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Truth in gender stereotypes?


YPestis

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I think gender stereotypes can be over exaggerated , but I think it is kind of silly to say that there are absolutely no general differences between males and females other than their genitalia.

A general difference just means that in general ,more males than females are likely to do well at x, or do poorly at y -- that isn't the same thing at all as saying ALL males will do well at x and do poorly at y.

All of those hormones that are in different proportions in males and females obviously do something.

On the topic of nurture and housecleaning - I've actually noticed many commercials lately aimed at men doing laundry, cooking, buying diapers etc. - and not, finally, in the "oh, that silly man, this is so simple even he can do it" way - but just as a consumer market.

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I think gender stereotypes can be over exaggerated , but I think it is kind of silly to say that there are absolutely no general differences between males and females other than their genitalia.

A general difference just means that in general ,more males than females are likely to do well at x, or do poorly at y -- that isn't the same thing at all as saying ALL males will do well at x and do poorly at y.

All of those hormones that are in different proportions in males and females obviously do something.

On the topic of nurture and housecleaning - I've actually noticed many commercials lately aimed at men doing laundry, cooking, buying diapers etc. - and not, finally, in the "oh, that silly man, this is so simple even he can do it" way - but just as a consumer market.

Um, the different hormones in cisgendered males and females are to do with reproduction. That's it. They don't have an impact on housekeeping skills or intelligence.

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http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... ate&sc=rss

From the end of the linked article:

Yes, a man can lactate for certain extrodinary reasons but there's been no documented culture of men who breastfeed (and some of the individual examples listed in the article are a bit suspect) While it would be interesting to see an experiment with inducing lactation in men to see if they could exclusively or even primarily sustain an infant, there's also the probability that the hormones required to accomplish the lactation would have some undesired side effects.

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I would say most of it is nurture, not nature.

This! Absolutely this! Just a theory here, but as far as household chores or cooking goes, a person raised in a home where they helped out are less likely to become slobs. Again, this is just a theory.

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YPestis, I'm sorry for what I said up-thread. I did not mean for what I said be an attack on you. You actually made some good points.

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My boyfriend/partner is way more into keeping a clean house and cooking than I am. He was raised by a single mom so he had no gender stereotypes about who did what. he always liked things neat, so he kept them that way and he's really into good food. The guys I've dated from mainstream Christian backgrounds or fundie backgrounds were not that OK with cleaning and cooking once I was around to do most of it. For the record, current boyfriend is a really manly kind of guy in a lot of other ways, meaning he's a mans man who's not afraid to be agressive about anything he wants to be, and that includes conquering the mess that is the kitchen after he's conquered making breakfast.

In my experience with the studying thing, guys range from super introvert who can study longer than I ever could to can't stand to sit still. I am inclined to think that the hormonal differences between males and females can have an effect on general behavior, which is why you might get more boys with HDHD, but it's complicated by the fact that society expect these differences, which is why a girl with HDHD might be more likely to be told to just sit quietly anyway. Mostly, it just depends on the individual.

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Even for things like ADHD, that doesn't mean there's a difference between boys and girls, only that society treats them differently. It's just much harder for a girl to get a diagnosis for it.

For instance, let's look at two different scenarios:

Little Billy is 10 years old and has poor grades in school because he doesn't pay attention, fidgets in his seat all the time, and interrupts the class with talking out of turn. His teacher recommends testing for ADHD and boom- diagnosis.

The next year that same teacher has Little Suzy, who also has trouble in school because she's always talking to her friends, spacing out, or is distracted by social interactions. Little Suzy is far, far more likely to just be labeled a "chatter box" or a "day dreamer" instead of being sent for an evaluation.

Studies have shown that girls with ADHD are diagnosed at a later age than boys (iirc, 12 years vs 8 years) and that ADHD diagnosed in adults is evenly split between men and women. Both those pieces of information lend themselves to the conclusion that there isn't a difference in the number of boys and girls who have ADHD, only those who get a diagnosis for it in childhood.

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Even for things like ADHD, that doesn't mean there's a difference between boys and girls, only that society treats them differently. It's just much harder for a girl to get a diagnosis for it.

For instance, let's look at two different scenarios:

Little Billy is 10 years old and has poor grades in school because he doesn't pay attention, fidgets in his seat all the time, and interrupts the class with talking out of turn. His teacher recommends testing for ADHD and boom- diagnosis.

The next year that same teacher has Little Suzy, who also has trouble in school because she's always talking to her friends, spacing out, or is distracted by social interactions. Little Suzy is far, far more likely to just be labeled a "chatter box" or a "day dreamer" instead of being sent for an evaluation.

Studies have shown that girls with ADHD are diagnosed at a later age than boys (iirc, 12 years vs 8 years) and that ADHD diagnosed in adults is evenly split between men and women. Both those pieces of information lend themselves to the conclusion that there isn't a difference in the number of boys and girls who have ADHD, only those who get a diagnosis for it in childhood.

I think this is a good example of where there are both biological/chemical differences between males and females , and societal expectations that make these differences more pronounced.

It isn't so much that ADHD isn't a problem for both boys and girls - it is that ADHD tends to present differently in boys and girls. Boys tend to have more of the "H" in adhd - the hyperactivity. Girls tend to have more of "just" the attention deficit. It is the hyperactivity that is more noticable and bothersome for other people, so boys are more likely to be referred more frequently, and at a younger age. A child who is jumping around the classroom is more noticeable that a child is spacing out.

As schools expect younger and younger children to maintain attention for longer periods boys often are at a disadvantage because they do, in general, tend to be less mature than girls of the same age ( google any study ever for your source ). So young boys who may not actually have adhd are more likely to be diagnosed due to their inability to conform to the social norm of sitting still.

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Boys are more likely to be diagnosed with ADD or ADHD than girls, but that does not mean that they actually have it more often. The patient group used to create the criteria was overwhelmingly male, so many of the characteristics listed are those most common to boys. its a problem that the next DSM is supposed to solve.

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Housework. I feel this is an area where the stereotype may have some truth. While exceptions abound, I've seen more slobbish guys than girls. Plus, girls seem better at keeping a clean house even when living alone. When a guy lives by himself, I've seen many that admit they don't wash their clothes until they run out of underwear, and some who admit to rewearing dirty ones. Ew! I just don't see any girls who go to such desperate lengths (although how gross for girls to rewear dirty underwear??). I've seen guys who show little concern about dirty dishes, vacuuming, dusting, scrubbing. Girls can be like that too, but it just seems more common to see guys with that attitude.

I feel like my entire life is a refutation of this stereotype

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Even for things like ADHD, that doesn't mean there's a difference between boys and girls, only that society treats them differently. It's just much harder for a girl to get a diagnosis for it.

For instance, let's look at two different scenarios:

Little Billy is 10 years old and has poor grades in school because he doesn't pay attention, fidgets in his seat all the time, and interrupts the class with talking out of turn. His teacher recommends testing for ADHD and boom- diagnosis.

The next year that same teacher has Little Suzy, who also has trouble in school because she's always talking to her friends, spacing out, or is distracted by social interactions. Little Suzy is far, far more likely to just be labeled a "chatter box" or a "day dreamer" instead of being sent for an evaluation.

Studies have shown that girls with ADHD are diagnosed at a later age than boys (iirc, 12 years vs 8 years) and that ADHD diagnosed in adults is evenly split between men and women. Both those pieces of information lend themselves to the conclusion that there isn't a difference in the number of boys and girls who have ADHD, only those who get a diagnosis for it in childhood.

this

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Something else to consider is, you need to read the media and look at reports in multiple places. So VERY MUCH of what is supposedly "evidence of girl brain!" and whatever, and this whole "crisis of boys" and whatnot is pretty much limited to the US or at least English speaking "Western" countries.

That should make anyone VERY suspicious that any of it has any sort of nature component. What is considered "girly" or not varies a lot between areas and what is expected of students (boys and girls both) varies similarly.

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Boys are more likely to be diagnosed with ADD or ADHD than girls, but that does not mean that they actually have it more often. The patient group used to create the criteria was overwhelmingly male, so many of the characteristics listed are those most common to boys. its a problem that the next DSM is supposed to solve.

The current criteria for ADHD has characteristics for primarily inattention ( the child sitting day dreaming ), primarily hyperactive ( the child bouncing off the walls ) and combined type, where there are symptoms of both.

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Caring for a newborn does require a fulltime person. But it doesn't have to be the mother. In the US, it is more often the mother because we haven't yet embraced the concept of paternity leave. Our society still mocks (in films, on television) the idea of men caring for babies, declaring them clumsy and unable to figure out a diaper.

I disagree 100%. I don't believe for a second that girls are any cleaner genetically then men. I've had a lot of roommates, male and female, and I can not say for one second that either gender is more likely to be dirty. I've had neat freak roommates and then some of the most horrifyingly dirty roommates. One of the worst was a female.

If you think, for some reason, women are cleaner than men, why would that be? Could it possibly be that they are told, from an early age, that their gender is supposed to be neat and orderly or grimy and dirty?

It's not nature.

Are they? Or are they held to different expectations?

Do you have a source?

Source?

Source?

BAZINGA

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Another consideration with education is the diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorders. I know this is only anecdata, but the school that I work at has four self contained ASD classrooms (two high functioning, one middle functioning, and one low functioning, roughly). The populations in those classes is very, very male. There are probably close to thirty students overall in those combined classes, but I can only think of six girls. A seventh recently transitioned to a general education classroom.

Is Autism being a primarily male diagnosis a stereotype based in fact? I'm not wholly sure. However, for the social aspects of the disorder I would imagine that females with Autism would stick out more. From my experience, females are supposed to be socially adept, while all but the most profoundly affected males could potentially be dismissed as "quirky."

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Guest Anonymous
Another consideration with education is the diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorders. I know this is only anecdata, but the school that I work at has four self contained ASD classrooms (two high functioning, one middle functioning, and one low functioning, roughly). The populations in those classes is very, very male. There are probably close to thirty students overall in those combined classes, but I can only think of six girls. A seventh recently transitioned to a general education classroom.

Is Autism being a primarily male diagnosis a stereotype based in fact? I'm not wholly sure. However, for the social aspects of the disorder I would imagine that females with Autism would stick out more. From my experience, females are supposed to be socially adept, while all but the most profoundly affected males could potentially be dismissed as "quirky."

I think girls are more likely to be labelled "shy". I was.

Edited: Major rewrite. Same gist.

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Something else to consider is, you need to read the media and look at reports in multiple places. So VERY MUCH of what is supposedly "evidence of girl brain!" and whatever, and this whole "crisis of boys" and whatnot is pretty much limited to the US or at least English speaking "Western" countries.

That should make anyone VERY suspicious that any of it has any sort of nature component. What is considered "girly" or not varies a lot between areas and what is expected of students (boys and girls both) varies similarly.

I had the same feeling about this. Before moving to the US (10 years ago), I had never heard about "girls being bad at math" or "girls being bad at science". I just could not understand why people were saying such a thing.

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I think there are definite biological, brain based differences between boys and girls/men and women.

The pregnancy thing is definitely true. I have always believed that women are "pre-wired" to nurture babies, and whilst men can do a great job, I think it takes more effort on their part to learn the ropes. Women have special hormones that promote bonding between mother and baby (one of those hormones, oxytocin, is often released during breastfeeding). Men don't experience these physical or hormonal changes, nor do they go through pregnancy themselves, which IMHO puts them at a disadvantage compared to their female counterparts. It doesn't mean that men can't be nurturing, I just think they have to work harder at it. Also, I think moms tend to focus more on certain things that many men just wouldn't care about. For example, it seems like a lot of the SAHDs I've met tend to be less focused on clothes and other "fussy" details, whereas the women often care more about these kinds of things. I think a large part of mothering is very instinctual.

My husband is the best Daddy in the world (not that I'm biased or anything :mrgreen: ) but while I was curled up reading Parenting books at bedtime, he was curled up reading Batman graphic novels :lol: It's just.....different. I don't think moms and dads are interchangeable, I think each gender has their strengths and weaknesses, and should build on each other to provide the best care they can for their child.

I have 3 daughters, and a son. My daughters all came first, my son came last. It's been interesting seeing the genuine differences in their behavior. Boys seem to be more active by nature. Girls seem to be more verbal. I remember sitting at my kitchen window once, watching a group of 5-6 boys chasing each other with wiffle bats and smacking the crap out of each other. I remember looking to my husband and saying, You'd never see girls doing that! When my son was born, he was different right from the get go. While my girls wanted to coo and smile at me, I couldn't even get him to look at me. He was much more interested in the ceiling fans and wall hangings. As he grew I noticed he was much more physical, destructive, and aggressive than his sisters. He gravitated to cars and things with wheels. He was just very different.

I consider myself fairly "liberated" in the gender roles department. I allowed my daughters to dress my son up in tutus, paint his fingernails and toe nails, and put bows in his hair :mrgreen: Despite our best efforts, he has grown up to be interested in more traditionally "boy" activities. If indeed it was all "nurture", having 3 big sisters to show him how to be a great little girl should have produced a calmer, less "traditionally gender stereotyped" male. That was not the case at all. The older I get, and the more I experience life, the more convinced I am that nature plays a HUGE part in how people turn out. My 4 kids are all very different from each other, and have all been parented the same way. Even their interests vary wildly. How can we explain that through nurture?

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But any people posting anecdotes about "among my kids, the boys are just so different from the girls!" surely realizes they have a sample size of what, 4 people? Plus nothing at all resembling a true blind test?

As a girl who was interested in more "boy" activities and for the most part didn't really care to socialize with girls, could not stand pretend social games (play "house"? hell no) and just never quite got the whole "but girls are supposed to be focused on socializing" meme, I just have some serious doubts about the entire idea of "boy brain, girl brain." I think people latch onto the idea of prenatal hormones as "hey! This can possibly maybe explain it! So yeah, there surely must be a physical basis for this gender business!" but the studies don't really bear it out so much. Miniscule sample size and lack of true controls are a problem in pretty much every study they do.

But either way, I think the real takeaway is, even if there ARE slightly different maxes on the graph of various behaviors between boys and girls (or men and women), the spread of each sex's graph far outweighs it, which means you simply CANNOT predict individual behavior on the basis of sex. You can't take some random boy and some random girl and predict "he will be more [whatever] than she will" or "she will be better than him at [whatever skill]."

That, plus the fact that this supposedly observed "crisis" of boys where boys are doing badly at education because they supposedly "innately" can't sit still and can't focus or hear the teacher (all of which have been claimed at some time or other) is just magically a problem in... the US only. You don't see stories about how education requires "girls' skills" and the classroom is too "feminized" and so boys are failing, elsewhere.

If the sexes really are so different, then surely if left to their own devices they would SELF-segregate, yes? But we're never happy to let that happen, no, there has to be constant gender policing. That alone should be a big red flag.

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I remember sitting at my kitchen window once, watching a group of 5-6 boys chasing each other with wiffle bats and smacking the crap out of each other. I remember looking to my husband and saying, You'd never see girls doing that!

NEVER! IN A MILLION YEARS! Except that I did that all the time as a child. And honestly - how different is that from a pillow fight at a slumber party? Pillow fights can get brutal, man. My girlfriends and I used to take the pillow fight outside. My best friend would swing a heavy one over her head like Gogo Yubari and when she popped you in the head with it your ears would ring.

I mean, you've decided that girls don't like to run around hitting each other with things.... ignoring a really stereotypical girl activity (the pillow fight) in the process. You may be, like, 'wait, but pillows are soft.' But freakin' wiffle bats aren't? Call me when you see a group of boy-children running around smacking the crap out of each other with titanium bats for fun.

Anecdote time: My friends and I also had a game (and this is probably you know maybe one of those childhood things you're supposed to keep in the vault, :P) that was a variation on 'mercy' in which one person would lie down in my parents' hallway (no lights, with doors at both ends that were shut and toweled so it was pitch black) and the others would run down the hallway, stampeding over the other person until they tapped out. Just girls being girls, you know how it is.

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My 4 kids are all very different from each other, and have all been parented the same way. Even their interests vary wildly. How can we explain that through nurture?

Because they are being influenced by more than just parenting. Culture is a huge influence on everyone.

My favourite article on this type of thing is A cross-cultural analysis of the behavior of women and men: Implications for the origins of sex differences. The authors investigate 185 non-industrial societies looking at the sexual division of labour. They found that of all the activities they investigated only two, hunting large aquatic fauna and smelting of ores, were solely carried out by men. Everything else was assigned to different or both sexes depending on the culture. If you want to prove something is natural then it needs to be found in essentially the same form in every culture in the world. You can't look at one boy and three girls raised in the modern west and assume gender expression is natural, inborn, and not heavily influenced by culture. You just can't.

Also, sociological images ran an interesting article on the differences between males and females in math. It's worth a read: http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/20 ... -and-math/

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Guest Anonymous
But any people posting anecdotes about "among my kids, the boys are just so different from the girls!" surely realizes they have a sample size of what, 4 people? Plus nothing at all resembling a true blind test?

I think the link for this thread needs to be sent to Boogalou, to mark the point on the Free Jinger Timeline when we suddenly realised that the pendulum that was displaced during Alectogate had swung way beyond the "New! Kinder! Gentler!" mark, and got stuck in the grasp of the lurking SOTDRT graduates.

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I think the link for this thread needs to be sent to Boogalou, to mark the point on the Free Jinger Timeline when we suddenly realised that the pendulum that was displaced during Alectogate had swung way beyond the "New! Kinder! Gentler!" mark, and got stuck in the grasp of the lurking SOTDRT graduates.

I'm all over it! When I first read the thread I had to look at the address bar to make sure this was, in fact, FJ.

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*looks around nervously*

Did I poop on the carpet? I can get the Febreze out... (just don't say that proves I'm girly!!! :D)

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I think girls are more likely to be labelled "shy". I was.

Edited: Major rewrite. Same gist.

I was labeled as gifted and lazy. When I was in college I was labeled as ADHD. Now when we look back at it, my mom and I suspect that it's really mild autism, but it's hard to say since some ADHD and Autistic charteristics are similar.

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