XXXY

et bien.
today the star has an article about The Female Brain. Another fucking book that keeps telling us we are irretrievably different from Males and should learn to cope with it.

DUH.

I don't see any rational woman past her initial feminist teen years saying otherwise.

But I think that the more important issue is not males minds on average or as a whole vs female minds on average and as a whole. We've been talking about this far too long. Who cares if the women, on average, are not as good at mathematical/spatial reasoning as men, ON AVERAGE. I don't see either men-on-average or women-on-average out seeking a job. A man looks for a job. A woman goes to school. INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES ARE STILL GREATER THAN WHATEVER ARBITRARY LINES WE DRAW IN THE SEX SAND.

Grouping all men together or all women together is stupid. The woman who lives in the front part of my house has no bearing on whether or not I can do math. My visual/spatial IQ could still be in the 96th percentile regardless of where the rest of womankind places on that bell curve.

OK, so women as a group are different from men as a group. Even the early feminists probably didn't argue that. What they argued was that women should not be forced to conform to the norm of women as a group.

And besides all this, we are talking about wiring, about intrinsic differences. The differences nature provides, if you will. We both have two hands. Most of us are better with one. Some of us are ok with both. A few special people are totally naturally ambidextrous. (this is an analogy, if you're confused by my topic change). But here's the catch - almost all of us could learn to be very functionally ambidextrous, or even switch hands entirely, if the need arose. It is the same with these supposed 'sex differences'. Perhaps my IQ is one percentile higher in verbal/linguistic reasoning than visual/spatial. Does that mean that my lesser, but still very impressive, visual/spatial skills are moot? I don't think so.

We all work with what we have. If it happens that women are more likely to be born with intrinsic strengths in emotional and people-related areas, does that mean we shouldn't require men to do their best to be empathetic and sensitive? Total bullshit.

My world is built of individuals. Sometimes I absolutely choke with laughter when someone I know falls smack into the stereotype for their sex. I don't deny it. Confirmation of stereotype is funny to me. But do I accept that men do the driving because on the whole, as a sex, their spatial skills are better? The difference we're talking about is small but significant. A few IQ points between the peaks of the normal curves. most of the curves overlap... look at the huge area in common! let me see if I can find a diagram.



See? The majority of people fall into that middle section. These are simply two overlapping normal curves, not using specifc data about sex differences. From what I recall from my psych degree, the inter-peak interval was actually smaller for all known sex differences: height, weight, math abilities, and so on. So I ask you - if you happen to be in that middle section, does it matter if you're male or female?

here's a link to the article in The Toronto Star that sparked this wrath within me.