The big hope derived from the brilliant work of Fine and other scientists is, that at least the scientific community will gradually cease to support this utter irrational bullshit theories (or should I say wishful thinking) about radical hardwired sex differences. Wouldn’t that already be quite a feat? Eventually, the common public also started to accept that the world is not flat and phlogiston is a myth, but first the scientific community had to come to a rational consensus on this matters.

I think half the issue is that many new parents are completely shocked to learn that kids come with their own personalities, and are not, in fact, blank slates.* Which throws them for a bit of a loop in terms of how they expected this whole raising children thing to go in general. The first few years anyway.

Take that revelation, mix in a bunch of unspoken (and often unconscious) anxiety about gender conformity, and then add a dash of lack of understanding of child development,** how the brain works, and how stereotypes actually work – and of course you have new parents engaging in a lot of confirmation bias and and assuming that their daughter liking pink is just as innate as her stubbornness.

*perhaps I am wrong and most new parents know this already? but I’ve had several tell me they didn’t – and they tend to be the ones that are also convinced that most everything else their child does is therefore genetically determined….

**children can generally identify gender – and gendered behavior – several months – a good year even – before they learn the word “pink.” It seems to me this ought to be considered when discussing toddlers’ behavior and whether or not any gendered behavior they exhibit is rooted in genetics or learned conformity.

My favorite factoid from Echidne’s series is the fact that a study that tested 3-dimensional visualization didn’t show higher scores for men when they described the skill to the test-takers as something that would help dress designers and interior decorators.

You’re wrong about that, too.

As for this future you’re predicting where women dominate “broken Xs”…that’s not the goal of feminism, or any of the feminists writing for this site, so quit acting as though you’re handing us a cookie every time you mention it.

I’m not sure what the point is behind your sort-of-flattering comments about men’s “broken Xes.” Is this sweet-talk, so I’ll ignore your utter lack of logic? If so: not working.

While there may be differences between “male” and “female” brains: 1) these are not innate and biological as much as learned and shaped over the course of an individual’s life and 2) the differences *across* male brains and across female brains are just as significant–if not more so–than those between single-sex groups.

If you haven’t read Fine, you probably ought not to continue to critique her science.

Is it because you are afraid that if you say there are differences then the door on any hope for equality of rights/wages/and all the rest is gone? The ADA NEVER argued that there aren’t differences; we are differently abled. But the differences in and of themselves should not be used to stop a person from going to her fullest potential.

I wasn’t being smart, sarcastic, or sexist when I marveled at the fact that you would deny gender differences when it should be obvious that the gender differences that exist favor women in the present and future. Okay, I was being sarcastic about the fluffy slippers because, when it comes to innate differences, it’s not us broken Xes that have the edge.

We don’t hunt mastodons anymore – but communication skills are increasing vital. We aren’t needed to move rocks and tree limbs by main strength, but the ability to do mentally challenging, detailed tasks over extended periods of time are increasingly valued – the sorts of work that men, by their mental and physical make up, just aren’t that good at doing – particularly when compared to women.

Look for the engineering and computer programming of the future to be increasingly dominated by women. As an engineer that started out when men did, in fact, hunt mastodon, I can tell you the rise of women in technical fields (architecture, engineering, etc) is only just beginning.

Women make up the majority of the high school graduates in this country, a large majority of the college graduates of this country. It’s not by accident and it probably isn’t some sneaky patriarchal trick to lure you all into a sense of false security.

Human brains, male and female, evolved to maximize chances of survival during a period of time when very different skills and abilities were needed. Do you think it is coincidental that ADHD tends to be a boys disease? For a hunter, the ability NOT to be lulled into concentrating on any one thing is a plus – for someone trying to learn physics, not so much. Men’s peripheral vision tends to be better than women’s peripheral vision. Big whoop. Who has better detailed visual acuity? Better color discrimination? Not us broken Xes.

So find all the authors who echo what you want to believe. But cognitive science continues fleshing out an increasingly detailed understanding of the human brains (plural – for female and male) and their impact on the individual.

Is behavior determined by this? No. But will abilities be affected by it? Absolutely.