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It's interesting watching the conversation over sex differences take shape. On the one hand, we have a group of people that say even though males and females are biologically different there are NO differences in the way we think or perform. At the other extreme you have the "girls are nurturing, males are war-like" argument. What it really is is a combination of both nature and nurture. The effects of testosterone and estrogen are well known. Brain plasticity is a marvelous thing. Add to that 'developmental windows' where certain behaviors and predilections become our (as in each individual person's) baseline behavior and you have a fantastic spectrum of humanity. Average people will tend more toward stereotypical behavior, because the stereotypes define average. Those at either end of the spectrum may be a hyper stereotype or a stereotype defying unique one-of-a-kind individual. Don't hate it, embrace it.

I found the below links a week ago, just browsing for 'sex differences':

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-how-and-why-sex-diff...

http://sugarandslugs.wordpress.com/2011/02/13/sex-difference...

http://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/sexdifferences.aspx



It's always sad to witness this need to flatten things on a space of two extrema. Often it's a complex combination that can't be pinned down neither in space nor time.


I really, really like the Genderbread Person for this reason.


Never heard of it. Pretty nice. I'd just change the 'and' in sexual orientations since people desire and feeling can target different types.

rapid picture link ps: http://i.imgur.com/t7Lfh4p.jpg


It actually oversimplifies all four dimensions, if you can even claim with any surety that there are exactly four dimensions. There are things like "third gender" [1] and there are demisexuals [2] and there are asexuals and so on.

What I like about it is that it's just slightly too big as a concept presentation (though it feels like it isn't) and mostly evokes the recognition that There Are Things You Didn't Know About.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_gender

[2] http://www.asexuality.org/wiki/index.php?title=Demisexual


here's another link, just popped today:

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2013/131122/ncomms3771/full/nco...

"This study provides unequivocal evidence that sex-biased gene expression in the adult human brain is widespread in terms of both the number of genes and range of brain regions involved. We also show that in some specific cases, molecular differences are likely to have functional consequences relevant to human disease and finally that sex biases in expression may reflect sex-biased gene regulatory structures"




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