Are Females Smarter Than Males?

[Starboy]

Quote by: tman_ndsu08 Men have penises, Women have vaginas. You can't change that.

tman, as predictable as a billiard ball. Are you sure you aren't pricky?

Starboy

[...Kate]

boys, take your Issues to elsewhere. lol.

I think the word you wanted might have been "prickly" ... given the politeness rules I read in the FAQ and all. Something about ad homs and keeping the conversation going all nice as pie, and stuff.

It does strike me that Starboy and tman share some similar thoughts on the subject of Feminism. :p

LOL

cya later.

-Kate

[tman_ndsu08]

Quote by: ...Kate You might have a penis, but I'm having trouble connecting with you as person, tman. You got a heart?

All I'm saying is that I'm sick of people pushing for super equality when there it isn't there to begine with.

If these people had their way, there'd be only one sex! But there's two, at they should realize the chemical differences that causes this will never allow for men and women to be equal.

BTW, you don't need to "connect with a person" share ideas.

See, there's a difference right there.

This isn't a moonlit walk on the sandy beach, lady, it's a debate forum.

[Starboy]

Quote by: ...Kate It does strike me that Starboy and tman share some similar thoughts on the subject of Feminism. :p

I am sure you hate to taunt and run but you will have to point out those shared thoughts to me when you can.

Starboy

[...Kate]

tman, I prefer two sexes. So, well, you must be talking about someone else.

About your personal relationship with Starboy, I don't know what's gone on between the two of you, but you sure seem super aware of each other, where ever I read. Just an observation. For what's it's worth.

Starboy, I've popped back in to tend the home fires. lol.

how's it going?

[Starboy]

Head on over to that thread and start reading. You asked for it, you got it, toyota. Also I expect you to do your part. Do more research, unless you are trying to tell me that you are educated and already know it all.

Starboy

[...Kate]

thanks, Starboy. I threw down some commentary, in a couple of places, and I will read the articles, but it would be nice if you'd pick out a *first* one to read, to get me started.

-Kate

[Songbird]

Quote by: BloodEagle An interesting thing i came across once said that quite clearly a man's brain is larger than that of a woman. But it went on to say that there is a certain chemical in a woman's brain that makes there's work a lot more efficiently. Interesting i thought but does not answer this arguement.

Blood Eagle, where did you come across this? I'd be intrested to read about it. Was it on the internet?

[BloodEagle]

Songbird, To be honest i can't remember now. It was sometinhg i came across when i was studying psychology at Unisome years ago. I will see if i can find it and give the reference but it may take some time lol.

[BloodEagle]

hehe i just found this article on the subject which i am copying here. It is interesting and also quite funny:

"Last year, I wrote a column about men's brains being larger than women's brains. Rather than rely on common knowledge for this claim, I cited a discovery made by actual researchers. According to them, the average guy brain contained 4 billion more cells than the average woman brain.


The column explored the many exciting things that men have been able to think up by using these extra brain cells, not the least of which are professional wrestling, impersonating Elvis, and innovative ways to destroy the world. Oh, and beer.


I was very careful to point out that these extra brain cells did not make men smarter or better than women. With the possible exception of White House press communiqués, nothing could be further from the truth.


All I said was that these extra brain cells are precisely what have enabled men to make History 101 interesting. Moreover, history will be even more interesting once we use these extra brain cells to develop a flesh-eating death ray or a decent pair of X-ray glasses.


For my trouble, I was rewarded with a barrage of letters from angry women.


One called me "a typically stupid male." Another said I was "a pig." Many more were illegible and flecked with Maybelline-tinted spittle.


Today I bear good news, or at least news more attuned to the political clime. While it appears that men's brains are still larger, women use much more of their brains. So says Mark George (a guy), psychiatrist and neurologist at the Medical University of South Carolina.


According to George, tests reveal that women's brains are far more active during the thinking process than are men's. Whereas men's brains only light up in specific areas during the thought process (usually areas directly associated with the groin), women's brains light up all over.


Some researchers say this proves that women's brains are more complex. It also proves that researchers should be shot for wasting federal funds. Any guy could have told them this.


Again, this does not prove that women are smarter than men. If they were, how is it that they are the ones asking for equality? Wouldn't this be too much like Abbott asking Costello for parity?


When it comes to women's brains, complex simply means harder to figure out.


For guys, this sometimes translates as "way too hard" and even "almost impossible." However, more often it means "What happened?"


The complexity of the female brain enables women to respond more intensely to emotions, up to and including the point that it turns men's hair white.


For example, when the ship sank in the movie "Titanic," women's emotions ranged rapidly between horror, sorrow, and even joy for the rescue. Meanwhile, guys are thinking, "Damn, we're almost out of Junior Mints."


Because girls speak sooner and read faster, women also tend to be more verbally adept than men. Proof is the number of utterances women can think up in less than a minute for which there is no appropriate male response, other than "Huh?"


Women navigate differently than men. Driving down the road, they pay more attention to landmarks like schools, grocery stores and churches.


Conversely, guys focus on direction and distance, as in, "The cops are behind us and it's 80 miles to the Nevada border."


The highly complex female brain means a sharper memory for women. Guys may be more spontaneous than women, but women remember longer the problems that such spontaneity caused. Women are always saying stuff like, "Remember what the judge said."


If it still bothers you that men's brains are bigger than women's, you can relax. The same study shows that men's brains shrink faster with age than women's brains. It starts about age 2."

Hope you enjoyed it...

[BloodEagle]

Here's another article i thought might be enjoyed-it's in two parts as it is quite long:

Men are More Intelligent than Women

On Start the Week, on Radio 4, tonight, Jeremy Paxman asked Professor Susan Greenfield, well-known neuroscientist (and Director of the Royal Institution) "You claim, don't you, that the more emotion you have, the less mind you have?"

"That's right," she answered.

Indeed, it is one of the main propositions in her new book, The Private Life of the Brain.

She went on to say, "[For example] One might say that, in meditation, one is developing a very deep consciousness, where you are accessing your inner states, and ignoring the outside world. This could be an example of where you are NOT experiencing an emotion, as such. The opposite would be, [perhaps], a baby, or someone with road rage, or a bungy jumper, awash with emotions and who is not [therefore] 'accessing' [with the mind] the past, or the future, or anything 'inside'."

Thus, Prof Greenfield is saying that the more 'emotion' you experience, the less 'mind' you have.

Now, which of the two possible genders, statistically speaking, experiences more emotion - and would claim to?

Mmm! The female gender, one would suspect.

And it follows, therefore, that, statistically speaking, this gender has less 'mind'. It is less in 'contact' with it.

Putting this another way: Relatively speaking, compared to men, women are less often 'accessing the past, or the future, or anything 'inside' ' - statistically, that is.

Well, that's what follows from Professor Greenfield's observations.

And most men and women would agree with them, openly, if they weren't having to be so politically correct.

Women, thus, statistically speaking, function less 'mindfully' than men, or, putting it less euphemistically, less 'intelligently'.

It cannot have escaped even the most ardent feminist's notice that it is men who are the focused, the possessed, and the obsessed. It is men who push forward the boundaries of science, music, technology and art. It is men who build great cities and great religions.

It is men who tinker well into the night, studying and prising apart the boundaries of even the most obscure and intractable.

I know one man who spent six years studying locust legs.

Not locusts. Locust LEGS!

FOR SIX YEARS!

I knew another who was a mathematician and who struggled daily, FOR YEARS, with some obscure problem in which only one other person in the entire world seemed to have any interest - and it wasn't me.

Just look at any science programme on TV and notice the 'workers' labouring in the various scientific fields. The 'experts'. The ones who sneak into their laboratories even on Christmas Day to skulk around engines, chemicals, computers or insects. The ones who spend hour upon hour, year upon year, squashed into their little rooms to study the contents of test-tubes or tissues. The ones who wander into the most hostile and desolate parts of the planet to scrub around for clues, artifacts and ideas.

They're nearly all men!

It is men who lead, explore, push forward and calculate.

And, to the extent that intelligence is based on environment, as opposed to genetics, or based upon learning and studying, as opposed to 'emotionalising' (and, so, losing 'mind') then the intelligence of men must creep forward more quickly, and further, than that of women, throughout their lives - because, statistically speaking, they choose to take on more of the intelligent-provoking 'environment', and they interact with it in much more of an objective and emotionless way (i.e. with more 'mind').

When it comes to intelligence, men have got what it takes. They drive in straight lines, they focus their attention, they do not multitask, they obsess, and they do not spend so much time emotionalising.

And they actually increase their intelligence by doing such things.

And the whole species benefits from their pursuits.

Statistically speaking, men are taller than women. Not much, but significantly so. The picture below is of some men and women. Some of the women, quite a few of them, are actually taller than quite a few of the men.





But now look at the next picture.



The very same men and women have fallen in love, and they have partnered each other. They are so happy. But, notice that EVERY SINGLE man is TALLER than EVERY SINGLE woman.

And the same thing happens with intelligence. Just as it is that women, statistically speaking, prefer men who are taller than them, and richer than them, and socially higher up the ladder than them, so it is that they prefer men who are more intelligent than them.

Not only do women admit to this last aspect, recent research also shows that most women believe that their partners are more intelligent than them.

[BloodEagle]

And they are!

The situation is exactly the same as for Picture B. Simply think of intelligence instead of height. All the women in this picture have chosen partners who are 'more intelligent' than them, even though it is true that, statistically speaking, across the whole population, there are millions of women who are more intelligent than millions of men.

And until such time as women CHOOSE partners who are less than, or equal to, themselves in terms of intelligence, the statement that 'men are more intelligent than women' will remain true when looking at the issue as it relates to partnerships between men and women!

Putting this another way: When it comes to looking at men and women as they function within their relationships, men are MOSTLY more intelligent than their female partners!

But, of course, we all know this instinctively.

We just cannot say so.

But it is clear that both men and women CHOOSE things to be this way - statistically speaking.

As Germaine Greer puts it, "Women are not valued for their intelligence." She's wrong(ish). They are. But they are not loved for it, nor are they found attractive as a result of it - statistically speaking.

In her book, Sexual Personae, Camille Paglia said that, "If civilization had been left in female hands, we would still all be living in grass huts."

She has a point, because if women had, indeed, been the dominant gender, each one would have used her influence to promote further 'emotionalising', and the result would have been less achievement with regard to developing other things.

Like wheels.

Little societies that spent their time emotionalising, instead of creating, inventing and progressing, had no chance in evolutionary terms. They lost the battle long ago. The men were killed and the women were carried away. And they no longer exist. They have been statistically washed away.

She also said that, "Women have been discouraged from genres such as sculpture that require studio training or expensive materials.

But in philosophy, mathematics, and poetry, the only materials are pen and paper.

Male conspiracy cannot explain ALL female failures.

I am convinced that, even without restrictions, there still would have been no female Pascal, Milton, or Kant.

. . . Even now, with all vocations open, I marvel at the rarity of the woman driven by artistic or intellectual obsession, that self-mutilating derangement of social relationship which, in its alternate forms of crime and ideation, is the disgrace and glory of the human species."

Men are, indeed, more intelligent and creative than women, on the whole. They work at it. They strive for it. They value it. They are loved for it. They are wanted for it.

And the mental environments in which they choose to spend their time definitely develop their talents even further.

That is, they give much more time to their 'minds'.

And this is mostly why women, STATISTICALLY SPEAKING, will never be able to compete successfully with men intellectually and nor, therefore, in any task or job which requires intellectual endeavour.

Finally, it is worth pointing out that not only do men develop their intelligence by CHOOSING to engage more so in activities that enhance it - as opposed to emotionalising - (and so, to the extent that the environment affects intelligence then it will do so more for men than it will for women) but it is also the case that, thanks to the Y chromosome, the genetic variability of men is greater than that of women, so spreading the range of their intelligence more widely. The consequence is that at the bottom range of intelligence there will be found to be far more men than women, and in the top range the SAME will be true.

Further, and for the same reason, both the highest and the lowest intelligence levels of men are more extreme than those of women.

And the upshot of all this is that at the high-flier levels, women haven't got a hope of competing with men either in terms of their number or in terms of their achievements. Thus, there is not so much of a glass ceiling created by sex-discriminatory men holding back the realisation of statistical parity between men and women in the higher echelons of the world, the women's relative lack of success in these lofty places is far more due to the choices that they make and their less-variable genetic makeup, neither of which is the fault of men.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

USA Benbow and her colleagues have reported consistent sex differences in mathematical reasoning ability that favor males. In mathematically talented youth, the differences were especially sharp at the upper end of the distribution, where males vastly outnumbered females. The same has been found for the Putnam competition, a very demanding mathematics examination. Benbow argues that these differences are not readily explained by socialization.

USA Science confirms what every husband and wife knows from personal experience. A wife recalls every argument in photographic detail, where they had it and how he started it, details that long ago slipped from his memory bank. Suzanne Fields

Remembering emotional incidents, or responding more emotionally to them, is not the same as understanding them.

That women respond more to the emotional elements of a situation and better remember them simply demonstrates that they are cognitively more affected by their feelings.

And, given that feelings are not particularly focused, logical or easily controlled (e.g. fear of harmless spiders) and that they are also very much affected by the blunt instruments of fluctuating hormones, the fact that feelings more readily influence the thinking of women goes some way to explaining why women, statistically speaking, will not be able to compete with men where intelligence is concerned.

[BloodEagle]

Oh and that last one does not reflect my own feelings about women and intelligent... so dont shoot the messenger lol.

[BloodEagle]

Another interestig one aboutthe driving debate i saw going on earlier:

Women Not Neccessarily Better Drivers Than Men

Although men are three times more likely than women to be killed in car crashes, researchers at the Johns Hopkins Schools of Medicine and Public Health have found that, when the total numbers of crashes are considered, female drivers are involved in slightly more crashes than men. Overall, men were involved in 5.1 crashes per million miles driven compared to 5.7 crashes for women, despite the fact that on average they drove 74 percent more miles per year than did women.

The investigators, who published their results in the July issue of Epidemiology, found that although teenage boys started off badly, with about 20 percent more crashes per mile driven than teenage girls, males and females between ages 20 and 35 were equally at risk of being involved in a crash, and after age 35 female drivers were at greater risk of a crash than their male counterparts.

Lead author Guohua Li, MD, PhD, associate professor of Emergency Medicine at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and of Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, said, "Although risk-taking behaviors may contribute to the excessive injury mortality among men and younger drivers, up to now age and sex discrepancies in death rates from motor vehicle crashes have not been well understood."

The researchers used 1990 crash statistics gathered by the Fatal Accident Reporting System (FARS), the General Estimates System (GES), and the Nationwide Personal Transportation Survey (NPTS) and applied an innovative method called "decomposition" to break down the data into new categories and weigh the relative contributions of three variables: crash fatality, incidence density (that is, number of crashes per million person-miles) and exposure prevalence (annual average miles driven per driver). Traditionally, the death rate ratio has been considered to be a function of just two factors: fatality rates and accident rates.

The investigators determined that about half of the 3.1-fold difference between the sexes' fatal crash involvement rates was due to the fact that males' crashes were more severe. Another 40 percent was due to the fact that men, who on average drove many more miles than women, thus had a greater opportunity of being in a crash; and 8 percent because of gender differences in "crash incidence density," the number of crashes per million person-miles.

Each year, highway crashes claim about 40,000 lives, cause three million injuries, and cost the nation $140 billion.

The study was supported in part by a grant from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and a grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Co-authors: Gabor Kelen, MD, professor and director, Emergency Medicine, the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine; and Susan P. Baker, PhD, professor of Health Policy and Management, the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.

[Songbird]

Thanks Blood Eagle! They are all very intresting! I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make you go search for the article. I was just wondering if you still had it :)

[Starboy]

I think brain size and even brain activity is highly overrated as an indication as to which sex is smarter than the other or if they are using their entire brains as opposed to a small portion and so forth. All it can do is indicate that the brains of each sex operate differently. Consider the fact that there are many species (some are bird brains) that perform mental tasks far better than we do (such as caching and finding those caches) than the humble graduate or college student (the typical test subject used when comparing human to animal abilities). The only way to determine if one sex is better at a task than another is to test one sex against the other for that task. There is plenty of evidence in front of every woman's nose that will clearly indicated that they are better at certain tasks than men if they would only look. What I have noticed is an almost innate feeling of inadequacy built into woman that seems to have nothing to do with their intelligence, ability or looks. For some reason I do not see too many papers published on that subject.

Starboy

[...Kate]

The male/female distinction is artificial, because in each of the groups further personality subdivisions makes some in each of the groups (the male and female groups ...) ... leaders and followers, creative and linear thinkers, intelligent and not so intelligent, atheltic and sedentary, clever and dull, and so on and so forth, "until the cows come home.". And even in those groups, if grouped, the characteristics of the individuals will shift as the demands of the situation dictate ... thus a "group" of "submissive males" if placed on a desert island would produce some leaders and followers, some nurturers and some hunters "until the bulls come home" (so to speak).
.

[BloodEagle]

perhaps the true questions should be... Is the Human race intelligent?

[...Kate]

Quote by: BloodEagle perhaps the true questions should be... Is the Human race intelligent?

lol!

it strikes me that we would entirely run out of things to talk about if we weren't subdividing each other into little groups.

[Starboy]

Quote by: ...Kate The male/female distinction is artificial, because in each of the groups further personality subdivisions makes some in each of the groups (the male and female groups ...) ... leaders and followers, creative and linear thinkers, intelligent and not so intelligent, atheltic and sedentary, clever and dull, and so on and so forth, "until the cows come home.". And even in those groups, if grouped, the characteristics of the individuals will shift as the demands of the situation dictate ... thus a "group" of "submissive males" if placed on a desert island would produce some leaders and followers, some nurturers and some hunters "until the bulls come home" (so to speak). .

No there is a distinction, it is just that within our species variation of traits within sexes and races are far greater then the variations between the average of the sexes and the races, but the differences are there. But be careful about that. All it means is that for certain individuals the variations by sex or race do not matter. What one must look at is the standard distribution against the difference and for some traits that is very significant. As I have told you before, women insisting that there is no difference is not helping their cause one bit because the data doesn't support that claim. It makes them look no different than communists or Christian fundamentalists or Nazis. They insist that their take on reality must be what everyone must except even though people can see with their own eyes that it is not. Now I am not saying that women are as insistent as the communists, fundies or Nazis but this denial of reality that they want excepted as reality is not helping their cause.

Starboy