I'm not even taking this conversation seriously in the first instance, since you believe that gender differences in biology and psychology can somehow be drastically reduced. It really is a laughable proposition.
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What Gender Is Your Brain?
- Thread starter Bastet
- Start date
No it's not. It's exactly the same as sunstone said.
The fastest women in the world are way, way faster than the average man in a race. Even the average well-trained women can outrun the average not-trained man. The speed of the genders is basically two slightly offset overlapping bell curves.
So you're openly admitting that the 5% figure does not apply in any way in relation to gender differences in speed or strength? I should hope so.
You have a brilliant talent for misconstruing what people say. You should cultivate it even further. There might be an opening in the field of comedy for such talent.
Again non-sequiter. And no; that's no where near what sunstone said. Sunstone gave a proposition which has been arbitrarily defined and attached a conclusive number to it: 5%.
There's a a lot of strawman arguments used in your second paragraph I'm afraid. Please stay on point. We're discussing the proportion of men who could beat "the fastest women" in the world.
Why do you think it's a "laughable" proposition?
If societies had different traditional roles for members of the same gender to account for physical and/or psychological differences between them, I believe those roles would differ from each other as much as prescribed gender roles for men usually differ from those for women in many societies. It's just that such distinct roles seem to be mainly emphasized due to differences in gender, not physical or psychological ability.
That simply is not true. I did not give 5% as a "conclusive number", but as a hypothetical number. I am beginning to wonder whether you are either someone who does not read well, or simply a troll.
Well, perhaps stop misconstruing the facts, that would be a start. Where did you get the 5% figure from mmhm? It's a simple question which clearly irks you. Is it fact-based or a fictional example? No need to get your knickers in a twist as we Brits say.
I clearly indicated that the 5% figure was for the purposes of illustration. You then took it as anally as possible by lying that I offered the figure as a hard fact. Man up and admit the fault is yours.
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It's laughable because it's a failure to recognise the eternal differences that exist. I can argue this at length but the reality is very self-evident. Discouragement of girls from bodybuilding is not a cause of female muscle weakness no more than discouraging tampons from boys is a cause of their lack of menstrual fluid. There is hard science behind both biological and psychological differences. Denying it is not an option.
But you have used it as an actual argument, do you see the problem with that?
I'll give you an example for an argument as to why Sunstone is so violent: As an illustrative example, Sunstone beats his mother 20% of the time.
The point is this; making up figures is ok, as long as you don't argue using them. Because once you have used them, then it forms part if the argument.
So far in this thread, you have misconstrued both what Penumbra wrote and what I wrote. Neither one of us has said that there are no differences between the sexes, but you insist on saying that is what we said.
I don't think anyone is saying that there are absolutely no biological and/or psychological differences between males and females; however, some societies blow those differences out of proportion and construct many seemingly arbitrary roles around their perception of said differences.
Also, there are female bodybuilders, so I don't see how that is at all comparable to the biological impossibility in your analogy (i.e., boys menstruating).
Not really; your arguments were distinct from the outset. Your invocation of the 5% figure as part of the argument was without merit, as was your appeal to the shape of a certain graph.
Penumbra on the other hand, used a series of non-sequiter arguments, including challenging me to run a mile as part of the arbitrary proposition which you have outlined.
I can no longer take your misunderstandings seriously enough to warrant any more of my time. Have a good day.
I know; what is being said is that those differences can be drastically reduced, which is a completely baseless assumption. To what extent do you think gender differences in psychology and biology can be reduced? And what evidence is there that such a reduction can take place?
Yes, there are female bodybuilders, unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it), the female blood circulation remains different to the male's, that's not going to change by handing dumbells to girls, at least it hasn't been demonstrated as such. You can't cause the average female to have the same muscle make up or fibre as the average male no less than one can start to cause periodic bleeding in males.
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Perhaps it's because of your successive errors? I don't think they are deserving of anyone's time, including yourself.
It's both. There are differences, societies realize that, and react to it. They react differently. Most if not all also react to it in such a way that enlarges the already existing differences. These differences would have been less if it were not for what society enforces or encourages regarding each gender.
In short, you're partially right, in that society is reacting that way because of there being differences, but that doesn't address what their reaction contributes to the issue, and it doesn't address the clearly differing standards (with sometimes differing motivations behind them) in regards to just how much differences are there to begin with, which would most definitely affect how they would react, and thus affect the differences.
In addition to all that, part of the differences between males and females are generalities rather than absolutes that apply to every case. There are exceptions to the norm in each gender. Often, if not most of the time, societies neglect that.
I'm on point, yet you've barely addressed my points. I pointed out the drastic differences in character between women in different cultures and men in different cultures, to show how culture can shape a person. I pointed to examples of female MMA fighters (and could just have easily pointed to other types of people) when you insisted that gender differences in physiology and psychology cannot be reduced. Your arguments have been picked apart by responders in this thread.
And physically for men and women, are you seriously taking Sunstone's 5% number literally? His point was clearly that training and individual physiology have a much larger impact on running ability than mere physical sex. Top female track athletes can regularly run sub-five minute miles, with the best running close to 4-minute miles, while the average population of males wouldn't be anywhere near that. Countless well-trained women in the world can run marathons, whereas most guys (and girls) if they were to try to run a marathon wouldn't even come close to finishing.
Here are some stats:
Take the U.S. army physical fitness test as an example. They need to do push-ups, situps, and running, with a minimum score of 60 out of 100 in each exercise, with the scores being adjusted for age and sex. Men need to do more pushups and run faster to meet their minimum requirements than women, while the situp test is sex-neutral because there isn't much difference in average physiology there.
In 2009, 75% of people that wanted to join the armed forces were ineligible, with obesity being the leading cause, presumably for both men and women. Of the 25% that were eligible, only 35% could pass the 60-point threshold for the the physical fitness test on the first day. That's something like 10% of total applicants being able to pass, assuming that most of the obese and otherwise ineligible people wouldn't be able to pass. Edit: here's the source.
Looking at the male chart for my age range, I can score a 90 on all three of the pushup test, the situp test, and the running test, which not only would allow me to breeze past the minimum 60-point male requirements, it would earn me a physical fitness badge for excellence. And I've never even been a varsity athlete of any sort; I'm just in shape and did martial arts. Virtually any woman that I kickboxed against that's been there for a couple of months could pass the male army test (I mean, our warm-up in the beginning of a training session to get our blood flowing involved scoring a 77 on the male age 22-26 pushup test, among other things), and I'm sure most women in my high school and college sports teams could pass as well. In other words, quite a significant chunk of reasonably athletic women could pass these tests that most men (and women) are failing.
Lifestyle and training clearly matter far more here than sex. The overlap of genders is enormous, even though testosterone does indeed give men some advantages (and women advantages in other areas, like average flexibility). A person who is in good shape, without major injuries, that practices on a regular basis can absolutely crush these tests regardless of gender that most people are apparently incapable of readily passing.
The above set of paragraphs covered physiology, how about psychology?
The number of women involved with math, science, and engineering at academic and professional levels was extremely low in the 1500's, 1600's, 1700's, 1800's, and the first half of the 1900's. Today, women are more likely than men to go to college in the developed world, and the percentage in science and engineering has particularly grown.
Post-Secondary Education:
Engineering and Science in particular:
Now imagine if those charts stretched back to 1866 or 1766 rather than around 1966. Women would be much-less represented, and negligible on the science and engineering chart. Many people having this discussion a century or more ago wouldn't have thought that a change like this is possible and continues to grow, because culture changed so much and once-held beliefs about genders were shown be largely exaggerated.
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