Thread by @Russwarne on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "In a survey of American college students' civics knowledge, males answered almost every question correctly more often than females... Knowledge levels are really low for most questions, especially when you consider that this is a survey of college students--not all adults. The only question that females answered correctly more often than males was about Brown v. Board of Education--and that difference was within the margin of error."
I once pointed out men are more interested in current affairs than women and got a hostile response
Denying the Neuroscience of Sex Differences - "Imagine your response to picking up a copy of the leading scientific journal Nature and reading the headline: “The myth that evolution applies to humans.” Anyone even vaguely familiar with the advances in neuroscience over the past 15–20 years regarding sex influences on brain function might have a similar response to a recent headline in Nature: “Neurosexism: the myth that men and women have different brains” subtitled “the hunt for male and female distinctions inside the skull is a lesson in bad research practice.” Turns out that yet another book, this one with a fawning review in Nature, claims to “shatter” myths about sex differences in the brain while in fact perpetuating the largest one. Editors at Nature decided to give this book their imprimatur. Ironically, within a couple of days of the Nature review being published came a news alert from the American Association for the Advancement of Science titled, “Researchers discover clues to brain differences between males and females,” and a new editorial in Lancet Neurology titled “A spotlight on sex differences in neurological disorders,” both of which contradict the book’s core thesis. So what in the name of good science is going on here? For decades neuroscience, like most research areas, overwhelmingly studied only males, assuming that everything fundamental to know about females would be learned by studying males... we neuroscientists are seeing just how profoundly wrong — and in fact disproportionately harmful to women — that assumption was, especially in the context of understanding and treating brain disorders. Any reader wishing to confirm what I am writing can easily start by perusing online the January/February 2017 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience Research, the first ever of any neuroscience journal devoted to the topic of sex differences in its entirety. All 70 papers, spanning the neuroscience spectrum, are open access to the public. In statistical terms, something called effect size measures the size of the influence of one variable on another. Although some believe that sex differences in the brain are small, in fact, the average effect size found in sex differences research is no different from the average effect size found in any other large domain of neuroscience. So here is a fact: It is now abundantly clear to anyone honestly looking, that the variable of biological sex influences all levels of mammalian brain function, down to the cellular/genetic substrate, which of course includes the human mammalian brain... Recognizing our obligation to carefully study sex influences in essentially all domains (not just neuroscience), the National Institute of Health on January 25, 2016 adopted a policy (called “Sex as a Biological Variable,” or SABV for short) requiring all of its grantees to seriously incorporate the understanding of females into their research... Since Simone de Beauvoir in the early 1950s famously asserted that “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman,” and John Money at Johns Hopkins shortly thereafter introduced the term “gender” (borrowed from linguistics) to avoid the biological implications of the word “sex,” a belief that no meaningful differences exist in the brains of women and men has dominated U.S. culture. And God help you if you suggest otherwise! Gloria Steinem once called sex differences research “anti-American crazy thinking.” Senior colleagues warned me as an untenured professor around the year 2000 that studying sex differences would be career suicide. This new book by Rippon marks the latest salvo by a very small but vocal group of anti-sex difference individuals determined to perpetuate this cultural myth. A book like this is very difficult for someone knowledgeable about the field to review seriously. It is so chock-full of bias that one keeps wondering why one is bothering with it. Suffice to say it is replete with tactics that are now standard operating procedure for the anti-sex difference writers. The most important tactic is a comically biased, utterly non-representative view of the enormous literature of studies ranging from humans to single neurons. Other tactics include magnifying or inventing problems with disfavored studies, ignoring even fatal problems with favored studies, dismissing what powerful animal research reveals about mammalian brains, hiding uncomfortable facts in footnotes, pretending not to be denying biologically based sex-influences on the brain while doing everything possible to deny them, pretending to be in favor of understanding sex differences in medical contexts yet never offering a single specific research example why the issue is important for medicine, treating “brain plasticity” as a magic talisman with no limitations that can explain away sex differences, presenting a distorted view of the “stereotype” literature and what it really suggests, and resurrecting 19th century arguments almost no modern neuroscientist knows of, or cares about. Finally, use a catchy name to slander those who dare to be good scientists and investigate potential sex influences in their research despite the profound biases against the topic (“neurosexists!”). These tactics work quite well with those who know little or nothing about the neuroscience... You may ask: What exactly are people like Rippon so afraid of? She cites potential misuse of the findings for sexist ends, which has surface plausibility. But by that logic we should also stop studying, for example, genetics. The potential to misuse new knowledge has been around since we discovered fire and invented the wheel. It is not a valid argument for remaining ignorant. After almost 20 years of hearing the same invalid arguments (like Bill Murray in “Groundhog Day” waking up to the same song every day), I have come to see clearly that the real problem is a deeply ingrained, implicit, very powerful yet 100 percent false assumption that if women and men are to be considered “equal,” they have to be “the same.”... No one seems to have a problem accepting that, on average, male and female bodies differ in many, many ways. Why is it surprising or unacceptable that this is true for the part of our body that we call “brain”? Marie Curie said, “Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.”"
We are simultaneously told that it's sexist that only men were studied and that it's sexist if you believe men and women are different, even though if they were the same, you wouldn't need to study women
Mazi Nathan on X - "Girls: Am I fat?
Omg! You are so beautiful 🤩
Men: Bro am I fat?
Bro I know 5 fat people, and you are 4 of them 😂"
Rolf Degen on X - "Sex differences in bipolar disorder and anxiety disorders, with women more susceptible than men, are larger in more developed countries. https://medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.10.27.24316200v2 Bipolar disorder and anxiety disorders are two prominent mental disorders that represent a significant global health challenge. We estimated sex-specific incidence of bipolar disorder and anxiety disorders globally and in 204 countries and territories from 1990 to 2021. Sex difference in the incidence of anxiety disorders and bipolar disorder have persisted worldwide over the past several decades, and the rates have consistently been higher among females than males. The sex difference is even more pronounced at younger ages and in more developed nations. The higher the degree of socio-demographic development, the greater the gender differences in the incidence of diseases. In countries with higher living conditions, the negative impact of emotion was greater for women than for men, and women had more mental disease, such as having more symptoms, diagnoses, or feelings of depression and remembering more nightmares. In countries with higher living conditions, psychosocial factors such as gender socialization may have less influence, giving women and men more freedom to pursue the values they care about. Personality, verbal episodic memory, verbal ability, aggressive behavior, and general self-esteem also show greater gender differences in countries with higher living conditions, This gives women and men more freedom to pursue the values they care about, not more of social-role expectations, which also contributes to greater gender disparities."
Damn patriarchy!
Gender equity paradox: sex differences in reading and science as academic strengths are largest in gender-equal countries - "A new study reveals that sex differences in academic strengths are found throughout the world and girls’ relative advantage in reading and boys’ in science is largest in gender-equal countries... The research team analysed data from nearly 2.5 million adolescents in 85 countries over 12 years or in five waves (2006-2018) from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Their findings confirmed that girls’ strength is typically reading, while boys’ is typically mathematics or science. These patterns are found both across countries and time. Most notably, sex differences in reading and science as academic strengths are more pronounced in countries with greater gender equality, such as Finland. Sex differences in mathematics, on the other hand, remained stable regardless of country-level gender equality. “These results suggest that in more gender-equal societies, women may be choosing fields other than STEM based on their strength in reading. Increasing the share of women in STEM will require more than just boosting girls’ math and science skills or advancing gender equality,” says Doctoral Researcher Marco Balducci from the INVEST Research Flagship at the University of Turku, Finland. The finding that sex differences in academic strength in reading and science are larger in gender-equal Scandinavian countries than in more traditional Middle Eastern countries –known as the Gender Equality Paradox – challenges the popular belief that sex differences are mainly driven by socialisation pressure."
Damn patriarchy!
To promote women in STEM, we need less gender equality
Rolf Degen on X - "As they got older, women and men made almost no concessions at all to the qualities they were looking for in a potential mate. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-024-03010-4 In a nationally representative sample of over two thousand participants, we found that women were more demanding in their mate preferences than men in Warmth, Status, and Dominance, while men were more demanding in Physical Attractiveness than women. Women also tolerated Unambitious, Hostile, Arrogant, Clingy, Abusive, and Depressed partners less than men did. Our results are in line with evolutionary predictions suggesting that women are more demanding, even though in this study, we did not differentiate short- and long-term partners. While women value men’s status more than men value women’s status in the mating context, men with lower status indicators did not decrease their preferences (because of lower mate choice power) as much as women did. While age is a frequently studied and assumed predictor of mate preference changes over the lifespan, we found trivial associations with age (explained variances ranged between < 1% and 3%). The tiny change in preferences between 18 and 50 years is rather surprising. Younger (fertile) people have long been believed to be pickier than older individuals. From a reproductive value perspective, fertility, especially in women, tends to decline. Consequently, the urgency to find a highly fertile and high-quality partner is reduced. Furthermore, older individuals may have achieved greater socioeconomic stability over time, reducing the need to seek a partner for financial security. However, our results demonstrate that age plays a negligible role not only in partner preferences but also in aversions."
Observed Aspects of Mate Value and Sociosexuality Account for Mate Preferences: Data from a Large, Representative Study from Czechia
Alexander on X - "Sex differences in friendship.
1. Women tend to have more friends than men. The size of friend groups declines with age, faster for men, but ends up similar later in life.
2. Women who are more agreeable have more friends, while men who are more impulsive, more promiscuous, and who have higher relationship satisfaction have fewer friends.
3. Men tend to have higher homophily in friend groups - male friends are more similar to one another than female friends are to each other. Promiscuity predicted homophily for men as well - so less promiscuous men probably have male friends who are less promiscuous.
4. Women are more likely to have a “best friend” than men - especially young women. At older ages the tend reverses. 80% of women’s best friends and 72% of men’s best friends are of the same sex.
5. The median age for meeting a best friend is pretty young - about 19 for men and women.
6. Women view same-sex and opposite-sex similarly in emotional closeness and support. However, men rate female friends high in emotional closeness / support while rating male friends lower in closeness / support."
Opinion | The Gender Gap Is Taking Us to Unexpected Places - The New York Times - "Dennis Chong, a political scientist at the University of Southern California, wrote by email that “a gender gap in political tolerance, with women being somewhat more willing to censor controversial and potentially harmful ideas, goes back to the earliest survey research on the subject in the 1950s.” There are a number of possible explanations, Chong said, including “stronger religious and moral attitudes among women; lesser political involvement resulting in weaker support for democratic norms; social psychological factors such as intolerance of ambiguity and uncertainty which translate to intolerance for political and social nonconformity; and greater susceptibility to feelings of threats posed by unconventional ideas and groups.”... “Mapping the Moral Domain,” a 2011 paper by Jesse Graham, a professor of management at the University of Utah, and five colleagues, found key differences between the values of men and women, especially in the case of the emphasis women place on preventing harm, especially harm to the marginalized and those least equipped to protect themselves... 'Boys and men enjoy direct status competition and confrontation, so the central drama of male-culture disciplines is ‘“Hey, Jones says his theory is better than Smith’s; let’s all gather around and watch them fight it out, in a colloquium or in dueling journal articles.” In fact, I’d say that many of the norms and institutions of the Anglo-American university were originally designed to harness male status-seeking and turn it into scholarly progress.' Women are just as competitive as men, Haidt wrote, “but they do it differently.”... 'From early childhood onwards, girls compete using strategies that minimize the risk of retaliation and reduce the strength of other girls. Girls’ competitive strategies include avoiding direct interference with another girl’s goals, disguising competition, competing overtly only from a position of high status in the community, enforcing equality within the female community and socially excluding other girls.'"
This is a key explanation for wokeness and cancel culture
Self-protection as an adaptive female strategy - "Many male traits are well explained by sexual selection theory as adaptations to mating competition and mate choice, whereas no unifying theory explains traits expressed more in females. Anne Campbell's “staying alive” theory proposed that human females produce stronger self-protective reactions than males to aggressive threats because self-protection tends to have higher fitness value for females than males. We examined whether Campbell's theory has more general applicability by considering whether human females respond with greater self-protectiveness than males to other threats beyond aggression. We searched the literature for physiological, behavioral, and emotional responses to major physical and social threats, and found consistent support for females' responding with greater self-protectiveness than males. Females mount stronger immune responses to many pathogens; experience a lower threshold to detect, and lesser tolerance of, pain; awaken more frequently at night; express greater concern about physically dangerous stimuli; exert more effort to avoid social conflicts; exhibit a personality style more focused on life's dangers; react to threats with greater fear, disgust, and sadness; and develop more threat-based clinical conditions than males. Our findings suggest that in relation to threat, human females have relatively heightened protective reactions compared to males. The pervasiveness of this result across multiple domains suggests that general mechanisms might exist underlying females' unique adaptations. An understanding of such processes would enhance knowledge of female health and well-being."
Ed Latimore on X - ""For face recognition memory tasks, women with IQs in the 60-80 IQs outperform men with IQs in the 121-140 range. When it comes to memorizing people's faces, women are, on average, far superior to men." -@robkhenderson"
Sex Differences in Episodic Memory: The Influence of Intelligence
Meme - "Bad" Billy Pratt @KILLTOPARTY: "Men know modern women value hook ups over boyfriends"
"I think I destroyed our relationship trying to compliment my boyfriend
My boyfriend and I are both 28 years old and together for 2.5 years. Yesterday night we were drinking and one thing led to another and I tried to compliment him by saying he is not someone who I would hookup or be a fwb with but marry. I thought everything was fine but he seemed extremely distraught after that. I realized how he understood it and tried to clarify it but he is still the same this morning. He told me he needs space to think for a while and left the house. All my friends tell me I messed it up and guys tell me it's not a compliment and most men will understand it differently. I think I destroyed our relationship and I am panicking right now."
Wokal Distance @wokal_distance: "People are misreading this: The BF hears this as: "I have sex with a fling because he's hot and that makes it fun, but the reason I have sex with you because I get something. I have sex with a fling because I enjoy sex with him, I have sex with you in order to get something."
The BF thinks his GF is saying "sex with a fling is like chocolate cake: it's so delicious that I eat it for fun and enjoyment even though I know it's unhealthy. Sex with you BF is like eating veggies: it doesn't taste nearly as good but I do it cause I need the vitamins"
Now... The BF thinks his GF is telling him "Id rather have sex with those other guys cause it's more fun...but I need stuff so I have sex with you to get it." That may not be what she MEANT to say, but it is what he HEARD. Men and women have totally different sets of meaning...
So they often have a totally different understanding of how to interpret relationships. It's not just two sets of ideas....it's two sets of meanings. And people need to be aware of that when they communicate with the other sex."
Meme - taco belle @animalologist: "believing more and more that men and women are just wired differently (nature reinforced by nurture) roughly 95% of women would find such a statement devastating and in fact we expend much forethought and energy trying to avoid this exact situation"
"If a girl told me she never liked me and was only using me for sex, that would be the highest compliment of my life."
Dan Baltic on X - "Male orgasm: you are now free from the bonds of desire. Science and philosophy await
Female orgasm: goo-goo gah-gah, I’m a baby"
Sex differences in visual-spatial performance among Ghanian and Norwegian adults - "Sex differences in spatial ability among adults in Western cultures are widely acknowledged, but few studies have assessed visual-spatial ability in non-Western subjects with tests that show the largest sex differences, and little is known whether effect sizes for different spatial ability categories are the same across cultures. This issue was addressed by using four visual spatial ability tests (water level, surface development, PMA space, and Vandenberg-Kuse) to collect data from university students in Ghana (n = 197) and Norway (n = 220). Except for the Surface Development test, on which no sex difference appeared in either sample, males performed significantly better than females in both samples, and the effect sizes (r) were about medium, with no significant between-nationality difference on individual tests. These results showed that patterns and magnitudes of sex differences in spatial abilities were similar across cultures. The test intercorrelation patterns in the two samples differed markedly, suggesting that the ability structure underlying spatial performance may be different in the two cultures."
The power of Patriarchy!
Related: Balderdash: Women and Spatial Perception
Alexander on X - "All of the sex differences in mate preferences that David Buss found way back in 1989 just won’t stop replicating! “This study suggests mate choice is based on evolutionary principles: men value primarily indications of fecundity (attractiveness, health, and sexiness) while women value material support (earnings, intelligence, and emotional stability) in their choice of mate.”"
Sex, personality, and mate preferences. - "In this study, we examined demographic, ideological, and personality difference correlates of ratings of 27 characteristics in a potential mate. In all, 288 mainly middle-aged adults completed two questionnaires: one assessing personality (high potential trait indicator) and one on mate preference (Mate Preferences Scale). Sex differences, where p< .001 and d > 0.40, revealed only one on personality (competitiveness) but five other factors (attractiveness, earnings, emotional stability, height, and sexiness) in line with previous studies. Correlations indicated that participant trait ambiguity tolerance and competitiveness (low agreeableness) were most closely related to mate choices and preferences for normality, good genes, and religious compatibility. A factor analysis of the ratings indicated five interpretable factors. Regressions, with the mate choice factors as criterion and demography, ideology, and the six traits as predictor variables demonstrated many of the traits related to mate preference ratings. Implications and limitations are noted."
Believing peer reviewed research that keeps being replicated makes you backward, a misogynist, dated and a rapist. But one-off findings that don't replicate that push the left wing agenda need to be trusted, because they're "science"
Rob Henderson on X - "worldwide women reported being awake at night more often than men did...following puberty women had a 40% higher risk than men of developing insomnia...a female adaptation that enhanced self-protection during an interval of heightened vulnerability"
Self-protection as an adaptive female strategy - "Many male traits are well explained by sexual selection theory as adaptations to mating competition and mate choice, whereas no unifying theory explains traits expressed more in females. Anne Campbell's “staying alive” theory proposed that human females produce stronger self-protective reactions than males to aggressive threats because self-protection tends to have higher fitness value for females than males. We examined whether Campbell's theory has more general applicability by considering whether human females respond with greater self-protectiveness than males to other threats beyond aggression. We searched the literature for physiological, behavioral, and emotional responses to major physical and social threats, and found consistent support for females' responding with greater self-protectiveness than males. Females mount stronger immune responses to many pathogens; experience a lower threshold to detect, and lesser tolerance of, pain; awaken more frequently at night; express greater concern about physically dangerous stimuli; exert more effort to avoid social conflicts; exhibit a personality style more focused on life's dangers; react to threats with greater fear, disgust, and sadness; and develop more threat-based clinical conditions than males. Our findings suggest that in relation to threat, human females have relatively heightened protective reactions compared to males. The pervasiveness of this result across multiple domains suggests that general mechanisms might exist underlying females' unique adaptations. An understanding of such processes would enhance knowledge of female health and well-being."
The power of patriarchy! Obviously the solution is more feminism
