Women genetically less intelligent than Men?

reply to post by chrhenn32


It takes a helluva lot to offend me. And, you didn't.

It's just odd in the "intelligence debate" that some of these arguments are that women should stay home, seemingly barefoot and pregnant, raise kids and coddle the husband.

There's more to life, and while stay at home moms are great and I bow down to them for what they do, there is more to life for some women. And, since we have been given the opportunities and circumstances to expand our intelligence and put it into action, there is nothing wrong with expanding the role of women in society.

Its actually a little frightening with the predictions of Oct 7th on and martial law. Commander X talked about a new form of old testament style Christianity being developed to become the law of the land, and Courts. Similar to Sharia law, an eye for and eye, hanging of adulterers and gays, etc. I am very concerned they have their own Sharia type plan for women, but they won't last as dictators. Women won't stand for one moment of it!

Marilyn vos Savant was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for five years under "Highest IQ" for both childhood and adult scores. (from Marilyn Savant's home page)

There are "idiot savants" like rainman that are genius in one aspect only (music, math, pattern finding, etc.) yet can't tie their shoe laces or balance a check book. Are they not intelligent? Yes and no. Same as the rest of us.

There's also something called emotional intelligence. You can have a high mental IQ yet make decisions that take a heavy toll on every aspect of your life. My daughter has an IQ of 143 yet she works at Taco Bell and supports a bum of a boyfriend. I told her, "Ya know? For a really smart person, you're behaving rather stupidly." Why would "smart" people make obviously dumb decisions? Emotional IQ comes from experience, not text books, and can be measured in maturity.

Additionally, up until quite recently, males were not formally educated either. What formal education occured was for males but the majority of people, male or female, were uneducated. Even today, I see little begging jars at the dollar store wanting me to contribute to eradicating illiteracy IN AMERICA! (I never contribute. That's what my ad valorum taxes are for.)

To suggest that women, having been deprived of academic education for millenia are genetically inferior ignores all the above points. I believe the study in question is flawed, gender biased, and wrong in it's conclusion.

reply to post by johnmajor


though most of the great thinkers of the past and present are male, i think this has less to do with intelligence and more due to the repression of women. until very recently, women were not only discouraged but in some cases dissallowed to pursue intellectual careers or advanced education, and instead encouraged to get married, raise a family, do the work at home, etc, while men were raised in a fashion that was more likely to yeild scientists, philosophers, mathematicians, and other great thinkers. It will be interesting to see how this changes as women are now being given equal rights and oppurtunities. (On the other hand, you cannot discount the biological nature of the mother attending to such things as child-rearing and the stay-at-home mentality, nurturing as opposed to exploring. Though this would suggest women have the same capacity for intelligence as men, they are less likely to develop it because humankind needs them for other purposes. Again, this will change as our society shifts away from gender specific roles.)

Given that there are some obvious places on the earth where women are opressed, could one deduce that *if* there was a possibility of genetic change due to lack of brain stimulation, that these genes could be isolated in the specific areas in question?

For example, a woman with genetics that are from a third world country that is raised in the same conditions as a first world country woman could possibly be genetically LESS intelligent than her counterpart?

Or is it something that isn't measureable considering it's a way of life for many of these women rather than a personal choice?

Personally I don't think we can really measure our brain power based on genetics or gender. I don't think it's a medium that we REALLY understand enough to make a concrete decision. There are too many examples of people defying the odds.

reply to post by skeptic1


I'm glad I didn't offend you. I was hoping I didn't make you too angry because my beliefs do carry some heavy weight. I wish it wasn't so that women have to feel that way and adventure out of the house and into the work force. I know that it is now impossible to make it on one income but that is one of the consequences that was bared down on our society because we allowed it. Sometimes I don't understand why the woman wouldn't want to be home with their adorable little creations. Broading a woman's horizons is what I believe to be selfish in their part for puting it in front of their children. My point of view again is that we will keep spiraling out of control as more and more family breakups and fatherless, motherless kids with new parents sprout out more and more until it becomes the norm. Already it pretty much is.


[edit on 5-10-2008 by chrhenn32]

reply to post by Malzypants
everyone wanted to know the definition of intelegence, where there it is, her post is a snapshot definition of it. she has posed the only sensible way of proving one way or another these theory by using scientific method in localized regions. i am extremely impressed, and at the same time jealous that i didn't think of that. indeed if this is true, different regions would have ddifferent levels of these differences in the brain. BRAVO! stared!

reply to post by Ghost147


nah, to me, women and men are created as equal in the eye of God. both of the two complement each other. sometimes i found my girlfriend lacking in some area but she could outdone me in the others. there is no such thing as male superiority or female inferiority. both gender need each other.

to sum my opinion: men and women are like a pair of wings. without one of them, the bird (humanity) can't fly. when both of the work together, the bird (humanity) will fly...

reply to post by abovethegod


An excellent post abovethegod! I agree with you.

No one can dispute that proof!

reply to post by skeptic1


Lol

Horses and apes are intelligent creatures too, but have no souls. They can learn lots of tricks. You can be a skeptic but not very smart one!

Holy books say: "Once men reunite with their maker, they will no longer be burdened with the care of women. After all, men are inferior creations from the start."

w00t the thread title's IQ just went up!

This thread has had many thought provoking posts. Good reading

I think that if there are any differences in intelligence, they are minimal, I believe men and women are equal in this respect. However we think and analyze situations differently and each side believes the other is stu- less intelligent
I also believe that a women has much more responsabilities than men. I am sure many bright women put their career at a stop or on hold because of maternity issues.
Religion played its part as well, women were for most of History treated as inferior and didnt have access to everything men had.

Hi there,

having read the whole thread I thought I'd better go back to the OP and see what he actually asked:

Originally posted by Ghost147
This is a question from the ignorant (aka me). Because of the past hundreds upon hundreds of years of neglect and abuse of women, forcing them into a state in which not to think freely, and a position in which they were (and sometimes still are) unable to attend schooling. Would this genetically make women less intelligent than men?

Okay, I hope you don't mind if I challenge a couple of statements you made. First of all, while there is no doubt that women have been neglected and abused and in some places still are (perhaps even more repressively than in the past), I don't agree that this forces them into a state in which they cannot/are not able to think freely. (Your own phrase -- "forcing them into a state in which not to think freely" is a little ambiguous but I hope I've taken your meaning.)

Physical and even mental oppression do not mean that the person is not able to think freely. Acting upon or voicing those thoughts -- yes, that is true enough. But I believe that when a person is in an oppressed or difficult situation, s/he is more likely to resort to escape via thoughts than when things are going well. However, that's only my belief and I might be wrong; I can only speak from personal experience really. Even so, it does seem to make sense to me that if women and girls in some cultures were repressed and restricted in what they could or say, then they would more than likely build survival mechanisms by thought processes.

You mentioned "unable to attend schooling". Again, that has been and shamefully, still is the case in some parts of the world. But that's formal schooling, revolving around literacy, numeracy and learning, in many cases in the past and still now (in feminine-repressive societies) based upon male-oriented concepts of what is "needful" by way of formal education. There is no way that the men in such societies wanted women and girls to stop learning altogether, for if they did, who would learn the recipes for doing the cooking? Who would do the washing so clothes were clean, who would spin wool and other fibres and make and repair clothes, who would do the myriad tasks of child-rearing, who would conduct the midwifing? Who would hold and pass on the secrets for making herbal medicines and other cures?

In even the most repressive societies, women have always passed on a tremendous amount of knowledge to their daughters, and as all this had to be done purely by direct instruction and memory, often with no recourse to reading from books, women must have developed and continue to have a high level of ability to learn, retain information and pass it on, with the only key resource being their own minds. I would expect that although there have not been so many women as men who have become famous as inventors, artists or scholars, their own day-to-day life required them to be inventive, artistic and scholarly -- but not from a perspective that most men ever recognized. Their achievements were not seen as such and were simply taken for granted.

I am not writing this to put men down. It's just that I feel the basic assumptions in the OP's question are perhaps not a true reflection of the historical or present circumstances of many women (vis a vis mental development) or of how they have always coped with them. However, I am not "knocking" the OP, just presenting my own point of view.

Just as an aside, I feel that while intelligence may have genetic components (and research with twins tends to support that concept), one of the factors in demonstrating intelligence is expectation. I told my daughter that she can achieve anything she wants to. I tell my students (of whom around 75% are post-high-school-grad women) the same thing. My expectations for her and them are not limited by their gender. I just consider how I would want to be treated in terms of expectations if I were a woman. It makes sense to me, anyway.

Mike

No intelligent life here. Just superficial thoughts and mental apathy.
No surprise!

A man posing as a woman
A man threating me (because he disagree with the bible) - how the manners?!

I have not insulted on anyone. Concentrate on what I said. It is not sarcaism, but the PURE TRUTH!

reply to post by abovethegod


If you don't mind me asking (I am a Man), what religion do you belong to? Like what Church specifically?

I know I am coming to this discussion late and I appologize if this was stated by someone else, but...
why does anyone care?

We are all people and there is a huge amount of variety in our species no matter how one tries to divide us all into groups (male vs female, race, age, height, weight, ...). I could go into all sort of technical reasons on why there is no basis for "genetic" differences between men and women (men and women are not genetically different).

- huge amounts of chromosomal homology between X and Y chromosomes (for example PRKY (y homolog) and PRKX (x homolog))

- SRY gene (DNA bindining protein coded on the the short arm of Y chromosome which triggers sexual differentiation to male). People with a Y chromosome but a non-functioning SRY become female though. And transgenic mice with SRY addition anywhere in genome become males - it does not have to be on the Y chromosome to work.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...
www.ensembl.org...


- SOX genes (SOX1 to SOX18) which actually are involved in sexual differentiation are scattered on many chromosomes (none on Y, but SOX3 is on the X chromosome)

- in some non-mamalian vertebrates, sex determination is temperature induced and not genetic

- some studies in humans are showing that SRY may not be the magic "male gene" originally thought and that there may not be any genetic component to sex differentiation in humans (it may be a complex cascade of growth rate related effects caused by the fact that Y is shorter than X and that certain growth repressors on the X chromsome are in 2x the quantity with XX individuals and only 1x in XY individuals)
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...

The only purpose of such a discussion is political and social. Someone or some group is feeling threatened or inferior and they propose something to try to make "us" appear better than "them". It is human nature, we are a social species with hierarchy and territoriality. It is much easier to create an artifical "group", label them and create "logic and evidence" as to why "they" are inferior and "we" are superior. Previously such "science" was called Eugenic and it was very popular in a certain part of europe around the 1930s and 40s.

The truth is that we are all the same and all different. There is so much variety within the species that sampling error or bias can easily swing a result from group A to group B. The truth is probably that any human hierarchy is inherently artificial and an illusion of the mind and social conditioning.

I think Eleanor Roosevelt said it well "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."

- Jessica

Well it depends how you mean.

Geniuses tend to be male and achieve more in their fields. However this could be put down to the drive of men that most women just don't have. Then there are maternity issues, women usually end up, around the age of 30, dropping out of graduate courses.

I don't think the average man is smarter than the average woman and we deffinately get female geniuses. However i think male geniuses tend to go further, push harder and achieve more. This doesn't mean they're smarter, just that their hormones are more geared towards achievement.

Originally posted by abovethegod
No intelligent life here. Just superficial thoughts and mental apathy.
No surprise!
A man posing as a woman

A man threating me (because he disagree with the bible) - how the manners?!

I have not insulted on anyone. Concentrate on what I said. It is not sarcaism, but the PURE TRUTH!

Hmmm...a misanthrope perhaps?

It is natural to like, or at least be tolerant/apathetic to those that give us what we want. If you are truly irritated by females as a gender then that implies you are not getting any. : )

When I say "any" i mean whatever it is you want from them, it could be a variety of things; sex, adoration, acceptance, whatever it is I do not think you are getting it.

[edit on 5-10-2008 by Sonya610]

Originally posted by Lucid Lunacy
reply to post by abovethegod

 

If you don't mind me asking (I am a Man), what religion do you belong to? Like what Church specifically?

*slaps lucid* lol i hope you didnt actually mean it when you asked that. damn internet, it can show love, rage and respect, but never sarcasm.


JustMike. good post, and points, for that matter. And yes, you figured out my question perfectly. However, By not thinking freely, i really ment encoraged not to think freely. obviously, yes, they could/did. but they definetly werent wanted to.

Originally posted by Ghost147
good find. but i already knew that upbringing dramatically effects the intelligence of the person.

No actually upbringing does not have much of an effect on i.q. (unless it involves lead paint or protein deficiency). IQ is primarily inherited, and even the best upbringing will only influence it by a very few points.

Typically when the individual is young and receives a lot of tutoring it can cause a more significant spike, but when they are adults those differences disappear.

[edit on 5-10-2008 by Sonya610]