The Evidence (or Lack Thereof) For Behavioural Sex Difference

No other subject do people think they are a bigger experts than behavioural differences based on sex. Our culture is filled with “well men are like *this* and women are like *this” rhetoric.  In fact, I think many would be quite surprised to find out how scarce the evidence for behavioural sex difference is.

There are many intuitive reasons why their should  be innate behavioural differences between men and women. Animals differ dramatically in both physicality and behaviour down sex lines. There are also observable differences in the brains of men and women. So what is the state of the science when it comes to his/her desires, cognition and emotions?

A report in the Encyclopaedia of the Human Brain  attempts to summarise the latest research and came up with this list of likely sex differences in human behaviours (at Table II in report):

General

• Aggression – moderate difference.
• Childhood play preferences (eg. ‘rough and tumble’ play) – moderate to high difference.

Tasks which males typically outperform females:

• Three-dimentional visual rotation – large difference.
• Two-dimentional visual rotation – small difference.
• Spatial perception – small difference.
• Quantitive and problem solving – small to moderate difference.

Tasks on which females typically outperform males:

• Verbal ability – negligible to small difference.
• Verbal association fluency – moderate difference.
• Speech production – small difference.
• Perceptual speed – moderate difference.

A follow up article by the New Scientist  seems to bring  even these small differences into question.  For example it cites a study published in Neuron which suggests that differences in verbal ability and spatial reasoning are about 50% of the kind of variability we see in height. The article also emphasis that nurture appears to play a larger role then has previously been anticipated, especially during pre-adult stages of development.  For example epigenetic effects can be brought about by the environment which influence the way sex-related genes are expressed, this in turn can the effect the way neurological connections are made in the brain.

Although sex hormones are thought to play a significant role in behaviour, research is a bit iffy. For example attempts to link higher levels of circulating androgens in men to aggression and higher libido have been pretty mixed.  Poor old circulating testosterone doesn’t seem to pack the punch we thought he did. Where sex hormones appear to play more of a role  is during foetal development, where they create the different physiologies of men and women – including different brain physiology. However linking such changes to behavioural differences is proving pretty complicated. They are pretty strongly linked with disease patterns however, and different brain physiologies may explain sex difference in neurological disease.

The two most consistent differences in behaviour based on sex are gender identity and sexual orientation – and of course queers like me keep screwing that up.

As you can see, evidence of sex differences isn’t  a clear cut  as ‘girls like pink, boys like blue’. Indeed, the stuff of  pop psych mythology and horrible dating advice is very hard to demonstrate through research. Even likely  innate differences like temperament and spatial ability  chart on a bell curve. Any guy  who calls women ‘less aggressive’ in a crowded bar, risks a manicured right hook from the bawdy outlier to his left.

So before you go assuming you’re  an expert on how men are from Mars and women from Venus, check the evidence, because you’re most likely full of shit.

Further Reading

• The amazing Australian neuroscientist Cordelia Fine assessing the evidence for gender difference here, in light of her book Delusions of Gender.
• Professors in Psychology Steven Pinker and Elizabeth Spelke debate what little sex difference seems likely given the latest scientific research.
• New Scientist discusses a new theory of why physical differences in brain structure don’t translate to behavioural difference (requires registration).
• A wonderful little article on the ABC about the story of testosterone. 

Rorty’s Neopragmatism

Truth is simply a compliment paid to sentences seen to be paying their way.

– Richard Rorty

He was rightly criticised for his rhetorical flourishes against reason, and sometimes too unconditional support for the Continental philosophers, but I’ve always found Richard Rorty‘s brand of Neopragmatism kind of interesting.

Essentially it views man as limited by his ‘animalness’ so that talk of absolute truth is a rather silly endeavour. Instead we should stick to what works: for inquiry about nature that is science, for the private sphere it is a romantic utilitarianism where absolutist religion is replaced by “polytheistic”  poetry.

For more check out this essay in the New York Times.

Progressive Policing Of Gay Individualism

I’ve written several times on this blog about my views on gay culture, particularly my view that a certain globalised social identity is harmful to gay men.

My position is often misinterpreted, I think because I try to explain too much at once.

Therefore, maybe it is best to summarise my view in a series of points, these are:

• Sexual orientation is an essential predisposition, not a cultural construct.
• However culture frames how we experience the world as gay people.
•  The more homogenised a gay cultural identity,  the less individual someone’s life experience.
• Clone culture is a poor environment for self-creation, creativity and diversity (the death of faggotry).
• When social groups feel both related internally but separated from the norm, they become  ghettoised leading to minority stress  (best shown by exaggerated anger against the ‘heteronormative’ or ‘homophobic’).

I have previously noted that gay organisations, venues and events do not address this problem and are often a major cause.  An added factor is the influence of progressive politics which focus on asserting ‘gay identity’ as a set of political values. It does this by skeptically policing gay figures who dare to value things outside the gay norm.

Take this post on Hitchens Watch which rallies against pro-choice US conservative and lesbian Tammy Bruce for “betraying homosexuals” via her support for traditional conservative positions. Now, I don’t agree with Bruce’s position on these issues, but the idea that she is somehow ‘letting the team down’ by holding values contrary to the gay norm is a very clear display of the kind of policing I’m talking about.

For another example of progressive anti-individualism , check out these responses by Andrew Sullivan and other ‘homocons’ to an attack by Richard Goldstein for holding values counter to what good gay men should.

I’m not a conservative, or a libertarian, nor do I sit comfortably on the “right-wing” but  the idea that an individual’s sexuality should play a role in how they form their political opinion is ludicrous.

Yet, it is another  factor in pushing this stale collective gay male identity which is doing more harm than good.

New Blog: Future Criminals

Just a quick update.

Blogging here tends to involve long rant-like posts which take some time to update on a regular basis. Because of that, I’ve decided to also start a ‘quick post blog’ exploring a personal interest of mine: the interaction of science/technology with the criminal law, called Future Criminals.

I will still be blogging here, but that other blog allows me to regularly update on my topic of interest without having to worry about a lengthy writing time.

Let me know what you think!

The Climate Skeptic To Skeptic Conversion Kit

Since I get into this debate a lot online, I just wanted to archive my particular approach in dealing with climate skeptics.

This is taken from a lengthy Twitter debate by a self described “physicist and philosopher” – which I’m sure means undergrad  physics coupled with a large ego – who seemed to believe anthropogenic global warming was a right wing (yes right wing!) conspiracy occurring in order get money into “Big Pharma” and oil companies (yer.. I’m not sure how either). Anyway, he seemed to quiet down after I laid out these nine pieces of evidence, so I’m going to keep ‘em:

The US Republican Party

..an insurgent outlier — ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition

In their book It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism, centre-left analyst Thomas Mann, and centre-right analyst  Norman Ornstein, both lament the death of discussion, pragmatism and compromise in modern US politics. The problem? Not plain old partisanship but the extreme shifting of one side – the Republican Party- toward radical absolutism. This has led to what the authors call ‘asymmetric polarisation’ where nothing productive can get done and political culture is coarsened. The authors urge voters to begin thinking strategically and start rewarding problem solving over party loyalties, lest the great American democracy collapse.

Nussbaum on Prostitution

Why are there laws against prostitution? All of us, with the exception of the independently wealthy and the unemployed, take money for the use of our body. Professors, factory workers, opera singers, sex workers, doctors, legislators — all do things with parts of their bodies for which others offer them a fee. Some people get good wages and some do not; some have a relatively high degree of control over their working conditions and some have little control; some have many employment options and some have very few. And some are socially stigmatized and some are not. However, the difference between the sex worker and the professor — who takes money for the use of a particularly intimate part of her body, namely her mind — is not the difference between a “good woman” and a “bad woman.” It is, usually, the difference between a prosperous well-educated woman and a poor woman with few employment options.

Susan Haack: Defending Science – Within Reason

I’ve recently read (well..mostly read) Susan Haack‘s amazing book  called Defending Science,Within Reason: Between Scientism and Cynicism. As should be clear from the title, the book is a thorough defence of the exceptional success of scientific inquiry.

Haack, a pragmatist philosopher specialising in epistemology and philosophy of science outlines her horribly named but interesting approach to scientific knowledge called foundeherentism. The author hopes to distance herself from the scientism of extreme logical positivists on one extreme, and the other extreme: the ‘New Cynics’  whose obsession with metaphysical or sociological subjects have led to a severe skepticism, if not rejection of scientific claims. At one point, there is a superb summary of the absurd views of New Cynic figures:

Robert G. Ingersoll

I want to do what little I can to make my country truly free [and little it was], to broaden the intellectual horizon of our people, to destroy the prejudices born of ignorance and fear, to do away with blind worship of the ignoble past, with the idea that all the great and good are dead, that the living are totally depraved, that all pleasures are sins, that sighs and groans are alone pleasing, that thought is dangerous, that intellectual courage is a crime, that cowardice is a virtue, that a certain belief is necessary to secure salvation.

- Robert G. Ingersoll, lawyer and oratory pleaser.

Why Mitigation Is Important

Once again, I got into a bit of back and forth with Heathen Republican on the subject of global warming. Please check out my original lengthy and time consuming exchange in the comments here – because he certainly didn’t appreciate.

Heathen asked the question: “why is the current temperature, the right temperature?”; below is my quick response.

Speaking of ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ temperatures would be a bit silly, but we can certainly compare effects and judge what temperatures are more conductive to human well being.

Abrupt changes in temperature are not like the gradual selection pressures which occurs in ecosystems – they can result in a bottleneck for many plant and animal species and will have wider ecological effects.

Rising sea levels will effect many people who have set up homes along coastal waters. Drought stricken areas of the world will be worsened by an increase in temperature. Higher temperatures mean greater mosquitos and other disease vectors – increasing the spread of diseases like malaria.

Greater CO2 in the atmosphere means more dissolved into oceans which can cause ocean acidification. This coupled with increased heat can cause bleaching of reef systems. In Australia is will likely mean the loss of the Great Barrier Reef.