men are not from mars and gender division is fatal

[Jenefer]

I don't think modern science supports this view . I feel instead men and women are very much equal and psychological difference is person specific. Men are better versions of woman may be.But women can always mature and grow beyond them . Instead I like view of one doc from India that MAN IS EXTENSION OF WOMAN.

[Gerd]

If men were better versions of women it would make me worry deeply about the state of women. :)

But there are natural differences between men and women, and our live experiences will always differ to an extent thus shaping different views in some aspects, the key however is not to play up one perspective over the other.

[Eva]

Men & women are a lot more similar than they are different. However, there are differences *on average*, deriving from both biological and cultural differences in experience that shape brain & behavior. It can be helpful to know about them (to model people better when their experiences & expectations are unlike your own), but it's not helpful to declare that "this is the way men are" and "this is the way women are" and then expect every person to fit in the right box. When reading a description of how men & women communicate & respond to one another, my husband and I are more likely to identify with the description if we swap the genders. Understanding general trends is useful; noticing specifics of the case you're looking at is critical, especially when they don't fit the general mold.

[Jenefer]

Gerd wrote: "If men were better versions of women it would make me worry deeply about the state of women. :)

But there are natural differences between men and women, and our live experiences will always differ..."
No natural differences just illusions to be deluded...
x and y are not dissimilar . In fact they are so similar that y is called x with missing leg. If that is correct then there remain no difference in blue print . if blue print is same how can the structure erected on the basis of this can be different. Only difference must be in arrangement and for a capable mind that is no difference at all . so to say man is just the woman with clitoris enlarged as penis. Vagina stitched to be scrotum and ovaries dropped down from the tummy as testis........(Ref-man is the extension of woman)

[Denise]

Having taken a number of mathematics and science courses, I would say that differences between women and men is only in whether each think they should be able to do the material.

Having been in CrossFit and sports for awhile, the differences between women and men amounts to how quickly their bodies are able to build muscle. Women can be just as competitive and driven as men regardless of muscle building ability.

Studies have also shown that men are just as capable of nurturing and caring for children. And women are just as capable of running highly successful businesses, corporations, or becoming effective politicians/leaders.

Psychologically, there are general statements that can be made about genders, however, there is enough variation that no trait should be seen as absolute.

[Graig]

Being different is not necessarily a bad thing. There is value in being different. There is a special creativity in a constant combining of differences. It leads to continuous growth. When you include the personal factor, you can decide how different.

[Mima]

There's no better or worse neither extension one of another.
I think that women and men ARE how they are.
From my point of view this book aims to help better understanding between both so (love-) life is better and longer for both of them.
Last but not least : we all have a specific amount of Venus and Mars in us like Yin and Yang are part of a whole.

[Kathy]

Sometimes I wonder if men and women are in the same genetic pool or....? Were we all put here as some gigantic experiment that is, unfortunately, failing.

When I see a really good relationship, I can tell that either the couple have just got the "rules" written down on their hand or they truly understand that there are differences and work through them as they rise to the surface.

In my 60+ years it has been a great pleasure for me to see a great many changes in some cultures that show promise toward gender equality. But we have not come as far as we should have "baby". (For those too young, Virginia Slim's commercial.)

The book can be very humorous for those who want a good laugh and are comfortable that differences in the genders can be worked through; that we can all just get along, despite the different perspectives.

Looking at these generalizations as a reflection of some cold hard facts around the world these types of misunderstandings among genders have lead to serious violence and oppression.

I have never lived in a time where there was true gender equality. Women and men still struggle to "get it." Globally some cultures dominated by one gender are so intimidated by these differences they feel the need to dominate with oppression and abuse.

I agree with Graig that there is something special when the combining of the differences does lead to a better relationship or heightened creativity. The tragedy of the world is that looking globally this kind of blend is very rare.

And let's none of tell ourselves we have not once said of the other gender "What planet are you from?"

[Abbas]

I think to say that men and women are the same and "equal" is somewhat of a delusion. Although Mascuiline and Feminine values differ even within the same gender, the "trends" as some put it are far more common to simply disregard as "person-specific".

I think the main reason people insist on refusing the notion that men and women are different is because they view it as an insult to one of the genders, and they don't adopt a view they feel is insulting or belittling.

Personally I think the notion started out of denial or pseudo-idealism. Or some mixture of both.

[Jenefer]

in pursuit of the truth many shockers wiil be awaiting

[Tom]

The Differences between Men and Women is a very interesting topic. From the Military Infantry, to American Ninja Warrior women are proving themselves physically. To understand our similarities, it would be easier to acknowledge our differences. These differences have nothing to do with weakness or intelligence, but the differences show the different strengths.

I am commenting as a computer nerd, not a medical expert, but I think it is a fun topic to study. I read the book Men are from Mars back in the 90's because my wife thought it would be a good idea. I did, but when I got finished, she had all these excuses for not reading it. It really bothered me, because it was a group effort, with "me" being the group. At the present, we have been married almost 20 years and we argue less as we get older and act more as a team now. At first, I thought I had married a person from Venus. Example: I have no idea why a woman would wear a pair of shoes to astonish other women, even though they hurt as much as wearing porcupine shoes.

If we fall into the same trap of the people before us, we will not be able to advance into the future properly. When you get to my (REF.IV) below, each gender should be represented in medical studies, because we have physiological differences. One of the problems with cancer and heart study is, we have only been studying men in the past. This has been a grave mistake for women.

*****1. Our Brains are wire differently. (REF.I)
"Male brains have more connections within hemispheres to optimize motor skills, whereas female brains are more connected between hemispheres to combine analytical and intuitive thinking."

*****2. Our Sexuality differs greatly. (REF.II)
"All people followed the four stages of sexual arousal: excitement, plateau, orgasm, and resolution. More recent work has shown that men and women differ dramatically in the nature of their sexuality. Compared to women, men masturbate more, use more pornography, are more reactive to visual cues, and experience sexual desire more spontaneously. Women on the other hand, are less likely to become spontaneously sexually aroused and their sexual desire is much more reactive to their surrounding circumstances. For example, the quality of a woman's relationship with a potential sexual partner greatly affects her feelings of sexual attraction. In this way, science supports the cliché that women like to be wined and dined and men like sexy outfits."

*****3. Men die 5 yrs sooner on average. (REF.III)
"Men are much less likely than women to look after their health and see physicians. They’re 25 percent less likely to have visited a health-care provider in the past year, and almost 40 percent more likely to have skipped recommended cholesterol screenings, according to the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. As stereotype would have it, nagging from women is the main reason men ever get their health checked out.
But what’s no laughing matter are the statistics on men’s poorer health outcomes: U.S. men are 1.5 times more likely than women to die from heart disease, cancer and respiratory diseases, according to U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. And they die, on average, five years earlier than women."

****4. Women aren't properly represented in scientific studies. (REF.IV)
"With all the hype about personalized medicine—one day, doctors will use patients' genomes to tailor treatments—one would hope that the medical community already had a decent grip on differences between the sexes. After all, says Teresa Woodruff, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern University, "You really can't get to personalized medicine until you at least split the population in half." Unfortunately, that hasn't happened yet. Last month, Woodruff co-authored one of three related editorials in Nature illuminating the now decades-long sex bias in biomedicine, which leads doctors to preferentially study diseases and test drugs in males. It's a practice that not only puts women at risk, Woodruff argues, but also limits the scope of our scientific knowledge."

REFERENCES
REF.I (How Men's Brains Are Wired Differently than Women's)
http://www.scientificamerican.com/art...

REF.II (Does Sexuality differ from Men to Women)
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/h...

REF.III (Why do Men Die earlier)
https://www.apa.org/monitor/2011/06/m...

REF.IV (Women aren't properly represented in scientific studies)
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_...

[Kathy]

Gerd wrote: "If men were better versions of women it would make me worry deeply about the state of women. :)

But there are natural differences between men and women, and our live experiences will always differ..."

Our life experiences and the times we have these experiences. I was working, a few years ago, with a woman considerably younger than me. She was married to a man who was more my age. He was always saying how he just loved the show "Mad Men" and this young woman liked it too. I told her it was a hideous show and that since I had practically lived this show (and not in a pleasant way) I was hardly eager to watch my past unfold on television.

She was surprised, but interested and asked what I meant. She had attended all the best schools, and had moved rapidly up the ladder of success and found no examples of any discrimination. (Here I am going to be very catty and say she was not only extremely smart, but extremely beautiful.) But different times..... Different experiences.....

If anything we have moved to a more classist, or even ageist status rather than a gender discrimination environment. The young are "too young to understand", the middle aged are tired and overworked and constantly worrying about their lives and their employment, and the older generation are "too old" so they are just ignored. Sort of "won't these people just die and get out of our way" kind of deal.

While I still consider myself young enough to offer to help an older woman or man across the street, some younger people come along and offer to help me!!!! It is like the first time a woman is called "ma'm" by someone. I was only 19 when this happened to me at a gas station. I was shocked and mortified!!! I don't think there is an equivalent experience for males....

[Jenefer]

Kathy wrote: "Gerd wrote: "If men were better versions of women it would make me worry deeply about the state of women. :)

But there are natural differences between men and women, and our live experiences will ..."
There might be, but the males must be bound by social rule not to expose

[Topazthecat]

Below is a presentation by Eastern College Christian and Gender Scholar psychology professor Dr.Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen which talks about how much abundant consistent psychological research studies find few gender differences,and much more overlap similarities between them.I don't have a link to this article because I can't find it online anymore.



Trinity 2007

Opposite Sexes or Neighboring Sexes?
C.S. Lewis, Dorothy L. Sayers, and
the Psychology of Gender

Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen


Gender and Modern Social Science


C. S. Lewis was no fan of the emerging social sciences. He saw practitioners of the social sciences mainly as lackeys of technologically-minded natural scientists, bent on reducing individual freedom and moral accountability to mere epiphenomena of natural processes (See Lewis 1943 and 1970 b). And not surprisingly (given his passion for gender-essentialist archetypes), aside from a qualified appreciation of some aspects of Freudian psychoanalysis (See Lewis 1952 (Book III, Chapter 4) and 1969). “Carl Jung was the only philosopher [sic] of the Viennese school for whose work [Lewis] had much respect” (Sayer 102).



But the social sciences concerned with the psychology of gender have since shown that Sayers was right, and Lewis and Jung were wrong: women and men are not opposite sexes but neighboring sexes—and very close neighbors indeed. There are, it turns out, virtually no large, consistent sex differences in any psychological traits and behaviors, even when we consider the usual stereotypical suspects: that men are more aggressive, or just, or rational than women, and women are more empathic, verbal, or nurturing than men.



When differences are found, they are always average—not absolute—differences. And in virtually all cases the small, average—and often decreasing—difference between the sexes is greatly exceeded by the amount of variability on that trait within members of each sex. Most of the “bell curves” for women and men (showing the distribution of a given psychological trait or behavior) overlap almost completely. So it is naïve at best (and deceptive at worst) to make even average—let alone absolute—pronouncements about essential archetypes in either sex when there is much more variability within than between the sexes on all the trait and behavior measures for which we have abundant data.


This criticism applies as much to C. S. Lewis and Carl Jung as it does to their currently most visible descendent, John Gray, who continues to claim (with no systematic empirical warrant) that men are from Mars and women are from Venus (Gray 1992).


And what about Lewis’s claims about the overriding masculinity of God? Even the late Carl Henry (a theologian with impeccable credentials as a conservative evangelical) noted a quarter of a century ago that:Masculine and feminine elements are excluded from both the Old Testament and New Testament doctrine of deity. The God of the Bible is a sexless God. When Scripture speaks of God as “he” the pronoun is primarily personal (generic) rather than masculine (specific); it emphasizes God’s personal nature—and, in turn, that of the Father, Son and Spirit as Trinitarian distinctions in contrast to impersonal entities... Biblical religion is quite uninterested in any discussion of God’s masculinity or femininity... Scripture does not depict God either as ontologically masculine or feminine. (Henry 1982, 159–60)




However well-intentioned, attempts to read a kind of mystical gendering into God—whether stereotypically masculine, feminine, or both—reflect not so much careful biblical theology as “the long arm of Paganism” (Martin 11). For it is pagan worldviews, the Jewish commentator Nahum Sarna reminds us, that are “unable to conceive of any primal creative force other than in terms of sex... [In Paganism] the sex element existed before the cosmos came into being and all the gods themselves were creatures of sex. On the other hand, the Creator in Genesis is uniquely without any female counterpart, and the very association of sex with God is utterly alien to the religion of the Bible” (Sarna 76).



And if the God of creation does not privilege maleness or stereotypical masculinity, neither did the Lord of redemption. Sayers’s response to the cultural assumption that women were human-not-quite-human has become rightly famous:Perhaps it is no wonder that women were first at the Cradle and last at the Cross. They had never known a man like this Man—there never has been such another. A prophet and teacher who never nagged at them, never flattered or coaxed or patronised; who never made arch jokes about them, never treated them either as “The women, God help us!” or “The ladies, God bless them!; who rebuked without querulousness and praised without condescension; who took their questions and arguments seriously; who never mapped out their sphere for them, never urged them to be feminine or jeered at them for beingfemale; who had no axe to grind or no uneasy male dignity to defend; who took them as he found them and was completely unself-conscious. There is not act, no sermon, no parable in the whole Gospel which borrows its pungency from female perversity; nobody could possibly guess from the words and deeds of Jesus that there was anything “funny” about women’s nature. (Sayers 1975, 46)



It is quite likely that Lewis’s changing views on gender owed something to the intellectual and Christian ties that he forged with Dorothy L. Sayers. And indeed, in 1955—two years before her death, Lewis confessed to Sayers that he had only “dimly realised that the old-fashioned way... of talking to all young women was v[ery] like an adult way of talking to young boys. It explains,” he wrote, “not only why some women grew up vapid, but also why others grew up (if we may coin the word) viricidal [i.e., wanting to kill men]” (Lewis 2007, 676; Lewis’s emphasis). The Lewis who in his younger years so adamantly had defended the doctrine of gender essentialism was beginning to acknowledge the extent to which gendered behavior is socially conditioned. In another letter that same year, he expressed a concern to Sayers that some of the first illustrations for the Narnia Chronicles were a bit too effeminate. “I don’t like either the ultra feminine or the ultra masculine,” he added. “I prefer people” (Lewis 2007, 639; Lewis’s emphasis).



Dorothy Sayers surely must have rejoiced to read this declaration. Many of Lewis’s later readers, including myself, wish that his shift on this issue had occurred earlier and found its way into his better-selling apologetic works and his novels for children and adults. But better late than never. And it would be better still if those who keep trying to turn C. S. Lewis into an icon for traditionalist views on gender essentialism and gender hierarchy would stop mining his earlier works for isolated proof-texts and instead read what he wrote at every stage of his life.


Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen is Professor of Psychology and Philosophy at Eastern University, St. Davids, Pennsylvania.



This essay originally was presented as the Tenth Annual Warren Rubel Lecture on Christianity and Higher Learning at Valparaiso University on 1 February 2007.


The Cresset


Bibliography


Evans, C. Stephen. Wisdom and Humanness in Psychology: Prospects for a Christian Approach. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1989.
Gray, John. Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus. New York: HarperCollins, 1992.
Hannay, Margaret. C. S. Lewis. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1981.
Henry, Carl F. H. God, Revelation, and Authority. Vol. V. Waco, Texas: Word, 1982.
Lewis, C. S. The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Vol. III. Walter Hooper, ed. San Francisco:
HarperSanFrancisco, 2007.
_____. The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1964.
_____. The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Vol. I: 1905–1931. Walter Hooper, ed. San Francisco:
HarperSanFrancisco, 2004a.
_____. The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Vol. II: 1931–1949. Walter Hooper, ed. San Francisco:
HarperSanFrancisco, 2004b.
_____. “On Three Ways of Writing for Children,”[1952] Reprinted in Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories, ed., Walter Hooper, 22–34. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975.
_____. “Priestesses in the Church?” [1948]. Reprinted in God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, ed. Walter Hooper, 234–39. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970a.
_____. “The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment,”[1954]. Reprinted in God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, ed. Walter Hooper, 287–300. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970b.
_____. “Psychoanalysis and Literary Criticism,”[1942]. Reprinted in Selected Literary Essays, ed. Walter Hooper, 286–300. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1969.
_____. [N. W. Clerk, pseudo.] A Grief Observed. London: Faber and Faber, 1961.
_____. The Four Loves. London: Geoffrey Bles, 1960.
_____. Till We Have Faces. London: Geoffrey Bles, 1956.
_____. Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life. London: Collins, 1955.
_____. Mere Christianity. London: Collins, 1952.
_____. That Hideous Strength. London: John Lane the Bodley Head, 1945.
_____. The Abolition of Man. Oxford: Oxford University, 1943.
_____. A Preface to Paradise Lost. Oxford: Oxford University, 1942.
The Cresset
_____. Perelandra. London: The Bodley Head, 1942.
Martin, Faith. “Mystical Masculinity: The New Question Facing Women,” Priscilla Papers, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Winter 1998), 6–12.
Reynolds, Barbara. Dorothy L. Sayers: Her Life and Soul. New York: St. Martins, 1993.
Sarna, Nahum M. Understanding Genesis: The Heritage of Biblical Israel. New York: Schocken, 1966.
Sayer, George. Jack: C. S. Lewis and His Times. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1988.
Sayers, Dorothy L. “The Human-Not-Quite-Human,”[1946]. Reprinted in Dorothy L. Sayers, Are Women
Human?, 37–47. Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity, 1975.
Sayers, Dorothy L. Gaudy Night. London: Victor Gollancz, 1935.
Sterk, Helen. “Gender and Relations and Narrative in a Reformed Church Setting.” In After Eden: Facing the Challenge of Gender Reconciliation, ed., Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen, 184–221. Grand Rapids:

Eerdmans, 1993.
Copyright © 2007 Valparaiso University Press www.valpo.edu/cresset

[Topazthecat]

Sword between the Sexes?, A: C. S. Lewis and the Gender Debates - Page 188 - Google Books Result
books.google.com/books?isbn=1441212671

Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen - 2010 - Religion

C. S. Lewis and the Gender Debates Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen ... indicates that women and men, boys and girls, are overwhelmingly more alike than different

[Topazthecat]

I have an excellent book from 1979 written by 2 parent child development psychologists Dr. Wendy Schemp Matthews and award winning psychologist from Columbia University, Dr.Jeane Brooks-Gunn, called He & She How Children Develop Their Sex Role Identity.




They thoroughly demonstrate with tons of great studies and experiments by parent child psychologists that girl and boy babies are actually born more alike than different with very few differences but they are still perceived and treated systematically very different from the moment of birth on by parents and other adult care givers. They go up to the teen years.



They also show that surveys show that boys are overwhelmingly preferred over girls,(sadly nothing has changed and sexist woman-hating,girl-hating Tee shirts that say( I'm Too Pretty For Homework So I Let My Brother Do It For Me) (and other sexist anti-female ads,pornography,etc do too) like these both reflect and contribute to this injustice.They also explain that when people guess if a pregnant woman is having a girl or a boy,and they list a whole bunch of false unproven sexist, gender myth,gender stereotyped,old wives tales,that assign all negative characteristics to a woman if they think she's having a girl,and the imagined girls or given all of the negative characteristics.



For example they say that author Elana Belotti(1977) explained these examples, The man and woman each take hold of one end of a wishbone and pull it apart.If the longest part comes away in the man's hand,the baby will be a boy. If you suddenly ask a pregnant woman what she has in her hand and she looks at her right hand first ,she will have a boy;if she looks at her left hand it will be a girl.If the mother's belly is bigger on the right-hand side a boy will be born,and also if her right breast is bigger than her left,or if her right foot is more restless.



If a woman is placid during pregnancy she will have a boy,but if she is bad-tempered or cries a lot,she will have a girl.If her complexion is rosy she's going to have a son;if she is pale a daughter. If her looks improve,she's expecting a boy;if they worsen,a girl.If the fetal heartbeat is fast,it is a boy;if it is slow it is a girl.If the fetus has started to move by the fortieth day it will be a boy and the birth will be easy,but if it doesn't move until the ninetieth day it will be a girl.( Belotti 1977,pp.22-23)



Dr.Brooks-Gunn and Wendy Schempp Matthews then say, now rate each of the characteristics above as positive or negative. A woman expecting a girl is pale,her looks deteriorate,she is cross and ill-tempered,and she gets the short end of the wishbone,all negative characteristics. They then say,furthermore ,a girl is symbolized by the left-the left hand,the left side of the belly,the left foot,the left breast. They say,left connotes evil,a bad omen,or sinister,again the girls have all of the negative characteristics.



They then say,that sex-role stereotypes about activity also characterize Belotti's recipes:boys are believed to be active from the very beginning and girls have slower heartbeats and begin to move around later.They then say,the message although contradictory(girls cause more trouble even though they are more passive) is clear in that it reflects the sex-role stereotype that boys "do" while girls "are" and the belief that boys are more desirable than girls.



They also say that parents have gender stereotyped reasons for wanting a girl or a boy,obviously if they didn't it wouldn't matter if it's a girl or boy.When my first cousin was pregnant with her first of two girls people even strangers said such false ridiculous things to her,that they were sure she was going to have a boy because she was carrying low or how stomach looked.



I once spoke with Dr.Brooks-Gunn in 1994 and I asked her how she could explain all of these great studies that show that girl and boy babies are actually born more alike with few differences but are still perceived and treated so differently anyway, and she said that's due to socialization and she said there is no question, that socialization plays a very big part.


I know that many scientists know that the brain is plastic and can be shaped and changed by different life experiences and different environments too and Eastern College gender and Christian psychology professor Dr.Mary Stewart Van Leewuen told this to me too when I spoke to her 15 years ago. Dr.Van Leeuwen also said that human beings don't have sex fixed in the brain and she told me that humans have a unique highly developed cerebral cortex that allows us to make choices in our behaviors and we can learn things that animals can't.



There was another case in Canada that I read about online some years ago about another case in which a normal genetic male baby's penis was destroyed when he was an infant and in this case he was raised as a girl from the much younger age of only 7 months old,not as late as 21 months as was David Reimer,and research shows that the core gender identity is learned by as early as 18 months old.



In this other case,it was reported in 1998 he was still living as a woman in his 20's but a bisexual woman. With David Reimer they raised him as a girl too late after he learned most of his gender identity as a boy from the moment he was born and put into blue clothes, treated totally differently, given gender stereotyped toys, perceived and treated totally differently than girls are in every way(in the great book,He and She:How Children Develop Their Sex Role Identity it explains that a lot of research studies and tests by parent child psychologists found that they give 3 month old babies gender stereotyped toys long before they are able to develop these kinds of preferences or ask for these toys. They also found that when adults interacted with the same exact baby they didn't know was a girl or boy who was dressed in gender neutral clothes,they decided if they *believed* it was a girl or boy.



And those adults who thought the baby was a boy,always handed the baby a toy foot ball,but never a doll and were asked what made them think it was a girl or boy and they said they used characteristics of the baby to make the judgement . Those who thought the baby was a boy described characteristics such as strength,those who thought the baby was a girl described the baby as having softness and fragility,and as the Dr.Jeanne Brooks-Gunn and Wendy Schempp Mathews explain,Again remember that the same infant was being characterized as strong or soft,the actual distinction by sex characteristics being only in the minds of the adults.



They also explain that in the toy preference studies,girl toddlers often show an initial interest in the trucks,but eventually abandon them for a more familiar type of toy. Also check out Kate Bornstein's books,Gender Outlaw and My Gender Workbook,and recently a co-written book,Gender Outlaws. Kate used to be a heterosexual married man who fathered a daughter and then had a sex change and became a lesbian woman who now doesn't indemnity as a man or a woman. I heard Kate interview in 1998 on a local NPR show and she totally debunks gender myths,and rejects the "feminine" and "masculine" categories as the mostly socially constructed categories that they really are.She even said,what does it mean to feel or think like a woman(or man) she said what does that really mean.

[Topazthecat]

http://www.newsweek.com/id/214834 Pink Brain, Blue Brain


Claims of sex differences fall apart.


By *Sharon Begley http://www.newsweek.com/id/183003 NEWSWEEK


Published Sep 3, 2009


From the magazine issue dated Sep 14, 2009


Among certain parents, it is an article of faith not only that they should treat their sons and daughters alike, but also that they do. If Jack gets Lincoln Logs and Tetris, and joins the soccer team and the math club, so does Jill. Lise Eliot, a neuroscientist at Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science, doesn't think these parents are lying, exactly. But she would like to bring some studies to their attention.

In one, scientists dressed newborns in gender-neutral clothes and misled adults about their sex. The adults described the "boys" (actually girls) as angry or distressed more often than did adults who thought they were observing girls, and described the "girls" (actually boys) as happy and socially engaged more than adults who knew the babies were boys. Dozens of such disguised-gender experiments have shown that adults perceive baby boys and girls differently, seeing identical behavior through a gender-tinted lens. In another study, mothers estimated how steep a slope their 11-month-olds could crawl down. Moms of boys got it right to within one degree; moms of girls underestimated what their daughters could do by nine degrees, even though there are no differences in the motor skills of infant boys and girls.



But that prejudice may cause parents to unconsciously limit their daughter's physical activity. How we perceive children—sociable or remote, physically bold or reticent—shapes how we treat them and therefore what experiences we give them. Since life leaves footprints on the very structure and function of the brain, these various experiences produce sex differences in adult behavior and brains—the result not of innate and inborn nature but of nurture.


For her new book, *Pink Brain, Blue Brain: How Small Differences Grow Into Troublesome Gaps—And What We Can Do About It,* Eliot immersed herself in hundreds of scientific papers (her bibliography runs 46 pages). Marching through the claims like Sherman through Georgia, she explains that assertions of innate sex differences in the brain are either "blatantly false," "cherry-picked from single studies," or "extrapolated from rodent research" without being confirmed in people. For instance, the idea that the
band of fibers connecting the right and left brain is larger in women,supposedly supporting their more "holistic" thinking, is based on a single 1982 study of only 14 brains. Fifty other studies, taken together, found no such sex difference—not in adults, not in newborns. Other baseless claims:that women are hard-wired to read faces and tone of voice, to defuse conflict, and to form deep friendships; and that "girls' brains are wired for communication and boys' for aggression." Eliot's inescapable conclusion:there is "little solid evidence of sex differences in children's brains."



Yet there are differences in adults' brains, and here Eliot is at her most original and persuasive: explaining how they arise from tiny sex differences in infancy. For instance, baby boys are more irritable than girls.


That makes parents likely to interact less with their "nonsocial" sons, which could cause the sexes' developmental pathways to diverge. By 4 months of age, boys and girls differ in how much eye contact they make, and differences in sociability, emotional expressivity, and verbal ability—all of which depend on interactions with parents—grow throughout childhood. The message that sons are wired to be nonverbal and emotionally distant thus becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.



The sexes "start out a little bit different" in fussiness, says Eliot, and parents "react differently to them," producing the differences seen in adults.



Those differences also arise from gender conformity. You often see the claim that toy preferences—trucks or dolls—appear so early, they must be innate.


But as Eliot points out, 6- and 12-month-olds of both sexes prefer dolls to trucks, according to a host of studies. Children settle into sex-based play preferences only around age 1, which is when they grasp which sex they are,identify strongly with it, and conform to how they see other, usually older,boys or girls behaving.



"Preschoolers are already aware of what's acceptable to their peers and what's not," writes Eliot. Those play preferences then snowball, producing brains with different talents.


The belief in blue brains and pink brains has real-world consequences, which is why Eliot goes after them with such vigor (and rigor).


It encourages parents to treat children in ways that make the claims come true, denying boys and girls their full potential. "Kids rise or fall according to what we believe about them," she notes. And the belief fuels the drive for single-sex schools, which is based in part on the false claim that boy brains and girl brains process sensory information and think differently.


Again, Eliot takes no prisoners in eviscerating this "patently absurd"claim. Read her masterful book and you'll never view the sex-differences debate the same way again.


*Begley is NEWSWEEK's science editor.*

Find this article at http://www.newsweek.com/id/214834

[Topazthecat]

Below is an email I wrote to Oxford University Gender communication professor Deborah Cameron author of the great important book,The Myth Of Mars and Venus Do Men and women Really Speak Different Languages?.



Dear Deborah,


I recently read your great important book, The Myth Of Mars & Venus. I read a bad review of the book, The Female Brain on Amazon.com US by psychologist David H.Perterzell he called it junk
science.


I also thought you would want to know that John Gray got his "Ph.D" from Columbia Pacific University which was closed down in March 2001 by the California Attorney General's Office because he called it a diploma mill and a phony operation offering totally worthless degrees!


Also there is a Christian gender and psychology scholar and author psychology professor Dr. Mary Stewart Van Leewuen who teaches the psychology and Philosophy of Gender at the Christian College Eastern College in Pa. She has several online presentations that were done at different colleges from 2005- the present debunking the Mars & Venus myth.



One is called , Opposite Sexes Or Neighboring Sexes and sometimes adds, Beyond The Mars/Venus Rhetoric in which she explains that all of the large amount of research evidence from the social and behavorial sciences shows that the sexes are very close neighbors and that there are only small average differences between them many of which have gotten even smaller over the last several decades and in her great even longer article that isn't online anymore called,What Do We Mean By "Male-Female Complentarity"? A Review Of Ronald W.Pierce,Rebecca M.Groothuis,and Gordon D.Fee,eds Discovering Biblical Equality:Complentarity Without Hierarchy, which she says happened after 1973 when gender roles were less rigid and that genetic differences can't shrink like this and in such a short period of time, and that most large differences that are found are between individual people and that for almost every trait and behavior there is a large overlap between them and she said so it is naive at best and deceptive at worst to make claims about natural sex differences. etc.



She says he claims Men are From Mars & Women are From Venus with no emperical warrant and that his claim gets virtually no support from the large amount of psychological and behavioral sciences and that in keeping in line with the Christian Ethic and with what a bumper sticker she saw said and evidence from the behavioral and social sciences is , Men Are From,Earth ,Women Are From Earth Get Used To It. Comedian George Carlin said this too.


She also said that such dichotomous views of the sexes are apparently popular because people like simple answers to complex issues including relationships between men and women. She should have said especially relationships between them.She also said when I spoke wit her in 1998 and 1999 that human beings don't have sex fixed in the brain,she said human beings adapt to their environments,and they develop certain characteristics in response to those environments but they are not fixed and unchangeable. Dr.Van Leeuwen also said that I'm correct that the human female and male brain is more alike than different and she said the brain is plastic and easily molded and shaped throughout life by different life experiences and environments.She said humans have a unique highly developed cerebal cortex which animals don't and this enables people to learn things and make choices that animals can't.



Sociologist Dr.Michael Kimmel writes and talks about this also including in his Media Education Foundation educational video. And he explains that all of the evidence from the psychological and behavioral sciences indicates that women and men are far more alike than different. He also demonstrated with a lot of research studies and evidence from the behavioral and social sciences that the sexes are more alike than different in his very good 2000 book,The Gendered Society which he updated several times in more extensive academic volumes called,The Gendered Society Reader.


Dr.Mary Stewart Van Leewuen says that there are no consistent large psychological sex differences found.


I have an excellent book from 1979 written by 2 parent child development psychologists Dr. Wendy Schemp Matthews and award winning psychologist from Columbia University, Dr.Jeane Brooks-Gunn, called He & She How Children Develop Their Sex Role Idenity.



They thoroughly demonstrate with tons of great studies and experiments by parent child psychologists that girl and boy babies are actually born more alike than different with very few differences but they are still perceived and treated systematically very different from the moment of birth on by parents and other adult care givers. They go up to the teen years.



I once spoke with Dr.Brooks-Gunn in 1994 and I asked her how she could explain all of these great studies that show that girl and boy babies are actually born more alike with few differences but are still perceived and treated so differently anyway, and she said that's due to socialization and she
said there is no question, that socialization plays a very big part.



I know that many scientists(the good responsible ones) know that the brain is plastic and can be shaped and changed by different life experiences and different life time environments.



Also there are 2 great online rebuttals of the Mars & Venus myth by Susan Hamson called, The Rebuttal From Uranus and Out Of The Cave: Exploring Gray's Anatomy by Kathleen Trigiani.





Also have you read the excellent book by social psychologist Dr.Gary Wood at The University of Birmingham called, Sex Lies & Stereotypes:Challenging Views Of Women, Men & Relationships? He clearly demonstrates with all of the research studies from psychology what Dr.Mary Stewart Van Leewuen does, and he debunks The Mars & Venus myth and shows that the sexes are biologically and psychologically more alike than different and how gender roles and differences are mostly socially created and how they are very limiting and emotionally damaging to both sexes mental and physical health and don't only allow are encourage them to become more than only a half of a person instead of a whole human person with all of our shared*human* qualities!




Anyway, if you could write back when you have a chance I would really appreciate it.

Thank You

[Topazthecat]

Dr.Janet Shibley Hyde in this 2005 major meta-analysis of hundreds of studies by all different psychologists from decades that was written in American psychologist,the journal of The American Psychological Association,found that the sexes are more alike than different in almost all personality traits,abilities,etc.


http://www.apa.org/research/action/di...

[Topazthecat]

In these extensive studies by psychologist Dr. Janet Shibley Hyde and others that is still on the American Psychological Association's web site since 2006 and that was published in American psychologist the journal of The American Psychological Association,Think Again:Men and women Share Cognitive Skills.


It's reported that Psychologists have gathered solid evidence that boys or girls or men and women differ in very few significant ways-- differences that would matter in school or at work--in how,and how well they think.


http://www.apa.org/research/action/sh...

[Topazthecat]

January 2015 major study of over 100 meta analysis and of 12 million people by two male and female psychology professor found what many other psychologists over decades have found,that the sexes are more alike than different in most areas psychologically including personality.It is published in American psychologist the journal of The American psychological Association


http://www.news.iastate.edu/news/2015...

[Topazthecat]

Psychology professor Gina Rippon debunks the Mars and Venus myths! Including that the sexes brains atre ''wired differently'' and fixed and unchangeable.She explains that the brain is plastic and is easily shaped and changed by the very different treatment and experiences the sexes have from birth throughout life.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/scien...

[Topazthecat]

ISBN: 0262720310
ISBN-13: 9780262720311
Pub. Date: February 1999
Publisher: MIT Press

Why So Slow?: The Advancement of Women
by Virginia Valian




Overview
Why do so few women occupy positions of power and prestige? Virginia Valian uses concepts and data from psychology, sociology, economics, and biology to explain the disparity in the professional advancement of men and women. According to Valian, men and women alike have implicit hypotheses about gender differences — gender schemas — that create small sex differences in characteristics, behaviors, perceptions, and evaluations of men and women. Those small imbalances accumulate to advantage men and disadvantage women. The most important consequence of gender schemas for professional life is that men tend to be overrated and women underrated. Valian's goal is to make the invisible factors that retard women's progress visible, so that fair treatment of men and women will be possible. The book makes its case with experimental and observational data from laboratory and field studies of children and adults, and with statistical documentation on men and women in the professions. The many anecdotal examples throughout provide a lively counterpoint.


What People Are Saying

The MIT Press
Editorial Reviews
From the Publisher

Publishers Weekly

Social psychologist Valian thinks that the Western world has gotten gender all wrong. "As social beings we tend to perceive the genders as alternatives to each other, as occupying opposite and contrasting ends of a continuum," she writes, "even though the sexes are not opposite but are much more alike than they are different." Indeed, despite nearly three decades of feminism, "gender schema"the assumption that masculine and feminine characteristics determine personality and ability continue to influence the expectations and thinking of most Americans. Just about everyone, Valian writes, assumes that men are independent, task-oriented and assertive, while women are tagged as expressive and nurturing. As such, women lag behind in many professions and continue to do the lion's share of housework and child-rearing. Girls remain less attentive in math and science, while even women who attend medical school tend to steer themselves into "gender appropriate" slots such as family practice or pediatrics. Valian bases her findings on research conducted by social scientists in fields as disparate as psychology, education, sociology and economics, and the result is a work that is both scholarly and anecdotally rich. But it also posits concrete suggestions for changing the way we view the sexes, from stepped-up affirmative action programs, to timetables for rectifying gender-based valuations. Accessible and lively, Why So Slow? is a breakthrough in the discourse on gender and has great potential to move the women's movement to a new, more productive phase. (Jan.)
Product Details


ISBN-13: 9780262720311
Publisher: MIT Press
Publication date: 2/5/1999
Edition description: Reprint

Pages: 421
Sales rank: 726,586

Table of Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
A Note on Method and Scope
1 Gender Schemas at Work 1
2 Gender Begins - and Continues - at Home 23
3 Learning About Gender 47
4 Biology and Behavior 67
5 Biology and Cognition 81
6 Schemas That Explain Behavior 103
7 Evaluating Women and Men 125
8 Effects on the Self 145
9 Interpreting Success and Failure 167
10 Women in the Professions 187
11 Women in Academia 217
12 Professional Performance and Human Values 251
13 Affirmative Action and the Law 277
14 Remedies 303
Notes 333
References 353
Author Index 385
Subject Index 393


© 1997-2013 Barnesandnoble.com llc

[Topazthecat]

In her very good important 1998 book,Why So Slow? The Advancement Of women, she says for parents who recognize and actively oppose the limitations of gender schemas matters are more complex she demonstrates clearly that many studies have shown that even parents who say they are egalitarian and who do encourage their children especially girls to consider a wide range of possible occupations and that encouragement influences the children's aspirations.She then says but without realizing it on the other hand,they are affected by gender schemas,dressing their children in ways appropriate to their gender.


She then says that their egalitarian beliefs prevent such parents from perceiving that they do encourage gender-specific patterns and from seeing how closely their children conform to the norm.She then says that gender schemas are powerful cultural forces and that adults cannot simply abandon them especially when they are unaware that they hold them and they too conform to them in such matters of dress.On another page she says that everyone,it appears is likely to be affected deeply and nonconsciously by their culture's view of what it means to be male and female.Then she says that even people who consciously espouse egalitarian beliefs do not realize how profoundly they have internalized the culture's norms and applied them to their children.


She then says that there is wide implicit consensus across income level,education,and sex about the core features of gender schemas and for these features parents are much more alike than they are different.She then says regardless of demographic variables,most subscribe to basic gender norms ,dress gender stereotypically themselves,and unwittingly treat their children gender-stereotypically.Then she says parents who actively endorse gender schemas or are unaware of the impact of gender schemas on their perceptions and interpretations,perceive children as gendered from birth and treat them accordingly.


She also says that studies show that even parents who deliberately try to rear their children nonstereotypically are subject to the influence of gender schemas.She says a study of six year olds for example compared children whose mothers explicitly tried to bring them up in gender-neutral ways with children whose mothers had conventional attitudes about gender roles. And that when independent observers who were unaware of the parents beliefs rated the children's clothes as masculine or feminine the ratings showed that the boys and girls in both types of families were dressed according to gender norms.She explains that the mothers who were committed to gender equality however saw their children's clothes as less gender-stereotypical even though they were not.


She shows how parents perceive and treat their daughters and sons so differently from the moment they are born and she says in chapter 1 called Gender Schemas At work that gender schemas oversimplify and that masculine and feminine traits are not opposites of each other and they are not contradictory and that everyone has both to some degree and expresses different traits in different situations.She then says that differences exist, but the sexes are more alike than they are different and she says it is easy to lose sight of that reality,even though most differences between the sexes are small.

[Topazthecat]

Public release date: 4-Nov-1999
[ Print E-mail Share

Contact: Penny Burge or Sharon Snow
burge@vt.edu or ssnow@vt.edu
Virginia Tech



20-year-old sex-role research survey still valid
BLACKSBURG, Va. ­



In the late 1970s, Penny Burge, director of Virginia Tech's Women's Center, was working on her doctoral dissertation at Penn State University researching the relationship between child-rearing sex-role attitudes and social issue sex-role attitudes among parents. As part of her research, Burge designed a 28-question survey in which respondents were asked to mark how much they agreed or disagreed with statements such as: "Only females should receive affectionate hugs as rewards," "I would buy my son a doll," and "I would be upset if my daughter wanted to play little league baseball."

Hard-hitting questions, many of them. But Burge carried on. She received her degree in 1979, and in 1981 her research findings were published in the Home Economics Research Journal.



Among her findings were that respondents who named the mother as their child's primary caretaker held more traditional child-rearing sex-role attitudes than respondents who named both parents. In addition, those respondents who held more traditional child-rearing sex-role attitudes also held more traditional social issue sex-role attitudes, and fathers were more conventional than mothers with respect to the issue of whether or not boys and girls should be raised differently.


"We found that parents do cling to traditional sex-role attitudes," Burge said. "It was more pronounced with male children where pressure to achieve was more intense."


Over the years, Burge occasionally received requests from other researchers for permission to use her survey in their own research. Burge always granted permission, but had redirected her research focus to gender equity in education. She had moved on in her career, serving on the faculty in Virginia Tech's College of Human Resources and Education from 1979 to 1994 when she became director of the Women's Center.

But a recent request from a researcher at New Mexico State University sparked her interest. The researcher, Betsy Cahill, had used Burge's survey (with some modifications and additions) to conduct research on early childhood teachers' attitudes toward gender roles. After the results of Cahill's research were completed and published in The Journal of Sex Roles in 1997, some unexpected events occurred.

The Educational Testing Service, a national resource that makes research instruments more widely available to other researchers, requested permission to use the Burge and Cahill survey tools in its upcoming Test Collection, a reference publication for future researchers. "I was honored," Burge said. "It was nice to have another researcher include my survey instrument in her own. And the request from the Educational Testing Service gave an additional sanction to my survey. It's amazing to me that the same type of social questions are still valid after 20 years."


And no one can dispute the past two decades have brought enormous social changes in the world, which leads to the second unexpected occurrence.


Cahill found that many of the findings from Burge's research were still very much the same. For example, teachers who espoused traditional gender role beliefs for adults also did for children. For those who were more accepting of cross-gender role behaviors and aspirations, they were more accepting of these behaviors from girls than boys.



Enter Sharon Snow, newly hired assistant director of the Women's Center at Virginia Tech, and the third coincidence regarding Burge's survey tool. As part of a survey research class Snow took while working on her graduate degree at Texas Woman's University, she cited Burge's study in her literature review.



"As part of the class, we conducted a survey of students to determine their attitudes about gender roles in children," Snow said. "We found that parents do indeed drive gender-based behavior. It's not something that just happens naturally."


So 20 year later, researchers find that parents still have a profound influence on their children's gender roles.


"The most amazing finding is that despite tremendous societal change over the past two decades, many parents still hold fast to raising their children with traditional sex-roles," Burge said.

[Topazthecat]

There is an excellent online article that I printed out 13 years ago,by Jungian psychologist Dr.Gary S.Toub,called,Jung and Gender:Masculine and Feminine Revisted. On his site it now only has part of this article and it says you have to register to read the full article. I emailed Dr.Toub years ago and he wrote me back several nice emails,in one he said he really liked my letter,and that it was filled to the brim with excellent points and references.



In this article he talks about what parts of Jungian thought he finds useful and what he finds problematic. The first thing he says he finds useful is, In the course of Jungian analysis, he often assists female clients to discover traditionally,masculine qualities in their psyche and that he likewise frequently assist male clients to recognize traditionally feminine qualities in their psyche. He says this process frees each gender from the straight-jacket of stereotyped sex roles and expands his clients identities. He then said that the process also mirrors and furthers the breakdown of male-female polarization in our culture,and the cultural shifts towards androgyny.



He also says that most importantly, his practice of Jungian analysis places the greatest emphasis on facilitating his clients individuation process. He says this means that he tries to assist clients,male or female,to search for their authentic self-definition,distinct from society's gender expectations.He also says that many Jungian definitions of masculine and feminine are narrow,outdated and sexist.


He also says that he has found that generalizing about what is masculine and what is feminine is dangerous,often perpetuating gender myths that are discriminatory and damaging.He says while there is some research supporting biological roots to personality differences,the majority of studies suggest that much of what is considered masculine or feminine is culture determined.



He also says that viewing masculine and feminine as complementary opposites,while useful at times,is problematic. He then says as his gay,lesbian, and transsexual clients have taught him,gender is more accurately viewed as encompassing a wide-ranging continuum. He then says that likewise,the more people he sees in his practice,the more he is impressed at the great diversity in human nature. He says he has seen men of all types and varieties,and women of all kinds. He then says,he is hard-pressed to come up with very many generalizations based on gender.He says he knows that there are some statistical patterns,but how useful are they when he works with individuals and in a rapidly changing society? He says if each person is unique,no statistical norm or average will be able to define who my client is.



He then says,from a psychological perspective,men and women are not, in fact,opposite. He says his clinical experience is that they are much more psychologically alike than different,and the differences that exist are not necessarily opposing.

[Topazthecat]

Therapist Kristen Martinez also debunks and rightfully criticizes this Mars and Venus myth!


http://pacificnorthwell.com/battle-se...

[Topazthecat]

The co-authors of that December 2013 study from University of Penn making claims that the sexes brains are ''hard wired'' differently'',are the husband and wife team,the Gurs who are total biological determinists who have been making these types of claims about sex differences in the brain since the mid 1990's. I heard them back then on a NPR radio show and in 1996 was turning the TV channel's and I saw a young woman lying under a brain scan and I thought that she had a brain tumor.Then I saw the Gurs making these types of claims about sex differences in the brain.

So I called up the station and I complained to one of the young male producers of the station that I was sick and tired of these gender myths being promoted in the media,and that I have a lot of great strong information that the sexes are more alike than different and that they are born biologically more alike than different with very few differences but are still perceived and treated systematically very differently from the moment of birth on by parents and other care givers.And he said,I know that there are a lot of different views out there about men and women today,but personally I tend to agree with you.

[Topazthecat]

Psychologist Gwendolyn Seidman debunks Mars and Venus myths in Psychology Today


https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/...

[Topazthecat]

"Feminine" and "masculine" are really *HUMAN* traits,thoughts,feelings and behaviors.


And there is plenty of decades worth of great psychological research studies by many different psychologists that shows that the sexes are much more alike than different in most traits,abilities and behaviors with a very large overlap between them,and that most of the differences between them are really small average differences,many of which have shrunk even smaller,and they find much greater individual *people* differences! Biologically the sexes are more alike than different too! As I said comedian Elaine Boosler said in the 1980's,I'm only a person trapped in a woman's body.


Feminists(such as Robin Morgan,Janice Raymond,Gloria Steinem,Germain'e Greer Sheila Jeffreys etc) who have rightfully pointed this fact out,are not afraid of transsexuals or prejudiced against them,the issue is what I said it is. The only transsexual woman who actually debunks these common sexist gender myths,and gender stereotypes is Kate Bornstein author of Gender Outlaw:On Men,Women And The Rest Of Us,Gender Outlaws,My Gender Workbook etc. She was a heterosexual man who was married and had a daughter,then had a sex change and became a lesbian woman and then decided not to idenify as a man or a woman.


I heard Kate interviewed in 1998 on a local NPR show and she totally debunks gender myths,and rejects the "feminine" and "masculine" categories as the mostly socially constructed categories that they really are.She even said,what does it mean to feel or think like a woman(or man) she said what does that really mean.


And as cultural anthropologist Roger Lancaster wrote in his introduction, in his very good 2003 book,The Trouble With Nature sex In Science when he's talking about how scientists constantly search for a ''gay brain'',a ''gay gene'' or ''gay intergovernmental'' patterns. Roger came out as a gay man in college.



He then says (One can hardly understate the naive literalism of present-day science on these matters: Scientists still look for the supposed anatomical attributes of the opposite sex embedded somewhere in the inverts brain or nervous system.) He then says and this notion now enjoys a second,third,and even fourth life in political discourses.He then says it is by appeal to such conceits that Aaron Hans,a Washington,D.C.- based transgender activist,reflects on his uncomfortable life as a girl:''I didn't *think* I was a boy,I *knew* I was a boy.'' He says,Hans elaborates: ''You look at pictures of me- I actually have great pictures of me in drag-and I literally look like a little boy in a dress.



Roger then says,Far,far be it from me to cast doubt on anyone's sense of discomfort with the ascribed gender roles.Nor would I question anyone's sense that sexual identity is a deeply seated aspect of who they are .But testimonies of this sort and appeals to the self-evidence of perception beg the obvious question:Just what is a little boy or girl * supposed* to look like? The photograph that accompanies Han's interview shows a somewhat robust girl.Is this to say that (real) girls are necessarily delicate and (real) boys athletic? He then says (If so,virtually all of my nieces are ''really'' boys,since not a one of them is delicate or un presupposing)



Roger then says,There is indeed something compelling about such intensely felt and oft- involved experiences-''I knew I was gay all along''; ''I felt like a girl'' - but that compulsion belongs to the realm of outer culture,not nature.That is, if ''inappropriate'' acts,feelings,body types,or desires seem to throw us into the bodies or minds other genders,it is because acts,feelings,and so on are associated with gender by dint of the same all-enveloping cultural logic that gives us pink blankets ( or caps,or crib cards,I.D. bracelets) for girls and blue for boys in maternity ward cribs.He then says,when we diverge one way or another from those totalizing associations,we feel-we really feel;in the depths of our being-''different''.Therein lies the basis for an existential opposition to the established order of gendered associations.



Roger then says But therein also lies the perpetual trap: Every essentialist claim about the ''nature'' of same sex desire in turn refers to and reinforces suppositions about the ''nature'' of ''real'' men and women (from whom the invert differs), about the ''naturalness'' of their mutual attraction(demonstrated nowhere so much as in the inverts inversion),about the scope of their acts,feelings,body types,and so on( again, marked off by the deviation of the deviant). Aping the worst elements of gender/sexual conservatism,every such proposition takes culturally constituted meanings -the correlative associations of masculinity and femininity,active and passive,blue and pink- as ''natural facts''.


Roger then says,In a twist as ironic as the winding of a double helix that goes first this way,then that,the search for gay identify gradually finds it's closure in the normalcy of the norm as a natural law.In the end,I am not convinced of the basic suppositions here. I doubt that most men are unfamiliar with the sentiment given poetic form by Pablo Neruda:''It happens that I became tired of being a man. ''Even psychiatrists who treat ''gender dysphoria''- a slick term for rebellion against conventional gender roles -admit that at least 50% of children at some point exhibit signs of mixed or crossed gender identify or express a desire to be the ''opposite'' sex. Roger has a note number to the reference in his notes section to a March 22,1994 New York Times article by Daniel Goleman called,The 'Wrong' Sex:A New Definition of Childhood Pain.


Roger also says that the way the media reported the David Reimer case was very gender stereotyped and and biological deterministc.He also said that they raised him as a girl too late

[Topazthecat]

Interview with long time feminist Letty Cottin Pogrebin about her teaching and erasing her two twin daughters and her son with non-sexist non-gender roles and gender stereotypes.

http://www.smith.edu/libraries/libs/s...



Feminist Letty Cottin Pogrebin's son didn't reject playing with dolls and tea sets, just as her identical twin daughters didn't reject the non-gender stereotyped toys and behaviors she encouraged them to have. And her son didn't grow up gay or transgendered he's married and I think has children,but he didn't grow up to be a macho football player either,as Letty said he's a chef and loves to cook.


And there is a lot wrong with sexist very limiting gender roles,gender myths and gender stereotypes that are mostly artificially created by the very sexist,gender divided,gender stereotyped,woman-hating male dominated family and society we all live in,which makes both sexes,into only half of a person,instead of full human people able to develop and express their full shared *human* traits,abilities,and behaviors etc. And then these artificial gender differences continue to reinforce gender inequalities,male dominance and men's violence against women,children and even each other.



There is a great 2005 book,Sex Lies And Stereotypes Challenging Views Of Women,Men and Relationships by social and cognitive British psychologist Dr.Gary Wood.He too shows plenty of great important research studies done over decades by many different psychologists that finds small average sex differences,and the sexes are much more similar than different.He also thoroughly demonstrates that gender roles,gender myths and gender stereotypes which are mostly socially and culturally constructed,harm both sexes because they are very liming,cause conflicts and misunderstands between women and men,and only allow each of them to become half of a person which can cause mental and physical conditions and diseases.

[Topazthecat]

John Lennon is a great example of people can change and are not fixed to be a certain way as a man or a woman.Yoko changed John into a much better person as a pro-feminist man and the feminist changes *are* for the better,and many pro-feminist men have recognized this too! They say it has freed them and allowed them to develop and express more of all of the shared common *human* traits,emotions,behaviors,abilities and reduce and prevent male violence against women and children etc. Definitions of "masculine" and "feminine" differ across time periods,and in different societies.



John Lennon is a great example of how feminism changing limited artificial gender definitions and roles,changed him for the much better. John as a child and teenager had a lot of traumas that permanently psychologically damaged him,but because of his and Yoko's beautiful loving relationship,and as he said she was a feminist before he met her,(and he said that because she was a feminist before he met her,they were going to have to have a 50/50 equal relationship which he never had before) he went in to primal scream therapy and Yoko went with him and he dealt with all of his pain and anger for the very first time at age 29.


When John was a young guy,he was often drunk getting into fist fights with men,hitting women,and womanizing including cheating on his girlfriends and then his first wife Cynthia.Of course Paul,George and Ringo did the same with all of the groupies all 4 of them had while touring from 1963-1966. I hadn't watched these Mike Douglas shows in years until December 2010 when it was the 30th anniversary of John's tragic crazy murder.



Out of the 5 Mike Douglas shows that John and Yoko co-hosted for a week that was taped in January 1972 and aired in February,a young criminal lawyer Rena Uviller(she went on to become a Supreme Court Judge) who worked with juveniles, and she,Mike Douglas,John and Yoko were discussing the then very recent women's liberation movement. George Carlin was on too.



Rena said,she agrees with Yoko,that the idea of Women's lib is to liberate all of us,and she said ,I mean we could talk hours on the way men really suffer under the sex role definitions.Yoko agreed with what she said too. Rena said that men don't really realize they have only to gain from Women's Lib,and that she thinks that maybe with a little more propaganda we can convince them.



John then said,yeah there is a lot to gain from it,just the fact that you can relax and not have to play that male role,he said we can do that,and he said that I can be weak,( but notice how then in a male dominated gender divided,gender stereotyped,sexist society,and even unfortunately still now in a lot of ways,the "female" role was defined as the weak one,and the male role as the strong one) I don't have to protect her all the time and play you know that super hero,I don't have to play that,she allows me to be weak sometimes and for me to cry,and for her to be the strong one,and for me to be the weak one. John then said,and it really is a great relief,after 28 years of trying to be tough,you know trying to show them,I don't give a da*n and I'm this and I'm that,to be able to relax.and just be able to say,OK I'm no tough guy forget it.



Rena then said,I think in some funny way,I think girls even as children,have a greater lattitude because a little girl can be sort of frilly and feminine or she can be a tomboy and it's acceptable,but a little boy if he's not tossing that football,there's a lot of pressure on him.John said,there's a lot of pressure,not to show emotion,and he said that there was a lot of pressure on me not to be an artist,to be a chemist and he said he discussed this on another Mike Douglas episode.



Rena said that unfortunately some of the leaders in the Women's Liberation movement fall victim to being spokesmen,for Women's Lib, and yet at least in public personality they seem to really have a certain amount of contempt for the hair curled housewife and there is a kind of sneering contempt,and she said I think it's a measure of their own lack of liberation.And Yoko said it's snobbery,and Rena said yeah,they really don't like other women,but I'm sympathetic,and Mike Douglas then said a sexist woman-hating statement,saying,well women don't like other women period.Rena said,no see that's very unliberated and Yoko said, in response to what Mike Douglas said,that's not true,that's not true.And John said,you see they are brought up to
compete with men.



Yoko said that even though in Japan they say they don't have much of a woman problem and women already had some liberation,there is still a long way to go that she really agrees with Rena that so many female liberation movement people basically hate women,and we have to first start to understand women and love them whether they are housewives or not,and she said that snobbery is very bad and we have to somehow find out a way to co-existing with men,and she asked Rena don't you think so and she said most definitely. George Carlin said,that actually many successful women are acting out male roles just like a lot of blacks think they escaped are acting out white roles.John also said that he thinks that women have to try twice as hard as to make it as men,and he said you know they have to be on their toes much more than a man.




On another Mike Douglas episode from the same week,former actress and acclaimed film maker Barbara Loden was on and Yoko had requested her as a guest.John asked her ,Did you have any problems working with the men,you know like giving them instructions and things like that and Barbara said,I did, but I think it was because I was afraid that they would not accept what I said,and I wasn't quite that authoritative in my own self.John said it's certainly a brave thing to do,and Yoko said it is.




Mike Douglas asked Yoko if John's attitude had changed much towards her since The Female Liberation Movement,and at first Yoko says John's attitude from the beginning was the same,and that they met on that level.John then says,twice, I was a male chauvinist and Yoko says,yes he was a male chauvinist but,and then John says,Can I say how you taught me,and Yoko says yes.John says,How I did it in my head was,would I ask Paul or George,or would I treat them the way I would treat a woman? John then said,it's a very simple thing maybe it's fetch that or do that ,and I started thinking if I said that to them,they'd say come on get it yourself,and if you put your wife or your girl friend in the position of your best friend,and say now would I say that to him,then you know when you're treading on some delicate feelings.





Mike Douglas said years later that after this week of John and Yoko co-hosting his show,many young people who had never watched his show before,(and his main audience was middle America and people older than their 20's and even mostly their 30's) told him they loved the show,and that it was great and his ratings went up high for those shows.Even if John didn't always live up to his feminist ideals and beliefs in his personal life,(although he did with Yoko because of her and this why and how he emotionally evolved into a caring,nurturing,house husband and father to Yoko and Sean),just the fact that he spoke out as a man in support of the feminist movement on a popular TV show back in early 1972 when most of the sexist male dominated woman-hating society looked down at it and considered it crazy which in some ways it's still unfortunately wrongly misunderstood(and it's really the male dominated,sexist,woman-hating society that has always been so wrong and crazy!),and the fact that John was (and still is) greatly admired and influential to many young people male and female,he did *a lot* to legitimize it and show it was rational,reasonable,needed and right!




A few months later he was performing Woman Is The Ni**er Of The World on The Dick Cavett Show and then months after that live in Madison Square Garden.In his very last radio interview done by Dave Sholin etc from RKO Radio just hours before he was tragically shot and killed, John said I'm more feminist now than I was when I sang Woman Is The N**ger,I was intellectually feminist then but now I feel as though at least I've put not my own money,but my body where my mouth is and I'm living up to my own preachings as it were. He also said what is this BS men are this way, women are that way,we're all human.



Even if John didn't always live up to his feminist ideals and beliefs in his personal life,(although he did with Yoko because of her and this why and how he emotionally evolved into a caring,nurturing,house husband and father to Yoko and Sean),just the fact that he spoke out as a man in support of the feminist movement on a popular TV show back in early 1972 when most of the sexist male dominated woman-hating society looked down at it and considered it crazy which in some ways it's still unfortunately wrongly misunderstood(and it's really the male dominated,sexist,woman-hating society that has always been so wrong and crazy!),and the fact that John was (and still is) greatly admired and influential to many young people male and female,he did *a lot* to legitimize it and show it was rational,reasonable,needed and right!





A few months later he was performing Woman Is The Ni**er Of The World on The Dick Cavett Show and then months after that live in Madison Square Garden.In his very last radio interview done by Dave Sholin etc from RKO Radio just hours before he was tragically shot and killed, John said I'm more feminist now than I was when I sang Woman Is The N**ger,I was intellectually feminist then but now I feel as though at least I've put not my own money,but my body where my mouth is and I'm living up to my own preachings as it were.



He also said what is this BS men are this way, women are that way,we're all human.He had also said that he comes from the macho school of pretense of course *all* men really are they are just too conditioned all of their lives to realize and admit it.And he said that men are trained to be like they are in the army,and that it's more like that in England but he knows it's this way over here too,he said that they are taught as boys and men don't react,don't feel,don't cry,and he said he thinks that's what screwed us all up and that he thinks it's time for a change.




In his September 1980 Newsweek interview the interviewer said to John aren't you the guy who said in 1963 that women should be obscene and not heard,and John said yes and I'm thankful to Yoko for the feminist education.

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Mike Douglas also said to John and Yoko,You're both so different,you had such different childhoods. John said,it's incredible isn't it? Yoko said,Yes! Mike asked,What do you think has attracted you to each other? Yoko said,We're very similar.John then said,She came from a Japanese upper-middle class family.Her parents were bankers and all that jazz,very straight.He said they were trying to get her off with an ambassador when she was 18.You know,now is the time you marry the ambassador and we get all settled. I come from a an upper-working class family in Liverpool,the other end of the world. John then said,we met but our minds are so similar,our ideas are so similar.It was incredible that we could be so alike from different enviornments,and I don't know what it is,but we're very similar in our heads.And we look alike too!



Mike also asked John about his painful childhood,and how his father left him when he was 5,and John said how he only came back into his life when he was successful and famous(20 years later!),and John said he knew that I was living all those years in the same house with my auntie,but he never visited him.He said when he came back into his life all those years later,he looked after his father for the same amount of time he looked after him,about 4 years.



He also talked about how his beloved mother Julia,who encouraged his music by teaching him to play the banjo,got hit and killed by a car driven by an off duty drunk cop when John was only 17 and just getting to have a realtionship with her after she had given him away to be raised by her older sister Mimi when he was 5.



And John also said,And in spite of all that,I still don't have a hate-the-pigs attitude or hate-cops attitude.He then said, I think everybody's human you know,but it was very hard for me at that time,and I really had a chip on my shoulder,and it still comes out now and then,because it's a strange life to lead .He then said,But in general ah,I've got my own family now ...I got Yoko and she made up for all that pain.



John's psychologist Dr. Arthur Janov told Mojo Magazine in 2000( parts of this interview is on a great UK John Lennon fan site,You Are The Plastic Ono Band) that John had as much pain as he had ever seen in his life,and he was a psychologist for at least 18 years when John and Yoko saw him in 1970! He said John was a very dedicated patient. He also said that John left therapy too early though and that they opened him up,but didn't get a chance to put him back together again and Dr. Janov told John he need to finish the therapy,he said because of the immigration services and he thought Nixon was after him,he said we have to get out of the country.John asked if he could send a therapist to Mexico with him,and Dr. Janov told him we can't do that because they had too many patients to take care of,and he said they cut the therapy off just as it started really,and we were just getting going.


Also this great article by long time anti-sexist,anti-men's violence,anti-pornography former all star high school player Jackson Katz.John Lennon on Fatherfood,Feminism,and Phony Tough Guy Posturing
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jackson...




Also Cynthia Lennon is quoted in the great John Lennon biography Lennon,by award winning music journalist and former editor of The Melody Maker Magazine and good friend of John's for 18 years,Ray Coleman as saying somethings like she knew as soon as she saw John and Yoko together she knew that she lost him,and that it was a meeting of the minds and that she knew that they were right for each other.She also said that she told John before he started his relationship with Yoko that she sees and incedible similarity between him and Yoko and said to him that there is something about her that is just like you.She told him that he may say that she's this crazy woman etc and that he's not interested in her,but that she can see more into John's future with Yoko then he can.

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https://books.google.com/books?id=wa0...

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Dr.Anne Fausto-Sterling's Myths of Gender:Biological Theories About Women and Men.She is a biologist and geneticist at Brown Univetsity and she thoroughly debunks these claims about testosterone levels and aggressive behavior and a whole lot of other sexist,racist claims made by both women and men scientists.


And Delusions of Gender How Our Minds Society and Neurosexism Create Differences by Australian neuro scientist Cordelia Fine also thoroughly debunks common myths of gender http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/delus...


And also the book,Brain Storm:The Flaws in The Science of Sex Differences by Barnard professor Rebecca Jordan-Young as reviewed by Amanda Schaffer on Slate's site Oct 21,2010 called The Last Word On Fetal T Rebecca Jordan-Young's masterful critique of the research on the relatiopnship between testosterone and sex differtence.And she says how remarably similar women and men's brains and minds actually are.


http://www.slate.com/articles/double_...#

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Also there is a lot of evidence from sociologists and anthropologists that there are androgynous cultures. Many anthropologists like Walter Williams author of the award winning,The Spirit and The Flesh,and many other anthropologists have done field work for decades in places like Tahiti and Malaysia, women and men are encouraged to have androgynous roles there and they are not polarized into "opposite" categories and gender roles,and they are more alike in their personalities and behaviors. This is thoroughly explained in the good book,
Manhood In The Making:Cultural Concepts Of Masculinity.


And the men there unlike in our very gender divided,gender stereotyped, sexist male dominated society ,aren't punished for being similar to women or appearing so-called "feminine", they are encouraged and rewarded for it! And it's in the very gender divided, gender stereotyped sexist male dominated societies where the sexes are polarized into "opposite" categories and gender roles that makes *more* gender differences!

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February 2013 big study by psychology professors Harry Ress and Bobbi Carothers of University of Rochester also found the sexes are more alike than different in most areas and are NOT disctinct ''mars and ''Venus'' categories!


http://rochester.edu/news/show.php?id...

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Scientists Researchers Reaching Different Conclusions On Brain Sex wiring



://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.http:...

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Professor Rebecca Jordan-Young author of the great important book Brainstorm:Tje Flaws In The Science of Sex differences debunks the brain wiring study.


http://feministcurrent.com/8358/podca...

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Radio interview with Iowa State University psychology professor Dr.Zlatan Krizan and Iowa State anthrpologist Emily Wentzell about the January 2015 major study that found the sexes are about 80% psychologically more alike than different that was published in American Psychologist the journal of The American psychological Association.


http://iowapublicradio.org/post/isu-p...

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Video interview with actress Jane Fonda about the harms of gender stereotypes and socialization of boys and men and evryone.



http://on.aol.com/video/activist-jane...

[Smriti]

Men are certainly from mars. What an irony??

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No men are *not* from Mars how totally ignorant!

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January 2015 major study of over 100 meta analysis and of 12 million people by two male and female psychology professor found what many other psychologists over decades have found,that the sexes are more alike than different in most areas psychologically including personality.It is published in American psychologist the journal of The American psychological Association

http://www.news.iastate.edu/news/2015...

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Important information from October 2015 by neuroscientist Dr.Lise Elliott about how new large research shows the sexes brains are much more alike than different! Three major areas in the brain that were claimed for decades to be different were found to not be different using over 6,000 women and men.



http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_release...

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MEDICAL RESEARCH.COM INTERVIEWS DR.LISE ELIOT SEXES MORE ALIKE IN BRAIN & BEHAVIOR


http://medicalresearch.com/radiology/...