other non-gendered universals. Health and fitness, of course. A certain minimum of emotional intelligence / social competence. Drive - not necessarily of the hyperambitious sort, but simply any kind of momentum in the direction of self-actualization.

Otherwise, I still think performance in gender roleplay is inextricable from attractiveness for most folks. Here is where a gender spectrum diagram makes helpful sense in understanding what turns us each on vs what maybe doesn't. This one features characters from Steven Universe who you don't need to know to understand what's being illustrated. This is a typical high-femme-to-high-masc (i.e., "literal stone butch" lol) gender spectrum comprised entirely of women. The labels along the top are not technical terms, but they are kind of funny, and help get the point across.

I think we each as individuals probably have a bell curve of sorts whose peak falls somewhere along this spectrum. This curve dictates which band of gender presentations we DEFINITELY like, which we SOMETIMES like, which we MIGHT CONCEIVABLY like, and which we consistently DON'T like. Where our curve sits is nothing we can really help, I'd wager. Sexual orientation seems to be pretty immutable.

 

[burgwad]

Here also is a slide from a presentation I never wound up giving on this very topic. Sorry for all the psych jargon. Hopefully it's still basically legible.

 

[lovecraft68]

Don't know about the difference between men and women but this thread shows the difference between facts and fairy tales.

 

[Bramblethorn]

If we changed two categories to, say, six, all data would then be sorted into six categories instead of two, and we would be talking about the ways in which people of each of the six viable karyotypes are immutably different from one another.

Obviously, it is sometimes useful or necessary to group things into categories. But it becomes pernicious when we ascribe them to nature and start to force things to fit into them. As Hawking once wrote about the four kinds of force-carrying particles: "This division into four classes is man-made; it is convenient for the construction of partial theories, but it may not correspond to anything deeper."

Uh huh. Just look at how many different personality-typing systems there are out there. We can shoehorn anybody into a Myers-Briggs or DISC or alpha-beta-omega or etc. system if we ignore nuances and edge cases; it doesn't mean these things represent any deep reality beyond "somebody found this set of pigeonholes worked for them".

(I guess this could be considered a form of reification.)

 

[TheRedChamber]

Gender cannot be essentialist because gender is not essential in the way melanin is. Gender is not like race, it is a social construct we make up. I am not the same kind of woman my mother was. My dad was not the same kind of man his dad was. Concepts of gender, men and women as differentiated from the male and female sex, are not immutable. They change constantly.

I'm hesitating about wading (further) into the biological-sex/gender minefield, but I am going to dip into a toe in to say this is completely wrong. Race is absolutely a social construct. Quick, how many races are there? And while skin colour might seem to be an obvious differentiator, the whole US White-Black thing with its 'just one drop doctrine' is definitely a social construct (see Latin America for a different attitude).

Thing with social constructs is they do often map to real world phenomena. 'Being a doctor' is a social construct which means different schooling, different standards and different job descriptions at various points in history, but all with an underlying basis of 'the patient is less likely to die if treated by this guy'.

With race it's certainly the case that certain populations originally located in a shared region share common genetic and physical traits, the barrier we errect are absolutely constructs and rendered less meaningful as soon as two people from the different sides of any one barrier have children.

I think the point is that race is not constructed in such a way as we allow a person with parents from one race (under whatever model we're using) to claim to be from a completely different race - that defeats the whole point of such a 'DNA classification'.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Just read books. All books from all cultures throughout history mostly treat sex and gender as the same thing and as binary.

This is a remarkable statement given that many historical cultures, including many of the ones known for having socially recognised non-binary identities, did not produce books.

Which books on this topic have you read from Australian Aboriginal cultures, Simon? Which books from pre-colonial New Zealand and Polynesia?

For that matter, which Chinese books or Albanian books have you read on the topic?

It's like telling people you're an expert on world cuisine because you've eaten at every McDonalds there is.

A classification system that divides things into two sets is not rendered invalid by the fact that there are individuals who don't fit neatly into either set.

IDK about "invalid", because that depends on how much failure one is willing to accept, but it's obviously at the least flawed. The point of a classification system is to classify; when there are entities within its intended scope that it can't classify, that is a failure.

If that were true, we would have a hard time ever classifying anything. It's OK for a classification system to proceed along the principle of "do the best you can."

Most people who design classifications for a living would disagree with you here. If you look up just about any professionally-designed classification system, you'll find some kind of "not elsewhere classified" type category as a catch-all for things that don't fit the other categories.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

this thread shows the difference between facts and fairy tales.

The thing I find more remarkable is the tenacity with which they keep fighting the imaginary opponents in this thread. It feels like a compulsion almost. Yet there is nothing but windmills here.

 

[SimonDoom]

IDK about "invalid", because that depends on how much failure one is willing to accept, but it's obviously at the least flawed. The point of a classification system is to classify; when there are entities within its intended scope that it can't classify, that is a failure.

That's not so. Consider the taxonomy of species. What differentiates one species from another? It's often not obvious when one species of finch is different enough from another that it should be given its own species name, but we do it anyway, and the system isn't a failure. It's not flawed. It's just not perfect. The lack of perfection isn't a flaw; it's a feature of the classification system that we put up with because there's no other way of doing it, IF you want to classify things. Biologists believe the benefit of classifying things outweighs the disadvantages of the system, so they put up with the imperfections in the system. It doesn't make the system flawed. It's a necessary feature.

Would you consider the classification male/female flawed? A failure? I don't think so. But it's imperfect. There's not one universal criterion that you can say always distinguishes male from female. We do the best we can. It's still an extremely useful way of classifying things that in the real world we recognize are different.

 

[AG31]

Here also is a slide from a presentation I never wound up giving on this very topic. Sorry for all the psych jargon. Hopefully it's still basically legible.View attachment 2391360

Very interesting! Thanks!

 

[AG31]

I'd like to ammend my OP to specify that I'm talking about attraction to a person I haven't yet met. Attraction beyond personality. So gender (as I've learned it is being defined in modern days) is not relevant to my question. I don't know how the object of my interest defines themselves.

If the outer signals (clothing, makeup) conflict with the innate facts (facial hair, prominent brow) I can't imagine being interested sexually.

 

[lovecraft68]

The thing I find more remarkable is the tenacity with which they keep fighting the imaginary opponents in this thread. It feels like a compulsion almost. Yet there is nothing but windmills here.

Because these are the people who talk about tolerance of their beliefs but are completely intolerant to everyone else's.

They're identifiable by being the ones who while the other side rationally state their case become belligerent, combative, and accusatory and assume what type of person we must be, which of course will end in the use of 'ist and phobe' when all else fails.

I believe in you do you but do it over there, don't do it to me, and don't push me to buy into your delusions. They're yours, so keep it that way.

 

[SimonDoom]

I think we each as individuals probably have a bell curve of sorts whose peak falls somewhere along this spectrum. This curve dictates which band of gender presentations we DEFINITELY like, which we SOMETIMES like, which we MIGHT CONCEIVABLY like, and which we consistently DON'T like. Where our curve sits is nothing we can really help, I'd wager. Sexual orientation seems to be pretty immutable.

I wonder about this. I have dated and am attracted to a very wide variety of types of women who vary widely in terms of "feminine" and "masculine" features, but I haven't dated someone with a penis. That's a hard line. It's a set-defining feature. I don't know this for certain, but I suspect most people are like me in this respect. I'll bet that if you were to conduct a test of a thousand people and show them numerous samples of different individuals, similar to the types listed in your example, with an extremely wide variety of traits, there would be a very strong convergence among the study group over what's a "man" and what's a "woman."

I think it also might depend on context and function. The answers might be different if the question is, on the one hand, "if you only want to date women, who among these people is a woman so you'd want to date them" versus "if you believe only women should be able to compete against women in a women's sporting event, which of these persons qualifies as a woman for this purpose?" That's OK, too. Words mean different things in different contexts. So do classification systems. Is a tomato a fruit or a vegetable? A chef and a botanist may answer that question in different ways, and that's OK.

 

[Bramblethorn]

(Still interested in those Australian Aboriginal/Maori/Polynesian book recommendations btw!)

That's not so. Consider the taxonomy of species. What differentiates one species from another? It's often not obvious when one species of finch is different enough from another that it should be given its own species name, but we do it anyway, and the system isn't a failure. It's not flawed. It's just not perfect.

Also, 1a here.

The lack of perfection isn't a flaw; it's a feature of the classification system that we put up with because there's no other way of doing it, IF you want to classify things. Biologists believe the benefit of classifying things outweighs the disadvantages of the system, so they put up with the imperfections in the system. It doesn't make the system flawed. It's a necessary feature.

Before I respond further... when you say "the system", which specific taxonomic classification system are you talking about here? Because there ain't just one, and it's difficult to discuss without knowing which one you have in mind.

 

[burgwad]

Uh huh. Just look at how many different personality-typing systems there are out there. We can shoehorn anybody into a Myers-Briggs or DISC or alpha-beta-omega or etc. system if we ignore nuances and edge cases; it doesn't mean these things represent any deep reality beyond "somebody found this set of pigeonholes worked for them".

(I guess this could be considered a form of reification.)

The personality model favored by researchers is the Five Factor Model. I admit I haven't heard of DISC or alpha-beta-omega. But the five factor model is surprisingly nuanced. Each of the five factors usually has multiple facets ascribed to it, meaning if you take an FFM inventory ("personality test"), your results will be broken out into greater detail than just your five main trait scores. But even if we oversimplify the math, and say that for any given facet we might score low, average, or high, then that gives us 5 to the 3 to the n (n = number of facets; usually 5 or 6, depending on the inventory) possible distinct outcomes. For the record, whether you go with 5 or 6 facets, the result is still significantly more possible personalities than has ever lived on earth. And then also recall that we simplified the math.

Also worth mentioning, the FFM is not hokum. It is one of the most robustly, empirically supported models from any branch of psychology, not just personality science. We're talking not thousands or even hundreds of thousands but millions of papers featuring the FFM. (That doesn't exempt it from controversy. It's still an imperfect model. But I just wanted to clarify its legitimacy, before you go lumping it in with the MBTI, which is hokum.)

 

[burgwad]

I wonder about this. I have dated and am attracted to a very wide variety of types of women who vary widely in terms of "feminine" and "masculine" features, but I haven't dated someone with a penis. That's a hard line. It's a set-defining feature. I don't know this for certain, but I suspect most people are like me in this respect. I'll bet that if you were to conduct a test of a thousand people and show them numerous samples of different individuals, similar to the types listed in your example, with an extremely wide variety of traits, there would be a very strong convergence among the study group over what's a "man" and what's a "woman."

I think it also might depend on context and function. The answers might be different if the question is, on the one hand, "if you only want to date women, who among these people is a woman so you'd want to date them" versus "if you believe only women should be able to compete against women in a women's sporting event, which of these persons qualifies as a woman for this purpose?" That's OK, too. Words mean different things in different contexts. So do classification systems. Is a tomato a fruit or a vegetable? A chef and a botanist may answer that question in different ways, and that's OK.

So gender identity and presentation are generally thought of as belonging on a spectrum (the masc-fem spectrum). Sex, meanwhile, while not quite a spectrum, is also more diverse than you might think. There are numerous ways a child can be born ambiguously sexed. We generally 'correct' many of these ambiguities shortly after delivery, always with parental consent, and though it isn't much talked about outside of the medical context it is quite a bit more common than folks realize.

The trans athlete situation is admittedly fucky. Women who transitioned after puberty, after their bodies had already developed all that extra muscle mass, while still fully within their rights to identify as women, bring an obvious complication to discussions of fairness. Should they be excluded from careers in women's sports, then? Forced to compete with gender-mismatched competitors? Or maybe relegated to trans-only leagues? Maybe we consign ourselves to forever take things on a case-by-case basis? It's hard to say where this will be twenty years from now. Trans folks aren't going anywhere. Gen Z is progressive-leaning on matters of trans rights. But it's a fucky situation with no obvious catch-all solution.

As for your tomato fruit/vegetable analogy with the chef and the botanist? Shoot, I like it.

 

[kiggs]

Indeed, and that's because men and women are the same species. There is of course a degree a sexual dimorphism, but in humans it is relatively mild. For most qualities and traits that you can point to a continuous distribution (height, weight, aptitude in certain kinds of physical or mental tasks), you will generally find two Gaussian peaks corresponding to each one of the two sexes. There will be some degree of overlap between them, along with the tails being exclusive to one sex (e.g. the very shortest people are all women and very tallest are all men). The male curve will often be flatter, too, meaning that the extremes are more common in men.

A great summation of where I stand on this question, although I would frame it in simpler terms (coz im simple).

There is a huge overlap in traits between men and women in the middle of the distribution. This confuses the discussion, esp coz so many of us struggle with statistics and will often use outliers to "disprove" rules.

The easiest place to spot the differences is at the extremes. For example, men are 96% of the prison population. This isnt some crazy conspiracy against men, nor does it mean all men. But its just that, when it comes to extreme antisocial behavior that is likely to land one in jail, men are over represented.

Of course thats just a symptom, hard to say the underlying why. But it's at these extremes where we see the difference and its not even close. I guess athletic performance is another obvious one of these. Lots of women can kick a man's ass. But once we cross the threshold into the most athletic men on earth (i.e. extreme), it's not even close.

 

[Levorotatory]

So gender identity and presentation are generally thought of as belonging on a spectrum (the masc-fem spectrum). Sex, meanwhile, while not quite a spectrum, is also more diverse than you might think. There are numerous ways a child can be born ambiguously sexed. We generally 'correct' many of these ambiguities shortly after delivery, always with parental consent, and though it isn't much talked about outside of the medical context it is quite a bit more common than folks realize.

Gender is a spectrum, but it is strongly bimodal. A majority fit into the traditional male and female categories, with a relatively small number of non-binary folks in the middle. Sex is very nearly binary, with only about 1 in 10,000 people being intersex. Those 1 in 10,000 really shouldn't be "corrected" before they develop a gender identity though.

But it's at these extremes where we see the difference and its not even close. I guess athletic performance is another obvious one of these. Lots of women can kick a man's ass. But once we cross the threshold into the most athletic men on earth (i.e. extreme), it's not even close.

I would suggest that it is fairly close, even at the extremes. For example, the men's world record for the 100 m sprint is 9.58 s, and the women's is 10.49 s. Those numbers are a lot closer to each other than either is to the average non-athlete of any sex who would have difficulty completing the race in under 20 s.

 

[XerXesXu]

For example, the men's world record for the 100 m sprint is 9.58 s, and the women's is 10.49 s. Those numbers are a lot closer to each other than either is to the average non-athlete of any sex who would have difficulty completing the race in under 20 s.

No need to exaggerate. My best time was 10.7 sec and I was more of a middle-distance runner. My girlfriend was a schoolgirl athlete, and she wasn't more than a couple of seconds behind me. Any fit 16-year-old male could qualify as a Royal Marine Commando, provided they were of reasonable fortitude and wished to do so. To date, no female has qualified despite highly motivated females of more than reasonable fortitude, having tried.

 

[kiggs]

I would suggest that it is fairly close, even at the extremes. For example, the men's world record for the 100 m sprint is 9.58 s, and the women's is 10.49 s. Those numbers are a lot closer to each other than either is to the average non-athlete of any sex who would have difficulty completing the race in under 20 s.

A great example of how our minds struggle with stats. In my mind too, the difference between 9.58 and 10.49 seems small. But that's a ~10% difference.

Can i reduce your salary by 10%? Perhaps the size of your house? Obviously these are hard nos. And that is because 10% is huge.

I would also encourage you to look up how many women have crossed the sub 10 seconds barrier for 100m - 0.

How many men? 199. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10-second_barrier#Electronically_timed_marks)

Once again, the extremes of the curve tell the story.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

No need to exaggerate. My best time was 10.7 sec and I was more of a middle-distance runner. My girlfriend was a schoolgirl athlete, and she wasn't more than a couple of seconds behind me. Any fit 16-year-old male could qualify as a Royal Marine Commando, provided they were of reasonable fortitude and wished to do so. To date, no female has qualified despite highly motivated females of more than reasonable fortitude, having tried.

Pip Tattersall would beg to differ. There's a second serving female commando now, too. An old flatmate of mine probably could have qualified but it was before they let women try.

Schoolgirl athletes do manage below 13 seconds though, that's true.

 

[Bramblethorn]

The personality model favored by researchers is the Five Factor Model. I admit I haven't heard of DISC or alpha-beta-omega.

...I mean if you're actually focussing on reputable psychometrics, there's no reason why you would have.

DISC started out as a kinky polyamorist's femdom fantasy (Dr. Marston, of Wonder Woman fame and polygraph infame), and is now a run-of-the-mill "pay us hundreds of dollars to tell you that there are different types of people" corporate psychology business. A-B-O is a fanfic version of the discredited-by-its-own-author "alpha wolf" hypothesis, not to be confused with the equally shady theory of personality typing based on A/B/AB/O blood groups.

But the five factor model is surprisingly nuanced. Each of the five factors usually has multiple facets ascribed to it, meaning if you take an FFM inventory ("personality test"), your results will be broken out into greater detail than just your five main trait scores. But even if we oversimplify the math, and say that for any given facet we might score low, average, or high, then that gives us 5 to the 3 to the n (n = number of facets; usually 5 or 6, depending on the inventory) possible distinct outcomes.

...shouldn't that be 3^(5n)? Or have I misunderstood something?

Also worth mentioning, the FFM is not hokum. It is one of the most robustly, empirically supported models from any branch of psychology, not just personality science. We're talking not thousands or even hundreds of thousands but millions of papers featuring the FFM. (That doesn't exempt it from controversy. It's still an imperfect model. But I just wanted to clarify its legitimacy, before you go lumping it in with the MBTI, which is hokum.)

Fear not, I'm not challenging the legitimacy of psychometrics as a concept, just noting that people love shoehorning one another into personality-typing frameworks regardless of whether those frameworks have any particular scientific basis.

 

[XerXesXu]

Pip Tattersall would beg to differ. There's a second serving female commando now, too. An old flatmate of mine probably could have qualified but it was before they let women try.

Schoolgirl athletes do manage below 13 seconds though, that's true.

Congratulations to Pip. She's not a Royal Marine, she's an army commando, she completed the All-Arms commando course. Shorter, but comparably challenging.