SF and the future of the sexes

So what I'm hearing in reply to my question is that my assumptions aren't too horribly far off base and probably sufficient for basic worldbuilding purposes (insofar as I'm dealing more with fantasy and high tech genetic tweaking isn't an issue I'm likely to deal with). I have two non-Earth societies I'm concerned with for the purpose of my current work, both pre-industrial and while I'm not making a big deal of gender, both have examples of established gender roles and people operating outside of them. In one case, there is some degree of what we'd call progressivisim involved, they've been exposed to the ideas of societies more developed than they are, in the other it's two major female characters who enjoy considerable mobility because they were born with magic abilities that elevate them to a position of high social power where no one is likely to tell them 'no'. (There's also no objection to women inheriting property though there is a gender-neutral form of primogeniture in play and refusing to marry or nobles marrying below their class is looked on with suspicion.)

On a seperate but somewhat related note, I'm really a fan of heroines where their empathy and kindless is as or more important to their heroisim than their physical strength. I blame Sailor Moon for this.

kuwisdelu said:

Not that you can really control all of the environmental factors, but at least with trans people on cross-sex hormone therapy you can control the between-subject variability.

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This is an interesting thing, and it does make for some uncomfortableness. For instance, I remember reading the account of a transgender man who, after transition that included testosterone therapy, felt much sharper, focused and confident than he did with female hormones dominating. This suggests that the sexist assertion that women's hormones make us duller, more scattered, and spineless overall than men (or than we would be personally if we were men) actually is true.

Depressing to think I might have been smarter, more focused, and more confident if I'd been born with male hormones.

It made me want testosterone so I can be smarter, more focused, and more self assured but without the other side effects, like a deeper voice, hair in all the wrong places, and a through the rooftop libido (I spend too much time thinking about sex and feeling frustrated as it is, and if I were on Testosterone, eeeeek). And I don't want my emotions (except anger) to be dulled.

But one side effect of being at a time of life when my female hormones are decreasing is that I feel more fuzzy-brained, tired, and unfocused than I used to, so it may not just be the effects of testosterone so much as being deficient in a particular hormone that one's body is wired up to need. So maybe an aspect of being transgender, for some people at least, could be that their bodies actually need different sex hormones than they have by default to work optimally?

And is it true that men actually don't (aside from anger) feel emotions as deeply as women do overall? Because my completely anecdotal experience with the men I've known is that the men I know (and the ones whose books I read) seem to feel love, joy, fear, sadness, jealousy, hate, loneliness etc. as intensely as I do and suffer terribly when their emotional needs aren't met, but they aren't always as good as articulating those feelings face to face.

I do remember hearing a neuroendocrinologist (Sapolsky) say in a radio interview that women, overall, are slower to anger but once aroused to anger, will tend to stay in that arousal state longer and be able to re-enter it more readily, which is the kernel of truth behind the stereotype that women are more likely to harbor grudges and bring up old arguments their menfolk think are settled and to tie current transgressions to ongoing patterns of behavior.

I'm not sure this typifies my overall experience, however. For me, whether I lose my temper quickly or do a slow burn is more about the mood I'm in. I'm likely to flare up more quickly f I'm hungry or tired, for instance, or if it's a hair trigger issue for me. And my dad, OMG, he never forgot old grudges or arguments. He'd bring up something hurtful (or stupid) you said in anger years later...

Anecdotes, I know, but this illustrates how hard it is to get a handle on these things. And how does one decide whether someone's account of their own lived experience is an anecdote of little importance in the overall scheme of things, or whether it's an important and overlooked variable?

Roxxsmom said:

This is an interesting thing, and it does make for some uncomfortableness. For instance, I remember reading the account of a transgender man who, after transition that included testosterone therapy, felt much sharper, focused and confident than he did with female hormones dominating. This suggests that the sexist assertion that women's hormones make us duller, more scattered, and spineless overall than men (or than we would be personally if we were men) actually is true.

Depressing to think I might have been smarter, more focused, and more confident if I'd been born with male hormones.

Click to expand...

Well, conversely, I also feel sharper, more focused, and more confident on estrogen than I ever did before.

So it does bring up a difficulty in teasing out the direct psychological effects of hormones specifically from those which are simply a result of having the correct sex hormone and reduced dysphoria.

Like, for some people, one's emotions feeling more intense and accessible may be an important aspect to feeling sharp and focused, while for others, that intensity may be a hindrance.

But one side effect of being at a time of life when my female hormones are decreasing is that I feel more fuzzy-brained, tired, and unfocused than I used to, so it may not just be the effects of testosterone so much as being deficient in a particular hormone that one's body is wired up to need. So maybe an aspect of being transgender, for some people at least, could be that their bodies actually need different sex hormones than they have by default to work optimally?

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Yep. Absolutely.

And is it true that men actually don't (aside from anger) feel emotions as deeply as women do overall? Because my completely anecdotal experience with the men I've known is that the men I know (and the ones whose books I read) seem to feel love, joy, fear, sadness, jealousy, hate, loneliness etc. as intensely as I do and suffer terribly when their emotional needs aren't met, but they aren't always as good as articulating those feelings face to face.

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I don't really know of any good way to measure this or any study which even tries, but that seems to be the anecdotal experience of many trans men and women. More or less. But it's a bit difficult to describe. For me, it's been rather subtle, but for others it's more dramatic. But that could be due to levels, too. (Getting mine checked tomorrow...)

Julia Serano. "Whipping Girl" said:

“People often say that female hormones make women “more emotional” than men, but in my view such claims are an oversimplification. How would I describe the changes I went through, then? In retrospect, when testosterone was the predominant sex hormone in my body, it was as though a thick curtain were draped over my emotions. It deadened their intensity, made all of my feelings pale and vague as if they were ghosts that would haunt me. But on estrogen, I find that I have all of the same emotions that I did back then, only now they come in crystal clear. In other words, it is not the actual emotions, but rather their intensity that has changed—the highs are way higher and the lows are way lower. Another way of saying it is that I feel my emotions more now; they are in the foreground rather than the background of my mind.

“The anecdote that perhaps best captures this change occurred about two months after I started hormone therapy. My wife, Dani, and I had an argument and at one point I started to cry—something that was not all that uncommon for me when I was hormonally male. What was different was that after about a minute or so, I began to laugh while simultaneously continuing to cry. When Dani asked me why I was laughing, I replied, “I can’t turn it off.” Back when I was hormonally male, I felt as though I was always capable of stopping the cry, of holding it all in, if I really wanted to. Now, I find it nearly impossible to hold back the tears once I start crying. I’ve learned instead to just go with it, to let myself experience the cry, and it feels a lot more cathartic as a result.

“In general, even though my emotions are much more intense these days, I certainly do not feel as though they get in the way of my logic or reasoning, or that they single-handedly control my every thought or decision. I remain perfectly capable of acting on rational thought rather than following my feelings. However, what I can no longer do (at least to the extent that I used to) is completely ignore my emotions, repress them, or entirely shut them out of my mind.”

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My experience so far is pretty similar. I thought I cried a lot before, but there is definitely a difference now.

Roxxsmom said:

Anecdotes, I know, but this illustrates how hard it is to get a handle on these things. And how does one decide whether someone's account of their own lived experience is an anecdote of little importance in the overall scheme of things, or whether it's an important and overlooked variable?

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Hormones are definitely YMMV.

As another example of that, most trans women today don't receive progesterone, despite it being an important part of cis women's cycles. Among trans women whose hormone treatment includes progesterone, some find it greatly improves their emotional stability and happiness, while others report the exact opposite.

Roxxsmom said:

This is an interesting thing, and it does make for some uncomfortableness. For instance, I remember reading the account of a transgender man who, after transition that included testosterone therapy, felt much sharper, focused and confident than he did with female hormones dominating. This suggests that the sexist assertion that women's hormones make us duller, more scattered, and spineless overall than men (or than we would be personally if we were men) actually is true.

Depressing to think I might have been smarter, more focused, and more confident if I'd been born with male hormones.

It made me want testosterone so I can be smarter, more focused, and more self assured but without the other side effects, like a deeper voice, hair in all the wrong places, and a through the rooftop libido (I spend too much time thinking about sex and feeling frustrated as it is, and if I were on Testosterone, eeeeek). And I don't want my emotions (except anger) to be dulled.

But one side effect of being at a time of life when my female hormones are decreasing is that I feel more fuzzy-brained, tired, and unfocused than I used to, so it may not just be the effects of testosterone so much as being deficient in a particular hormone that one's body is wired up to need. So maybe an aspect of being transgender, for some people at least, could be that their bodies actually need different sex hormones than they have by default to work optimally?

Click to expand...

Ok, this is real interesting to me because the sensations the guy described mirror some stuff going on in my own head the past couple years. It wouldn't raise a flag except I may actually have some hormone balance problems (which also have physical manifestations) - I had gotten to the point where I got some testing done and would have been refereed to an endocrinologist but life took a nosedive at that point and my procrastinator nature has meant getting the things I'd need to get sorted out to have that looked at again have been slow at happening.

This is a very interesting and informative thread.

themindstream said:

Ok, this is real interesting to me because the sensations the guy described mirror some stuff going on in my own head the past couple years. It wouldn't raise a flag except I may actually have some hormone balance problems (which also have physical manifestations) - I had gotten to the point where I got some testing done and would have been refereed to an endocrinologist but life took a nosedive at that point and my procrastinator nature has meant getting the things I'd need to get sorted out to have that looked at again have been slow at happening.

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It's not that uncommon. I have a cis female friend with a hormone imbalance who has relied on exogenous hormones for years.

kuwisdelu said:

Well, conversely, I also feel sharper, more focused, and more confident on estrogen than I ever did before.

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Which suggests that having the hormonal milieu that's right for your body and brain may be what's most important. It's certainly true that I haven't spoken with a transgender woman who felt that she became less intelligent or more wimpy after she started taking hormone treatments. I also have memories of not feeling at all well sometimes when I was going through puberty (lots of headaches and upset stomach and just feeling foggy and out of it, and rather depressed and anxious, which didn't help me in school at all during that time, but everyone assumed I was just being lazy, since I was "so smart," I should have been getting straight As if I just applied myself).

Ironically, once I settled in during my mid to late teens, I never really experienced the pre-menstrual emotional flux issues some women do (when I got depressed, it tended to be triggered by an external event and to be more pervasive and stable for months at a time). I didn't think much about my hormones, aside from the issue of menstruation itself.

It's so long ago I can't recall if it's unwell in the same way I've been feeling with menopause, which of course brings weird hormone fluxes. I've joked that it's like puberty in reverse, though.

So it does bring up a difficulty in teasing out the direct psychological effects of hormones specifically from those which are simply a result of having the correct sex hormone and reduced dysphoria.

Like, for some people, one's emotions feeling more intense and accessible may be an important aspect to feeling sharp and focused, while for others, that intensity may be a hindrance.

Click to expand...

I can certainly see that.

As another example of that, most trans women today don't receive progesterone, despite it being an important part of cis women's cycles. Among trans women whose hormone treatment includes progesterone, some find it greatly improves their emotional stability and happiness, while others report the exact opposite.

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I think it might be because progesterone is important in the shedding of the uterine lining in cisgender women, so the whole thing is overlooked for transgender ones. Also, there's the fear because of the whole prempro problem with HRT for menopause symptoms. That specific formulation caused health problems that estrogen alone did not. But as it turns out, other regimens that mingle estradiol and synthetic progesterone haven't developed the same issues, at least with shorter-term use. Of course, hormone treatments for transgender women would be a long-term thing.

I have no uterus (was removed due to nasty fibroids), but anecdotally, estrogen alone helped with the so-called hot flashes, but hormone replacement therapy has worked better for my energy levels and mood since my doctor added progesterone to the mix. It may be a different issue for me, since my body is having to adjust to decreasing amounts of a hormone it was previously used to getting. I'd tried some herbals before, such as black cohosh and some soy based supplements, but I didn't get much out of them.

Out of curiosity, does hormone therapy (I'm assuming a testosterone blocker is involved too) have a period of adjustment where there are hot flashes or other symptoms?

Roxxsmom said:

Which suggests that having the hormonal milieu that's right for your body and brain may be what's most important. It's certainly true that I haven't spoken with a transgender woman who felt that she became less intelligent or more wimpy after she started taking hormone treatments.

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Yep.

I think it might be because progesterone is important in the shedding of the uterine lining in cisgender women, so the whole thing is overlooked for transgender ones. Also, there's the fear because of the whole prempro problem with HRT for menopause symptoms. That specific formulation caused health problems that estrogen alone did not. But as it turns out, other regimens that mingle estradiol and synthetic progesterone haven't developed the same issues, at least with shorter-term use. Of course, hormone treatments for transgender women would be a long-term thing.

Click to expand...

There is some anecdotal evidence that progesterone helps with breast development, but nothing substantial (not like anyone does studies on it), which is a reason why some trans women want it. But since there's no real evidence for it, and it's not really important for physical feminization besides it, lots of doctors won't bother.

Which neglects the potentiality that cycling progesterone might actually be important for emotional and mental health, and other such reasons.

I have no uterus (was removed due to nasty fibroids), but anecdotally, estrogen alone helped with the so-called hot flashes, but hormone replacement therapy has worked better for my energy levels and mood since my doctor added progesterone to the mix. It may be a different issue for me, since my body is having to adjust to decreasing amounts of a hormone it was previously used to getting. I'd tried some herbals before, such as black cohosh and some soy based supplements, but I didn't get much out of them.

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I really want to get grant funding someday to study this stuff. Everyone's just basically guessing, and we really need to do more research to figure out proper regimens for both cis and trans women. Any chance you'd be interested in Co-PI-ing and writing a grant with me sometime?? A biologist would certainly be useful. ^_^

I don't take oral progesterone yet, but I recently got an OTC progesterone cream. It's probably entirely placebo (especially since it's not very much), but I do think I feel a little bit better with it. Well, if nothing else, it smells good.

Out of curiosity, does hormone therapy (I'm assuming a testosterone blocker is involved too) have a period of adjustment where there are hot flashes or other symptoms?

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For feminizing HRT? If you stop it, yes. A trans women who stops taking estrogen will experience menopause symptoms.

Starting it has no such effect (that I know of), except for low energy levels while T is low and before E is built up to normal female levels.

We can also experience PMS symptoms (minus the bleeding).

I'm not sure about trans men. I'd assume they'd have menopause-like symptoms at first, too, until their T is stable in male ranges, but I don't know. Maybe not.

Helix said:

If you're upset about being called a mansplainer, how do you think the people you are lecturing feel? I note, though, that you only acknowledge it when someone with a clearly male name and avatar mentions it.

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zanzjan said:

I'd like to note that I *strongly* suggested in-thread that you revise your original post to get rid of the lecturing tone, which you totally ignored. That you then got accused of lecturing is, IMHO, not something you can claim to not have seen coming. Further, you're lecturing to an audience that has significantly more knowledge and personal experience with much of your subject matter, including its context within SFF.

My new suggestion is that you consider taking this as an opportunity to learn something new about your topic and people in general, and also a chance to reflect on whether your tendency to present yourself as an expert/mentor in relation to conversations is best serving you.

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Laer Carroll said:

Thanks, Pete. I understood your comments intellectually as general, but reading them deep in the night my emotions treated them as personal.

I try to avoid the personal in AW posts and look at the bigger picture. To see the forest rather than dwell in the trees. This is in part due to my training as a systems engineer. I'm sorry if this comes across as lecturing.

So here I get personal on the last two topics brought up: trans change, and non-nuclear families.

___________________________
​

The first trans person I met was about 25 years ago. She and I and ...


(9 paragraphs snipped)


Does this sound like I'm making all this up? If so, that may be because of that secrecy I just mentioned. You haven't (yet) found your way behind the public façade.

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What a lovely discussion we're having. What a pity Laer couldn't be here.

For anyone not named "Pete", that is.

Helix said:

"Primitive areas"? Dude, really. And further, perhaps you should look at timelines. Remember that India and Pakistan have both had women Prime Ministers. Read more history.

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But, Helix, Laer is right about the torture, murders, acid in the face, and honor killings. Periodically there's a news story about another honor killing in India.

And I know I just read an article about a guy who married off his just-turned-teenage daughter to a much older man, like 40 or 50. He regretted it almost immediately, and somehow managed to send the girl off somewhere. But I think she is 21 now and has finished college. And she still doesn't want that guy as her husband.

Also, I believe families are still aborting female fetuses in China in favor of having male babies.

If these aren't primitive behaviors, I don't know what is. And yes, India and Pakistan have both had women prime ministers.

Marilyn

I do remember a transgender woman mentioning getting some hot flashes from when she started on testosterone blockers, but I don't know how common that is. As with everything else, the way bodies respond to hormones can be highly individualized. I know a couple women who got through menopause with very few symptoms, and others where in addition to the standard issues (hot flashes, changes in mood and so on), other health issues they had got abruptly worse, or new ones developed. The hard part is knowing how many of those things might have happened anyway, or if they're just generically age related.

Mi Oh said:

But, Helix, Laer is right about the torture, murders, acid in the face, and honor killings. Periodically there's a news story about another honor killing in India.

And I know I just read an article about a guy who married off his just-turned-teenage daughter to a much older man, like 40 or 50. He regretted it almost immediately, and somehow managed to send the girl off somewhere. But I think she is 21 now and has finished college. And she still doesn't want that guy as her husband.

Also, I believe families are still aborting female fetuses in China in favor of having male babies.

If these aren't primitive behaviors, I don't know what is. And yes, India and Pakistan have both had women prime ministers.

Marilyn

Click to expand...

Calling another culture "primitive" is often thinly-veiled racism. We have torture, murders, acid, and honor killings right here in the USA.

I face the possibility of violence and death just for using the bathroom.

Calling another culture racist is not only calling the perpetrators of violence "primitive", but also calling the victims "primitive".

Western society is not further evolved or above gendered violence. It's just better at hiding its hate behind a facade of respectability.

I come from a culture that is also often described as "primitive". It's racist terminology. We can do better.

Mi Oh said:

But, Helix, Laer is right about the torture, murders, acid in the face, and honor killings. Periodically there's a news story about another honor killing in India.

And I know I just read an article about a guy who married off his just-turned-teenage daughter to a much older man, like 40 or 50. He regretted it almost immediately, and somehow managed to send the girl off somewhere. But I think she is 21 now and has finished college. And she still doesn't want that guy as her husband.

Also, I believe families are still aborting female fetuses in China in favor of having male babies.

If these aren't primitive behaviors, I don't know what is. And yes, India and Pakistan have both had women prime ministers.

Marilyn

Click to expand...

I believe in Western societies this is termed Domestic Violence. So much less 'primitive'.

kuwisdelu said:

Calling another culture "primitive" is often thinly-veiled racism. We have torture, murders, acid, and honor killings right here in the USA.

I face the possibility of violence and death just for using the bathroom.


I come from a culture that is also often described as "primitive". It's racist terminology. We can do better.

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Yikes! I stand corrected. I definitely know better and can do better. Even if I feel angry about things like honor killings and such, I still need to speak respectfully about different cultures.

You've given me other things to think about too. I hadn't connected some of the violence against women I read about with honor killings, but the underlying feelings could very well be the same.

At any rate, I apologize to all for not paying attention to what I was saying and how I was saying it.

Marilyn

Mi Oh said:

Yikes! I stand corrected. I definitely know better and can do better. Even if I feel angry about things like honor killings and such, I still need to speak respectfully about different cultures.

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Yep. We can be critical while being respectful.

A key thing to remember is that oppressed PoC women are still often very connected to their cultures. It's not their culture which is the problem, but the misogynist behavior within it — behavior which Western societies have not successfully eradicated completely yet either. Denigrating their cultures in order to villainize their oppressors does nothing to actually support them.

Treating misogyny in PoC cultures with a patronizing cultural attitude of white savior syndrome is what leads to perpetuating misogyny in misguided attempts to "free" PoC women from their cultures...

Like when French police publicly and coercively strip Muslim women of their clothing.

You've given me other things to think about too. I hadn't connected some of the violence against women I read about with honor killings, but the underlying feelings could very well be the same.

At any rate, I apologize to all for not paying attention to what I was saying and how I was saying it.

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I'm glad! Thank you for being cool about it.

I've also heard (but not verified) that many places adopted more misogynistic beliefs because their European colonizers imported it. Not sure enough to cite specific examples but I want to say medieval-era Arabic women were mentioned.

themindstream said:

I've also heard (but not verified) that many places adopted more misogynistic beliefs because their European colonizers imported it.

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Native American cultures, certainly. Also homophobia and transphobia. ...Although "adopted" is a rather polite way of saying "had forced upon them at risk of genocide".

kuwisdelu said:

Well, conversely, I also feel sharper, more focused, and more confident on estrogen than I ever did before.

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This has been my experience as well. And I am, after all, the 7th "Best Transgender Person of All Time" (currently)*


*citation to follow:
https://rankly.com/list/best-transgender-person-off-all-time

Roxxsmom said:

This is an interesting thing, and it does make for some uncomfortableness. For instance, I remember reading the account of a transgender man who, after transition that included testosterone therapy, felt much sharper, focused and confident than he did with female hormones dominating. This suggests that the sexist assertion that women's hormones make us duller, more scattered, and spineless overall than men (or than we would be personally if we were men) actually is true.

Depressing to think I might have been smarter, more focused, and more confident if I'd been born with male hormones.

Click to expand...

I don't know about hormones, but they have done studies that indicate that folks who are told they will do well at a certain thing due to gender or race are more likely to do well at it than those who are being told not to expect great results. Merely changing the language in introducing certain types of skills testing almost completely eliminated differences in men/women or middle/low income or white/PoC. (The studies were focused on various science and comprehension tests - areas where women and PoC or low income students frequently struggle.)

The conclusion was that societal pressures do influence an individuals ability to not only grasp but transmit information, essentially causing certain groups to "psych" themselves out by telling them they won't do as well as certain other groups. They even did a particular test where they asked women to picture themselves as men while taking the test and they did better than a group of similar educational level that was not told that.

I found it both interesting and infuriating.

Laer Carroll said:

All this discussion of hormone treatments makes me wonder if my friend died partly because her med mix was wrong. She had changed in 1986 or '87 when she was in her mid-thirties. We met her in 1991 or '92. Her suicide came about two years later. Was hormone therapy for transition a fairly mature process then? Did doctors know enough to successfully tailor the treatments to the individual, and adjust it as needed?

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They still don't really know enough now. There are target ranges, but every doctor does something slightly different to get there. It's still common for trans people to know more about HRT than many of our doctors.

As far as I know, it hasn't really changed much since then except for new drugs. Today we use bioidentical estradiol for feminizing HRT, which is synthesized to be identical to endogenous estradiol. PreMaRin (horse estrogen made from pregnant mare urine) used to be used. It was effective, just not exactly the same, and quite expensive. I don't really know much about the history of masculinizing HRT or when testosterone became available.

Assuming she actually had access to hormones, though, society is the more likely cause.

But then she was brought up as a cismale, who have it drummed into them that "boys don't cry" when hurt. Then she did two tours in the Marine Corps, which likely reinforced all the stoicism boys are taught. Maybe she found it hard to talk even to her doctor about her feelings.

Click to expand...

You think?

Growing up LGBTQ, especially trans, means being constantly gaslighted by the world.

41% of trans people attempt suicide at least once.

Laer Carroll said:

Is that before or after transition?

Click to expand...

Lifetime.

Oh, and I was slightly wrong. That's actually across all gender non-conforming people. It's higher among trans people.

It's highest for Native Americans (>50%). (Followed by those who identify as mixed race, and African Americans).

It's highest during gender transition, and decreases post-transition.

I'd have guessed that someone who completes the process to be well informed and fully committed to the result, and happier afterward on the average. But then happier afterward depends not only on themselves, but the way the world treats them. The recent attempts to punish trans people using the "wrong" restroom being only one example.

Click to expand...

Transitioning ultimately reduces suicide risk, but it remains dramatically and tragically higher than for cis people.

Maybe I got too optimistic an idea of what trans people experience after transition because the second person I know who went through the process has what seems to have a happier life than before. But then he is now a male, the privileged sex in our society.

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The internal experience can be pretty great. The social experience can be pretty brutal.

Aggy B. said:

I don't know about hormones, but they have done studies that indicate that folks who are told they will do well at a certain thing due to gender or race are more likely to do well at it than those who are being told not to expect great results.

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I've heard this too, though someone else was saying a while back that the studies aren't well controlled. It certainly makes intuitive sense that this could happen.

Worst story I remember hearing was from a friend who was in college back in the 70s, and there was only two women in his engineering physics class. One of the two got the highest score on the exams, however, and the prof would publicly chide the male students for letting a "girl" beat them. I'm sure he thought he was being funny and giving the woman a sort of compliment too, but jeez.

Aggy B. said:

I don't know about hormones, but they have done studies that indicate that folks who are told they will do well at a certain thing due to gender or race are more likely to do well at it than those who are being told not to expect great results. Merely changing the language in introducing certain types of skills testing almost completely eliminated differences in men/women or middle/low income or white/PoC. (The studies were focused on various science and comprehension tests - areas where women and PoC or low income students frequently struggle.)

The conclusion was that societal pressures do influence an individuals ability to not only grasp but transmit information, essentially causing certain groups to "psych" themselves out by telling them they won't do as well as certain other groups. They even did a particular test where they asked women to picture themselves as men while taking the test and they did better than a group of similar educational level that was not told that.

I found it both interesting and infuriating.

Click to expand...

Roxxsmom said:

I've heard this too, though someone else was saying a while back that the studies aren't well controlled. It certainly makes intuitive sense that this could happen.

Click to expand...

We've talked about this at a diversity workshop for statisticians, by statisticians, at the largest statistical conference in the world.

It happens.