Male/female or masculine/feminine polarity, your views?

[Elding]

Actually, had more thoughts on the matter.

For me, male/female is about basic physiology.  And while dysphoria is a real thing, and some people's physiology doesn't match their internal self, as a thing about life, male/female doesn't really bother me.  It's just a statement about what parts you have, or feel you should have, or whatever.

Masculine/feminine, OTOH, is about BEHAVIOR.  And THAT one weirds me the fuck out.  Because behavior is what we DO, who we ARE - and masculine-active vs. feminine-passive or feminine-receptive (depending on which system) creeps me out like crazy.

I am female.  It's the parts I have, and usually, that's something I'm fine with.  I'm NOT passive.  I'm active, I'm definitely assertive, and anything involving "being more feminine" hits me in the sense of having my identity being attacked as "wrong".

Male/female seems irrelevant to me outside of sexual attraction - but it's a thing-that-is.  Masculine/feminine, OTOH .... now we're getting into some really scary identity-policing stuff.

 
Interesting way to look at it. I don't see male/female as behavior-governed traits, personally - I see it more as an outlook on life that is pre-programmed into people to a certain extent based on ones physical sex. We're just programmed to look at the world slightly differently - for example, when a newborn baby girl is shown a face and a toy, she will almost always look at the face of the person, but baby boys will look at the toy. They're just attracted to different things. That doesn't mean that the baby girl is destined to be more attracted to people than toys in the long run compared to the little boy. There is always free choice, and choice is available to us regardless of our femininity or masculinity.

I've met a very masculine male-to-female transgender, and she behaved in quite a stereotypically very "feminine way". Great with kids, very social, very bubbly, very gentle... but there was always that underlying masculinity, despite the changes she had done to her body and her voice. She had a sex change, and nothing about her appearance gave her away. But there was always the subtle things - the look in her eyes, how she moved, even how she smelled (despite hormone treatment - I have a very sensitive nose). She still gave off what I would call a masculine energy.

I'd say that masculinity and femininity, in its essence, is kind of like a pair of tinted glasses. It's more about how we look at the world than how we behave, although in most cases the two are synonyms.. that transgendered woman I mentioned is actually still one of the most masculine people I've ever met, despite being one of the most "feminine" in terms of pure behavior.

Aaanyway, enough rambling... no, I don't often work with "polarity" in a conscious way. It has happened, especially when I need to change on a spiritual plane to make a change in my personality or behavior. And I'll do it for fertility stuff. Gender energies on their own, though, can be potent for a lot of things. I can use either one for something, but not the other.

[Ceath]

I am interested to hear your thoughts on the male/female or masculine/feminine polarity

If there is a male female polarity I do not think this polarity conforms to what the cultural assumptions are about what masculinity and femininity is. If masculinity and femininity are real things then I do not think they are defined by what people see as masculine and feminine. I do not know what true masculinity and femininity is but I am certain that peoples notions of what they are is likely wrong.

[jsquared]

Interesting way to look at it. I don't see male/female as behavior-governed traits, personally - I see it more as an outlook on life that is pre-programmed into people to a certain extent based on ones physical sex. We're just programmed to look at the world slightly differently - for example, when a newborn baby girl is shown a face and a toy, she will almost always look at the face of the person, but baby boys will look at the toy. They're just attracted to different things. That doesn't mean that the baby girl is destined to be more attracted to people than toys in the long run compared to the little boy. There is always free choice, and choice is available to us regardless of our femininity or masculinity.

Except when you look at the actual numbers from that study, they play out like this

Number (and percent) of neonates falling into each preference category
--------------------Face Preference--Mobile Preference--No Preference
Males (n = 44)-----11 (25.0%)-------19 (43.2%)---------14 (31.8%)
Females (n = 58)--21 (36.2%)-------10 (17.2%)---------27 (46.6%)

So /most/ female-assigned infants /have no preference/. Significance in science is /very/ differently defined than in vernacular. I read those awful articles in parenting magazines and got the same impression you did, but looking at the actual study shows something very different. This is mostly because science journalism is objectively awful.

I've met a very masculine male-to-female transgender, and she behaved in quite a stereotypically very "feminine way". Great with kids, very social, very bubbly, very gentle... but there was always that underlying masculinity, despite the changes she had done to her body and her voice. She had a sex change, and nothing about her appearance gave her away. But there was always the subtle things - the look in her eyes, how she moved, even how she smelled (despite hormone treatment - I have a very sensitive nose). She still gave off what I would call a masculine energy.

I'd be pretty careful with how you talk about transgendered people (not 'transgenders'). Saying that, no matter what a transgendered woman does, she still comes off as masculine can be /very/ dysphoria inducing. This is pretty unrelated to the discussion, more an FYI. Not everyone on the board is cisgendered, and it's just polite if we try to not write things that might be hurtful to them.

I'd say that masculinity and femininity, in its essence, is kind of like a pair of tinted glasses. It's more about how we look at the world than how we behave, although in most cases the two are synonyms.. that transgendered woman I mentioned is actually still one of the most masculine people I've ever met, despite being one of the most "feminine" in terms of pure behavior.

We look at the world differently because we're socialized differently. And someone who is transgendered or agendered or metagendered or nonbinary or any of the above will look at it differently from a cisgendered man or woman. It's all about socialization; I very much reject the idea that there's anything /innate/ that could override the massively gendered socialization we all undergo.

And I say this as someone who is in a PhD program for a hard science that has been given the 'oh that's so surprising!' grossness that comes from this kind of 'boys are just better at math and science and girls are more emotional' belief. So I do have a horse in the race, as it were.

As for my beliefs about polarity: neither my beliefs about religion nor magic incorporate polarity. It can work for some people, but I feel (for me personally) that it's very reductive. For example, something could be an oxidizer in one reaction and a reducing agent in another reaction and neither in still another reaction. To put it in a polar context loses that variation of utility. So I also wouldn't work with masculine/feminine polarity but am, admittedly, very wary of people that do. Mostly because, as Darkhawk said upthread, more than masculine/feminine almost always gets lumped in with it in our Western culture.

[Elding]

Except when you look at the actual numbers from that study, they play out like this

Number (and percent) of neonates falling into each preference category
--------------------Face Preference--Mobile Preference--No Preference
Males (n = 44)-----11 (25.0%)-------19 (43.2%)---------14 (31.8%)
Females (n = 58)--21 (36.2%)-------10 (17.2%)---------27 (46.6%)

So /most/ female-assigned infants /have no preference/. Significance in science is /very/ differently defined than in vernacular. I read those awful articles in parenting magazines and got the same impression you did, but looking at the actual study shows something very different. This is mostly because science journalism is objectively awful.

Huh, interesting. I'll have to do a bit more research on the topic apparently. However, it is still fairly obvious from the statistics that more girls than boys are drawn to the faces.

I'd be pretty careful with how you talk about transgendered people (not 'transgenders'). Saying that, no matter what a transgendered woman does, she still comes off as masculine can be /very/ dysphoria inducing. This is pretty unrelated to the discussion, more an FYI. Not everyone on the board is cisgendered, and it's just polite if we try to not write things that might be hurtful to them.

I completely accept that these people might not identify with their physical sex and I am fine with that. We must all be ourselves. However, my experience is what it is - it simply is what it is what it is what it is. Not much I can do to change that, no matter how fine I am with people living their own life in the way they want to, and I figured it was relevant to the topic.

As for the wording, sorry about that. English isn't my first language and this kind of thing slips through now and then. What's wrong with "transgenders", if I may ask? I mean, there's to my knowledge nothing wrong with saying plumbers or pagans or even straights or kinksters or vanillas or homosexuals, so what makes "transgenders" the exception to the same grammatical rule?

We look at the world differently because we're socialized differently. And someone who is transgendered or agendered or metagendered or nonbinary or any of the above will look at it differently from a cisgendered man or woman. It's all about socialization; I very much reject the idea that there's anything /innate/ that could override the massively gendered socialization we all undergo.

And I say this as someone who is in a PhD program for a hard science that has been given the 'oh that's so surprising!' grossness that comes from this kind of 'boys are just better at math and science and girls are more emotional' belief. So I do have a horse in the race, as it were.

Err... but if socialization was everything, there wouldn't be any transgendered people. People would simply be raised to "fit" their sex, and that would be enough to make them identify with their physical sex. That friend I told you about is a great example of otherwise. She was raised by ultra-macho bikers - the buffest, toughest, studded-leather-jackiest, handlebar-moustach-iest and stereotypically manliest dudes you can imagine. By that logic, she should identify as a macho man, just like her father, her uncle, and all the other men who raised her and taught her since she was a toddler. And here she is today, pasting posters of baby bunnies all over her dorm room and bringing several packs of tissues to chick flick movies. She just doesn't fit into your theory. And neither do I, being gender-fluid. Since I experience both, it would be dishonest of me to say that "there is no difference". In my world, there is. I cannot overlook my own experience.

I also cannot overlook the scientific evidence. There are many, many studies done on testosterone, estrogen, oxytocin and vasopressin, their effects on behavior and their different levels in men and women. The sheer number of animal studies (as animals cannot experience the placebo effect) cannot lie..

Unless you can present me with studies that counter that evidence, I'm gonna have a hard time abandoning my standpoint I'm afraid.

I suggest we drop this topic, though. This type of subject have a tendency to become infected really quickly, and I don't want that, it's not what this thread is about. If you want to keep discussing this, I invite you to PM me about it

[Darkhawk]

As for the wording, sorry about that. English isn't my first language and this kind of thing slips through now and then. What's wrong with "transgenders", if I may ask? I mean, there's to my knowledge nothing wrong with saying plumbers or pagans or even straights or kinksters or vanillas or homosexuals, so what makes "transgenders" the exception to the same grammatical rule?

It's not a noun.

Nouning adjectives in that fashion is extremely dehumanising in rhetorical effect; it's the reason that online misogynists are fond of calling women "females".

Err... but if socialization was everything, there wouldn't be any transgendered people. People would simply be raised to "fit" their sex, and that would be enough to make them identify with their physical sex.

Nope.  Trans people are already raised to fit their assumed sex, which does not stop them from assimilating the socialisation patterns associated with their actual identifications.  Often in complicated and nuanced ways.

[jsquared]

As for the wording, sorry about that. English isn't my first language and this kind of thing slips through now and then. What's wrong with "transgenders", if I may ask? I mean, there's to my knowledge nothing wrong with saying plumbers or pagans or even straights or kinksters or vanillas or homosexuals, so what makes "transgenders" the exception to the same grammatical rule?

It's less about grammar and more about person-first language. So I've been taught to use adjectives (although there's debate about whether transgendered or transgender is the corrective adjective) and not nouns when one isn't sure of the person's preference. Although I'm open to being corrected on this, if the norm on this board is different.

Err... but if socialization was everything, there wouldn't be any transgendered people. People would simply be raised to "fit" their sex, and that would be enough to make them identify with their physical sex. That friend I told you about is a great example of otherwise. She was raised by ultra-macho bikers - the buffest, toughest, studded-leather-jackiest, handlebar-moustach-iest and stereotypically manliest dudes you can imagine. By that logic, she should identify as a macho man, just like her father, her uncle, and all the other men who raised her and taught her since she was a toddler. And here she is today, pasting posters of baby bunnies all over her dorm room and bringing several packs of tissues to chick flick movies. She just doesn't fit into your theory. And neither do I, being gender-fluid. Since I experience both, it would be dishonest of me to say that "there is no difference". In my world, there is. I cannot overlook my own experience.

Which is why I mentioned anyone of any gender would have a different experience. F'ex, it's not that you're socialized as a 'man' when you're a transgender woman; you're socialized as a transgender woman before transition, which is different than either a cis man or woman.

I also cannot overlook the scientific evidence. There are many, many studies done on testosterone, estrogen, oxytocin and vasopressin, their effects on behavior and their different levels in men and women. The sheer number of animal studies (as animals cannot experience the placebo effect) cannot lie..

Unless you can present me with studies that counter that evidence, I'm gonna have a hard time abandoning my standpoint I'm afraid.

And none of them can absolutely rule out socialization as a major factor in how humans function. That's really the problem when you try to take a hard science approach to gender studies. Does the testosterone cause something so intrinsic that socialization can't overcome it or do most people with excess testosterone get socialized so thoroughly that the effects of testosterone itself get lost? I agree that hormones have an effect on our behavior, I just disagree to the extent. And we'll probably never know, since the controls that studies like that would require are /highly/ unethical.

And I don't put much stock in animal studies, since the hormones, the social structure, and the ability for any higher reasoning just aren't the same.

I suggest we drop this topic, though. This type of subject have a tendency to become infected really quickly, and I don't want that, it's not what this thread is about. If you want to keep discussing this, I invite you to PM me about it

 
I do think we'll have to agree to disagree about the extent biology can actually control human behavior and gender roles (and thus whether masculine/feminine is even a useful energetic dichotomy). The existing studies definitely can be interpreted in many ways, and you have your interpretation and I have mine. I just can't help myself when people bring up bad science journalism; it's very much a hot button issue of mine.

Don't ever ask me about What The Bleep Do We Know?! :whis:

[Elding]

It's not a noun.

Nouning adjectives in that fashion is extremely dehumanising in rhetorical effect; it's the reason that online misogynists are fond of calling women "females".

Huh... well damn. I guess that explains why people tend to get impatient with me during conversations in English Thanks for the language lesson.

Nope.  Trans people are already raised to fit their assumed sex, which does not stop them from assimilating the socialisation patterns associated with their actual identifications.  Often in complicated and nuanced ways.

I think you missed my point - I said that socialization ISN'T enough to determine gender identity. That was exactly what I meant.

[Elding]

It's less about grammar and more about person-first language. So I've been taught to use adjectives (although there's debate about whether transgendered or transgender is the corrective adjective) and not nouns when one isn't sure of the person's preference. Although I'm open to being corrected on this, if the norm on this board is different.

Ok. Thank you for the language lesson. My English is still flawed, it seems, subtle things like these have a tendency to run through the cracks.

Which is why I mentioned anyone of any gender would have a different experience. F'ex, it's not that you're socialized as a 'man' when you're a transgender woman; you're socialized as a transgender woman before transition, which is different than either a cis man or woman.

... what? What parent raise their child to be transgender? I'm afraid I'm not following your logic here because that is certainly not the norm.

And none of them can absolutely rule out socialization as a major factor in how humans function. That's really the problem when you try to take a hard science approach to gender studies. Does the testosterone cause something so intrinsic that socialization can't overcome it or do most people with excess testosterone get socialized so thoroughly that the effects of testosterone itself get lost? I agree that hormones have an effect on our behavior, I just disagree to the extent. And we'll probably never know, since the controls that studies like that would require are /highly/ unethical.

I never said that socialization isn't important. My argument was that there is, on some physical level, a fundamental difference between men and women that affect personality, caused by hormones and/or the XX/XY chromosomes, or whatever. Your claim was that socialization is EVERYTHING, and I do not agree with that. It exists, and it is of course very important, but it is only one layer among many that shapes our personalities. Furthermore, our social status and our actions will in turn affect our hormonal levels (although, of course, there is still a divide. Even a low-testosterone man will have more of it than a high-testo woman).

Socialization can overcome hormones up to a point. Humans are not perfectly logical creatures, and hormones play a large role in temperament. Of course we can control our temperament using logic and reasoning, thus deciding upon our actions so that they will fit into the world in which we have been socialized, but that doesn't mean that different people don't have different thresholds for certain emotions, like fear or anger. An obvious example is temperament swings women might go through during their periods or during pregnancy, "symptoms" including bouts of anger, irritability, boosted moods and heightened feelings of love, or depression. Saying that hormones don't effect our personalities or behavior is like saying that these women are making their issues up. And that's really just the tip of the ice berg. That's not even touching on the studies done using oxytocin as a 'happiness drug' in women(oxytocin is naturally more abundant in women by the way) but that makes men more competitive, or the relationship between testosterone and vasopressin (men and women have similar levels of vasopressin - which among other things affect paternal behavior and cognitive ability - but since men have more testosterone, the effect of vasopressin is more powerful), all the way to how a womans sense of smell is not only statistically better than that of men, but also heightened during certain points of the ovulation cycle.

And I don't put much stock in animal studies, since the hormones, the social structure, and the ability for any higher reasoning just aren't the same.

No worries, there are already plenty of studies done on humans:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24034714
https://today.duke.edu/2014/08/feminization
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24814142
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24157401

I do think we'll have to agree to disagree about the extent biology can actually control human behavior and gender roles (and thus whether masculine/feminine is even a useful energetic dichotomy). The existing studies definitely can be interpreted in many ways, and you have your interpretation and I have mine. I just can't help myself when people bring up bad science journalism; it's very much a hot button issue of mine.

Fair enough. The last point is something we can certainly agree on. Hey, no one's flawless.

Don't ever ask me about What The Bleep Do We Know?! :whis:

Right... you know what, I've been debating in my head whether or not this comment is as hostile as I read it be. Internet just has that way of screwing with peoples heads, you know?

But dude.. could you please do not write in such a tone? I'm stating fact, as well as my own personal opinions. You seem to be largely ignoring the science and then walking all over my opinion, my personal experience as non-binary, and all the time I've spent studying the subject. I apologize for the "females" thing but seriously, calm your horses. If you really do know these things, I genuinely suggest that you write down your findings and send it to the Nobel prize committee, because you will unarguably be nominated for your incredible and groundbreaking work in the medical field, regardless if you prove that hormones = personality changes is true or false.


The topic is about male/female polarity from a spiritual standpoint, and this is getting way off topic.

[Darkhawk]

... what? What parent raise their child to be transgender? I'm afraid I'm not following your logic here because that is certainly not the norm.

Anyone with a trans child is inevitably raising their child in that environment.

The thing about gendered socialisation is that it's not hermetically sealed off from everything else.  Everyone gets the same "boys are like this, girls are like that" soup.

What many trans people get is "I am like one of those things, but unless I pretend like I'm the other one I will get brutalised."

I never said that socialization isn't important. My argument was that there is, on some physical level, a fundamental difference between men and women that affect personality, caused by hormones and/or the XX/XY chromosomes, or whatever.

Almost every bell curve that shows separation between the sexes has something like 80+% overlap between the curves.  There is more variation within the sexes than between them.

The topic is about male/female polarity from a spiritual standpoint, and this is getting way off topic.

 
Welcome to the Cauldron.  Thread drift happens.

[Elding]

Almost every bell curve that shows separation between the sexes has something like 80+% overlap between the curves.  There is more variation within the sexes than between them.

In what way? DNA? Behavior? Hormones? You need to clarify this a little.

Since we're on the subject of male and female dna.. I think it was Bill Clinton who said that every person shares 99.9% of their genome with every other person on the planet. It was a speech against racism I think.. aaaaand, technically, he was right... if we're comparing two people of the same gender. Two men will share 99.9% of their DNA, and two women will share 99.9% of their DNA.

A man and a woman, though? The similarity is only 98.2! That might still sound like a lot, but consider this... the genetic difference between a man and a male chimpanzee is actually higher than the DNA difference between a human man and a human woman, at 98.7%! A human being is literally closer, genetically, to a monkey of the same sex than a human being of the opposite sex. To say that there absolutely CANNOT be any difference in the face of THAT... it doesn't make any sense to me. True, I might be wrong, but to completely disregard this evidence rather than keep it in mind as one goes through life... well, it strikes me as a little bit naive.

Men and women aren't all that different, and we're certainly not un-equal. We're simply alive. We're all simply here, and any 'value' of this over that is simply a human thouht construct. But there are differences, differences that affect us all, and we honestly do not know why that is - to write it all down to socialization and never question that, would IMHO be a disservice to both the medical field and the non-cis crowd. I for one would love answers, real answers to why I am as I am and identify as I do, but everywhere I look, I'm faced with what basically boils down to either "it's all Satans fault and you're not being perfect enough in the eyes of Jesus" or "hey, this is simply how you identify, now stop looking for scientific answers because THAT IS EVIL in fact HOW DARE YOU SUGGEST THAT THERE IS A REASON BEHIND NON-BINARY PEOPLE. WE'RE SPECIAL SNOWFLAKES AND WHY DON'T YOU APPRECIATE THE WONDERS OF BEING AN OPPRESSED MINORITY ARE YOU EVEN ONE OF US YOU STRANGE AND BAD PERSON. ALL SHUN THE BLASPHEMER!". (Not saying that anybody here said that, but... I have some... weird... experiences with the LGBT crowd.) I can't POSSIBLY be the only person who would love to KNOW. Even if it's just something to shove in the face of the fundies, something to say "hah, it's XXX and not Satan, in yo face!".... childish, I know. Still, though..

Frankly, I'm getting a bit weary of the whole thing. I would love to have a civil discussion on it one day, a conversation in which people don't get mad because they don't share my opinions.. eh, maybe one day.. in some distant, strange, perfect Utopia world, far over the rainbows. :whis:

Welcome to the Cauldron.  Thread drift happens.

Ha ha, thanks! :p

[jsquared]

... what? What parent raise their child to be transgender? I'm afraid I'm not following your logic here because that is certainly not the norm.

I think Darkhawk covered what I meant pretty well. Socialization isn't a parental thing, it's a societal thing.

I never said that socialization isn't important. My argument was that there is, on some physical level, a fundamental difference between men and women that affect personality, caused by hormones and/or the XX/XY chromosomes, or whatever. Your claim was that socialization is EVERYTHING, and I do not agree with that. It exists, and it is of course very important, but it is only one layer among many that shapes our personalities. Furthermore, our social status and our actions will in turn affect our hormonal levels (although, of course, there is still a divide. Even a low-testosterone man will have more of it than a high-testo woman).

I think this is the problem. I didn't claim socialization was /everything/; I claimed it was /more important/. And people who are much better read than I am are still having this debate, so it's not really something you can just prove with a couple of studies. Again, it's two different interpretations, neither more 'provable' than the other.

An obvious example is temperament swings women might go through during their periods or during pregnancy, "symptoms" including bouts of anger, irritability, boosted moods and heightened feelings of love, or depression. Saying that hormones don't effect our personalities or behavior is like saying that these women are making their issues up. And that's really just the tip of the ice berg.

As someone who has these problems, I am well aware of how hormones can effect people. I never said it has /no/ effect.

No worries, there are already plenty of studies done on humans:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24034714
https://today.duke.edu/2014/08/feminization
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24814142
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24157401

And yet
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022103198913737
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2245735
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20590724
http://www.jstor.org/stable/1132257?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

You can pull out scientific articles to support /either/ position, is what I'm saying. So to say that 'Science says X. Period.' is a gross simplification. That's absolutely my only issue. To say 'I think X based on Y scientific data' is not what I'm arguing about. Anyone is free to interpret data in either way, especially about an issue like this. But to say 'science agrees with position X' is very rarely true.

Right... you know what, I've been debating in my head whether or not this comment is as hostile as I read it be. Internet just has that way of screwing with peoples heads, you know?

But dude.. could you please do not write in such a tone? I'm stating fact, as well as my own personal opinions. You seem to be largely ignoring the science and then walking all over my opinion, my personal experience as non-binary, and all the time I've spent studying the subject. I apologize for the "females" thing but seriously, calm your horses. If you really do know these things, I genuinely suggest that you write down your findings and send it to the Nobel prize committee, because you will unarguably be nominated for your incredible and groundbreaking work in the medical field, regardless if you prove that hormones = personality changes is true or false.

That was meant to be a joke. I'm sorry if it didn't come off that way. I'm in a PhD program for physical chemistry and the absurd 'quantum physics' in that movie are an example of the kind of bad science journalism I can't stand.

However, this whole 'I'm stating fact' is my problem. You are using studies to back up an opinion. Totally fine! But to use those studies and say they brook no argument? Not scientific in the slightest. There are virtually /equal amounts/ of studies that fall on either side of nature vs. nurture. This is not my area of study, so I don't really have papers at hand. But I do have a rather large background in 'what conclusions can be supported /and excluded/ by data X.'
 
I'm not trying to invalidate your experience as a non-binary person; I'm trying to talk about how you're using science and the kind of conclusions one can reasonably draw from available data. (I'm also trying to /validate/ my experience as a woman in a field that a bunch of evo-psych types would say I have no business being in.)

I think we're really talking at cross-purposes. What I'm saying, in a nutshell, is 'Science has pretty equal evidence for both nature being more important and nurture being more important. Based on my own experiences, I fall on the nurture side. However, neither side is more /scientifically valid/.'

[jsquared]

A man and a woman, though? The similarity is only 98.2! That might still sound like a lot, but consider this... the genetic difference between a man and a male chimpanzee is actually higher than the DNA difference between a human man and a human woman, at 98.7%! A human being is literally closer, genetically, to a monkey of the same sex than a human being of the opposite sex. To say that there absolutely CANNOT be any difference in the face of THAT... it doesn't make any sense to me. True, I might be wrong, but to completely disregard this evidence rather than keep it in mind as one goes through life... well, it strikes me as a little bit naive.

That statistic isn't quite as important as it would seem. But yes, there are genetic differences between (cis) men and women. There is a problem generalizing to all men and women when some women have XY chromosomes and some men has XX, but it does hold true for large gamete- vs. small gamete-havers.

Frankly, I'm getting a bit weary of the whole thing. I would love to have a civil discussion on it one day, a conversation in which people don't get mad because they don't share my opinions.. eh, maybe one day.. in some distant, strange, perfect Utopia world, far over the rainbows. :whis:

 
I don't think anyone has gotten mad? We've just disagreed on some things, which is going to happen with any discussion. And I'm struggling to say 'do what you have to for your peace of mind here' /without/ coming off as condescending or like I'm telling you what to do. But we're all real people and sometimes that is a thing that needs to happen. So yeah, please pretend I found a way to say that through the brain fog?

[Darkhawk]

In what way? DNA? Behavior? Hormones? You need to clarify this a little.

Physical aptitudes, like strength or endurance.  Intelligence and other related number-value metrics, to the extent that they can be meaningfully evaluated.  Height.  Weight. Finger lengths. Bunches of things like that.  Probably a bunch of behavioural stuff too, but I haven't seen the studies for the more subjective things.

Basically, if every chartable aptitude were put in from 0 to 100 and separate curves were drawn for each sex, they wouldn't look like "there's a bunch of behaviour clustered around 30 and another one clustered around 70".

They would look like "There's a kind of lumpy bell curve, and if you code it by sex there's maybe a peak at 45 and a peak at 55".  Maybe it means something on average, but it's often hard to tell what it might do, and it's utterly meaningless when dealing with specific actual people who very likely fall into the Typical Human Overlap, which is the case for most specific actual people on any given measurement.

Since we're on the subject of male and female dna..

Were we?

A human being is literally closer, genetically, to a monkey of the same sex than a human being of the opposite sex. To say that there absolutely CANNOT be any difference in the face of THAT... it doesn't make any sense to me.

Why?  It's not like there's a huge amount of stuff encoded on the sex chromosomes in the first place, and most of what is is encoded on the X chromosome; if I remember right, a person with multiple X chromosomes will have one of them deactivated and run the code off the other in each of their cells.

So basically women have a spare X in case one of theirs gets fucked up, and men don't.  It's not like people use more than one at a time in any given cell.

(This is actually what drives certain coat patterns in cats, by the way - the orange gene and the black gene are both on the X chromosome.  So when you have an orange and black cat, the patterns are created depending on not only which X chromosome is disabled but when in development it happened.  If the choice happened early in kittyfetal development, you get bigger patches of color on the cat because each progenitor cell makes more cat; if the deactivation happened late, you get smaller patches on more mottled cats.  This has been your Wacky Science Digression for the thread.)

(That is also why male calicoes are considered extremely lucky; you only get that happening when you have XXY variants or something even less common.)

(I was at one point net-acquainted with a human who has actually had chromosomal testing done, whose sex chromosomes test as XOXY, by the way.  She has carried at least one pregnancy to term.  Assuming chromosomal pattern from phenotype is... not accurate; there are many known variants, chimerisms, and there's no way of actually knowing without running the tests.  Turner syndome, Androgen Insensitivity, and many, many other things turn up relevant.)

(Other fun things about reproductive sex and biology: some reptiles determine the sex by what temperature an egg is incubated at, not genetic variation.  Female birds are the ones that have different-typed sex chromosomes (ZW) while the males are same-typed (WW).  Platypi have five sex-determining chromosomes.  Certain slime molds have been determined to have thirteen sexes; some apparently have more.)

(I should stop adding parentheticals of Cool Science Facts.)

[Ceath]

Another thing when it comes to male and female issues is that male and female behaviors varies from species to species as well as varying from human culture to human culture. Insect societies have male and female behaviors that vary a bit from what has been observed in various human societies.

I personally haven't even scratched the surface when it comes to that stuff.

It's not exactly clear what true male behaviors and what are true female behaviors or if there are certain patterns of behavior that should be ascribed to either gender. It is a very murky area and I hesitate to say anything about it because I am just not very informed on it.

I am interested to hear your thoughts on the male/female

[SunflowerP]

Don't ever ask me about What The Bleep Do We Know?! :whis:

 

Right... you know what, I've been debating in my head whether or not this comment is as hostile as I read it be. Internet just has that way of screwing with peoples heads, you know?

But dude.. could you please do not write in such a tone?

 
Elding, it occurs to me that the crossed communication wires here might well be because you're unfamiliar with the pseudoscientific documentary.

Sunflower