Girls Wired To Fear Dangerous Animals

Foot-in-Mouth writes "New Scientist reports that girls are more "primed" to fear spiders and snakes, compared to boys. Infant boys and girls were shown pairs of images, a fearful and a happy object (such as a spider and a flower), measuring the boys' and girls' dwell times on the images. And in another similar test, normally happy objects (such as a flower) were given a fearful face and fearful objects were given a happy face. The results of these two tests suggested to the researcher that girls are not wired to fear spiders, for example, but rather girls are wired to more quickly learn to fear dangerous animals. The researcher, David Rakison at CMU, 'attributes the difference to behavioural differences between men and women among our hunter-gatherer ancestors. An aversion to spiders may help women avoid dangerous animals, but in men evolution seems to have favoured more risk-taking behaviour for successful hunting.' This reminds one of men's obsession with video games. Will game designers use this information to tweak video games for gender, either to make the games more or less frightening?"

Comments

Dangerous animals

[Anonymous Coward]

i.e. mice

Re:Dangerous animals

[Taibhsear]

Mice bite. Bites get infected and transmit diseases. It makes sense evolutionarily speaking. Boys grow to be men and need to be able to not be afraid (or at least keep that fear in check) while hunting so that they can focus on the kill. Girls and women tended to be more on the gatherer side (why they can see colors better amongst other things) to pick fruit and what-not. Spiders and bugs and slithery things would be more dangerous to them than men since they'd be more likely to encounter them. Screaming when in fear alerts the tribe to danger and the higher pitch of their voices seems like it would travel better than a guttural manly tone.. Makes perfect sense to me.

Re:Dangerous animals

[ByOhTek]

Another possibility (not saying yours is wrong, but this "correction", is probably another factor).

[..] It makes sense evolutionarily speaking. Boys grow to be men and need to be able to not be afraid (or at least keep that fear in check) while doing stupid but impressive things to show potential mates that they are strong. [...]

Re:Dangerous animals

[TheLink]

The plague killed quite a lot of people.

Re:Dangerous animals

[daveime]

Boys grow to be men and need to be able to not be afraid (or at least keep that fear in check) while flushing that "5mm2 raisin with legs" down the toilet.

FTFY

Re:Dangerous animals

[thepooh81]

Screaming when in fear alerts the tribe to danger and the higher pitch of their voices seems like it would travel better than a guttural manly tone..

Actually the higher pitch is better because it is less omnidirectional (i.e. you can tell where it's coming from) than a lower pitch. This is why police/fire/medical vehicles have high pitch sirens, so you can tell where they are coming from easier.

Re:Dangerous animals

[plague3106]

Damn, just one bad day and no one ever lets you forget.

Re:Dangerous animals

[tftp]

Mice bite

If you are catching a mouse in a cardboard box with your bare hand then the cornered mouse will eventually bite. But in an open land any sane mouse will do its best to run away. Attempts to bite a creature 100x larger than the mouse will only force it to come closer to the danger, and most likely will not be effective.

Re:Dangerous animals

[Minwee]

Xenopsylla cheopis says 'Hi'. In addition to being a close friend of mice, it also carries something you might know as the Bubonic Plague.

It killed a hundred million people in the 14th century. Is that dangerous enough for you, or would you like something more lethal?

Re:Dangerous animals

[Takichi]

Are police sirens directional? They seem to be fairly omnidirectional to me. It makes more sense that they're high pitched because most traffic noise is made up of low rumblings, so it cuts through better.

Also, an omnidirectional scream would have benefits since it would warn a wider surrounding area of the danger. Do you have a reference for being able to find the location of more directional sound sources? If you do, I'd love to read it.

If I had to make a guess, the reason for the high pitched scream is simply because you can get more volume, regardless of the directionality. Overall it notifies more people.

Re:Dangerous animals

[Imrik]

The higher pitch (both siren and scream) are omnidirectional from the point of view of the source, but are easier to pinpoint from the view of the listener.

Re:Dangerous animals

[Takichi]

Higher pitches tend to be more directional because they diffract less. The same goes for vocalisations and diffraction around the head. I wouldn't describe a scream as being omnidirectional. There's an obvious difference between standing in front of someone and standing behind them in terms of volume regardless of the pitch.

Re:Dangerous animals

[access.name]

The danger is not in the bite, is in the germs it carries. Mouses are dirty animals. They eat our stored food too.

Re:Dangerous animals

[CarpetShark]

Mice bite. Bites get infected and transmit diseases. It makes sense evolutionarily speaking. Boys grow to be men and need to be able to not be afraid (or at least keep that fear in check) while hunting so that they can focus on the kill.

Traditionally, at least in aboriginal cultures, women hunt/forage for the small "scary" animals like mice and slugs and so on, whilst men go on long treks for bigger game. This article isn't just caught up in modern thinking; it's caught up in the modern thinking of a certain limited set of human cultures. It could be the worst study I've heard of, and that's saying something.

Re:Dangerous animals

[DigiShaman]

And the worst is that high-pitch scream from a 2 year old. It almost resonates perfectly against the human ear drum enough to make it BLEED!!!!

I suspect it's because 2 year old children are curious enough to get into some serious danger. Hence, the need to scream the dead awake.

Re:Dangerous animals

[Cstryon]

When I was playing Tuba in the school band, the director would always impress that the low brass was most important. Lower pitches travel further than higher pitches, but higher pitches had more distinction.

I would imagine our hunter/gather ancestors would hear a deep growl and maybe know something is there to kill and eat, or run because it will eat me. Where as the high pitched screams said "I'm/my child/you are in danger, listen to my warning."

So it would notify more people like you say, but I think when the GP said less omnidirectional, he just meant no matter where you stand, you know where the warning is coming from.

Now I need to go study some english, so I can know what omnidirectional really means :S

Re:Dangerous animals

[thepooh81]

Interestingly enough it's because until you reach puberty most vocal ranges are within the "2.5 kHz" range. Which is the most sensitive frequency for the human ear.

Thus humans have evolved to be very sensitive to a child's cry. I think it's when a child reaches 2 years old that they realize this and start to take advantage of it (imo).

Full Disclosure: I used to be an audio engineer.

Re:Dangerous animals

[thepooh81]

http://www.dspguide.com/ch22/1.htm

The information that you'd be interested in is in the last 3 paragraphs of the page...

Here's a quote:

"First, frequencies above about 1 kHz are strongly shadowed by the head. In other words, the ear nearest the sound receives a stronger signal than the ear on the opposite side of the head."

This is basically saying that a higher frequency waveform will be louder in the ear closest to it (i.e. not have the sound dampened by the head) and therefore we will perceive where the frequency is coming from easier (because it will be louder in the ear closer to it).

Whereas a lower frequency will be more likely to have an equal amplitude in both ears and thus would be more difficult to perceive the direction of.

QED Bitches???

Re:Dangerous animals

[EatHam]

higher pitch of their voices seems like it would travel better than a guttural manly tone

Which is why animals that communicate over long distances use higher pitches, like elephants and whales.

Re:Dangerous animals

[xgr3gx]

Which is why when building a surround sound layout, the subwoofer can be tucked under a table or in a cabinet, but the speakers providing a full range of sounds are positioned relative to where the listener will be sitting.

What about the most dreaded animal of all?

[Anonymous Coward]

Trollus Slashdottus?

Does anyone even read the summary anymore?

[Anonymous Coward]

Foot in mouth is right. The title and the summary contradict.

Nature vs nurture.

[stagg]

I assume that they picked such young children to avoid the nature vs nurture debate, but this still seems a long way from objective. Aren't we really just reinforcing our own preconceptions with this kind of pseudoscience? It says that the girls "looked" more fearful. It seems foolish to base a scientific study off of some scientist's ability to objectively judge facial expressions in infants. That's not science.

Re:Nature vs nurture.

[Monkeedude1212]

What if you had HUNDREDS of scientists objectively judging facial expressions of HUNDREDS of infants?

Re:Nature vs nurture.

[stagg]

I don't think that's enough. Can you isolate the experiment from their expectations? Are those scientists subject to preconceived notions shaped by culture and their exposure to similar media? A larger sample doesn't improve your data if your data is already corrupted.

Re:Nature vs nurture.

[Quothz]

It seems foolish to base a scientific study off of some scientist's ability to objectively judge facial expressions in infants.

That's not what the study measured. It used quantifiable criteria. The conclusions are debatable, but you have to read the study before you're entitled to an opinion.

That's not science.

That's not reading.

Re:Nature vs nurture.

[stagg]

I'm going off of the linked article here. Those articles almost always misrepresent the studies, but I can hardly be expected to dig up primary sources for every link I read on the net.

Re:Nature vs nurture.

[stagg]

Addendum: In case it's unclear, I realize that they measure how long the infants observed the pictures in question. That doesn't make the study or it's conclusions useful.

Re:Nature vs nurture.

[Monkeedude1212]

Their data is of their creation - yes. They are testing the infant's reaction to those creations. How is the data corruptable? The scientists can think and have as many preconceptions they want about their data, and how they percieve the children might react. Either way - it doesn't stop the children from reacting to the data in any way. And if the recording of the reaction is accurate, ie, larger sample sizes, then you've got yourself an answer to a question.

How would you propose they experiment with human psychology?

Re:Nature vs nurture.

[Anonymous Coward]

You have them look at pictures of the child, not knowing if it is a boy or a girl. Eliminate all elements of gender from the pictures. Then have a panel grade the fear in the pictures, not knowing which gender it is. Run a stats test on the actual genders, and the responses of the panel. voila.

Re:Nature vs nurture.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

In principle, you could easily enough prevent bias by appropriate blinding.

Just take the pictures of the infants' reactions, and get some third parties, who don't even know what the experiment is about, to do the scoring. You could probably conscript a bunch of child-development majors to provide assessments of the sample pretty easily.

Re:Nature vs nurture.

[JeanPaulBob]

Can you isolate the experiment from their expectations?

Yes, you can, though I don't know if this study did so.

Make it more blind. Have volunteers (who can't see the images) classify the infants' reactions to the images.

Whoops, hold on. I just RTFA. They're not evaluating based on the infants' facial expressions--they're evaluating based on how long the infants looked at each image. That's objective--hard to see how the scientists' expectations would be affecting the data. Mind you, "more time looking==more scared" isn't obviously valid, but the difference in times between the tests is still significant. You could question whether the girls are learning fear vs something else, but the test still seems to show that the girls are being trained by the images while the boys aren't.

Re:Nature vs nurture.

[TheCarp]

Seems like you might do better looking for electrical activity patterns in the amygdala.

I find this interesting as it touches my life... my wife has always been afraid of spiders, but recently her fear of them has gone into the realm of extreme phobia. Panic attacks, avoiding places where a spider might be etc. She can't even watch a scene in a movie that has a spider-like creature in it without having an attack.

Of course, she has panic attack issues anyway, it makes me wonder if some peoples amygdalas are just built with a hair trigger.

-Steve

Re:Nature vs nurture.

[JeanPaulBob]

The linked article says that they were measuring length of time spent looking, not judging facial expressions. If you did RTFA, you skimmed it and missed that detail.

The study does seem to demonstrate that girls are being trained by the images while the boys aren't. It might not be "trained to fear", but something is responsible for the difference between the tests. There's a history effect. The girls are learning something the boys aren't.

Re:Nature vs nurture.

[Anonymous Coward]

In principle, you could easily enough prevent bias by appropriate blinding.

Just take the pictures of the infants' reactions, and get some third parties, who don't even know what the experiment is about, to do the scoring. You could probably conscript a bunch of child-development majors to provide assessments of the sample pretty easily.

But if adult humans are hard-wired OR socially conditioned to assume girls are more easily scared, they may be slightly more resistant to considering the baby boys as looking fearful. Therefore there may be a slight bias in that when the infant boys are frightened by the fearful images, the "false negative" rate may be higher than for infant girls. When neither group is particularly scared the false positive/negative rate may be the same. This is a particularly difficult experiment to blind, I suspect, because you have to separate the bias of the observer from the bias of the observee.

Re:Nature vs nurture.

[ruewan]

genesis 3:14-15 God made woman scared of snakes.

Re:Nature vs nurture.

[Nick Ives]

What if you had HUNDREDS of scientists objectively judging facial expressions of HUNDREDS of infants?

Unless you found some non-human scientists, they would still be pre-disposed to think that girls would act more fearfully. It'd be impossible to control for the expectation bias in an experiment like that.

Re:Nature vs nurture.

[poetmatt]

I agree with what you're saying, I figure there are definitely cultural aspects of "what are people afraid of", although I can understand the general premise of this whole experiment.

I mean how often does one in an urban city encounter snakes? Not often. Rats? Depends on the city/living conditions.

I'm sure paris hilton sees way less rats in the mirror than most people see when looking at her, etc, and encounters them around the house less commonly than people of poorer parts of society. /subtle

Re:Nature vs nurture.

[Anonymous Coward]

They aren't measuring expressions, they're measuring gaze time. Unless they have a stopwatch that's influence by facial expressions your point it totally moot.

Re:Nature vs nurture.

[Anonymous Coward]

Genesis 19:86

Theres too many men
Too many people
Making too many problems
And not much love to go round
Cant you see
This is a land of confusion.

Re:Nature vs nurture.

[wwfarch]

Sounds like it's time for a surprise viewing of arachnophobia.

Re:Nature vs nurture.

[Anonymous Coward]

Except you didn't start off by saying the study or it's conclusions weren't useful. You started off by saying the study wasn't "objective" and that it relied on "some scientist's ability to objectively judge facial expressions in infants". These complaints are totally baseless. Criticizing others when you don't have a clue what your talking about isn't a good trait. The fact that you seem to realize that but haven't bothered to state that your original points were totally baseless, but still go on attacking the study, makes me think you're either an asshole who enjoys attacking others or an idiot who can't understand a few sentences the first time he reads them. It's your choice if you're going to be a jerk, but at least spend a minute to do a small amount of research.

Re:Nature vs nurture.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're incorrectly assuming that the scientists can distinguish between an infant boy's face and an infant girl's face when they aren't wearing a blue or pink headband.

Still, even removing the bias on the researcher's side, I think there's still some opportunity for cultural bias. I'm inclined to guess that parents, particularly fathers, play more roughly with boys than they do with girls, even at very young ages.

Re:Nature vs nurture.

[CarpetShark]

What if you had HUNDREDS of scientists objectively judging facial expressions of HUNDREDS of infants?

Then it would be HUNDREDS of times all wrong.

Re:Nature vs nurture.

[CarpetShark]

It used quantifiable criteria.

No, it used a named collection of variables, and mistake the name for a constant. "Boy of 11 months" and "Girl of 11 months" are vague abstractions for "human of a $gender, socially developed to $level, trained in $faces facial expressions by $family, most of whome have $emotional_state". And that's just one of the flaws. This paper should be taken out and shot.

Re:Nature vs nurture.

[bohobourgie]

genesis 3:14-15 God made woman scared of snakes.

uh, no actually the snake was the better lover this article is the product of pop science may big hairy spiders make mad passionate love to you in game

Video Game Changes

[lymond01]

Will game designers use this information to tweak video games for gender, either to make the games more or less frightening?

Tweak video games for gender? You mean like Sims 4 with the man-eating toilet seat?

Wow. I just freaked myself out.

Re:Video Game Changes

[Anonymous Coward]

Aside from that, there are already loads of games for the "gatherers" among us: hidden object, time management, match 3 and all that casual stuff. Oh yea the target audience of these is pretty much women.

Re:Video Game Changes

[twosat]

Reminds me of the toilets in the living insectoid spaceship the "Lexx". As someone wrote on a website: "The titular living ship naturally has an organic lavatory, complete with a tongue, so you can finish your bowel movement with that fresh, just-licked-by-a-giant-space-bug clean feeling"

mice?

[seven of five]

What about female aversion to mice? They aren't dangerous.

Re:mice?

[Steve Baker]

They can carry disease, although rats are more dangerous in that respect. Mice may just look enough like rats to trigger the same response.

Re:mice?

[canajin56]

I always thought the mice thing was a construction of television, much like the toilet seat wars. I've never once seen a girl who reacts to a mouse with anything other than "Awwwwwwwwwwww, look at the mouse". Certainly never seen anybody, male or female, jump on a chair and shriek. Now, I've seen girls freak out at rats, but not out of fear of the rat. Out of television induced germophobia. "My god, it's full of disease, quick, get the antibacterial soap and the antiviral lysol aerosol spray! I'm sure a spray that says it kills 99.99% of airborne viruses is legit, and won't cause harm when I inhale it, not like all those rat viruses floating around in here now! Also, I better badger the doctor into prescribing some antibiotics and tamiflu, just in case"

Re:mice?

[MBGMorden]

Actually I've noticed a HUMAN aversion to mice. A couple of mice in a room will often make a 250lb flanel-wearing truck driver hop up on the table to get away.

I'll admit, they freak me out too. I went into the shed in my back yard to clean up a good while back. I had some scraps of carpet stashed in there that were left over from when I'd built a speaker box for my car. I picked up the pile and mice - dozens of them, just scattered everywhere. I'll admit, I shrieked like a girl and ran for mah life . . .

Re:mice?

[guest235]

I guess most people simply fear all animals that are not cat or dog. Like... fearing horse is probably rational thing to do, so "fear of horses" does not make news the way "fear of mice" does...

Re:mice?

[Rhaban]

That's a legend.

http://www.cdc.gov/RABIES/qanda/general.html#a3

Re:mice?

[clone53421]

I always thought the mice thing was a construction of television, much like the toilet seat wars. I've never once seen a girl who reacts to a mouse with anything other than "Awwwwwwwwwwww, look at the mouse".

I've seen a girl jump on a chair and shriek when a mouse scurried through the room. I've also been berated for leaving the toilet seat in the wrong configuration. Your anecdotal experience completely goes against my anecdotal experience, and guess whose anecdotal experience I tend to trust more?

Re:mice?

[Locke2005]

What about female aversion to mice? They aren't dangerous.

I beg to differ.

Re:mice?

[Moraelin]

So, between your one girl once and at least two villages in my experience which didn't even look twice at a mouse, guess which one I'm going to trust more? :P

But that actually raises a good nature vs learned behaviour question. Was that girl actually wired that way, or had she learned from movies that that's the expected behaviour?

Re:mice?

[gnick]

Not a legend, your link just separates them out as not being major rabies carriers. Here in New Mexico, we get cases of hantavirus every year, which certainly is carries by mice and rats. We also typically get several cases of plague every year. And, while the little rodents don't directly communicate the disease to humans, they make a pretty efficient transport device for the critters that do.

Re:mice?

[nizo]

Don't forget plague . The state I live in (New Mexico) has both!

Re:mice?

[clone53421]

Re: nature vs. learned behavior, TFA wasn't suggesting that girls are hard-wired to fear mice per se. Rather it suggests that they are hard-wired to fear animals they've learned are dangerous. I don't know what "villages" you've been to, but I'm guessing that mice were relatively common there and the people had no reason to consider them dangerous.

So basically, TFA claims that girls are wired to fear dangerous animals whereas boys are wired to face dangerous animals without showing the same level of fear.

Re:mice?

[jeffshoaf]

I've also been berated for leaving the toilet seat in the wrong configuration.

I've never understood why women want the seat left down. If you think about it, it's in their best interest to put the seat down when they go into the toilet and put it back up when they're done. That way, they don't run the risk of falling in due to sitting while the seat is up and they don't have to worry about us guys getting the seat wet since it won't get wet in the raised position.

Unfortunately, I've found that even the most logical female will refuse to follow this logic...

Re:mice?

[clone53421]

No... it's in women's best interest for the men to put the seat up when they go and back down when they're done. Prevents the "them falling in" problem, prevents the "them sitting on a wet seat" problem, and prevents the "them actually having to do something" problem.

Me, I just leave BOTH seats down anymore. Nobody complains and it doesn't look like the toilet is yawning at you when you walk into the room. ;)

Re:mice?

[canajin56]

It's not symmetric through. Multiple cases of no reaction, few cases of a fearful reaction. That implies that the reaction is not hard wired. Most of the women I know were not raised in a rural environment, so I doubt they have overcome a hardwired fear, but rather, have just never acquired a cultural fear. Having seen it would disprove me if I was saying it never happens. But, I'm only saying it doesn't always happen. I'm also talking about a truly frightened reaction, rather than a startled reaction, which are quite different. If a mouse startles you, you may indeed jump up and shriek. The difference is, somebody startled will say "oh, hahaha", where as somebody frightened will stand there shrieking until somebody else catches the mouse. My mom has been startled by a mouse jumping out at her when she opened a bag of birdseed, and did scream and jump back. But a second later she picked it up and carried it outside calmly. She didn't react with fear, but with startlement. Same with my wife. If something runs out from behind a box or something, she'll jump, and so will I. But only if it's a spider does she continue to scream, forcing me to stop what I'm doing and get a glass ;) My sister in law has a severe phobia of butterflies. If she sees one she will become very nervous. If one flies near here she will run shrieking and be shaken for quite a while afterwards. But I conclude that's a phobia, rather than a property of women.

Re:mice?

[clone53421]

The question isn't so much "fear of mice" as it is "fear of danger".

Of course, anything that is startling is potentially dangerous until we figure out what startled us. The question is more how we deal with our phobias, not so much just which animals we fear. How we treat phobias is nature (hard-wired); which animals we fear is nurture (learned).

Re:mice?

[amicusNYCL]

I've seen a girl jump on a chair and shriek when a mouse scurried through the room.

For what it's worth, my male roommate exhibits the same behavior. I get called whenever any non-pet quadruped or insect is sighted. It's just like living with a girlfriend, except without the sex.

Re:mice?

[clone53421]

Sounds like he needs to be properly trained. A few rubber snakes and plastic spiders in his bed (and scattered in other strategic locations) should do the trick.

If he doesn't move out, he'll get used to them.

Re:mice?

[clone53421]

(Yes, I realize that neither snakes nor spiders are either quadrupeds or insects... although I suppose you could get some scissors and make two quadrupeds from a single plastic spider.)

Re:mice?

[Chris Burke]

Oh yeah? Well I've seen an NFL linebacker jump five feet straight up when he saw a mouse. Then a woman grabbed it with her bare hand and bit off its head. Then she looked right at me and said "That's what'll happen to you if you leave the seat up again."

guess whose anecdotal experience I tend to trust more?

Probably not the anecdotal experience that was obviously just made up... for shame.

Re:mice?

[clone53421]

I'm guessing, "the evidence that came from the particular breed of woman you're trying to survive amongst". I'd trust that, too...

Re:mice?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Me, I just leave BOTH seats down anymore."

Leaving both down before you go will teach them to be careful what they wish for.

Re:mice?

[Zordak]

I always thought the mice thing was a construction of television, much like the toilet seat wars.

I see you've never lived in the same house as a woman. I suggest you get married, try leaving the toilet seat up a few times, and then try your post again. For best results, go to your in-laws' house and leave the toilet seat up there. It won't do any damage. Chances are your mother-in-law doesn't like you anyway ;-)

Re:mice?

[Chris Burke]

True that! It doesn't really matter if some other women are afraid of mice or not or if they don't care about toilet seats if the one you're with threatens to cut your junk off in your sleep if they fall into the toilet, or if you look at other women, or try to leave. (please help).

Re:mice?

[Nadaka]

I am no fan of mice. I once woke up in the middle of the night to notice a mouse sitting on my foot and eating the skin from my toes. I spent the rest of the night sitting in the dark in the middle of my apartment with a pellet gun and a flashlight. Every time I heard it scurry I would spot light it. The first time it was in front of my computer. The second time it was in front of some glass dishes. The third time I cought it in the open, and took a shot as it jumped jumped 3 feet towards some shelves. I managed to hit it center of mass from about 10 feet.

Re:mice?

[Whorhay]

I keep the lid down because my wife likes to keep things on the back of the toilet and it's also immediately next to the sink. I have no desire to fish anything out of the toilet. Anything that ends up in it had better be leaving via the sewage pipes.

Re:mice?

[31415926535897]

I tried your advice, but I find it hard to get the urine in the toilet with the "BOTH seats down" configuration. Please advise.

Re:mice?

[Moraelin]

I wasn't talking about TFA here, though, but mainly addressing the OP point that girls somehow inherently fear mice.

Re:mice?

[clone53421]

If you're a man, lift both seats and stand. If you're a woman, lift only the top one and sit. After doing your duty, return toilet to the "BOTH seats down" configuration.

P.S. the woman method also works quite well if you're a man and would like to piss in the dark without getting it all over the bathroom floor.

Re:mice?

[Anonymous Coward]

But what about my male roomate that does the same (jump up on a chair/table screaming)?

note: it's hilarious b/c he's 6'4, 220lbs

Re:mice?

[clone53421]

Send him a link to this article.

Re:mice?

[Massacrifice]

took a shot as it jumped jumped 3 feet towards some shelves. I managed to hit it center of mass from about 10 feet.

HEADSHOT!

Re:mice?

[Nadaka]

I wish, it was a gut shot. It was still twitching after it landed. a .177 ball through the head of a mouse would have completely obliterated its brain.

I don't care what PETA says, any animal that tries to eat me (even if it is only the callouses off my feet) is going to die.

Re:mice?

[Haxzaw]

I've seen a man do the same thing. My home room teacher in ninth grade screamed like a little girl and jumped on a chair when a mouse ran through our classroom. That was thirty plus years ago, and it still makes me laugh.

Re:mice?

[Technicgal]

It's good Feng Shui to leave both seat and lid down. That way all the good energy in the house doesn't go down the toilet ;) ITS TRUE!

Re:mice?

[Boronx]

Have a bushel of boys and see if your wife can keep the toilet seat down. Victory is possible.

Re:mice?

[CarpetShark]

I've also been berated for leaving the toilet seat in the wrong configuration.

The correct response to this is, "well leave the seat up for me sometimes, bitch, and then I might help you out too."

Re:mice?

[Mashiki]

It's just plain better to leave it down and take a piss like that unless you have a urinal and even then it's touch and go.

Urine will eat flooring, it stinks, it does nasty stuff to just about everything in the bathroom, and really most people never clean behind their toilet anyway. Want to see how bad? Use a blacklight in your bathroom one day.

Re:mice?

[okmijnuhb]

Piss in the sink. Problem solved.

Re:mice?

[okmijnuhb]

Falling in is a great lesson. Look before you leap. Seriously.

Re:mice?

[BluBrick]

Headshot? What kind of weird-arse mice do you have there that a hit to the centre of mass equates to a headshot?

Re:mice?

[quenda]

But what about my male roomate that does the same (jump up on a chair/table screaming)?

Unless "roommate" is a euphemism, I'd say its time to reconsider your living arrangements.

Re:mice?

[imakemusic]

The ones I see every night, Pinky. The ones trying to take over the world.

Re:mice?

[clone53421]

Oddly enough they don't see it that way.

First Question

[MonsterTrimble]

How do they define 'fearful' as it relates to infants? My 1 month old son can barely make out my face never mind something 'fearful'.

Designers *COULD* but how many females like scary movies and how many men do not? I think putting more money into gameplay & plot would be better spent!

Unscientific conclusions?

[stagg]

The whole "men are manly men born to hunt" conclusion seems to be just repeating what we've been taught to believe. There's no proof for that, and really no reason to even believe it. It's a blind guess. Speculation is great except when it's confused with science.

Re:Unscientific conclusions?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not speculation when you have millenia of historical records where men engage in dangerous behavior (hunting, war, etc.) and women tend not to. Heck, you can even look at aboriginal cultures today and notice the same pattern. Go take a trip to australia or africa and see for yourself. We're not lions where the females do the hunting. We evolved differently.

Re:Unscientific conclusions?

[Monkeedude1212]

Thats not at all what the popular TV Show Xena led me to believe.

Re:Unscientific conclusions?

[hedwards]

No reason to believe it? I mean sure it is kind of speculative, but over the whole of history, that's been the way it's been done for the vast majority of civilizations. What you're suggesting is probably even more speculative than that. Men being typically larger and stronger clearly doesn't indicate anything, neither does anything about the distribution of brain mass. On top of that, for organisms that have live young, it would be decidedly inconvenient for the primary hunter to be largely out of commission for the better part of a year before giving birth. Yes pregnant women can do a lot, but it's not a good step evolutionarily for the hunter to also be with child.

Yes it's pretty speculative, but suggesting that it's a blind guess requires real ignorance of both history and biology.

Re:Unscientific conclusions?

[stagg]

MOST large game hunting has been done my by men, in MOST human societies. However, human society has almost never relied on hunting large game for survival. When hunting is a subsistence activity it still tends not to require a large percentage of the population's efforts or take a substantial amount of their time. Pregnancy is unlikely to be a factor in preventing women from hunting, except for a comparatively brief period in an individual's life, and child rearing obviously doesn't have to be a woman's activity, or the same mother's activity. No, I can't scientifically proving anything about gender roles. The difference is that I'm not claiming to. I'd hardly publish a thesis on what I know about gender roles in history, but it is enough to suggest that things aren't as open and shut as that.

Re:Unscientific conclusions?

[canajin56]

Well, except for lions. In lions, the male is truly massive compared to the females. But the male just sits there sleeping, easting, and having sex, and also occasionally eating its own young so the females will want to have more sex to repopulate. So, a larger male doesn't necessarily mean the male is the hunter. It could also mean that the male protects the rest of the group while the females are away hunting smaller prey that needs a fast hunter, rather than a massive pile of muscle, in order to bring down. But yes, lions are just about unique in that regard. It would be most unusual if humanity's ancestors were like that, since as you say, we're pregnant for far longer than greater cats, and babies need the care of their mother (or at least A mother) for far longer than most mammals.

Re:Unscientific conclusions?

[Anonymous Coward]

See: Lions.

Females do the hunting for their cubs.

Re:Unscientific conclusions?

[Kashgarinn]

The fact that certain traits have been tought to each of the sexes from generation to generation only suggests that males and females are the same (in that regard), and some responsibilities have been firmly divided and have to be tought.

Not sure if you understand, but the fact that both males and females can jump at the sight of a mouse means it's an inherent reaction which isn't any different with both sexes.

The fact is that you then teach them that "males" being "male" should not fear the mouse, no change in the females response is given, but a general "women.. pah!" attitude is often given.

There definitely are different traits between the sexes, both genetically and socially, but I think people would be surprised by how little of it is genetic and how much of it is social, as in a learned situation.

This research to me just proves that females, even very young are already practicing honing their social learning and mimicry while the boys for some reason do not seem to need to do the same.

Evolutionary origins of gender stereotypes

[David Gerard]

British scientists have uncovered why little girls like pink toys. "Women are hardwired to like pink," says Professor Gene Hunt of the University of Metro, "because their cavewoman foremothers spent their days gathering red leaves and berries amongst the trees." Later, women needed to notice red-faced babies and blushing boyfriends. Men are attracted to blue because of the colour of the sky as seen when hunting.

Women are also predisposed to backstab one another in the workplace and cry in the boardroom, just like the social structures in the cave population as extrapolated from two bone needles. Being too successful will increase women's testosterone, giving them hairy nipples and male-pattern baldness. Females joining the hunt may also explain the end of the Neanderthals.

IQ test studies show that women have lower IQs on average than men, undoubtedly from lesser need for environmental variation while taking care of the cave. Tests on little boys prove that testosterone correlates with a sense of humour, so women naturally can't take a joke. Housework has been shown to cut the risk of several fatal diseases, and dressing up nicely around the house is psychologically healthy as it uses the Homo erectus clan maintenance abilities of the female of the tribe.

Men are naturally predisposed to sleep with as many women as possible, as proven by lions, whereas women are naturally predisposed to stay loyal to their man and their spawn. Women who sleep around are at increased risk of parasites and death, as proven by cheetahs, who are a pack of catty sluts.

In a final crowning achievement, the team has shown that daily fellatio greatly reduces the incidence of breast cancer. Furthermore, regular sexual intercourse is essential to feminine health, but may be injurious if prolonged for more than two minutes or conducted while the man is sober.

"In conclusion," says Professor Hunt, "all of this is top-notch science that you can absolutely rely on. Now get your knickers back on and make me a cuppa."

Re:Evolutionary origins of gender stereotypes

[canajin56]

I find your ideas intriguing, and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

Re:Evolutionary origins of gender stereotypes

[notarockstar1979]

Now this is science I can stand behind.

Re:Evolutionary origins of gender stereotypes

[Locke2005]

Best. Troll. Ever!

Re:Evolutionary origins of gender stereotypes

[Anonymous Coward]

Best. Troll. Ever!

However, I'm a bit uneasy that it's currently rated as "Score:3, Informative". I mean if you want to give David Gerard points for his effort there was the option of "Interesting", at least that one doesn't imply the mods fell for the troll.

Re:Evolutionary origins of gender stereotypes

[David Gerard]

Troll, how dare you sir! Everything except the last two paragraphs is actual "news" stories. Evidently our caveman ancestors are alive and well and working at Associated Newspapers in London.

Re:Evolutionary origins of gender stereotypes

[David Gerard]

http://notnews.today.com/feed/

Re:Evolutionary origins of gender stereotypes

[religious freak]

Best response to this article I could think of. I haven't (and won't) take the time to read the study, but when I see "conclusions" like this, I'm quite skeptical. Maybe it's true, but the whole idea seems rooted in sexism.

Personally, I F$#%@! hate bugs, and I'm a dude. My wife doesn't mind so much. I grew up in the city, she grew up in the country... see a correlation there???

Re:Evolutionary origins of gender stereotypes

[David Gerard]

You can tell when it's August or September and there's no proper news to print: the papers print an article saying the sexist notion of the day is proven by "our caveman ancestors".

Re:Evolutionary origins of gender stereotypes

[hyades1]

Whether by accident or because you may be depressed and suicidal, it appears that you may have allowed your real name to appear at the top of this post. Regardless, I have great respect for your courage in the face of what will doubtless be a very unpleasant fate.

Where should I send the flowers? Or would you prefer a donation in your name to an appropriate charity?

Re:Evolutionary origins of gender stereotypes

[31415926535897]

I believe this is about as reliable as most "evolutionary stories" I hear.

Re:Evolutionary origins of gender stereotypes

[gaspyy]

Yep, I actually remember reading these "studies". I won't bother googling for them, but they are out there.

The only thing I want to know is - are these studies publicly funded? And how can I apply for some grants for my research? I'm pretty sure I can come up with some very insightful findings, like the importance of watching football on TV...

Re:Evolutionary origins of gender stereotypes

[Anonymous Coward]

Srsly? They're usually either (1) blatant marketing exercises by PR companies (2) one line out of unpublished research, taken completely out of context by the newspaper and an embarrassment to the researcher. Occasionally they're (3) one line out of unpublished research, taken completely out of context by the University press office desperately trying to justify their existence, and an embarrassment to the researcher.

Ben Goldacre covers this stuff a lot in the UK.

Re:Evolutionary origins of gender stereotypes

[tweekie]

A++ As an actual girl, I feel this overwhelming need to now put on pretty heels and dust off the china while performing fellatio and wishing I was a cheetah.

Re:Evolutionary origins of gender stereotypes

[Anonymous Coward]

Newsletter? Join the 21stC!

http://twitter.com/genehunt for mor misogynistic humour and terrible puns.

Girls can be fun

[unlametheweak]

Girls Wired To Fear Dangerous Animals

It's cute when they scream.

Re:Girls can be fun

[clone53421]

Congratulations, you've just told us what every little boy already knew.

The main attraction of toads, frogs, worms, and bugs is the fascinating effect they have on girls.

Re:Girls can be fun

[Taibhsear]

-1 creepshow...

Re:Girls can be fun

[Anonymous Coward]

Strangely enough, my younger sister has no problems with frogs or toads, going so far as to rescue them from the skimmers in the swimming pool if they get caught. She also went vegetarian for a while and continues to believe in animal rights.. until she sees a spider and comes to me to kill it.

Re:Girls can be fun

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? In that case, see how she likes having a garter snake in her hair. They can be tricky to get back out...

YAVGDT - Yet Another Video Game Design Theory

[Arakageeta]

Does everything have to tie back to video game design? I think we're being a little one-track-mind here. Sometimes things just are and we'll see what people make of them. This research is so general, one could pose the question "Will directors/writers/teachers/coaches/lawyers use this information to tweak movies/literature/education/sports/representation for gender?"

Re:YAVGDT - Yet Another Video Game Design Theory

[Oloryn]

I think we're being a little one-track-mind here.

Welcome to /.

Re:YAVGDT - Yet Another Video Game Design Theory

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, for some reason people are trying to figure out how to make video games more popular with women.

Has anyone ever considered the possibility that the vary nature of video games themselves is what women don't like? You know, playing a game on a video screen. Maybe that's what they don't like. It's not the content, it's the medium itself.

Re:YAVGDT - Yet Another Video Game Design Theory

[insertwackynamehere]

yes but does it run linux

lets invest heavily in cybernetic research and brain-computer interfacing and install linux into the brains of women. it can be called fembuntu distro, airy alphafemale. there will be no question now as to what women are thinking or how they think but there will also be no accountability or tech support. until the bugs are ironed out, kernel panic will cause women to suddenly fixate angrily on one little thing. interacting with women will be confusing for everyone except the nerdiest of the population (how the tides have changed!) and most things won't be supported out of the box. One will have to apt-get sex and then all of the dependencies will be outdated. Even then, the developers have made the binary clunky and slow and prone to crashes. However, since it's open source you can finally find the gspot. The devs promise that by 2015, the application will be up to par with the current iteration of commercial competition. Google is rumored to step in but you'll have to deal with the fact they are getting your DNA samples to sell to advertisers.

Or maybe we could just make a beowulf cluster of mice and snakes

Micro$oft

furthermore,

plugged toilets?

[Anonymous Coward]

What about the female aversion to unplugging toilets? How about an experiment with a plugged toilet with a happy face on it?

Or getting under the car to fix an oil leak? Greasy happy face?

Is there one?

[Moraelin]

Actually, is there one? Mice are a fact of life in rural areas. I can't imagine women being able to function at all in, say, medieval Europe if they were wired to shriek and jump on the table at the sight of one. Rats and mice were really that common.

Heck, even in the 20'th century, I've seen more than one when visiting either grandma as a child. And that's not counting the ones the cat used to bring us. And I don't remember anyone freaking out.

Honestly, other than in Hollywood movies and cartoons, I can't remember even hearing about someone who reacts that way to mice.

So is it a real phenomenon, or one of those movie stereotypes like computer displays with huge letters and a "hack password" command?

Re:Is there one?

[rainmaestro]

I suspect it is a mix. A slightly different example:

Roaches. You always see the stereotype of the woman freaking out. Well, I live in Florida. Palmetto bugs are a way of life down here. I don't care if you're in a $50 million mansion, you're gonna see palmetto bugs at some point. And they run/fly *straight* at you (tall and thin person == tree == shelter in their eyes).

Down here, people don't really freak out. I know people who will run screaming from a bee, but show them a roach and they calmly pick up a newspaper and crush it.

I don't think we're hardwired for these kinds of fear. My suspicion is that it results either from some trauma early in life (little kid gets bitten by a spider), or the result of being "taught" to fear it by your parents ("Don't touch that, it will make you sick").

Re:Is there one?

[Anonymous Coward]

So is it a real phenomenon, or one of those movie stereotypes like computer displays with huge letters and a "hack password" command?

Don't forget the staccato beeping that comes out of the monitor when you crop a picture...

Enhance! [beep-beep-beep-beep-beep]

Re:Is there one?

[gbjbaanb]

I'd think speed of movement counts a lot too - a bee zips about the place faster than you can react to it, a roach crawls along. Make it move very fast and you'll probably see something like the same response.

As for rats, I don't think women would jump on a chair and scream for help like Mammy Two -shoes, but there's a healthy aversion to the things in relatively recent times. Today we don't have the same housing and health issues we had just 50 years ago, so we've lost what ever instincts we had against them.

That said, women are always going to be more hardwired to flight than men, they just don't have the same "I'm big and strong" attitude men (are more likely to) have, present geeks excluded :)

Re:Is there one?

[Moraelin]

I wonder how much of it is there pretty much because

A) it's expected. It's my unscientific impression that women are more likely to try to fit in a group, and do whatever is needed to that end.

B) they can. Honestly, if I could get someone else to do some jobs, I would too. If all it takes is some "oooh, you're so big and strong, I'm weak and affraid of X" to get someone else to take care of X, _and_ it was socially acceptable, wouldn't you do it? Heck, screw the "socially acceptable" too :P

And I don't think humanity ever had any real insticts against rodents, plus 50 years is a bit too short to lose genuine instincts. More likely, it was just learned behaviour both then and now. It might happen to be different behaviours, depending on the time and place, but nevertheless learned behaviour.

Bullshit

[Locke2005]

My daughter used to pick up spiders with her bare hands when she was 3, as well as dance on shelves 11 feet off the ground and climb out of second story windows. I had to intentionally terrify her a few times to teach her fear, but now I've trained her not to touch spiders. She still has no problem handling garter snakes. Her mother, coming from a part of the world where many venomous snakes are found, is so terrified of all snakes that she cannot even bear to see them on TV. So are all her relatives, so we have had the situation where an adult male refused to hold a garter snake I caught in the yard, but a 6-year old girl didn't have any problem with it. (By the way, garter snakes actually are venomous, but their venom teeth are in the back of their mouth and there are no known incidents of them biting people.)

Re:Bullshit

[RemoWilliams84]

Her mother, coming from a part of the world where many venomous snakes are found, is so terrified of all snakes that she cannot even bear to see them on TV.

Yet she still loves to handle the trouser snakes... sorry, I had to do it.

Re:Bullshit

[Whorhay]

Well I remember a garter snake biting my older brother a couple of times on the hand. But he probably didn't get a bite like a small animal might as the snakes mouth was rather small.

Re:Bullshit

[clone53421]

Quite right, GP's statement is completely incorrect. Garter snakes will bite if provoked; I've been bitten myself. He should have said there are no known cases of serious injury from a garter snake bite.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garter_snake#Venom

Re:Bullshit

[deglr6328]

Your daughter is going to be a very butch lesbian.

Re:Bullshit

[oni]

My daughter

Yeah, let me just stop you right there. Your anecdote does not disprove a statistic. For example, human males tend to be taller than human females. It's a well-established fact. If we have a slashdot thread full of people saying, "bullshit! My wife is taller than me!" does that disprove the statistic? No, it certainly does not. That's a slashdot thread full of selection bias - the only people who care to post are these who disagree.

Congrats on your daughter. Maybe she is unusual, or maybe you can condition her away from her biological norm. Either way, she's an anecdote and does not disprove the statistic.

Re:Bullshit

[clone53421]

Either way, she's an anecdote and does not disprove the statistic.

Yeah, congrats dude, your daughter is now neither a number nor a statistic. We've demoted her to "anecdote".

Re:Bullshit

[Locke2005]

Actually, since she also loves the color pink, dressing up in foo-foo dresses, and playing with Barbies as well as quoting Katy Perry's "I kissed a girl", I prefer to believe she will grow up to be a quite well balanced bisexual. So far, though, she has had several boyfriends (starting when she was 6) and no girlfriends. Nothing wrong with being a butch lesbian, although as a man I take personal offense at being a man-hating lesbian.

Re:Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes garters are venomous(it is just a very weak poison), but they still bite people all the time. As a young girl I used to play with them all the time and did get a nice set of teeth marks in the end of one finger when I made the mistake of grabbing one that was in the middle of a shed (makes them very irritable)

Re:Bullshit

[Locke2005]

I chase and catch small western terrestrial garter snakes all the time, and have never had one of them even try to bite, which surprises me. (The fact that they are so easy to catch also surprises me. Don't they have any natural predators?) They will do everything in their power to get away, whipping around, jumping out of cages, and defecating in your hand. But the thought of actually biting this huge monster that is apparently intent on eating them never seems to occur to them. Apparently I was incorrect in assuming they never bite, but I do believe there are no documented incidents of them doing serious harm to a human -- otherwise, I wouldn't let my daughter play with them. (I did, however, advise her not to kiss them.)

Re:Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

Your anecdotal evidence is impressive. I am utterly convinced.

Dangerous animals?

[Anonymous Coward]

Women are wired to fear ME.

Mukekeke.

Re:Dangerous animals?

[Red Flayer]

Women are wired to fear ME.

Mukekeke.

That may be; however, I've *trained* women to fear ME.

Bukakekekekeke

Re:Dangerous animals?

[93 Escort Wagon]

Women are wired to fear ME.

Hey, my mom's first laptop had ME installed on it - and I'd say fear was a completely reasonable reaction.

Re:Dangerous animals?

[Chapter80]

Women are wired to fear ME.

Hey, my mom's first laptop had ME installed on it

My Mom's laptop had ME and My siblings installed on it. One by one, we were uninstalled at birth.

Gender discrimination? Say it ain't so.

[skornenicholas]

I find it rather humorous that it is considered so taboo to say that maybe, just MAYBE, men are discrimnated against as well. Don't believe me? As a male, also kinda a large guy I'm 6'3" and 220, I also happen to LOVE kids. And not in the have some candy and get in my van way, in the oh my God have candy and a pony and if you smile I might just steal a space shuttle and go to the moon to get you moon rocks, kinda way. Living in America if I so much as "Oooh, awwww" over a small child, especially if it is female, I am treated as a pervert. Not just sometimes, but 99% of the time. I found a lost crying child in Wal*Mart and I bought her a sucker and put her in a stroller going aisle to aisle to find her parents. I was tackled from behing by security with no verbal warning what so EVER. It hurt like hell and busted my nose. I am now terrified to so much as smile at a child, even my own small cousins. The thing is that every male habit is viewed as bad from the get go and we have to fight to prove it is useful. I work two jobs, my father is dying of cancer, my mothers mill was outsourced, and neither of them graduated High School. I support me, my parents, my ex wife, putting my oldest cousin through ACC, while taking guardianship of his sister while she completes school because both of her parents are now in jail. I come home, I cook, I clean, make sure everyone is okay, laundry is done, homework is done, medication is taken. If I decide to spend two hours shoving bayonets in the throats of other dudes in Call of Duty what right do you have to say I shouldn't? It is a stress reliever. Am I addicted? It depends, it doesn't interfer with my life so I would say no, but I do enjoy it very much. It is time to put aside our "beliefs" about what is male and what is female and look at it from a completely open point of view. Let us start all over with new ideas and create a new comprehensive study using double blind standards, then find out is it male/female, is it race, religion, upbringing, or does it simply vary wildly from person to person? I am thinking it is the latter, I find demographics studies to be prebiased and largely absurd.

Re:Gender discrimination? Say it ain't so.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, as a man that also likes to see cute kids (in the same way as you) I hate that it seems that if I do anything more than just look and smile the parents tend to shield their kids from me.

As an aside, doesn't it suck that men cannot tell women they are attractive without it being a come on?

Re:Gender discrimination? Say it ain't so.

[Locke2005]

If you find a lost child, you take them to customer service. They have a PA system, much more effective than "going aisle to aisle".

Yes, most of the "gender differences" we see are primarily nurture, not nature. Even if you don't brainwash your own daughter, trust me, other kids will.

As an adult male, I too find it depressing that I apparently cannot be trusted around children, but my daughter's male teacher and principal can (strange double standard). Unfortunately, I do like kids, in the sense that I want to see them be happy. And, as creepy as I am, little girls adore me. Why? Because, unlike most adults, I actually pay attention to them, and treat them like human beings. Which apparently is something that their paranoid parents are failing to do. I believe giving your kids the time and attention they crave would protect them much better than training them to fear all strangers. The "stranger danger" myth is bullshit - the vast majority of child abuse is perpetrated by people the parents know, those same school staff and relatives that the parents trust unconditionally.

Re:Gender discrimination? Say it ain't so.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know but you certainly came off creepy as all hell in that post.

Re:Gender discrimination? Say it ain't so.

[skornenicholas]

I have always done the customer service thing first, I am not talking about literally carrying the child up and down each aisle, what are the odds of a kid standing next to customer service? You always take them to CS, but as I lack the ability to teleport there directly...You are correct on the stranger danger myth and most child abuse being done by a member of them family though. Actually as for teachers, they suffer the same fate. How would YOU feel if your daughter came home and told you the boy teacher takes them to the bathroom? Most people would freak before asking if he walks them TO the bathroom and stands guard outside the door. Treating children as human beings is oftern overlooked and I applaude you. The thing is that when I find a lost child I am not going to leave them there since I KNOW I'm one of the good guys. At the same time how do you KNOW the person taking the child from you is the parent? I'm not sure there is any easy way to be but so safe. Maybe that is the whole point of this, you teach your children all the warning signs and you protect them the best that you can, at some point you HAVE to trust another human being with the kid. I just despise these articles stating that it is a "male" problem with aggression and violence. Tell that to MY ex, girl was bad about causing others physical harm by tossing heavy objects. I have found the "gender rules" to be utterly useless. I may kill spiders, snakes, and home invaders; but if there is a turtle under there, no freakin' way. Put simply, there are nice people and horrible people, it is very hard to tell which is which MOST of the time, I always instruct kids that if they feel weird about a person to find an adult they already know, is it foolproof? Not one bit, but nothing is.

Re:Gender discrimination? Say it ain't so.

[rainmaestro]

Yeah, it's not a secret that child abuse is typically a family affair, but telling parents that their brother or cousin might be touching little Suzie in a bad place doesn't sell news stories. Creepy looking men driving around in vans does.

Little kids like me, mainly because I have a similar sense of curiosity. I'll happily spend an afternoon watching bugs, or pretending to fight monsters in the backyard. Imagination is a wonderful tool for boosting creativity. But unless the parents really trust you (family, long-time friends, close neighbors, etc) you have to act like a boring adult to avoid being seen as a perv. No smiling, acknowledge them and then ignore them, just like mommy and daddy do.

If you find a lost child, the only way to help without getting a nightstick in a bad place from a rent-a-cop is to (a) don't get within arm's reach and (b) immediately dump the kid off with the first *female* you can find. Screw finding an employee, you're better off finding some random lady and telling her "this little boy can't find his mommy". Any attempt at help beyond that will end badly.

Re:Gender discrimination? Say it ain't so.

[Anonymous Coward]

sound like 2 pervs to me

Re:Gender discrimination? Say it ain't so.

[Anonymous Coward]

+1 Sad-but-True

Re:Gender discrimination? Say it ain't so.

[Anonymous Coward]

Little kids like me, mainly because I have a similar sense of curiosity. I'll happily spend an afternoon watching bugs, or pretending to fight monsters in the backyard.

And playing Doctor, I suppose. Yeah, we all know why you'll endure a whole afternoon watching bugs with some snot-nosed kid...

Re:Gender discrimination? Say it ain't so.

[rainmaestro]

I realize this is a troll, and I shouldn't bother responding, but....

This is a common misinterpretation. I'm not saying I like *hanging around with kids*. I'm saying I like a lot of the same things as I did when I was a kid.

Personally, I don't particularly like being around kids (I neither have, nor want, children). but when I am around them, they tend to like me because I can still act like a kid, instead of being just another boring adult who completely ignores them.

I'm the type that goes out to a state park and spends half a day following birds around to see what kind of material they're making nests out of. It has nothing to do with children, other than it being the same curiosity about the world that I had as a child, the thing that so many people lose as they grow up.

As far as pretending, it helps. When I've been troubleshooting a SQL Server issue for three days, spending an hour daydreaming about something else helps me approach the problem from a fresh perspective.

Re:Gender discrimination? Say it ain't so.

[epukinsk]

I'm sorry that you've suffered from other people making assumptions about you. But I want to post, because there are two issues with talking about prejudice against men that you seem unaware of, and they have nothing to do with "taboos".

1) People sometimes bring up prejudice against men in discussions about prejudice against women in order to dismiss the concerns about the prejudice against women. As the adage goes, two wrongs don't make a right. This is particularly rude when YOU are the one being called out for sexism. It's like if I punched you in the face, and you call me out on it, and I start talking about how many times I've been punched in the face growing up. It's not that no one is sympathetic to your plight, it's just not a good time to bring it up.

Now if people were having a discussion about "rare forms of prejudice," then prejudice against men, prejudice against white people, these are welcome topics. If people are discussing sexism against women, then they're not.

2) Prejudice and systematic oppression are very different things, and it's naive to conflate them. I appreciate your point about men and children. I've experienced it to, and it's sad, and it bugs me. But it doesn't prevent me from getting a job. It doesn't prevent me from going out and having a few drinks without someone grabbing my crotch (or worse). It makes me feel bad, and it hurts. But it doesn't get in the way of most of my every day activities. It's not the same as sexism or racism, which are prejudice with the force of systematic oppression behind them.

I would be happy to read and discuss your experiences, the Wal*Mart experience, etc, and prejudice against men in general. But if you are using it either to distract away from a conversation about chauvanism, or to suggest that women's oppression and men's oppression are somehow equal, then it's inappropriate.

Re:Gender discrimination? Say it ain't so.

[clone53421]

Yes, I was trolling (I'm the same AC).

In a way, I was acknowledging the problem you describe. I was poking you where I know it's uncomfortable. I've felt the same thing.

In a way, I was also trying to show how silly it sounds to freak out just because an adult gets along well with children.

(You fed the troll; I'll bet you didn't expect to get this in return. ;)

Meh... I've said what I have to say, now moving on...

Re:Gender discrimination? Say it ain't so.

[oni]

If you find a lost child, you take them to customer service

Which, unfortunately, is in the back of the store right next to the bathrooms. What's very likely to happen is that the paranoid soccer mom is going to see you walking away, hand in hand with her precious snowflake, and she is going absolutely flip out. Just pray she doesn't have a tazer.

most of the "gender differences" we see are primarily nurture, not nature.

In order to say that *most* differences are the result of culture, we'd have to compile a comprehensive list of differences and decide the cause of each one. Since you don't have that list, I don't think you can say that most of them are culture. For my own part, I am prepared to say that some of them are not culture, but are biologically determined, and that some of these appear to be very important differences. For whatever reason, even that statement is taboo in certain circles, where it is said that any and every behavioral difference must be the result of culture and there can be no other possible reason and to suggest otherwise is sexist blasphemy.

Re:Gender discrimination? Say it ain't so.

[oni]

it is considered so taboo to say that maybe, just MAYBE, men are discrimnated against

I agree that it's taboo, but there happens to be a very good reason why evolution would predispose us to discriminate against males and to find discussion of that discrimination distasteful, even offensive. It comes down to the simple fact that females are considerably more valuable* to the species than are males. We may not like it, but that's the way it is and that's the foundation for all of our instinctive emotional reactions. A woman's problem is a problem for the whole tribe and they take it seriously. A male's problem is a sign of weakness and the tribe will be better off without him. And any tribe whose members do not have these instinctive reactions will be selected for extinction.

That's just the way the world works. If you keep this simple principle in mind while observing any sort of social behavior, you'll find that suddenly the behavior makes a lot more sense.

*valuable in this context means the ability to have children. If a tribe has 20 males and 20 females, and 10 of the males are killed, the tribe will completely recover in just one generation. But if 10 of the females are killed, it make take many generations to recover. Thus, we might imagine many tribes of humans competing with each other. If any of them have instincts that cause them to prefer and protect males (say, if there's a flood and you have a choice to rescue a male or a female, and you choose the male) that tribe will be out competed by the tribes that have the instinct to prefer and protect females. 100,000 years later, we carry the instincts of those successful ancestors.

Note also that this predicts that we'd have a negative instinctive emotional reaction to any woman that doesn't want children, since we instinctively associate "value" with reproductive fitness. So, this explains the discrimination that career women face.

See? It really does explain everything.

Re:Gender discrimination? Say it ain't so.

[Fulcrum of Evil]

People sometimes bring up prejudice against men in discussions about prejudice against women in order to dismiss the concerns about the prejudice against women.

No, it's usually in order to dismiss claims that prejudice only flows one way. For instance, domestic violence is usually perceived as man on woman violence, even though it's fairly even. When people respond to evidence of increased violence from women to men with the assumption that the man still initiated that violence, you need to do something to readjust the perception: hence the anecdotes.

Now if people were having a discussion about "rare forms of prejudice," then prejudice against men, prejudice against white people, these are welcome topics.

Try being a white nurse in DC or a white person in detroit. These things aren't all that rare. It isn't 1970 any more, and you can't assume that prejudice is endemic and one way - hell, everyone's heard about the college admissions bias against white males, right?

Re:Gender discrimination? Say it ain't so.

[epukinsk]

No, it's usually in order to dismiss claims that prejudice only flows one way.

I'd be surprised if you could find many examples of that. In this example, no one said any such thing to skornenicholas. There's one example in my favor, do you have any in yours?

For instance, domestic violence is usually perceived as man on woman violence, even though it's fairly even.

It's only close to even if you use a ridiculous metric like number of encounters. If you look at more meaningful metrics, like actual harm done (women are far more likely to be injured in domestic violence) or society's response (men receive much shorter prison sentences for killing their wifes than vice versa) then really there is no comparison.

It isn't 1970 any more, and you can't assume that prejudice is endemic and one way

Sorry, I must've been unclear in my post. Looking back I could've worded it better. Prejudice happens in all directions. People make unfair assumptions. It's human, and unavoidable. But the question is, are people turning down white men for jobs because they are white? No. Not on a large scale.

hell, everyone's heard about the college admissions bias against white males, right?

I've heard people claim that this happens, but I don't believe it. You'd have to give me some examples if you want to convince me.

What I have seen is a very strong bias against women and people of color, which is so strong that any attempt to bias in the other direction is pretty inconsequential. Black students have to learn all of the same material as white students (math, biology, etc, etc) PLUS they have to learn how to "act white" in order to be accepted. They are forced to speak and write and think more like white people. Similarly, women have to not only learn all the same material as men, and build the same (genderless) skills, but they must also spend a bunch of energy learning to "act male", in everything from clothes to patterns of argumentation, in order to be accepted in many professional environments. And on top of that, they have to deal with harassment.

White men have no idea how much extra free time and energy they have because of their whiteness and maleness. College admissions are a little like holding olympic trials, and having one person carrying a 50 lb pack while they compete in the 200 meter dash. If they come in a half second behind the leader, but they did it with a 50 lb pack on, doesn't that mean they're probably the fastest in the bunch, and they should make the team?

Re:Gender discrimination? Say it ain't so.

[haruharaharu]

It's only close to even if you use a ridiculous metric like number of encounters.

It's expected that, since the numbers for the other three pairings (MM, MF, FF) are about even, the numbers for FM violence is severely underreported. Also, since women can attack with near impunity, often with weapons, it's hardly as onesided as you say.

But the question is, are people turning down white men for jobs because they are white? No. Not on a large scale.

No, but lots of public jobs and government contractors make it very hard to get hired if you're white. My favorite is the guy who can only get government contracts for education CDs (from about 10 years ago) by using a black man as a one man shell company. Basically, he was told that they couldn't contract with him because of diversity requirements and his nonminority status.

It's nice to try and counter generations of discrimination, but we have gone too far in some cases - I really think we have no business mandating diversity for government contracts; mandating a percentage of business going to small companies would accomplish much the same goals without shutting out us white folk :)

I've heard people claim that this happens, but I don't believe it. You'd have to give me some examples if you want to convince me.

Just anecdotes from people allegedly in admissions who see the bumps minorities get for being minorities - the actual data is confidential, so good luck there. You can check the scholarship stuff, though - lots of stuff available for blacks, not so much for a poor white boy. This results in blacks from affluent families getting full or partial ride scholarships for iffy grades while the poor white applicants get not much in the way of admissions bumps or financial aid. If you're white from the ghetto, you're screwed.

What I'd like to see here is some financial aid for people based more on economic hardships than race - hell, we could solve this tomorrow by guaranteeing tuition to an in state public college to anyone who can get in (or a voc tech job if that's your focus). It's not simple or easy, but would remove a major hurdle to middle class lifestyle: qualify and you get tuition for one BS/BA.

Black students have to learn all of the same material as white students (math, biology, etc, etc) PLUS they have to learn how to "act white" in order to be accepted.

Hehe, acting white? you mean some blacks can't go act gangster and talk like an idiot and expect respect? Are the asian kids acting white? Lots of them and they do ok, even with the language barrier (and a whole different culture). But seriously, this is where I ask for examples: are they being rejected for saying 'wif' or are they being insular? Those chinese students (and later, workers) are okay to get along with but it's really goddamn annoying that they socialize almost exclusively with other chinese.

Similarly, women have to not only learn all the same material as men, and build the same (genderless) skills, but they must also spend a bunch of energy learning to "act male", in everything from clothes to patterns of argumentation,

Haven't noticed that so much. Could you describe a female pattern of argument?

And on top of that, they have to deal with harassment.

Harassment? not so much where I work. I have seen one or two women socially who are incapable of telling someone that they aren't interested, even when asked rather bluntly. I expect that that could cause problems at work - someone makes a pass, they 'act polite to avoid conflict' and it gets interpreted as interest.

White men have no idea how much extra free time and energy they have because of their whiteness and maleness.

Ahh, male privilege, what a gas...

College admissions are a little like holding olympic trials

Re:Gender discrimination? Say it ain't so.

[epukinsk]

You know, you make some good points. I'm willing to conceded that domestic violence is not just a men's issue, that it's a women's issue too. I think it's definitely an issue that should be addressed partially in a non-genered way. So, I agree that we should work to discourage violence in general.

But what I'm not willing to concede is that it's the same on both sides.

It's expected that ... the numbers for FM violence is severely underreported

Like I said, raw rates of incident don't matter much to me. Women can be hitting men with a ratio of 10:1, and I won't care, if women are still the only ones ending up in the hospital. Research shows that women are substantially more likely to be injuried[1]. I would like to see some data about the severity of injuries on both sides. My suspicion is that women attack more often, because they're not really able to inflict much harm. Men do it less often, but when they do the woman is much more likely to end up in the hospital. But it's just a suspicion.

Women seem to be somewhat less likely to murder their spouses, although I think honestly (I'm being honest here) I rarely meet a couple where I think the woman poses a legitimate physical threat to the man. It happens, but it seems uncommon to me. Maybe my feelings are skewed because I'm 6'1" and 205 and the women I've dated have always been smaller and unable to really hurt me. I'll give it some thought.

No, but lots of public jobs and government contractors make it very hard to get hired if you're white.

Why are you saying "a lot"? I think there have been some high profile cases, because whenever a white person gets shut out, there is a huge fuss and it's in all the papers. But it seems ot me that white people are still vastly favored in government contracts. In San Diego, where I live, I just read that 98.8% of construction contract dollars from the city go to businesses owned by white men[2].

Now, as for solutions... I don't necessarily think there should be short-term requirements that a certain amount of money goes to women- and minority-owned businesses. But I think there should be programs that try to address the problem at lots of levels. Offering contracts to smaller businesses might be one way to do it. I don't know all the solutions, and I don't think "forcing the numbers" is a solution, but I think we should be able to agree that the numbers as they current stand are a problem.

What I'd like to see here is some financial aid for people based more on economic hardships than race

I agree with you that there should be financial aid based on economic hardship. I don't know what's currently out there, but there should be more. However, you seem to be suggesting that there be no race-based scholarships. Is that true? If so, I disagree.

You seem to think that the ONLY way that black people are hampered by our system is because of economic hardship. There are two problems with this:

1) It's not true. Black people with money still face constant racism. It sucks up time and energy. In my experience most of the black people I've gotten close enough to that they feel safe talking to me about race have confirmed this. Some people of color will say that it doesn't affect them, but they are a very small minority. And good for them, but that doesn't make everything right for the rest of folks who struggle with it every day.

2) Some of the economic hardship is a result of race-based discrimination. The reason why people of color are disproportionately poor must be a race issue, no? How else can you explain it?

For example, despite the fact that most drug dealers are white, black folks are much more likely to be convicted for dealing drugs, which means lots more black folks in prison, which means it's harder for them to get jobs, which means more poverty. That they're kids are in crappy schools IS a poverty issue, to some extent, but the root cause is racism.

you mean some blacks

Re:Gender discrimination? Say it ain't so.

[epukinsk]

I also suspect that generally only more educated and wealthy black Kenyans are able to make it to the US, which makes it an unfair comparison.

Re:Gender discrimination? Say it ain't so.

[lawpoop]

...but my daughter's male teacher and principal can (strange double standard)

The parents know that they've been background checked.

Re:Gender discrimination? Say it ain't so.

[Locke2005]

The parents know that they've been background checked.

So has this woman A confessed serial child molester, she is seeking a new teaching certificate, and will probably get it. Of course, informing her students that the is a child molester would be a violation of HER rights, so the probably can't even do that.

Re:Gender discrimination? Say it ain't so.

[Fulcrum of Evil]

The reason why people of color are disproportionately poor must be a race issue, no?

Well, I'd call it a result of history, but I really don't care. What I care about is how to fix it, and that has to come from the black community itself. No other way will work (white man's burden and all that).

Yes, what you call acting "gangster" is a predominantly black way of acting. Just because you act "gangster" doesn't mean you can't write or take classes or run a business. And yes, people are discriminated against for acting "gangster" and yes, that is racism, and it's exactly the problem I'm talking about.

I'm ok with discriminating against someone for acting like a lowlife thug. Seriously, it isn't racism, it's acting like a damn criminal; only an idiot wouldn't expect to do that without consequences. Act like a decent person (black or white) and I'll treat you well. Act like a thug and I cross the street.

And yes, asian kids are under an extreme amount of pressure to "act white". It's another form of racism.

Yeah, right. They're under pressure to study well and get a good job, usually. That's just the cultural baggage they tend to get.

Have you been put in that position? Have other men in your office been put in that position?

No, I was on the other side. It was clear that she was holding back, I asked bluntly if she had a problem (email, so no real intimidation or work consequences), she said we were still cool, and the next time I saw her on the street, she just stared at me. Creepy as fuck.

I just know lots of women who say they find they have to speak like men to get listened to. And they have to dress like men. Suits, no low-cut shirts. If you wear a dress that shows off your femininity, you lose respect in the workplace and in the classroom.

How does a woman talk differently? If you don't bring up issues or go with feelings instead of facts and solutions, what am I supposed to do?

Also, why do you think those women are incapable of telling that person they're not interested? Because society has told them over and over that they don't have a right to. There's a great essay on the subject written by Fugitivus[3]. Here's an excerpt:

Funny, it's those things that piss me off the most: women who won't speak up when they have a problem, or want approval for everything they do, but half your examples here come off as shrill whiny feminist rhetoric. There are tons of counterexamples to your points, which tend to underline a victim mentality. Sort of ironic coming from people who call themselves feminists.

For the record, someone is only shrill when they harp on something incessantly. Fix it, leave or get over it.

The truth is, sometimes when women put their foot down about stuff like that, the men turn violent, or they step up their harassment.

And other times, them playing polite is seen as giving permission. Easier to do nothing and play the victim than risk a change in outlook.

What you call "America", I call "Whiteness". I have a different definition of "America", which includes "Gangster" and "Asian" and a lot of other things. America has set up the definition of "American" such that the only way a black person can be "American" is to shed their blackness (or latinaness or asianness). So, of course black people want to define themselves outside of that "America".

Please define what you mean by white. I'm not about to pretend that there's something wrong with planning, education and hard work. Of course, I see plenty of black people who do these things, but they aren't the problem, are they?

Would you identify as "American" if everyone else felt that the only way to be "American" was to act "gangster" all the time?

No, I'd move to europe before the idiots turn Americ

Re:Gender discrimination? Say it ain't so.

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Oh yes, Harriet/fugitivus is an idiot. Apparently, when you have a guy who won't take a hint, you can either flirt back or scream at him. You aren't allowed to just say 'sorry, I'm not into you', because he will rape you forcibly right there at the bar.

Posting here because Harriet likes to delete things:

Fuck you Harriet. If I'm talking to a woman and she's flirting back, that's normal. I will absolutely pursue things as I please so long as she appears interested. The idea that she's not really into me and just fucking me to be polite is absurd and really sounds like a mental problem. Seriously, I've never run into someone who was willing to go on a date and come back with me and spend the night so I wouldn't be offended.

Seriously:

the man who just a moment ago told you how pretty you are is now calling you a stupid ugly whore, all because you didnâ(TM)t get in his car.

Fear It Self

[EXTomar]

I'm not sure about girls being afraid of snakes and spiders and such but is weird that I'm spooked if not afraid of the ad in the page about "Dora Saves The Crystal Kingdom. Try it free! Nick Jr Arcade"?

Re:Fear It Self

[Anonymous Coward]

yes, girls are more fearful of dangerous animals. My 2 year old girl all of sudden claimed one day she will no longer sleep in her little bed because "there is a snake in it". She showed it to me, it's the contouring shape of some plastic model which is similarly shaped like a snake's head, of course, with a screw in the middle where the eye would be. I was perplexed for a while as we don't have a toy snake even with 2 boys in the house. Then I found out, the idiotic day care people brought in LIVE SNAKES to show case to the little kids. I saw a picture where she freaked out and the boys were pointing and showing interest.. That explained the whole thing...

Game for girls ?

[sadness203]

It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a g... cute little thing.

Because we all know men and women are the same?

[Anonymous Coward]

How many 300-pound solid-muscle women do you see making millions of dollars a year in the NFL?

Why did that hermaphrodite from South Africa get stopped from racing as a woman?

Women and men ARE DIFFERENT.

That's reality. All the claptrap from "womyn" loons can't change it. Get over it.

Other female fears

[Anonymous Coward]

What about the innate hard-wired female fear of dating ./ readers.

There's a PhD in that for someone, I'm sure...

Guys scared of Modern Day Dangerous Animals...

[Anonymous Coward]

Like broad shouldered, brain dead sport-jocks...

Just evolution messing with you...

[Gavin Scott]

It may not be that females learn faster that Dangerous Bug is Dangerous, but that males are programmed to be less cautious in order to make them investigate just HOW dangerous it is, thus providing useful information (in case it turns out to actually be harmless and/or tasty).

And sending the male into battle with the unknown will serve as an excellent boost to natural selection.

Her: "Aaagh! Look out! That will kill you! Run away!"
Him: "What? Are you sure? It looks all furry and cuddly... Here, I'll just poke it with this.."
[gets eaten by lion]
Her: "Aaagh! Look out! That will kill you! Run away!"
New Guy: "Um, ok, if you say so."

G.

Dangerous?

[Anonymous Coward]

Most snakes and spiders are not any more dangerous than any other wild animal, much less so than many other animals which might trigger an "aww" response and attract a youngster to go pet it.

Except it's not that clear cut at all

[Moraelin]

Except it's not that clear at all, so, yes, _I_ will call it blind guesses.

For a start, the evolution of the homo species has involved _reducing_ sexual dimorphism. All along the line we moved from disproportionately larger males than females and males with born natural weapons (e.g., bigger teeth and jaws) to something more gender-equal than any other ape. Clearly there wasn't as big a need for big males protecting weak females.

Also, if you're actually looking at primitive cultures, you must be looking through tinted glasses. Because it never was a case where females sit in the cave and just take care of the babies. In hunter-gathering cultures, the males were the hunters, yes, but the females were the gatherers. Obviously we lived with their being out of commission while pregnant just fine.

Furthermore, the actual roles in those cultures aren't anything like the modern stereotype in western culture. Women aren't the weaklings jumping on a chair when they see a mouse, and men aren't the stereotypical testosterone-poisoned idiots.

Women out gathering must be able to take care of themselves. Sure, they won't go wrestle tigers, but they must out-wit, out-run or out-climb any dangers they may meet.

And most importantly, they have to somehow finish gathering food for their family and come back even if they see a spider or a snake. Jumping on some branch and shrieking every time you see either, won't get you too far. There is no guy around who'll bravely come and kill the snake for you, because the guys are out hunting.

There are no guys on escort duty for the women gathering berries. If they need to save their skin, they must do it themselves.

But most importantly the guys in those cultures aren't the kind who'll think with his dick and wrestle tigers to impress the girls either. The role of the men is to hunt some antelope or whatever is available, but try to avoid the predators just like the women do. There is no way a lone bushman hunter will take on the lions, and even a group has nothing to gain and everything to lose from trying to. So he'll just try to avoid them.

Basically _both_ genders' roles were to avoid danger in as much as possible.

Yes, all cultures tried to give their women slightly less risky jobs, but

1. that doesn't really mean more than that they were protecting their pussy supply, to be blunt. For most of human history, the life expectancy for women was lower than for men. Because of birth-related death and complications. As modern civilizations as Old Kingdom Egypt had the median of life expectancy, if you got past the peak of infant mortality, in the 20's for women and the 30's for men. _That_ disproportionate. Warfare to capture women was a stapple all the way to late Roman republic at the very least.

So, yes, those guys tried to protect what was a limited supply of nookie, because demand always outstripped supply. It doesn't have to mean any different wiring or natural handicap or anything.

2. "that's the way it's been done" isn't really proving anything. Equally slavery was the way things were done for millenia, and nobody would still argue like Aristotle that some people were born to be slaves.

3. Even gathering was only marginally less risky, and was still a vastly more risky job than any moder woman will ever have to do. (Unless she's a tiger tamer or something.) Or than most modern men will.

What people are trying to apply to modern jobs and tasks, was actually the difference between (A) might have to outrun a tiger attracted by that freshly hunted antelope, and (B) slightly lower chances to meet the same tiger, but is good enough to save her skin if she does. Stupid "eeek, a mouse!" acts don't even come close to be justified by that ancient division of labour. If one of those gatherer women even heard of someone making a fuss over a mouse or bug -- when, again, they actually had to somehow deal with actual predators -- they'd probably be pretty perplexed.

Re:Except it's not that clear cut at all

[Slime-dogg]

There is nothing in this post that refutes that men are more built for hunting than women.

Quick Test

[marcop]

Which do you fear more:

Spider

OR

Flower

Except that's the crux of the problem

[Moraelin]

Except that seems to me like a very serious flaw. Doing a scientific test when you don't even know what you're measuring or what it means, seems to me incredibly unscientific. If they can't actually prove that "more time looking == more scared", then the whole conclusion isn't really supported by anything.

To see how bogus the whole "more looking == more fear" thing is, a whole other team used "more looking == more attractive" when they tried to prove that there is a hard-wired beauty ideal. If I'm to believe this team's "more looking == more fear", than the other team proved that a hourglass woman figure with big breasts is actually scarier than hell to babies. And viceversa, if I'm to believe the other team's interpretation for "more time looking", then this team showed that girls are attracted to spiders and snakes. (Cue trouser snake jokes;)

But really it shows how bogus it is. Nobody actually knows what "more time looking" actually means in those babies. Two different teams assigned two fundamentally opposite interpretations to it. And neither actually has more than handwaving to support that crucial proposition in their inferrence.

There are ways to see which brain zones are triggered, e.g., MRI. If you see the zone for anxiety triggering on a MRI scan, that's a pretty conclusive "yep, it's fear."

Why don't they do just that, instead of guessing what "more time looking" means?

Re:Except that's the crux of the problem

[JeanPaulBob]

You said some completely valid things in your post. But you also seemed to entirely miss my last sentence.

I had said, "You could question whether the girls are learning fear vs something else, but the test still seems to show that the girls are being trained by the images while the boys aren't."

1.) This study is not bogus. It's showing a real training/history effect, specific to gender.
2.) Yes, an MRI would be better as a "fear" diagnostic. (Can you do an MRI on an infant?)
3.) The study author might actually discuss the issues involved with using "time looking" as a diagnostic.
4.) More study is needed, but the data is interesting and the hypothesis is reasonable.

Re:Except that's the crux of the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

(Cue trouser snake jokes;)

Cue anecdotal evidence!
Except mine. /cry

Re:Except that's the crux of the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, accept mine - Bitch!

Re:Except that's the crux of the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody actually knows what "more time looking" actually means in those babies.

Sure it does. Babies tend to stare longer at objects which they can make detail out of, since at early stages they have trouble making sense of objects. It simply shows that the girls tend to develop visual acuity a little differently than the boys do. They don't bother to analyze the shapes vs. colors aspect directly, so I agree the study's conclusions are complete B.S.

It could simply mean that girls tend to cue up on color early in life, where boys tend to que up on shapes. Or it could mean the opposite. Or it could mean any of a million different things... I'd be a lot more inclined to be interested in the study if they had an active MRI hooked up to see what the brain was actually processing during the looking, as opposed to just saying "subject a stared longer than subject b.". They also failed to put "innocous" images into the mix to help serve as a control, mix blank/white/greyscale with color, use just outlines, etc.

Honestly, I think more than anytime this is simply a measure of color/pattern awareness than "scary vs. nice" or "bad vs. good", since humans actually key off of motion more than shape/color.

Re:Mice? No. Rats? Yes.

[Chris Burke]

I'm not frightened by mice in the least. I think they're adorable. Even when I find them someplace unexpected, my reaction is usually "Awww". Even after one of the fuckers has bitten me.

Rats, on the other hand, are a different critter. For one, compared to mice they're huge. Also compared to mice, they're much more likely to be aggressive if they're even close to cornered. And they look evil.

Though pet rats or lab rats don't bother me. Even the rats scurrying around the tracks in the NY subway don't bother me as they go about their business. Strange rat in my house, though, that's freaky.

WTF?

[IceFoot]

Slashdot headline: Girls Wired To Fear Dangerous Animals

Article: girls are not wired to fear spiders

WTF? Is it time to replace employees with droids?

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

So the correct headline should be "Girls Not Wired to Fear Non-Dangerous Animals"?

Toxoplasmosis

[Anonymous Coward]

When my wife was pregnant, we learned about toxoplasmosis, which is a parasite carried in mouse droppings, which can cause miscarriage or other undesired defects for the kid in utero. I think it may be related to cat scratch fever.

Doesn't sound so crazy anymore? Why wouldn't women of child-bearing age run away from mice? Sounds like a positive adaptation.

Whoosh!

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet America, Slashdot trolls You!

Re:Whoosh!

[skornenicholas]

In Soviet America, Slashdot trolls You!

On /. YOU are the troll, jerk off.

Oblig. Styx

[snspdaarf]

Don't sit down on the plexiglass toilet....

Paradoxically

[Ukab the Great]

The phobia doesn't extend to frat boys, bikers, and republican congressmen.

A Girl was scared of my FELINE

[AthleteMusicianNerd]

I once went out with a girl who was scared of my cat. I dumped her.

"effiminate" men, "masculine" women?

[JSBiff]

No, this isn't meant to be flaimbait. I just always wonder, do such studies include as subjects, men who might be considered 'effiminate', or women who might be considered 'masculine'?

The reason I ask is because, if they don't, it seems to me like the researchers are self-selecting for a particular outcome? How do these studies/hypothesis account for such . . . "non-typical"(?) individuals?

Re:"effiminate" men, "masculine" women?

[JSBiff]

On further reflection, since this is a study on babies, I guess such distinctions can maybe be entirely excluded, as one would have no idea how the babies might eventually develop.

My Brother..

[Anonymous Coward]

...is scared of spiders.

One time he got stoned and was walking around in the backyard (Dec in WI, maybe -5 to 0 degrees F outside), and he turns to me and says, "Wait! What about the spiders out here?"

I'm looking around at the snow on the ground, and I say, "Spiders are cold-blooded, there's snow on the ground, there's no way a spider is walking around out here."

He looks at me and says, "NAW MAN! SPIDERS CAN LIVE!"

Maybe he was wired for it.

buddhistic view

[amn108]

I am all for scientific research and evidence study, but since I started with buddhism, it always struck me why cannot we think backwards, as in girls fear spiders not because simple because they are girls, but they are born girls because they fear spiders. After all the gender is decided at one point after inception. Likewise boys like video games because they are born boys because they like video games. No direct evidence suggests that because girls express fear when looking at images of spiders, it is because of evolution. It simply suggests that already after birth there is some difference between sexes, but this difference can be attributed to a whole lot of reasons. But of course even evolution is explained by buddhism to have strong scientific reality, as in scpecies progress into other species from both an adaptational and karmic conditions.

Re:buddhistic view

[rainmaestro]

So what happens if I'm afraid of spiders *and* I like video games? I'm born androgynous? =)

Re:buddhistic view

[clone53421]

After all the gender is decided at one point after inception.

Except that's factually incorrect. The egg has the X sex chromosome, the sperm has either a Y sex chromosome or another X chromosome. The gender is decided the moment a sperm fertilizes the egg, and entirely depends on which sex chromosome is contained in the sperm cell.

Re:buddhistic view

[amn108]

Actually, you are not far from the truth. Buddhism is pretty damn logical at times ;-) Like, they say, humans are reborn as many different species depending on general tendencies. I always liked to look at peoples faces to see diverse animal features. Not without reason we attribute some behavior to be "rat" like, etc. Some people walk like bears. Some smile like tigers. It is the stream of conciousness that takes many forms depending on what the tendency is. After all it is pretty logical that if you feel like a rat whole your life, why not BE a rat? For example, they say if you are really really lazy and like uneventful life, you have a fair chance at being reborn as a large fish - a whale or tiger shark or a giant jellyfish.

Re:buddhistic view

[amn108]

Yes you are right. I was afraid I was mistaken there. But what I was trying to say is that at one point the unknown becomes a fact, as in there is a moment where the gender is a fact. Before that time, there is time when it is impossible to know the gender. Whether that time includes the time when millions of sperm cells swim towards the egg, or time even before that, I don't know. I only suggested that at one point the "no gender" becomes "gender".

Re:buddhistic view

[rainmaestro]

Sounds pretty appealing sometimes. But can I come back as a goober fish instead, so I can kill Jar-Jar?

Though you just *had* to mention jellyfish. Now I'm gonna have the song Mental Floss stuck in my head all night =)

"They're just simple protoplasm, clear as cellophane,
They ride the winds of fortune, life without a brain."

Re:buddhistic view

[Reziac]

But what about the androgen insensitivity issue that can screw up expression of gender characteristics, regardless of whether the fetus is XX or XY ?? Gotta wonder if this might be influenced by genes that also influence general gender-based behaviours. So say an XY fetus chances to inherit a lot of other "female behaviour" genes -- could that genetic mix lead to androgen insensitivity??

There are too many factors to ever really test that out, but it makes for an interesting speculation. Who knows, maybe the Buddhists are on to something. ;)

Re:buddhistic view

[Fulcrum of Evil]

except that gender is more complicated than 'man or woman'. Lots of hormones have to happen just right for things to go all XX or XY. If they don't, you get into one of those transgender buckets.

correction

[Stoutlimb]

The average body mass of a mouse is about 35 grams. The average body mass of your typical American female is 74.4 kilograms.

Thus, the size difference is actually closer 2,125 times. The mouse doesn't stand a chance.

women's version of Doom 3?

[Dan667]

Would that make all the demons from hell into sad flowers that need a hug?

supporting evolution? correlation != causation

[Anonymous Coward]

As science geeks, we should know better.

Every time we see the phrase "it makes evolutionary sense " (e.g. women needing to recognize dangerous animals quickly to avoid them, while men need to bring out their hunter instincts) we make the dangerous mistake of implicitly supporting evolution, by basing an argument on common sense.

Common sense is very prone to mistakes, and repeating the above such phrases only promotes us to feel better about ourselves, while not really contributing any useful information.

It Started with Eve

[Anonymous Coward]

Eve started this. Her proffered fruit was laced with worms and spiders. And now, we have to listen to little girls' ear-splitting shrieks.

Maybe so, but...

[Haxzaw]

Somehow they still manage to fall for dangerous guys. Don't tell me they're not animals, because those bad boys that girls seem to fall for are most certainly animals.

programmers

[gearloos]

So, your saying programmers resemble spiders and mice? Must be the pocket protectors! yeah, thats it! The Pocket Protectors.

True story.

[Anonymous Coward]

My wife is no delicate flower. She grew up on a farm, milked cows, drove tractor, etc. I'm posting anonymously.
"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!" I heard her shriek from the kitchen the other day. My son and I ran in to see if she was OK. "A mouse just ran under the stove", she said, "and Jimmy, you did not just hear me shriek like a little girl about some mouse. EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE !!!!!!"

Expectations and early development?

[cptdondo]

I wonder if the study was double-blind; did the researchers know they were testing a girl or a boy? Anyway, I think much of it is nurture. I've seen parents at playgrounds treat boys differently from girls even from before they could walk. A dad boosts his son up the slide and guides him down; a mom keeps here infant daughter close on the bench. The message is clear, even to a 6 month old. You hear parents say to their girls, "Now don't get your pretty dress dirty" - but boys get no such instructions. I've heards parents tell their daughter she can't climb up the rope ladder, while at the same encouraging her younger brother to do so. I've been so close to slapping some of these parents. So much is what we expect our kids to be and we as parents limit our children's future by imposing our own expectations on them.

***News Flash for the Slashdot Community!***

[okmijnuhb]

***News Flash for the Slashdot Community!***

Girls are afraid of spiders and snakes.

This has been a public service announcement.

a sucker?

[phorm]

Never, never, offer a strange kid candy (exempting parental permission or Halloween trick-or-treaters). Even if it were a woman who did this I'd find it creepy and more than a bit suspicious.

What was done may have been with good intentions, but I don't think that the freaked-out reaction was due to your gender. The tackle may have been, but then I'd regard a 220/6'3" due as more likely to be a physical threat in a fair fight than a 110lb 5'3" soccer mom...

The broken nose sucks (and you might have a case for assault), but dude, in this day and age you're lucky not to be posting from a prison cell for attempted abduction.

Depends on the person

[phorm]

I have a friend who has three daughters. Actually I don't know him that well myself, but he's best buddies with my roomate. While he was visiting, his daughters ended up making a plaything of me and climbing about and bonking at my head, etc (not hard enough to be painful).

When they left they all insisted they have hugs. They were *very* friendly little girls compared to most there, and for awhile I was a put put-off/confused about such attention from non family-members. Now I'm more used to it, and I think part of it has to do with the fact that their dad is a rather extensively muscled ex-prison guard. I'm fairly sure he taught his daughters to beware of strangers, but when daddy's around they have little to fear as any potential pervs would likely end shaped like a pretzel before they could try anything.

Many parents take the protection/care thing to the point of overbearing, stifling kids natural tendency to be friendly. This is quite sad, really,and likely a detriment to us all as a society in the future.

Is everything evolutionary?

[Anonymous Coward]

How is it that everything can be explained from an evolutionary standpoint?

Women need to fear things in order to live longer and have more babies.
Women need to not fear things in order to be stronger and have more babies.

Does the "logic" ever end?

Re:Is everything evolutionary?

[sowth]

How is it that everything can be explained in the Bible? It is easy if you just take a dim, narrow view of the world and relate everything into that view.

Heh, I can't wait to show my friends this.

[sick197666]

My close friend (a male) is completely terrified of spiders and creepy-crawly things. I (a female) love them and love scaring the crap out of male friend for amusement for other friends. Besides the brown recluses in my basement (which will die from RAID - and no, not a hard drive - sometime this week, gotta keep them away from the cats, who knows which will win that one), I think they're so interesting. I want a tarantula. And a baby ball python - my other friend has one and they are adorable!!!!!! Where I live qualifies as "back woods," but no where near as far in as my male friend. We're more concerned about bears and coyotes here, unless a mountain lion shows up randomly, but they haven't been here for a while. While they do bring up video games, in male friend's defence, I've never met anyone better than him at video games (just don't tell my boyfriend I said that). Perhaps where you live in approximation to deadly animals makes a difference. Growing up I was taught which snakes and spiders were poisonous as opposed to running away from all of them; there are too many to run away from. "If red touches yellow, you're an unlucky fellow..." and all that. If you see a bear, hope someone else you are with runs slower than you do, jk. Besides, garden snakes are such a pretty color green.... - a tomboy, apparently

Re:Heh, I can't wait to show my friends this.

[gujo-odori]

I've been rather averse to spiders since I was bitten by a brown recluse. Got pretty sick, needed several injections of serious antibiotics. The pain was excruciating. Naturally, this happened right before finals week :p The only upside was that it happened on Friday before Memorial Day, so I had three days of recovery. I had to keep the foot elevated all the time, or just the weight/pressure of blood in my leg was unbearably painful.

After three days, I was able to drive, but couldn't walk (bite was near my shin) on it and had to use crutches for 2 or 3 days.

The NP at student health told me "I read literature all the time that says brown recluses don't live this far south and west, but I see several bites ever year. Yours is a classic brown recluse bite."

Do spray them before they bite you or one of your cats. The bite is incredibly painful in less than 24 hours. Don't know if it would kill a cat or not, but the suffering would be really bad.

I thought the same until my daughter got sick

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what I thought, and always poo pooed my wife for being upset if we had a mouse in our house. That is until my baby 1 year old daughter got sick. The doctor could not figure out what was wrong with her, it almost seemed as if she had a bladder infection but this was not the case. She was not eating for several days then finally stopped drinking liquids. The doctor gave her 1 more day to recover before hospitalization. He kept asking about exposure to animal droppings and such and not having pets we didn't put it together until later that she probably ate mouse feces and got sick.

I don't have any proof this is what happened, and she recovered, but I went on a mission to close every possible crack in our house and to keep poison active in crawl spaces just in case. We actually used to trap the mice in live traps and let them loose (âoeyou're free my child!â). Not any more. Hammer, meet mouse.

Is there any difference at all...

[sean.peters]

... between evolutionary psychology and "just-so" stories? Seriously, this is ridiculous. It's widely accepted in the pop pyschology crowd that men did the hunting while women did the gathering, but we don't even know if that's true! In fact, we know very little about the lifestyle of primitive man at all. This stuff isn't science - it's utterly untestable, for one thing. Any time someone starts explaining anything about human behavior in terms of what our cave man ancestors had to deal with, your internal BS alarm ought to start going off.