The Distance Between Mars and Venus: Measuring Global Sex Differences in Personality

The idea that there are only minor differences between the personality profiles of males and females should be rejected as based on inadequate methodology. (continue reading…)

Gender Differences in Personality and Interests: When, Where, and Why?

How big are gender differences in personality and interests, and how stable are these differences across cultures and over time? To answer these questions, I summarize data from two meta-analyses and three cross-cultural studies on gender differences in personality and interests. Results show that gender differences in Big Five personality traits are ‘small’ to ‘moderate,’ with the largest differences occurring for agreeableness and neuroticism (respective ds = 0.40 and 0.34; women higher than men). In contrast, gender differences on the people–things dimension of interests are ‘very large’ (d = 1.18), with women more people-oriented and less thing-oriented than men. Gender differences in personality tend to be larger in gender-egalitarian societies than in gender-inegalitarian societies, a finding that contradicts social role theory but is consistent with evolutionary, attributional, and social comparison theories. In contrast, gender differences in interests appear to be consistent across cultures and over time, a finding that suggests possible biologic influences. (continue reading…)

220: Testosterone

Stories of people getting more testosterone and coming to regret it. And of people losing it and coming to appreciate life without it. The pros and cons of the hormone of desire. – See more at: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/220/testosterone#sthash.1xSaFmPK.dpuf

Men Sentenced To Longer Prison Terms Than Women For Same Crimes, Study Says

If you’re a convicted criminal, the best thing you can have going for you might be your gender.

A new study by Sonja Starr, an assistant law professor at the University of Michigan, found that men are given much higher sentences than women convicted of the same crimes in federal court.

The study found that men receive sentences that are 63 percent higher, on average, than their female counterparts. (Continue reading…)

Busted: the politics of cleavage and a glance

Increasingly, women feel they are entitled to dress however they like but take offence when the ‘wrong’ man has a look, writes Bettina Arndt.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/society-and-culture/busted-the-politics-of-cleavage-and-a-glance-20120211-1sy7e.html#ixzz3ABiGNdMj

2006 Self Made Man: Norah Vincent chooses Female Privilege over Male Privilege

Equal ≠ The Same: Sex Differences in the Human Brain

By: Larry Cahill, Ph.D.

Early in 2013, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ordered the makers of the well-known sleep aid Ambien (zolpidem) to cut their recommended dose in half-but only for women. In essence, the FDA was acknowledging that despite extensive testing prior to the drug’s release on the market, millions of women had been overdosing on Ambien for 20 years. On February 9, 2014, CBS’s 60 Minutes highlighted this fact-and sex differences in general-by powerfully asking two questions: Why did this happen, and are men and women treated equally in research and medicine?1

The answer to the first question is that the biomedical community has long operated on what is increasingly being viewed as a false assumption: that biological sex matters little, if at all, in most areas of medicine. The answer to the second question is no, today’s biomedical research establishment is not treating men and women equally. What are some of the key reasons for the biomedical community’s false assumption, and why is this situation now finally changing?  What are some of the seemingly endless controversies about sex differences in the brain generated by “anti-sex difference” investigators?  And what lies at the root of the resistance to sex differences research in the human brain?

– See more at: http://www.dana.org/Cerebrum/2014/Equal_%E2%89%A0_The_Same__Sex_Differences_in_the_Human_Brain/#sthash.lKD5UT9i.dpuf

18 Things Females Seem To Not Understand (Because, Female Privilege)

Mark Saunders

1. Female privilege is being able to walk down the street at night without people crossing the street because they’re automatically afraid of you.

2. Female privilege is being able to approach someone and ask them out without being labeled “creepy.” Continue Reading…

What Do Men and Women Focus On When They Watch Porn?

When someone watches pornography, what is it that first captures their attention? Most people would probably guess the actors’ bodies and/or genitals, especially if they’re talking about male porn viewers. Although this would seem to make intuitive sense, is it really the case? According to research, not necessarily.

…Continue reading

The startling facts on female sexual aggression

For the past year or so, any time I’ve written about men’s sexual aggression towards women, I could almost guarantee that someone would comment beneath about women’s sexual aggression towards men, usually referencing the US Centre for Disease Control’s Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey 2010.

This huge victim survey made a surprising finding. It suggested that the rates of men being forced to penetrate women over the past year was identical to the rates of women reporting being raped, each 1.1%. Lifetime prevalence of the crimes were 4.8% for men and 17.8% for women. Meanwhile men reporting sex through coercion was 1.5% over the past year (6% lifetime) compared to 2% (13% lifetime) for women.

I’ll be honest that I was, for a long time, extremely dubious about these data. They fly in the face of everything we presume to know about sexual violence. They had to be a rogue result, either the product of some sampling error, a result of differing interpretations of coercion and compulsion by male and female respondents, or some unexplained bug in the methodology.

So I began to do what I always try to do (Continue reading…)