Holding a door open, and related "benevolent sexist" acts

[ljm2002]

23. Even those scientific facts are misused...

...and the supposed biological effects are very often overstated.

Furthermore, some differences in the brain between the sexes may actually promote similar, rather than different behavior.

From the book "Delusions of Gender" by Cordelia Fine:

"One very striking example of the principle that brain difference can yield behavioral similarity, discussed by De Vries, comes from the prairie vole. In this species, males contribute equally to parenting (excepting, of course, nursing). In female prairie voles, parenting behavior is primed by the hormonal changes of pregnancy. But this leaves a mystery. How do father voles, which experience none of these hormonal changes, come to show paternal behavior? The answer turns out to lie in a part of a region of the brain called the lateral septum, which is involved in the triggering of paternal behavior. This part of the brain is very different in males and females, being much more richly endowed with receptors for the hormone vasopressin in the male, yet this striking sex difference in the brain enables male and female prairie voles to behave the same".

This is just one of many examples in the book which question our easy acceptance of "brain differences" to explain gender.

I will also point out that somehow, when we say that females use the "verbal" part of the brain, we do not then translate that to mean that men will just naturally not achieve the same heights in literature that women do; while conversely, it is often argued that since men tend to use the "spatial" part of the brain, it follows that females will not attain the heights in math and science that men do.