Gender Difference Taboos

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13596

Quote:

It's thought of as a sexual stereotype: boys tend to play with toy cars and diggers, while girls like dolls. But male monkeys, suggests research, are no different (see a related video report). This could mean that males, whether human or monkey, have a biological predisposition to certain toys, says Kim Wallen, a psychologist at Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta, Georgia. Wallen's team looked at 11 male and 23 female rhesus monkeys. In general the males preferred to play with wheeled toys, such as dumper trucks, over plush dolls, while female monkeys played with both kinds of toys. This conclusion may upset those psychologists who insist that sex differences – for example the tendency of boys to favour toy soldiers and girls to prefer dolls – depend on social factors, not innate differences. To try and tease out the effects of nature over those of nurture, Wallen and his colleagues studied a group of captive rhesus monkeys. His team reasoned that the choices of the monkeys wouldn't be determined by social pressures. Most of the study animals were juvenile (age one to four years), but some sub-adult and adult monkeys were included. "They are not subject to advertising. They are not subject to parental encouragement, they are not subject to peer chastisement," Wallen says.

Now I suspect this kind of report will bring down a load of antagonism from those people who want to insist that sex differences depend on socialisation. It will be interesting to follow this story, because I think it is very much a modern taboo subject to make that kind of suggestion, even when the science is there to back it up. 

Contrast this with the current establishment view, which is coming under increasing pressure from scientific studies such as this one:

http://www.enotalone.com/article/4316.html

Quote:

Among the courses I took that fall was a graduate seminar in developmental psychology. "Why do girls and boys behave differently?" my professor, Justin Aronfreed, asked rhetorically. "Because we expect them to. Imagine a world in which we raised girls to play with tanks and trucks, in which we encouraged boys to play with dolls. Imagine a world in which we played rough-and-tumble games with girls while we cuddled and hugged the boys. In such a world, many of the differences we see in how girls and boys behave-maybe even all the differences-would vanish."

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4458855

and this recent report:

Quote:

Last Friday, Harvard University President Lawrence Summers suggested that innate differences between men and women might be one reason there are fewer women in the fields of science and engineering. More than 50 Harvard professors signed a letter protesting his statement, and alumnae have threatened to withhold donations. Summers has apologized, but commentator and psychological researcher Drew Westen says that apology might be unwarranted.

and it seems that there may well be powerful taboos against thinking about these kinds of differences. It is interesting that the critics of Summers did not note that he was not denying that men and women should be treated equally; all he was doing was hypothesising that innate differences may play out (in the average) in the preferences people have for science and engineering. The reaction suggests it is a non-discussible topic: a taboo subject.

So while homosexuality (and all other kinds of sexuality) are now less taboo - Coronation Street has both a gay man and a transsexual individual, and that is mainstream - we are gaining other equally insidious taboos.