Emotional, psychological or spiritual differences between the sexes - What is your opinion about difference feminism?

I had no idea an actual term existed to describe this. Thanks for bringing it to my notice! I’ll have to look into some of the work that’s been done in this field.

My gut reaction to the concept that men and women are different versions is that it’s somewhat true. Men and women (I’m generalizing here) are two different creatures with two differently wired brains, and it’s important to study this in order to understand and improve our methods of communication, amongst other things.

But I wouldn’t go as far as to argue which is superior. There’s just no point in doing so. Humanity cannot exist without both men and women (hermaphrodites excepted). Sometimes men and women are superior at different tasks, but even this is a grand generalization that does not play true in all cases. Plus, such talk is more divisive than unifying, and can easily lead to the actual topic at hand being ignored in favour of arguing about that insignificant point.

Is there value in identifying what areas men or women are superior in? Yes! This analysis can lead us to questioning why it exists, and to take steps at remedying it, if it’s something that remedying would make beneficial. Such a thing was done regarding women and programming/computing sciences, and as a result social programs and opportunities were created that encourage and teach simple programming languages and concepts to young girls. This will ultimately benefit programming and computing science (furthermore, humanity) as a whole, because women have different ways of thinking and this may translate to a different code approach, resulting in new innovation that a man might not have stumbled upon.

Like other groups with less power in this country, women did not want separate, but equal when the feminist movement began.

Clearly, however, there are biological differences between the sexes, and it would be willful ignorance to deny that.

The sensitive part of the issue, though, is how not to have those differences used as excuses for subjugating an entire gender with stereotyping and generalizing. As an example, Lawrence Summers’ laughably sexist remarks in 2005:

“Last week at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a small nonprofit organization in Cambridge, Summers reportedly said that “Science has shown that ladies’ brains are actually proportioned quite differently from those of alpha males – the amygdala is on top of the medial frontal cortex – and this explains why the gals do so poorly at math and physics. Plus their tits get in the way when they try to operate supercomputers and particle accelerators.”

Having a top educator make those remarks publicly was totally unacceptable. I would put our own PnL or my friend Linda against any guy in a math setting. Using supposed gender differences to close off entire fields of study from women would be ludicrous. Not all men are good at math or anatomy either. There is variation in human beings.

I also think the fact women get 79% of what male workers do for the same job is disgusting and has no basis in fact or performance or “differences.”

So, in some ways, I find this a dangerous trend. It concerns me just as the fact that young women, far from appreciating the strides made in earlier decades that give them the range of choices of future available to them today, actually deride feminism.

I think that if you did a lot of statistical analysis, you’d find that the average woman and the average man are different. And I think you’d find this across the board, unless you took great pains to only measure some areas, and I think even those areas would surprise you.

But I also think that if you plotted these points on a line, and found the male locus and the female locus, and then plotted actual men and women’s locations around them on that line, you’d find a lot of men way over past the “female” locus and a lot of women way over past the “male” locus. The differences among individual women and among individual men are at least an order of magnitude larger than the differences among women in the aggregate and men in the aggregate.

And all that said, I think we have a duty to remove socially constructed barriers. If we find, for instance, that college-aged women are markedly inferior in the average to college-aged men in math and science, I don’t think we can just say, “Oh, well, men and women are different,” and move on. I think we need to look at educational practices: if a teacher thinks that boys are good at math and girls are not, the teacher will reinforce that belief and pass it on to the students. And we know that boys and girls develop physically and psychologically at different times and in different ways; if the Algebra I class is taught at a grade level where boys are thinking analytically and objectively and girls are thinking critically and subjectively, the boys will do better, but not because they’re inherently better.

And, like @Marina, I think that if we just shrug our shoulders and say “Men are just superior in some areas! Vive la feminisme de différance!” we do a great disservice to women—and to men, because the increased range of self-expression available to women because of the feminist movement has also brought an increased range of self-expression to men. Before feminism, the ideas of a metrosexual or a stay-at-home dad were unthinkable.

Sure men and women are different. For that matter, every person is different. So what? Any form of “ism” is a political issue with people or groups of people jockeying for more status within the community. The different isms are just different tactics to achieve the same goal.

I don’t believe that any normative statements made about various groups of people make any sense. None of them have a leg to stand on in terms of determining what is better or worse.

Better and worse depends on your goals, and goals are arbitrary. One might argue that biological imperatives, such as the desire to survive, are objective, but that’s only true from an anthropocentric point of view. Or even a “lifist” point of view.

In the end, we are probably all selfish in that we decide what better and worse are depending on what we, individually, want.

So, one person can look at a picture and say that men are better. The next person can turn the picture over and say that women are better. The norm that prevails is the norm that has the most political power. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about sexism, racism, ethnocentrism, or any other “ism” you want to think about.

Here’s my theory: whoever organizes the best, wins the status battle. It doesn’t matter what “ism” we are talking about. Organizing includes data, argument, people, cooperation, and willingness to push for what the group wants. Feminists can use any argument they want, but arguments carry you only so far, and are not a magic bullet. Data based arguments are better, but still not enough. People have to organize and show a united front, and become an economic force to be reckoned with. Then change can happen.

You know what’s really weird? When a group does this, and gains power, they tend to buy into the system that prevailed before they became powerful. For many young women, there is no battle anymore. Sexisim no longer exists. Sigh.

@daloon: I’m in love with your words! Thank you for beating a dead horse so well.

@VzzBzz I can’t tell if you agree with me and are saying the issue should have died ages ago, or if you are making fun of me. Either is fine, but I just with it could be clearer.

@daloon: I’m not making fun and yes, I agree with you.

@Marina – The fact that women get 79% of what male workers do for the same job is indeed a huge scandal. I can only speak for the IT industry and there it’s changing for the better in my opinion. Women are excellent project managers for example, because the success of a project does not only depend on technical skills, but also on how people interact. Emotional intelligence is key (some men realize this too, by the way). And here’s the irony: shareholder value might be (in part) responsible for removing the injustice created in the past. Companies are tired of having to hire below average men. I’m not kidding. So all of the sudden there’s this new flexibility: child care offered by companies, flex time models, fully equipped home offices and so forth… It’s an issue during job interviews and later as well. If you want to hire or retain above average people you need to be flexible.

@Marina: That website is a satire. Here is the full text of the speech that ended Summers’ presidency. His cardinal sin was suggesting that women may have innate qualities that prevent them from reaching the extremes of intelligence in the fields in which they’re underrepresented.

Here is a debate between Steven Pinker and Elizabeth Spelke, two eminent psychologists at Harvard, regarding the validity of that claim.

I am currently working on a couple projects looking at sex differences in the brain. They exist. That is undeniable. I don’t think acknowledging that should require any kind of philosophical or political movement.

@niki Sloppy linking on my part. I have the full text here at home. I think the actual speech is just as bad. There is absolutely no scientific data supporting his back of the envelope conclusion. A complex set of factors is involved in the outcome. He completely ignores all of those and says this:

“So my sense is that the unfortunate truth-I would far prefer to believe something else, because it would be easier to address what is surely a serious social problem if something else were true-is that the combination of the high-powered job hypothesis and the differing variances probably explains a fair amount of this problem.”

I consider it irresponsible at best and flat out prejudiced most likely. For a man in his position to make such unsupported jumps to conclusion in the public arena is ridiculous. It makes one wonder where Summers is on the standard deviations from the norm.

@Marina: His claim is not unsupported. Read the Pinker/Spelke debate. And I don’t think he ignores other factors at all. He discusses three hypotheses to explain the problem and suggests they all contribute.

@nik He minimizes them to subfactors. I do not think there are nearly enough studies to show precisely what the differences are and which are genetic and which cultural and which limitations imposed by white male dominance of the culture. Let me be clear that I do not deny that their are clear differences between the way men’s and women’s brains are constructed, but I believe that the existing research is not by any means definitive or substantial enough to be used as any kind of basis for public policy. Finally, because we are dealing with a continuum of abilities in the brains of both men and women, it is very dangerous to close off possibilities. We could lose a Marie Curie.

@Marina – And there’s always Gaussian distribution.

Yes, I can tell you now. There are big differences.

@mattbrowne Yes I think we are much more emotionally-equipped than men. And just better able to deal with everyday annoyances. Whereas men seem to bitch and moan about the dumbest things.

@thesparrow – Well, men can learn to read emotions. Keep in mind, men and women share 45 of 46 chromosomes. Men and women experience the same primary emotions such as fear, anger, disgust, surprise and joy. The issue is how this translates into feelings involving the conscious mind.

I agree @mattbrowne and well said. I find my SO and I seem to experience emotions a little differently, but he seems to be more sensitive to the suffering of others than I am (i.e. he’s more likely to help someone on the street or give homeless people money) whereas I am more attuned to connecting with HIM on an emotional level.