Via Aporia Magazine on substack. "The world's only sociobiology magazine."
Origin of Sex-Biased Mental Disorders:Do Males and Females Experience Different Selective Regimes.
From the abstract
The origins of sex-biased differences in disease and health are of growing interest to both medical researchers and health professionals. Several major factors have been identified that affect sex differences in incidence of diseases and mental disorders. These are: sex chromosomes, sex hormones and female immunity, sexual selection and antagonistic evolution, and differential susceptibility of sexes to environmental factors. These factors work on different time scales and are not exclusive of each other.
Notice that these Canadian researchers dare to say sex rather than gender, which is likely easier politically (so far) in a biology department in the field of molecular biology. Also, the perspective shades slightly to "women have a harder time," which may provide some cover for them, whatever their personal beliefs.
It is a fascinating time we are entering with genetics providing so much new raw data that we don't quite know what to do with. Not only genes that turn other genes on and off, but other genes which direct when to do that, downstream of hormones, which are themselves subject to their own on-off switches. So you can get cascade effects or effects that shut down immediately, and long chains of polygenic effects.
4 comments:
Relevant?
https://americanmind.org/salvo/violent-femmes/
When something is this pronounced in one direction, it simply must be. Nor do I believe it is entirely environmental/cultural, though that must be in there somewhere. I think again of Dr. Tania Reynolds and her work on intrasexual competition and cooperation, how men and women have quite different base styles or drives. I mentioned her work and linked to it back in my "Will Tinder Enable the New Polygamies" series. https://assistantvillageidiot.blogspot.com/2022/10/will-tinder-enable-polygamies-mating.html
AVI...interesting post. A woman commenting another blog said 'we (speaking of women) are the mobile gender'..she went on to point out that for much of history & prehistory, women wound up in another tribe or at least another branch of a tribe, usually either by choice of their parents or by outright wife-stealing, hence, had to develop tendencies of fitting-in and doing so fairly rapidly.
re Theory of Mind, I do think women generally are better at this (probably a partial explanation for why women do more fiction-reading) I remember a girlfriend once mentioned that she liked to lie on the rug and look into her dog's eyes and wonder what it was like to be him. And a good female friend remarked that being able to really understand what someone else was thinking & feeling would be 'the ultimate adventure.'
I do think men often get better at Theory of Mind as they get older, particularly if they are in any kind of leadership position, in which at least some ability to understand others is essential.
Also, the organizational confusion that exists in many businesses today tends to put even more of a premium on this kind of social intelligence than does more hierarchical organization. Same is true when people work as independent contractors rather than employees and have to sell themselves for new deals frequently.
David, I had never thought of the possibility that men got better, perhaps even considerably better at theory of mind, after an initial head start by women. For the reasons you mention about women having to fit in, sometimes even in dire situations, they would need to have some ability to read others, especially other women, at an earlier age than men, whose developmental task is often more like learning to fit in with a group norm.
Autism researchers are generally convinced that women with autism still have many of the secondary social traits, whether by culture or by genes, and thus are less likely to be detected. Their social reads, even as they are worse than more women, might still be better than many men. The high-functioning autistic women I have known often have enormous confidence that they read people as well as other women, even as they are spectacularly offensive and difficult. I have puzzled over why this would be, but have only half-theories. What I have seen in practice is that they are reasonably good when cued, when asked "How would you feel if someone said that to you?" or "Do you think this would have a different meaning coming from a woman rather than a man?" But without cuing, they simply neglect such questions and barrel on, rather disconcertingly.
I have also noticed that women in general, not just Aspies/HFA's, are quickly offended at the suggestion that they aren't very good at this. There may be some subterranean sense that "You are saying I am not a proper woman, then."
But none of this entirely convinces me, and someone with a better theory, or even some data, might convince me pretty easily.
Post a Comment