gods man how short sighted and foolish can you be!!!

Agreed. Then to confuse the issue further, there are transgendered people - people who feel their genders are the opposite of their biological sex.

So while their bodies may be male, their minds are considered "female" (if you're being polite to them anyway) - does that mean they'll have a handicap in mathematics and an advantage in language and writing skills? Or in the case of FTM transsexuals, would they have a lower language aptitude and a higher mathematic aptitude?

I wonder if anyone's ever done studies to that effect. I know that they have in fact found biological differences in the brain structure of MTF transsexuals. The configuration is closer to a female's in shape than a male's, too often to be a mere statistical anomaly.

When we say that a man or a woman might be inherently better at a certain mental task, why is it sexism? Biology has shown we have different brain structures. Couldn't those varied structures favor an aptitude in some areas but not in others?

Why would anyone feel shame at a biological handicap that makes certain learning areas harder, any more than a tall person should feel offended when someone tells him to duck for low ceilings?

Asians are Alien People ??

These Gender differences will not end, however and whatever People will discuss and talk about it .If only paper and pen will talk , at least they don't have sex organs.

I'm hoping that we can write this off with the excuse of her (?)(!) being young. TRS is about 18 years old, if memory serves. (I also thought that TRS was male, but one sentence makes me unsure at the moment.)

He is 18 yrs.old and he is Male.

I knew he was a he. After the whole THY fiasco, and with TRS saying "our brains are wired differently," I lost confidence in my memory. Sorry, TRS. (And thanks, Whirlpool.)

Because we haven't yet determined if there is an actual biological basis for perceived differences in aptitude, or if it's just a cultural artifact. Until it is conclusively proven that women are mentally inferior in some aspect, I'm more than willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. Apparently, you aren't.

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“There’s nothing that spells progress in large, friendly letters like trying to combine two totally incompatible technologies.” – David Szondy, Tales of Future Past.

I'm willing to agree that they are certainly capable * of learning * mathematics.

But it's been proven that male and female brains are not physiologically identical. That's just a fact.

And it's also known that different areas of the brain control different cognitive functions. One area for memory, one for language/linguistic processing, one for logic and reasoning/calculation.

I do not believe it qualifies as sexism to suggest that a male brain (on average) may be somewhat more developed in the area that handles calculations, while females may be somewhat more developed (on average) in linguistic/language aptitude.

It's also worth noting that the corpus callosum, which connects the left and right brains, is more advanced in a female brain than in a male one. Which means that the logical, concrete thinking brain communicates with the emotional, abstract, intuitive brain more thoroughly in a woman's mind than in a man's.

So the problem may not be that women necessarily lack the necessary mathematical aptitude, but that they have a harder time separating logic and emotion due to the more advanced corpus callosum.

While we're talking right-brain/left-brain mystic, the people we really need, the inventors, have a very developed corpus callosum. You can be logical, but you can't make up new stuff without that.

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Si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses.

"Half of what I say is meaningless, but I say it so that the other half may reach you."

^ Agreed.

I'm in much stronger agreement with this- than I am with anyone claiming that it is currently known what the intellectual capabilities are like.

Except for the "benefit of the doubt" part, which is usually aimed at me, not others

I cannot think of One Reason why anyone would think women are intellectually inferior to men.
If anything, it could be perceived as the other way around quite easily!

Two of the best mathematicians I know, Ingrid Debauchies and Jelena Kovacik, are female.

That is all.

Has anyone on this thread claimed women are intellectually inferior to men?

I usually regret getting involved in discussions like this because emotion overcomes even those who are educated and presumably immune to making irrational arguments and logical fallacies.

Have I failed to address any points directed to me?

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Olsen the moderator.

Yes, but it wasn't you

Oh, a lot of the discussions here can do that.
I think it's refreshing- It offers the opportunity to recognize and learn a persons own behavior.

I am not aware of it if you have.

I certainly haven't, but that is certainly the way everyone is choosing to interpret my statements.

Precisely. Saying that men and women's brains are * wired differently * and may have * slightly different innate aptitudes on average * does not constitute saying that women are inferior.

If anything, I'm saying both sexes may be slightly less skilled in one way or another. The average man may be mildly deficient in communication/language/writing skills. This is the result of thousands of years of evolution from responses to necessity. We haven't * needed * to develop our language skills because we were out hunting predators.

On the flip side, women have been the (on average) physically smaller and smaller-muscled sex, and as such their communication skills have been vital to survival and status advancement within a community. They did not usually go hunting so they didn't develop the same navigational/spatial aptitude, and cold calculation through logic wasn't necessarily a high priority either because it did not equal the difference between life and death in the premodern societies. I'd also consider the more developed corpus callosum to be an evolutionary advantage, because it allows for intuitive leaps and deeper emotional response, positive or negative.

That those needs may have translated to a slightly different brain chemistry/structure which encourages mathematical aptitude in men and encourages communication aptitude in women doesn't seem like a large leap of faith to make.

And in fact this assertion of varying brain structures has been demonstrated in biological examinations.

To take such arguments as saying women are "inferior" and I am a misogynist, you must also assert that I'm also saying that men are "inferior" and I'm a misandrist.

Neither of which is actually the case, but if you choose to view it cynically you can't pick one. You'd be obliged to call me both.

I'm not, for what it's worth.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Whatever are the differences lies between a male and a female they still get attracted to each other.

Minus between about 4 to 10 percent.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Are you saying that's the percent of difference, or the percent of people who are not attracted to the opposite sex?

OK

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Olsen the moderator.

I think she was referring to gay people...

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The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool.
~~~ Richard Feynman ~~~
It is imperative in science to doubt.
~~~ Richard Feynman ~~~
Common sense is not so common
~~~ Voltaire ~~~

Oh really?

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Olsen the moderator.

Spot on.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

As opposite magnets attrat... ok not exactly the same, but you don't have to be "alike" to be attracted to some(thing)[body]...

__________________
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool.
~~~ Richard Feynman ~~~
It is imperative in science to doubt.
~~~ Richard Feynman ~~~
Common sense is not so common
~~~ Voltaire ~~~

although sometimes the attraction is within gender rather than across gender.

This is not limited to human beings!

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Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

On what basis do you assert that particular cause? The problem with your argument as it stands is that it is simply not logical. First you assert that something "may be" true, and then you go on to give a reason. The logic fails in two related respects:
1) anything "may" be true, in the absence of evidence either way, so there is no need to provide a reason for what "may" be true. If you give a reason, you are advocating why it might be true, but the argument is pure cherry-picking.
2) You leave out all the other reasons that could lead to that same result, the most obvious being cultural norms and expectations.

So why is this a genetic evolutionary issue? If your claim is true, why is it not even more obviously a basis for a difference in cultural norms and expectations? Cultures evolve too, you know.

In other words, your argument in no way advances an expectation that performance differences are genetic/physiological instead of the far more clear and present expression of cultural differences. Indeed, every argument you give applies equally well, if not better, to the latter.

Another obvious reason for cultural differences! Again you fail to elevate genetic differences over cultural ones-- your argument fails even this most superficial test.

So you're saying that women have less reason to learn to be analytic because of their different cultural expectations-- and this clear cultural difference is again somehow indirect evidence of a genetic difference? I'm at a loss. To establish genetic differences, I submit you need to talk about genes-- not cultural expectations. The latter only advances the contrary position to yours!

But this is science-- so why do we need any "leaps of faith" at all? Where's the evidence? Did not this whole thread begin with evidence to the contrary?
So you're saying we can look at someone's brain and tell how good at math and logic they are going to be? Wow, I must be way behind the neurological literature.
I personally wouldn't accuse you of being misogynist, merely illogical. As I presume you are male, that further defeats your thesis.

We can do this to a limited extent. After we've removed and examined someone's brain we can be predict with a high degree of confidence that their maths skills are going to be zero.

Point taken-- I should have said how good their math skills previously were!

Being able to take a look at an apparently full dataset, then be able to anticipate a new, unrelated dataset which is based on missing variables from the first one that you "intuit" should be included but are not, and then proceed to create the new dataset on your own, is * extremely * valuable.

Is Einstein's gravitational theory better than Newton's? Yes.

Why? Because he looked at the math, and felt that something was wrong. So he created his own math for the same problem, which when the numbers were crunched turned out to be superior.

A student who had simply read Newton's work and memorized it by rote would not have been nearly as useful to the world.

Given enough time (hundreds of thousands of years, when you include our hominid ancestors) cultural expectations * become * evolutionary advantage.

If you are exiled from the tribe for being a woman and deciding to go out hunting, you will not reproduce.

If you are exiled from the tribe for being a man and wanting to stay at home and gather, you will not reproduce.

So the offspring most likely to be born are those whose fathers had an aptitude for hunting, and whose mothers had an aptitude for working with the community. Over many generations this becomes a more and more prevalent trait for men and women.

Evolution is not just the result of random mutations.

No, you're putting words in my mouth. What I did in fact say was:

To simplify, neurological research has demonostrated differences in male brain structure versus female brain structure, on average. And as I stated earlier, the interesting part is that transgendered women (Male-to-Female transsexuals) have had their brains dissected and it's been shown that they have brain structures closer to an average woman's than an average man's.

That demonstrates that there are exceptions to the rule. And that the different structure is likely to have some effect on the gender (rather than the sex) of the individual as well.

Would you say it's unreasonable to suggest that it's also an evolutionary construct that causes the urge in women to have one mate who will protect their children? And as a corollary, the male urge to have as many mates as possible to ensure species continuation? You could argue that it's a cultural pressure: that women are considered "sluts" if they sleep with more than one person, and men are considered "studs" if they sleep with many people.

But it * also * happens to be an efficient way to breed that results in many offspring, making it an evolutionary advantage. A man who is promiscuous and has twenty children with many mothers spreads the trait "mate with anything that moves" into many different tribes.

All I said before is what the social pressures have been * in premodern societies * and why that would have encouraged differences to evolve between men and women. Now that women have gained full social equality and there is no longer a need for most people to hunt or to gather in a technological society, we have a chance to reverse the trend.

Your likelihood to reproduce now has little to do with what tasks you choose to pursue.

OTOH I would say that yes, it * may * be possible to determine mathematical vs. language aptitude by studying the brain, because those functions involve activity in different areas of the brain. Whether they've done such research and whether it involved comparing male vs. female I have no idea. I would suggest that in this hostile, politically correct culture no one would dare do such research and if they tried they would get their funding pulled before it could be completed.