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[Sheb]

Evolutionary biology...

... is mostly bunk, but still, I think it's pretty clear men tends to be taller, bigger and thus stronger. Of course it's an average things and doesn't mean every woman is weak.

Come on Vector, will you be asking for a study that show that women are more likely to grow breasts or something?

[Vector]

Come on Vector, will you be asking for a study that show that women are more likely to grow breasts or something?

I'd like a study specifically for nature/nurture on average strength.

Africa is arguing from evolutionary biology/psychology for continued gender roles, rather than basing the roles on an individuals actual capacity to act.

[Africa]

Otherwise, you are violating the rules set out by the OP (sorry, EvoBio is lumped under EvoPsych in this instance) and I would like to ask you to leave.

Rather than a single study (which by itself wouldn't mean anything anyway), I'll refer you to the wealth of sources involved in any aspect of you're interested in at the end of the wiki articles on sexual dimorphism and sexual dimorphism in humans.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_dimorphism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_humans
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_humans#cite_note-3 is right on this topic.

As for it being nature vs. nurture, this is anything but my specialty, but once again, the fact that it's found throughout all of humanity is a pretty solid clue. If there were numerous (or any number) of societies where it were reversed, then we'd have a good reason to think it's not innate.

Also, didn't we discuss way back then that it was bad evolutionary science you wanted to avoid? I don't deal in bad science.

Evolutionary biology...

... is mostly bunk,

Uhhhh, not a relevant topic to that thread, but hardly. It's an entire field, and not exactly a crackpot one. By which I mean any serious biologist would disagree with you.

Africa is arguing from evolutionary biology/psychology for continued gender roles, rather than basing the roles on an individuals actual capacity to act.

Are you deliberately misinterpreting me? When did I say this means we should "continue" gender roles? Remember what I said about separating "is" and "should?"

[Vector]

That's also the reason you can't just "get rid of gender roles," because gender roles are to a great extent rooted in our biology.

I must be understanding you most grievously, then.

[Africa]

I guess you are.

The fact that something is has no relation to whether that thing is good, or to whether it's something we should encourage.

If you're asking whether I think gender roles as we know them are always going to be with us, then no - but a large part of gender roles as we know them are going to be with us for a very long time, given how humans are put together.

Whether that's good or bad is a completely separate question.

[Vector]

If you're asking whether I think gender roles as we know them are always going to be with us, then no - but a large part of gender roles as we know them are going to be with us for a very long time, given how humans are put together.

Ahhh, okay.  Sorry for getting so angry at you, then.  I think I totally misread your statement and, well... lost it a bit.

In any case, I agree with you.  I think this is going to be a long-term thing, and yeah, a lot of it is probably rooted in the (more severe) sexual dimorphism of our early history.

[Africa]

Yeah, evolution screws us over sometimes, but it also made us what we are. I mean I can get mad at my parents for, you know, not pushing me enough to go outside my comfort zone as a kid or whatever, but they're still my parents and I wouldn't exist without them.

I think the large majority of antipathy to evolutionary psychology comes from people misinterpreting scientists saying something is a certain way, as them meaning it SHOULD be kept that way. In any case I'd say understanding how we work is pretty dang important and doesn't have any bearing on our conceptions of human rights. It's not like, if you reason far enough, you can find an objective basis for any "should" statement of any kind, after all.

[Sheb]

Yeah, and I should apologize too, I read that as Evolutionnary Psychology. I'm studying biology myself, so I'm well placed to know that Evolutionnary Biology is a great field, but we should be cautious when drawing conclusion from it: it's easy to  justify almost everything with enough imagination.

[Glowcat]

Yeah, and I should apologize too, I read that as Evolutionnary Psychology. I'm studying biology myself, so I'm well placed to know that Evolutionnary Biology is a great field, but we should be cautious when drawing conclusion from it: it's easy to  justify almost everything with enough imagination.

I like how P.Z. Myers put it.

There are days when I simply cannot bear the entire field of evolutionary psychology: it's so deeply tainted with bad research and a lack of rigor. And that makes me uncomfortable, because the fundamental premise, that our behaviors are a product of our history, is self-evidently true. It's just that researchers in this field couple an acceptance of that premise to a deep assumption of adaptive teleology, the very thing that they should be evaluating, and produce some of the most awesomely trivial drivel.

[Africa]

Yeah, and I should apologize too, I read that as Evolutionnary Psychology. I'm studying biology myself, so I'm well placed to know that Evolutionnary Biology is a great field, but we should be cautious when drawing conclusion from it: it's easy to  justify almost everything with enough imagination.

Well, evolutionary psychology is no less legitimate. See above. Yeah, it's a favorite of high-schoolers and such who think they've found science to justify why men are meant to act this way and women are meant to act that way. Well, about a hundred years ago, there were people who found the theory of evolution and went "Eureka!" and created a philosophy called Social Darwinism. That's not an argument against the theory of evolution.

It also gets flak like the guy quoted just above, but, well, whenever I see criticism of it, they're either picking the worst examples of it (as if every field doesn't have crackpots) or fuming at the perceived ideological and social implications of it: they're people who reason that because it is morally right that men and women should be treated equally, therefore it must be scientifically right than men and women are psychologically the same, to name one of the most prominent examples.

It's not like a bunch of the world's most respected universities are funding bad science just for shits and giggles, after all. Read some material by serious evolutionary psychologists and let the research speak for itself. It's inevitable that biology (and evolutionary biology) will merge with psychology and it would nonsensical to try and avoid that. That's all "evolutionary psychology" means; the recognition that mind and body are one and the designation of figuring out the implications of that.

Edit: I just clicked through to that link, and well, if the guy writing the blog thinks that article exemplifies evolutionary psychology, then no wonder he hates the field so much. Fortunately for science, it doesn't. And it's an article in Slate, not a peer-reviewed study, which is obvious enough.

Edit again: Jerry Coyne's critique, also linked in the blog, does a great job of explaining what I'm getting at.

[Africa]

Also, from clicking around the cornucopia of links, I just found this gem on "mansplaining." http://scienceblogs.com/thusspakezuska/2010/01/you_may_be_a_mansplainer_if.php

All I'd say to her is that before you assume a man who's talking condescendingly to a woman is sexist, you should see how that man talks to other men. Need I say more?

[Angle]

Which man? that article is written by a woman.

[freeformschooler]

Which man? that article is written by a woman.

All I'd say to her

Precisely.

[Fenrir]

While I do not doubt that this sort of explanation happens, this blogger would appear to have given herself a reason to discard any agrument from a man with which she does not agree. She may simply presume that he is explaning because he supposes women to be inferior, and, if he objects to her presumption, such an objection is listed as a symptom of a sexist explanation, so she may also discard that as well.

[Angle]

Also, from clicking around the cornucopia of links, I just found this gem on "mansplaining." http://scienceblogs.com/thusspakezuska/2010/01/you_may_be_a_mansplainer_if.php

All I'd say to her is that before you assume a man who's talking condescendingly to a woman is sexist, you should see how that man talks to other men. Need I say more?

Derp. I thought you last comment was about the person who wrote the article.