A Billion Years of Sex Differences

Quotes

1. In some frog species, females fake their own deaths to escape unwanted male attention; males, on the other hand, never fake theirs to escape female attention.

   p. 139

2. 

   We often view sexual victimization and partner abuse as women’s problems, rather than more-women-than-men problems. In doing so, however, we once again treat a statistical sex difference as a Mars-and-Venus difference. Ironically, the tendency to polarize sex differences in this domain is particularly common among gender-role progressives, who usually downplay female-male differences.

   p. 249

3. 

   I once spotted an article in The Daily Mail with the rather striking headline: “How did I raise such a girly girl? Feminist mother cringes at her three-year-old daughter’s love of princesses, frills and pink – and wishes she was into toy cars instead.” I remember thinking how strange it is that people who wish their daughters were less girly, and more like boys, are viewed as pro-female, rather than anti.

   p. 253

4. 

   The most violent category of human being is the toddler, and the only reason we don’t worry more about the epidemic of toddler violence is that toddlers are small and cute, and can’t do much damage with their tiny fists.

   p. 169

5. 

   We should treat individuals as individuals, rather than as instantiations of the statistical properties of the groups to which they belong. In other words, we should judge people by the content of their characters, not their sex chromosomes.

   p. 276

6. 

   Men are naturally more violent than women, and male violence is the cause of much needless suffering in the world. We therefore have every right to stifle it, in the process narrowing the sex difference. Again, though, the rationale for this isn’t that sex differences are bad; it’s that violence is bad. After all, another way to narrow the sex difference would be to ensure that women are as violent as men. But that wouldn’t make the world a better place; it’d make it a worse one.

   p. 274

7. 

   There are no average sex differences in IQ, for instance (much to the surprise and disappointment of both sexes).

   p. 25

8. 

   On the rare occasions when women get into physical fights, it’s commonly triggered by one woman calling the other promiscuous, albeit usually in less polite terms. When men get into physical fights, on the other hand, it’s rarely triggered by one man calling the other promiscuous. It’s fair to say that such an insult would lack bite. In fact, yelling at a man that ‘You’ve slept with hundreds of women!’ probably wouldn’t be an insult at all.

   p. 189

9. 

   Strictly speaking, the goal of these efforts isn’t a 50:50 sex ratio in every field. If that were the case, policymakers and activists would be just as worried that more women than men go into the social sciences, health sciences, and humanities as they are that more men than women go into computer science, engineering, and physics – and they’d be just as worried that more men than women work as garbage collectors as they are that more men than women are CEOs. Clearly, they’re not nearly as worried. This tells us that the implicit goal isn’t 50% men and 50% women in every field; it’s at least 50% women in every desirable field.

   p. 267

10. 

    Even though the risks are real, the sexes do differ on average, and we can’t just lie about that. What we should do instead is tell the truth carefully.

    p. 27

11. 

    Rather than being indicators of a sexist or oppressive society, sex differences may sometimes be indicators of the opposite: a comparatively free and fair one (emphasis on the “comparatively”).

    p. 30

12. 

    The fact that more members of group X than group Y suffer problem Z is a bad reason to act as if only members of group X suffer problem Z.

    p. 251

13. 

    The default assumption, in lieu of strong evidence to the contrary, should be that we’re continuous with the rest of the living world, and thus that the differences we see in our species have the same origin as those in every other: natural selection.

    p. 200

14. 

    Many argue that it’s sexist to say, for instance, that women are more parental than men, or that women are more interested in working with people and less interested in working with things. But the accusation can be turned on its head. The idea that such claims are sexist only makes sense if we tacitly assume that the female-typical tendencies are inferior. Why else would it be disparaging to women to say that more women than men exhibit these tendencies? But if women really are more parental than men, or if they really are more interested in working with people, then we’re taking a negative view of traits that are more characteristic of women than men. That’s sexist!

    p. 24

15. 

    Even if toy makers and advertisers could conjure sex differences into existence on a whim, why would they? Toy makers would ideally want both sexes to covet their offerings, not just one or the other, as this would instantly double the size of their market.

    p. 231

16. 

    Men corner the market on what evolutionary biologists call mate-choice failure, with documented cases involving everything from lampposts to trees to vacuum cleaners. We all make mistakes, I guess – but men more often than women.

    p. 140

17. 

    A lot of people want to argue that “Homosexuality is natural; therefore, homosexuality is OK.” I agree that it’s OK, and I agree that it’s natural, but I don’t agree that it’s OK because it’s natural... Consenting adults don’t need a biological justification – or any kind of justification – for who they are or who they love.

    p. 135

18. 

    If you treat a dog like a cat, it’ll still act like a dog. Maybe it’s the same with boys and girls.

    p. 64

19. 

    Even in the healthiest of relationships, a spouse’s or lover’s happiness isn’t necessarily our own. It’s rarely the case, for example, that upon hearing about a partner’s infidelity, people say “Oh, that’s nice! I love my partner, and I’m sure they had fun – so this is great news!”

    p. 210

20. 

    It is true that women get fewer jobs in math-heavy STEM fields. But that’s only because fewer women apply for them. Those who do apply are generally more likely than men to be interviewed and more likely to get the job.

    p. 259

21. 

    Although more men than women make it to the top, more men than women also sink to the bottom – and the overwhelming majority of men don’t end up at either the top or the bottom.

    p. 257

22. 

    We live in an age where, quite rightly, we encourage people to accept and celebrate differences and diversity, and yet we get outraged whenever anyone points any out. Not exactly tolerance of diversity!

    p. 25

23. 

    First question: Do intersex individuals undermine the female-male distinction? First answer: No. On the contrary, it’s only possible to even describe intersex conditions if we assume the female-male distinction. Intersex conditions are, after all, defined as involving a mixture of female- and male-typical attributes.

    p. 38

24. 

    Gender-role traditionalists assume that sex differences are natural, and therefore that they’re good. Gender-role progressives assume that sex differences are bad, and therefore that they’re not natural – or they assume that the absence of sex differences is natural, and therefore that the absence of sex differences is good, and that that’s what we ought to strive for.

    p. 271

25. 

    Some differences may never be completely eradicated – not, at any rate, without draconian interventions that limit people’s freedom and potentially make them miserable. Such interventions may be modern-day equivalents of earlier efforts to force gay people to be straight or left-handers to use their right hands: a progressive form of conversion therapy.

    p. 29

26. 

    Men are more willing than women to take risks. Almost by definition, this means a higher chance of great success, but also a higher chance of catastrophic failure. One study found that when an attractive woman was watching, male skateboarders started trying riskier moves on their boards, which led to more impressive stunts and more wipeouts. This is a good illustration of a pervasive pattern, which applies as well to the workplace. According to one study, for example, part of the reason that men start more new businesses than women – and therefore that they succeed and fail more than women – is that more men than women are overconfident.

    p. 258

27. 

    Unless sex differences are products of discrimination or cause demonstrable harm, progressives have no more right to eliminate them than traditionalists have to enlarge them.

    p. 29

28. 

    Our genes push us in certain directions, but our genes aren’t the only things shaping us, and thus we can often push right back.

    p. 24

29. 

    According to an old joke, everyone knows that men and women are different… except social scientists. Plenty of research reveals the truth in the jest. One study, for example, found that social scientists are more likely than civilians to chalk up sex differences to nurture rather than nature, and that this even extends to differences between hens and roosters. As we’ll see later, even when it comes to humans, the evidence sides with the civilians, making this one area where laypeople have a firmer grasp on reality than many alleged experts – and one area where academia seems to impair people’s understanding of the world rather than improving it.

    p. 17

30. 

    In our species, both sexes are choosy about their long-term mates, and both compete among themselves for the best mates on offer. For that reason, both sexes have their equivalents of the peacock’s tail and the deer’s antlers. Indeed, when it comes to physical attractiveness, females in our species have the larger “peacock’s tail”: a reversal of the usual pattern in nature. It’s all very weird.

    p. 15

31. 

    If variation and overlap imply that sex differences in brain, mind, and behaviour aren’t really real or important, they equally imply that sex differences in earnings aren’t really real or important – and the same for sex differences in power, privilege, and many other areas central to the activist worldview. The inconsistency in the treatment of the gaps has a political explanation, not a scientific one: The overlap argument is levelled selectively against differences the levellers want to minimize.

    p. 19

32. 

    A vocal minority see positing sex differences as more than a mere faux pas or difference of opinion, and view it instead as a moral transgression. For individuals in this camp, the idea that the sexes are naturally identical has become a sacred belief. Disagreement is seen not as an honest mistake or interesting challenge to be evaluated, but as sacrilege. And the typical response to sacrilege isn’t a tolerant appreciation of the wonderful diversity of human lifeways: “Well, I’m not personally into sacrilege, but if other people are, who am I to judge?” Instead, the typical response is to censor, to silence, to cancel, punish, and shun.

    p. 21

33. 

    In our primary approach to making babies, humans are more like the average bird than the average mammal. Again: all very weird.

    p. 16

That’s all the quotes.

33 quotes in the collection · come back when we add more