[maximusprime]

I expected people would take issue with it. Unfortunately some people really really want it to be the case that girls and boys are only different because of their environment.

Given the way evolution works, doesn't that seem ridiculously unlikely?

Given the way we evolved to have clearly defined roles, and how we have obvious physical differences to enable that, doesn't it seem pretty obvious that we evolved our brain power differently also? eg men lots of brain power for spacial awareness for hunting etc.... women caring nuturing, far more brain power for language, communication etc

The other funny thing is that it's usually the same set of people who firmly believe that you are born homosexual, and that you can't be made homosexual by your upbringing. They believe sexual orientation to be biological. But at the same time claim that being 'girl' or 'boy' is something that you've been taught by culture??

[sunahsuh]

Your grandparent post took the argument farther than just saying that evolution has given men and women certain tendencies or proclivities (as an aggregate, allowing for the massive range of individual differences that are possible). You flat-out claim that men and women have brains that are hard-wired a certain way. If there's anything evolution has given us as humans, it's brains that are amazingly adaptable and plastic. Research has shown that things like basic perception differ across cultures (see, for instance, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%BCller-Lyer_illusion). You make an apparently logical assumption based on what you understand of evolution and biology (and how the human brain works) but I proffer that there's a fair amount of evidence that those assumptions might be wrong. (For instance, we have this recent study questioning the widely-held belief that men are by nature better at spatial reasoning: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/08/women-math-science...)

> But at the same time claim that being 'girl' or 'boy' is something that you've been taught by culture??

You misunderstand the argument. The argument is that what it means to be a boy or a girl has been taught by culture. That being said, I do personally believe there's more room for inquiry into the nurture side of the equation and that the "entirely biological" argument is something that's currently politically expedient to counter the people claiming that it's entirely a personal choice. On a personal note though, my earliest memory of having a crush on another girl was in 2nd grade and my uber-religious parents certainly weren't nurturing such notions in me (nor was anything else in my environment explicitly).

[bermanoid]

You make an apparently logical assumption based on what you understand of evolution and biology (and how the human brain works) but I proffer that there's a fair amount of evidence that those assumptions might be wrong. (For instance, we have this recent study questioning the widely-held belief that men are by nature better at spatial reasoning: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/08/women-math-science...)

The problem is, there's a "fair amount of evidence" on both sides, and it's universally shoddy research.

On the "innate difference" side, the most that can usually be done is to show that a discrepancy exists, and that it exists broadly in a statistical sense, argue that it exists broadly enough to posit that the effect is at least partially biological.

On the "no innate difference" side, the most that can usually be done is to pick out a couple of instances where the claimed effect doesn't exist, argue that if it doesn't exist everywhere then it's not real, and claim that this exception proves that it can't possibly be biological at all.

The "innate difference" folks then reject the debunkings as relying on cherry-picked data (in some cases this is fair, in some cases probably not, and unfortunately the level of statistical rigor in most papers on both sides is horrendous, so it's hard to say for sure), the "no innate difference" people disagree, and nothing is ever resolved.

The problem, of course, is that there's absolutely no realistic way to do a study that removes the effect of people growing up in a world that has the current set of gender roles, so both sides are right, in a sense: none of the "innate difference" papers actually prove that the differences are primarily biological, and none of the debunkings prove that they're not.

So everybody falls back on their priors. And our priors on these matters are pretty naive, more based on emotion and the minimal set of observations that we each personally have than anything else. Women that are good at math, feminists, and those that generally side with nurture assume that the burden of proof is on the "nature" folks to prove that there is an innate difference (because it's "obvious" that men and women are equal intellectually), and the nature types assume the burden of proof goes the other way (because they look at the observed statistical discrepancies and assume that they should be taken at face value until debunked). So we all end up arguing over what set of assumptions is more reasonable, throwing meaningless references to studies at each other as if the studies actually prove anything, which they usually don't.

It's quite the mess. I would ask, at least, that everyone on either side of this try to think of at least a few experiments that would actually change your mind on these matters. They're actually kind of tough to come up with, because it's so difficult to separate culture from the equation...

[einhverfr]

On top of that, you have an epistemological problem. How can you separate culture and biology in something like this without repeating the same experiment in a wide range of people in different types of cultures?

[lubutu]

Is it not possible that it's a bit of both? Given this scenario, which is clearly very likely, enforcing gender stereotypes could dissuade a child from walking a certain road down which their nature would have led them.

Boys and girls are naturally different, yes, but as demonstrated by the many women in science, that doesn't mean that all females want to grow up to become hairdressers or models.

Stereotypes do affect a child's development. Please don't limit their potential.

[maximusprime]

Yes it's obviously both. It's genetics, and sometimes bad stereotyping parents/upbringing.

[einhverfr]

One interesting experiment is to try HARD to create a realistic person of the other gender in an environment like Second Life. It's remarkably difficult but once you do, it's quite an interesting experience to see how socially conditioned so many things are.