Yet again, scientists fail to find any differences in male and female brain. Because there aren’t any:
“Sex differences in the brain are irresistible to those looking to explain stereotypic differences between men and women,” said Dr. Eliot. “They often make a big splash, in spite of being based on small samples. But as we explore multiple datasets and are able to coalesce very large samples of males and females, we find these differences often disappear or are trivial.”
Scientists keep looking for these non-existent “gendered brains” because there’s a huge premium in finding them. There is no media attention, no link love, no gleeful facebooking in science. The only way to attract crowds is to soothe them with some new variation on the tired old “men, Mars, women, Venus” idiocy.
There are crowds of people who are so empty inside, so devoid of individuality that this “men and women are different” mythology is all they have to fill the inner vacuum, poor sods. For them, this research is painful to contemplate. For those with some inner substance, it’s all “well, duh, everybody knows that gendered brains are a crock invented to tranquilize idiots.”
Clarissa's Blog 
Doesn’t the meta-study just say that hippocampus size/brain size is the same for all genders? That does not mean that there are no differences in brains of men and women.
Using the same methodology we could show that there are no differences in the height of men and women by showing that the ratio of height to skeleton size is constant for all genders.
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Read to the end of the article.
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Does anyone have a non-paywalled copy/link to the original paper? I promised to myself for the sake of my blood pressure that I’d stop reading science “journalism” for any reason other than finding the paper that started it all. From reading the abstract, it looks like one particular measurement that is sometimes used in differentiating between men and women(trans or cis) doesn’t actually measure anything once you take brain size into account (and we already know brain size is proportional to body size).
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Click to access 560006b908aec948c4fa0ce3.pdf
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Clearly you would accept there are hormonal differences and that impact on the body? Testosterone, estrogen etc. levels are universally accepted as different profiles between the genders right?
Obiously a lot of gendered behavior is due to cultural / stereotypical features and influence, but there are innate differences. Again each person is unique, but generically the much higher level of testosterone makes the AVERAGE male more aggressive etc.. you are too smart to disagree with this right?
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“Clearly you would accept there are hormonal differences and that impact on the body?”
Please, let’s not start going in these boring circles again. No, there are no “hormonal differences” that impact the ways people think, understand reality, conceive of themselves in the world, etc. These “hormonal differences” impact mentality, behavior, ways of thinking, etc. as much as differences in height do.
“Obiously a lot of gendered behavior is due to cultural / stereotypical features and influence, but there are innate differences.”
“Again each person is unique, but generically the much higher level of testosterone makes the AVERAGE male more aggressive etc.”
“you are too smart to disagree with this right?”
People, the point of the post is not to attract people in the grip of anxiety that somebody has noticed their inner vacuousness. Please get your psychotherapist to help you solve this problem. I’m simply sharing an article from the world of science. Psychological dysfunction should be taken elsewhere.
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It is an enigma – you are urged to respect various differences between people – we are equal in spite of our differences – but then, in the next moment, you are told that there are no differences! It is confusing if you accept it without having the talent to “double-think”.
The word double-think was created by George Orwell, after that he for a long time had been exposed to Communist propaganda. So he used it in his dystopian novel ‘1984’. Copying Wiki: “Doublethink is the act of ordinary people simultaneously accepting two mutually contradictory beliefs as correct, often in distinct social contexts. Doublethink is related to, but differs from, hypocrisy and neutrality. Somewhat related but almost the opposite is cognitive dissonance, where contradictory beliefs cause conflict in one’s mind. Doublethink is notable due to a lack of cognitive dissonance — thus the person is completely unaware of any conflict or contradiction.”
Honestly, I was appalled when I checked the actual studies – and found that they were based on the size of parts of the brain! That was done more than a 100 years ago! Everybody who owns a smart-phone knows that size tells you very little about function. And you can look at two micro chips – they may look exactly the same, but their function are very different. Yet they are the same size, made of the same materials.
Of course I had expected studies based on the methods of the 21th century: Positron emission tomography (PET), CT scan (also called X-ray computed tomography (X-ray CT) or computerized axial tomography scan (CAT scan), Electroencephalography (EEG), Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), nuclear magnetic resonance imaging (NMRI), or magnetic resonance tomography (MRT), Single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), Functional magnetic resonance imaging or functional MRI (fMRI).
The experiments we have read about is when subjects were exposed to various stimuli, and then studied how the different centers of the brain react. That gave us the final proofs that homosexuality is something people are born with, and that we get more stimulated by a portrait of a partner we are in love with, than one of any attractive person (of our preferred sex), and that we are stimulated by pheromones from persons from the sex we prefer, but that women reacts differently if exposed to pheromones from their own father or brothers. Our incest taboo is a gift from Darwin.
When I started to work at an office of the Swedish Social Insurance, I was the only male with about 40 female coworkers, the boss included. I came marinated with the 60’s discourse of the sameness of the sexes, but I soon found out, that men and women are different in various subtle respects. Women are not men with breast and a vagina, thank Heaven. As soon as I had accepted this, both the social interaction and the cooperation in the work flowed very well. It is no rocket science to get along with women at work if you are a man – just be a man, and not an asshole. and be a good workmate. Be fair to them, and they will be fair to you.
Creating men and women exactly the same would be a waste of nature. In our own brains, the two hemispheres have different functions. Yet they look exactly the same, mirror images. From looking at them, you could never decide what their functions were. To have two identical brain halves, one would be redundant. Also, they would conflict with each other.
Having men and women made the same, would not be an optional use of the resources, and the evolution is very harsh against everything sub optimal. In the about five million years when there have been humans on the Earth, Homo Sapiens often and for extended periods were very close to extinction. Two people, specialists in different areas, working together to keep their children alive to maturity, are a more competent team with greater possibilities to succeed, than two identically equipped. A craftsman would never keep two tools exactly the same in his toolbox.
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“It is an enigma – you are urged to respect various differences between people – we are equal in spite of our differences – but then, in the next moment, you are told that there are no differences!”
“I soon found out, that men and women are different in various subtle respects.”
“Having men and women made the same, would not be an optional use of the resources, and the evolution is very harsh against everything sub optimal. In the about five million years when there have been humans on the Earth, Homo Sapiens often and for extended periods were very close to extinction. Two people, specialists in different areas, working together to keep their children alive to maturity, are a more competent team with greater possibilities to succeed, than two identically equipped. A craftsman would never keep two tools exactly the same in his toolbox.”
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