Why Science Says Men & Women Will Never Be The Same - David Geary

1. 0:00 – 0:20

   Intro

   1. DGDavid Geary0:00

      You can take a brain pattern of a 10-year-old and predict whether that brain belongs to a boy or a girl about 93% of the time, almost as good as you can by looking at an adult face of a male or female. So, huge difference.

   2. CWChris Williamson0:15

      Why do you think the discussion about sex differences between men and women has become

2. 0:20 – 6:00

   The Contested Topic of Sex Differences

   1. CWChris Williamson0:20

      so hotly contested recently?

   2. DGDavid Geary0:23

      Yeah. Great, great question. I, I, I think it's always been hotly contested to some extent. Um, it just kind of, uh, flares up and then down, uh, just depending on, um, conditions. I, I, I think the, the, one of the main drivers is there are, um, many individuals who don't wanna believe that there's biological basis to anything, and if there's a biological basis to anything, it- it's gonna show up in- in sex differences. And there are, um, gender activists who don't wanna believe that there are differences between men and women that have a biological basis to them, and therefore, they don't wanna consider that those potential differences contribute to socially important outcomes, like the percentage of males in computer science or engineering or, you know, teaching or whatever it might be. And so-

   3. CWChris Williamson1:26

      You, you did a bunch of research, right, looking at STEM, uh, and seeing what it was that contributed to, uh, women's lower participation in STEM subjects.

   4. DGDavid Geary1:40

      Right. Yeah, so, so we looked at, um, we- we've looked at a variety of, uh, sex differences in, in a number of things and- and one, um, 2018 study, we looked at the, um, proportion of women, college students, who were getting degrees in inorganic sciences. So, computer science, engineering, physics and so forth. And, um, we plotted that against things like, um, gender equality, which is, uh, would be... A high gender equal country would be one that... Uh, that they tend to be generally pretty wealthy, liberal, um, there's high levels of, um, female participation in the labor force, there's women in Parliament or Congress or whatever, um, it might be, a lot of women in higher ed and so forth. So, the standard argument has been, for the last, uh, four or five decades is that as countries approach that type of, um, wealth and, uh, liberal openness, that basic psychological, cognitive and other sex differences will begin to disappear. Um, so, so we looked at that generally. We looked across countries and we found the exact opposite of that, that as countries became more gender equal, there was proportionately fewer women going into these inorganic sciences. They were going into, uh, other areas, um, presumably. So, the gap in these, um, these particular STEM fields actually increased as societies became more open to women participating in a variety of, kind of, cultural endeavors.

   5. CWChris Williamson3:32

      Have you got any idea whether this is due to interests or abilities?

   6. DGDavid Geary3:36

      Right. Probab- probably a coup- a couple of different things. Um, interest for sure. Um, there are sex differences in, um, interest in science generally, and there are sex differences in particularly interest in, uh, mechanical, um, types of things, how, how inorganic things work. Um, in terms of abilities, the, probably one of the primary movers is intra-individual strength. So, if you're inter-... And so, what, what are you best at? Reading or math or reading or science or whatever it might be? And throughout the world, girls are generally, their best subject is generally reading, meaning that their comparative advantage is in fields that are more reading heavy than math or science heavy. Even if their overall levels of, uh, math and science are high, or even higher than boys, um, if their strength is reading, they're still more likely to go into other fields, uh, than, than STEM related.

   7. CWChris Williamson4:49

      That's very interesting that it's not necessarily... You, you could have, let's say that, um, women were better than men in, uh, maths on average-

   8. DGDavid Geary5:01

      Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   9. CWChris Williamson5:01

      ... but that women were even more better at reading-

   10. DGDavid Geary5:06

       Right.

   11. CWChris Williamson5:06

       ... they're going to be predisposed to do the thing that they are best at. We all take pride in the things that we feel we're very competent at, and if we have this biological predisposition that is a sex difference-

   12. DGDavid Geary5:17

       Mm-hmm.

   13. CWChris Williamson5:18

       ... why, w- w- why would it be surprising that we would go away in, and, and flourish in those areas?

   14. DGDavid Geary5:23

       Well, yeah. It, it is not actually surprising at all, um, uh, you know, in, in our mind, uh, because it, it, it just a, a rational choice. You- you're gonna go into areas in which you're going to have a comparative advantage, where you're gonna do relatively better than you would in other areas. So, if you're a poor reader and you're reasonably good at math and science, you're probably gonna go into a tech field. Um, if you're really good at reading and much better at reading than, than tech related sorts of things, you're probably gonna go into h- humanities or something similar.

   15. CWChris Williamson5:58

       Why is it the

3. 6:00 – 13:13

   Why Women Are Better at Reading

   1. CWChris Williamson6:00

      case or why would it be the case that females are better at reading-... and that males seem to be better at maths. Give me the ancestral justification for why, uh, men should be better at, at counting things and women should be better at reading things, given that both of those have only been around for a few thousand years.

   2. DGDavid Geary6:22

      Right. Yeah, so, so both reading and mathematics are evolutionarily novel abilities, and so you can't say that well, you know, women, uh, you know, evolved to be good readers and men evolved to, to do math. It just, just doesn't make sense. And, you know, probably if anything, the good mathematicians and recent evolutionary history probably have had below average reproductive success. Uh, you know, just wild guess there. Um, but in, in terms of reading, if you look at brain imaging studies and cognitive studies and so forth, it is an adaptation of the language system and other systems, like theory of mind, you know, understanding characters and so forth, understand plots. Um, and women have advantages in, um, certain language areas and they have advantages in theory of mind and so forth. So, the underlying basis upon which reading skills are developed, um, there's a sex difference favoring, uh, girls and women. Um, when it comes to math, uh, there's no math gene per se. I mean there, there is a kind of inherent sense of, uh, quantity and so forth, but it's not a very sophisticated skill. Um, and if we look at overall mean differences in math, they're pretty small. Where we see the differences are in areas that involve, um, spatial abilities, so certain areas of geometry, solving word problems actually has a spatial component to it because you can sketch out the relations in a complex word problem that helps you kind of solve, set up and solve that problem. Um, and, and that is driving the sex difference in, in math levels, uh, to a large extent when, when we see those differences. Um, there are also more men than women at the high end of math performance. That was at one point a very big gap. Um, it's closed since the '90s. There's maybe three to one men than women at the high end, um, but it's kind of been relatively flat since then.

   3. CWChris Williamson8:38

      I would imagine... I- it seems to me that the discussion around we need to get more women into STEM, we need to get more men into HEAL, has very much dampened down as the stark difference in college admission and then, uh, like completion rate between women and men, with two women for every one man completing a four-year US college degree-ish on average.

   4. DGDavid Geary9:05

      Yep.

   5. CWChris Williamson9:05

      Seven times more men dropped out of college during COVID than women. Uh, i- it's, it's huge. Um-

   6. DGDavid Geary9:11

      Right.

   7. CWChris Williamson9:11

      ... I notice that the discussion around, uh, pushing women further into higher education appears to have kind of fallen by the wayside. We haven't, we haven't had that, uh, be quite so vociferous, uh, as it was. And that seems to have been, I would have said in the last sort of f- three to four years, uh, that I've really noticed it.

   8. DGDavid Geary9:31

      Yeah, yeah. The, um, you know, if, if w- we go back, th- there's long literature on, um, kids' liking of school, you know, going back more than 100 years. And, and girls have always kind of liked school more than boys. Um, sitting there listening to adults and, you know, being conscientious, doing your... You know, and that's more, uh, it's easier for girls-

   9. CWChris Williamson9:53

      Mm-hmm.

   10. DGDavid Geary9:53

       ... to adapt to that kind of environment than it is especially for young guys. They just are not really...

   11. CWChris Williamson9:59

       Mm-hmm.

   12. DGDavid Geary9:59

       It's not really their thing. Um, and as, um, higher ed opened, you know, there, there were clearly restrictions on and discouragement of women going into college, um, going back 60 years or so. As those restrictions abated, we had more women flowing into higher ed than men, and now we have about a 60, 60/40 ratio of completion, um, for, uh, in, in the US and a lot of, um, Western, Western countries. Yeah, so bringing attention to that, um, highlights the disadvantage that boys and men now have in educational outcomes. And that might be why, um, you don't hear as much about it, because, um, the gender activists don't want people to think about it. But, it's, it, it's a problem. I- it's a problem on multiple levels. One is, um, it's distorting the operational sex ratio for young adults. More educated women than men leads to more competition among women, uh, for a smaller base of, um, educated and ambitious, um-

   13. CWChris Williamson11:16

       Do you know what? I've, I've deemed that, uh, I needed to come up with a meme to describe that, so I've-

   14. DGDavid Geary11:22

       Okay.

   15. CWChris Williamson11:22

       ... deemed it the tall girl problem.

   16. DGDavid Geary11:24

       Tall girl problem, yeah.

   17. CWChris Williamson11:26

       Yep.

   18. DGDavid Geary11:27

       And it's, um, you know, it, it, it's associated with d- delays in marriage, um, you know, increased divorce rates, um-

   19. CWChris Williamson11:35

       More objectification, more sexy selfies, more casual sex, more unprotected sex.

   20. DGDavid Geary11:41

       Right, right. You know, back, back, back to the hippie and disco days types of things for young educated, um, adults. And you know, whi- which is whatever. I, I used to blame it on the Bee Gees, but apparently it's a little more complicated than that, you know, you've got the, the sex ratio, uh, thing or, or, or the tall girl thing.

   21. CWChris Williamson12:02

       Tall girl problem it is.

   22. DGDavid Geary12:03

       Yeah. The other problem is, is that, um, the US and, and, and a number of other-... highly developed countries are losing the industrial base that would, um, provide pretty good paying jobs for working class guys, that really got them integrated into the, uh, workforce, integrated into the broader culture, so forth. And now, a lot of those jobs are disappearing, and you have a lot of guys that are probably pretty good at spatial mechanical types of things, but they're not pursuing school, um, and a lot of them are pulling back, I, is a huge number work, you know, living at home still, not really engaged socially, not engaged economically, and it, you know, it- it's a potential tinderbox for society if- if, you know, things really, really collapse economically.

   23. CWChris Williamson13:01

       You are touching on all of my favorite catastrophes and crises here, David-

   24. DGDavid Geary13:06

       Okay.

   25. CWChris Williamson13:06

       ... so first one, um, Richard Reeves' book Of Boys and Men, were you familiar with that? Did you get to read that last

4. 13:13 – 18:25

   The Crisis of Disengaged Men

   1. CWChris Williamson13:13

      year?

   2. DGDavid Geary13:14

      I don't think I- I've read that one.

   3. CWChris Williamson13:16

      Oh, you would. It's very short, super short read, only about a hundred and fifty, two hundred pages, I think.

   4. DGDavid Geary13:21

      Okay.

   5. CWChris Williamson13:21

      Fantastic. So it's, um-

   6. DGDavid Geary13:22

      Great.

   7. CWChris Williamson13:23

      ... he is a policy wonk guy from Washington, D.C. who is looking at-

   8. DGDavid Geary13:26

      Okay.

   9. CWChris Williamson13:26

      ... structural issues that boys and men are facing, uh-

   10. DGDavid Geary13:29

       Oh.

   11. CWChris Williamson13:29

       ... education, employment, and then in the- the home. You would love that, so first off, put that on your list.

   12. DGDavid Geary13:34

       Okay. Okay.

   13. CWChris Williamson13:34

       Uh, secondly, Nicholas Eberstadt, Men Without Work. Are you familiar with him?

   14. DGDavid Geary13:39

       No. No.

   15. CWChris Williamson13:40

       Oh, my.

   16. DGDavid Geary13:41

       I've hea- yeah. I- I- I-

   17. CWChris Williamson13:42

       So-

   18. DGDavid Geary13:42

       Yeah. Sorry, I- I've read the basic economic papers, but not the popular press books.

   19. CWChris Williamson13:48

       Got you. Yeah, so his, um, he- he was on the show a couple of weeks ago, and he said there's this cohort of prime working aged 22 to 55 year old men, seven million of which are unemployed and not seeking work. On average, they spend 2,000 hours per year watching screens, 50% of that time is on prescription drugs or s- whilst smoking weed, and two thirds of that cohort live in a household which claims at least one disability benefit.

   20. DGDavid Geary14:18

       Right. Right. Yeah.

   21. CWChris Williamson14:20

       Absolutely wild.

   22. DGDavid Geary14:23

       Huge, huge problem. Um, that, that is a huge problem. I mean, partially due to the changes, you know, increases in world trade and- and changes in, as I said, the- the manufacturing base. Um, I- I also wonder if a lot of the cultural social rhetoric about things like toxic masculinity and so forth, and promoting girls in education, which is fine, um, but it's often seen by activists as a zero sum sort of game. You don't want to acknowledge any issues that boys have because that might take away from what girls are, the extras that girls are getting and it, and it's creating a real problem.

   23. CWChris Williamson15:04

       I couldn't agree more. Um, o- one thing that you touched on before was the potential tinderbox and-

   24. DGDavid Geary15:10

       Mm-hmm.

   25. CWChris Williamson15:11

       ... uh, let's roll all of these together. Given the fact that we have the highest rates of sexlessness amongst young men that we've ever seen, round about 30% of men haven't had sex in the last year, aged 18 to 30.

   26. DGDavid Geary15:21

       Mm-hmm.

   27. CWChris Williamson15:22

       Around about 50% of men say that they're not looking for short-term or long-term relationships. We have this massive cohort, roundabout 7 million men just in the US, 22 to 55-

   28. DGDavid Geary15:32

       Mm-hmm.

   29. CWChris Williamson15:33

       ... that are not looking for work, not, um, a- and also not employed, also not in education, employment or training.

   30. DGDavid Geary15:39

       Yeah.
5. 18:25 – 30:00

   Sex Differences Increase When Freedom is Increased

   1. CWChris Williamson18:25

      the beginning, is that the gender equality paradox? Is that what we're referring to? The fact that as you get increasing egalitarianism, you have more of a sex difference in terms of what people go into?

   2. DGDavid Geary18:36

      Right. Yeah, yeah. So, so that, we- we call it the gender equality paradox in STEM, uh, in this particular article. Um, but y- you also see larger d- sex differences in a variety of other things, such as personality, spacial abilities, uh, a variety of things that it, you know, as people get wealthier and there are more options, social and economic options available to them, um, they're better able to express their own individual preferences. And we've argued that as you're better able to express your own individual preferences, any inherent sex differences or any inherent individual differences will be better expressed in those contexts than is contexts that re- that, um, uh, have, for a variety of reasons, more restricted opportunities.

   3. CWChris Williamson19:30

      So, as the real world constrains your choices less by being more, uh, free, more open, um, more degrees of freedom, more opulent, et cetera, um, that allows you to fully follow whatever it is that you care about the most, therefore these sex differences, we seem to see, increase?

   4. DGDavid Geary19:50

      Right, yeah.

   5. CWChris Williamson19:52

      What is the response from sex difference denial groups about why the gender equality paradox exists then?

   6. DGDavid Geary20:05

      Well, um, yeah, when- when we, uh, uh, Gisbert S- Soet and I did this, you know, th- this 2018 study, you know, I- I, we walked through, gone through all the data and we thought it was pretty interesting, but not, you know, uh, we didn't think it was gonna be as big of a deal, at least I didn't think it was gonna be as big of a deal as it turned out to be, mostly because it wasn't that surprising. And it wasn't that surprising because other people had found, like, increases in personality differences and so forth across cultures. Um, but our, uh, but the response to it was pretty, um, negative. We- we got a lot of emails. Um, the editors of the journal apparently got a lot of emails, including, um, you know, attacks on us and pressure for them to retract the article, so forth. They- they didn't do that. Um, there- there was a commentary on it that did get published, uh, I think just because the editor had got tired of getting so many commentaries. He could finally say, "Well, we already published one and we're not gonna any others." Um, that (laughs) showed that the gender equality paradox didn't... Well, one, they- they complained about how we define proportion of males and females in STEM fields, which was just kind of, kind of, um, you know, a- a no, you know, just kind of a stupid thing. Um, but then they took a- actually an, a study that Gisbert and I put together called The- The Big E, which was an alternative, um, measure of wellbeing, sex differences and wellbeing, rather than the gender, um, equality measure that most people look at. We- we looked at things like opportunities to complete education, overall healthy lifespan, life satisfaction, things that are, um, equally valid for men and women and boys and girls, rather than something like, um, the proportion of women in parl- parliament w- which has a gender activist and it's- it's very female biased. So, when we use the female biased measure, which is what the activists push for and is a better measure of gender equality, we get the paradox. When we look at our measure, which we developed to make it sex neutral, just because the gender equality stuff is biased, um, they don't find that, which is what we- we would expect. But in any way, um, the authors of that made a big deal of that. Um, they did a hit piece on Gisbert and I in BuzzFeed, um-

   7. CWChris Williamson22:50

      Oh, very reputable-

   8. DGDavid Geary22:52

      (laughs)

   9. CWChris Williamson22:53

      ... academic (laughs) response there.

   10. DGDavid Geary22:55

       Yeah, I- I- I had never read BuzzFeed. I never even considered it and-

   11. CWChris Williamson22:59

       You'll be parked in between four outfits to wear on your next hot girl walk and 10 dog memes so good that we can't stop laughing, so I'm- I'm glad that they really positioned you appropriately there.

   12. DGDavid Geary23:09

       Right, right. Well- well they- they put in there a lot of ad hominem, a lot of comments that the editor and reviewers of their comment to the journal said, "You gotta take out 'cause this isn't supported." They put it in there. But anyway, now there's this BuzzFeed thing and there's this, uh, commentary on our original article, so when people bring up the gender equality paradox in STEM, you, they can now say, "Well, this has been debunked. See this BuzzFeed?" So-

   13. CWChris Williamson23:38

       (laughs)

   14. DGDavid Geary23:39

       They see this-

   15. CWChris Williamson23:40

       Fuck off, dude.

   16. DGDavid Geary23:41

       Yeah.

   17. CWChris Williamson23:42

       Fuck off. (laughs)

   18. DGDavid Geary23:43

       Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That- that-

   19. CWChris Williamson23:45

       (laughs)

   20. DGDavid Geary23:47

       So, that's- that's how it's dealt with. You know, you get something into the general media, in a commentary somewhere, or some counterargument-

   21. CWChris Williamson23:55

       Hm.

   22. DGDavid Geary23:56

       ... somewhere, and then when it, somebody brings it up, you don't have to discuss the points-

   23. CWChris Williamson24:00

       Hm.

   24. DGDavid Geary24:00

       ... you can just say, "Well, that's already off the table. It's gone, it's been, uh, you know, uh, determined."

   25. CWChris Williamson24:06

       BuzzFeed et al, 2018.

   26. DGDavid Geary24:09

       Yep. Yeah.

   27. CWChris Williamson24:10

       Phenomenal.

   28. DGDavid Geary24:11

       Small.

   29. CWChris Williamson24:11

       Okay, um, one- one final thing to sort of round this out. Y- you've used, uh, participation in STEM. That seems to be, you know, a- a very obvious sex difference that occurs as you get more egalitarianism in- in a society. Are there any other equally strong, or even stronger, evidence for the gender equality paradox?

   30. DGDavid Geary24:32

       Well, uh, one, one interesting thing is the, um, sex difference in height gets bigger. Um-
6. 30:00 – 37:08

   Biggest Differences in Men’s & Women’s Brains

   1. CWChris Williamson30:00

      When it comes to sex differences in cognition, what are the most well-established differences in men's and women's brains? Let's get into the nuts and bolts of what's actually going on here.

   2. DGDavid Geary30:13

      Sure. So let's, um, you know, traditionally psychologists have been studying sex differences in cognition for, you know, a century or so. Um, and they focused on verbal abilities generally, math, and spatial. Let's take math off the table because it's evolutionarily novel, it's not that interesting. And in verbal is a big...... field. It can go anywhere from, you know, how quickly you can name animals that start with the letter A, um, versus analogical reasoning. You know, girls have advantages on one, boys on another, so it's, it's not, not clear. So putting it, I- I've, I've argued that, you know, we really need to think about these cognitive sex differences from a broader evolutionary perspective and think about, okay, what is it that is universal, um, across people no matter where they live? You know, math isn't, because you get it in school or you don't get it at all. Um, and so things that are... One thing that is universal that women and girls have advantages on or something that I call at least an aspect of folk psychology, these are skills that allow you to, um, interact with individuals on a one-on-one basis and more importantly develop and maintain one-on-one relationships. This would be, you know, BFF sorts of, um, relationships. You think about all the skills involved in that. And that would be, you know, language is obviously a, a good part of it, but also reading facial expressions, um, you know, making inferences about how they're feeling or thinking based on facial expressions, reading body posture types of things, vocal intonation, theory of mind, which is your skill at, uh, actually figuring out what's going on with the individual. And if we look at each of those individual skills, um, girls and women have small to moderate advantages in them, but in the real world, they're working in concert. They're not just bits and pieces. They're, they're working all together. And if we look at the entire constellation of skills, as they're working together in an interaction or interpreting an interaction, girls and women have fairly large advantages. Probably about 85% of them are better than the average guy, or maybe 90% or so. So it, it's a fairly substantial advantage. There are other areas involved in, you know, dealing with, with people or groups or whatever where we see more subtle differences. But it's the, the one-on-one kind of emotional intelligence, I think some people might call it, that I think that's what people mean by that. I call it kind of an individual level folk psychology. Girls, girls and women do really well at that. Um, boys and men do particularly good on what I call folk physics. This is, is, uh, not an academic physics, but it is kind of the foundation for aspects of a, of an academic physics. It involves things like, um, dealing with the physical world, uh, navigating from one place to another, tracking tr- the trajectory of things as they're moving, um, through space, um, understanding how objects might be manipulated and used as tools, a mechanical reasoning type of thing. And so boys and men, um, have small to large advantages in, in all of those areas.

   3. CWChris Williamson33:53

      Wow. Okay. What's social learning theory?

   4. DGDavid Geary33:58

      Social learning theory, well, there is, um, a social learning theory wh- where we learn to, um, you know, what do you do in this context? You know, you go to a dinner with folks. You know, it's your first formal dinner. You've never worn a tie before and you have no idea how to do things. You know, you watch other people and you figure out, you kind of imitate, um, what people who seem to know what they're doing are doing. And so that's a social learning type of thing. And, and, and that's a universal as well. I mean, w- we learn a lot from other people. There, there's no doubt about that. But I, I think you might be s- mean social roles theory.

   5. CWChris Williamson34:37

      Yes.

   6. DGDavid Geary34:38

      Yes. Yeah, so social roles is th- the, um, argument that, uh, boys and girls and men and women learn to behave in sex-specific ways. You know, like girls are more communal or nurturing and guys are more agentic, you know, focused on getting things done, being more dominant and, and so forth, because they receive either explicit or implicit information from the social environment that they are... that basically tells them, "Oh, you're a girl" or "You're a boy," and this is what girls and boys do, and therefore you adhere to these roles. And the argument then is that, um, that's how all, all these... We're basically a blank slate mentally, psychologically, and then we kind of develop these roles based from, you know, learning from others of, of, of the same sex. Um, and that is the argument underlying things like, um, you know, encouraging girls to do this, getting role models, you know, girls in stem role models. And you know, w- w- which is fine, I mean, wh- whatever. Um, the problem is, is it's, it's way- well overstated. You know, boys don't like playing with toy cars and blocks and so forth because their parents have implicitly given them those toys for Christmas or they've seen the advertisements, you know, boys playing with these things on television. Um, they like playing with these things because, uh, you know, if you're playing with a car, it has, it has a, a specific type of motion to it, it's a non-biological motion that captures the attention of what's called the dorsal visual stream that feeds into these folk physics centers that I, um, mentioned, uh-... previously. So, there is an early bias in what boys and girls look at. Boys look at physical motion and stuff, and they're attracted to those types of things. Girls look at faces and the details of objects more. And that's, I mean, there, there is some place for social roles, but, but it's, the extent of its influence is really overstated, in my opinion.

   7. CWChris Williamson37:07

      A lot

7. 37:08 – 49:30

   Are Differences Simply From Social Constructs?

   1. CWChris Williamson37:08

      of people, when they talk about sex differences, particularly whether that be in children or as soon as people grow up to be adults-

   2. DGDavid Geary37:16

      Yeah.

   3. CWChris Williamson37:16

      ... will come up against somebody who either, in terms of well-meaning or this is just the way that they see the world-

   4. DGDavid Geary37:23

      Mm-hmm.

   5. CWChris Williamson37:24

      ... will use social roles theory as, "Well, look, of course boys are stronger than girls. They're the ones that are encouraged to do rough and tumble play. Of course boys are more interested in things than people, because they've seen it on TV. Of course boys are expecting to be more dominant, because these are the subtle cues that their parents and the media and everybody else has given to them."

   6. DGDavid Geary37:46

      Right.

   7. CWChris Williamson37:47

      For the people who sit down at Thanksgiving, perhaps, with that one brother or sister or cousin who-

   8. DGDavid Geary37:53

      Makes up. Yeah.

   9. CWChris Williamson37:54

      ... puts this across as an argument, what are the strongest rebuttals that can, uh, dispel this particular myth?

   10. DGDavid Geary38:05

       Yeah. So, so there was, well, one, th- these differences are, um, universal. I mean, they're, I mean, it's not just, you know, the, you know, E- US upper middle class families that see it. I mean, you, you see it all over the place. Um, but, but one important piece of data ... Well, there are, are a number of them. I'll, uh, I'll tell you one, and I can tell you more if you want. Um, there was a study done, you know, a few decades ago that was a fairly large-scale study looking at, um, you know, a couple hundred parents and how they were socializing their kids. So, there were, some of them were traditional parents. You know, they'd buy the girls Barbies or dolls or whatever, and the boys, you know, car trucks. And other parents were more, um, I don't know if they'd be progressive. I mean, they'd be called progressive today. They, back then they were hippies or whatever they were. They were, they, they, they were non-traditional, so they raised their kids, say, "Okay, you know, girls can play with, with blocks and with, um, toy cars and boys can play with dolls and all of that's fine. It doesn't make any difference." And then the researchers brought the kids into the lab setting and said, "Okay. Is it okay for girls to play with trucks and boys to play with dolls?" Those that were, um, raised in non-traditional families said, "Yeah, yeah, sure, it's fine. No problem." So, their beliefs about what's okay and, or what's typical or not typical or whatever, uh, mirrored, to some extent, what their parents said. Um, but then when you cut them loose and watch how they actually play, they still play in sex-typical ways.

   11. CWChris Williamson39:46

       Mm-hmm.

   12. DGDavid Geary39:46

       So, their beliefs about kind of what boys and girls should do and their actual beh- it was one thing, but their actual behavior was sex typical. There was no difference between how boys from traditional and untraditional families played, and same for girls, meaning that the kids are calling the shots here. Um, they're creating their own environments based on what they find interesting and what they want to do.

   13. CWChris Williamson40:15

       Does this show up in primates as well, juvenile primates?

   14. DGDavid Geary40:21

       Yeah. Um, rough and tumble play is, um, pretty common in species where males are bigger and more aggressive than females, and those are typically species, if we're looking at primates, where there's a lot of male-male fighting and competition in adulthood. Clearly see that in humans. If we look, you know, in, in, uh, human history, it's clearly a lot of physical competition, a lot of violence and, and so forth. Um, the sex differences and physical size go back at least 4 million years in our ancestors. It's a long, long evolutionary history of that. Obviously, males and females are bi- uh, males are bigger than females in modern humans, and we see the sex difference in, um, rough and tumble play. Uh, I mean, it just fits very, very nicely with this evolutionary pattern and this pattern of, uh, male on male aggression.

   15. CWChris Williamson41:14

       I remember hearing a while ago that if you give a juvenile female chimp, perhaps-

   16. DGDavid Geary41:24

       Mm-hmm.

   17. CWChris Williamson41:24

       ... a, sort of a soft toy that resembles a baby, that they-

   18. DGDavid Geary41:27

       Yeah.

   19. CWChris Williamson41:27

       ... treat it in a different way to the males. Is that right? Was that ... Have I made this up or was that correct?

   20. DGDavid Geary41:32

       That's, that's correct. It, it, it was with vervet monkeys, and I think it's been, uh, replicated maybe with, with macaques or so. So, right. If, if you give toys, you know, sex-typical toys, th- the human sex typical, a doll and a truck, you know, a big, like, dump truck that, that they, they can play with, um, y- you do see preferences. The, the, the females like the dolls more than the males do. Um, the males are a- are also more likely to approach their novel types of things, and so the risk-taking, um, is higher there. Now, the- there's no, um, you know, toy trucks in macaque evolutionary history, um, but again, it, it could be attractive because of the type of motion in the dorsal ventral stream associated with navigation and just kind of focusing on large-scale space.

   21. CWChris Williamson42:27

       I'm fascinated by the fact that, um, the type of toys, it's not, it's not just the fact that that, uh, figuratively represents a kind of, uh, role, perhaps, that you, d- I would imagine that if you were to look at the sex differences in the trucker community, that it's going to be heavi- (laughs) heavily skewed towards men. Um-

   22. DGDavid Geary42:46

       Yeah, true.

   23. CWChris Williamson42:47

       ... but it- it's- there's also something innate about that movement back and forth. And given the fact that we, you know, go back far enough and we do have a common ancestor, there has to be this sex difference which at least was maybe there before we split off, and we're seeing this play out with macaques or whatever else it might be. Um, what- what would you say to the people that say we are more similar than we are different? You know, if you look at the overlap between the dispositions that boys and girls have, that men and women have. Um, you know, you've mentioned, uh, o- one particular example which seems pretty stark, which is the average female is better than 85% of men when it comes to, I think it was reading faces or perhaps it was verbal ability. Um, what would you say to people that say we're more similar than we are different, these sex differences are basically small and it doesn't really matter, and David, you're just making a mountain out of a molehill?

   24. DGDavid Geary43:41

       Yup, yup, yup. Um, I've heard that. And- and that's a very popular belief in, um, in- in the field and- and one that is debated. So if we look at, um, sex differences in certain verbal skills, um, they're fairly small. So you can say, well, we're more similar than different. Maybe 60% of women are better than the average guy. Um, not big. But m- my point was, and- and other people's point, is- is if you put the whole package together, it's, you know, the brain is an integrated system of, uh, you know, that pulls together abilities that you use in tandem. And when you pull together these networks of abilities, that it would include, you know, making eye contact, uh, theory of mind sort of things, vocal intonation and so forth, that's when you get very big differences. And that's kind of more of a real life sort of thing. So if- if we look at individual personality types of things like, um, how sociable, how much you like just, you know, festive chatter and talking to people and- and kind of the warmth component, being nurturing, you know, it's a modest sex difference favoring, uh, girls and women in this case. Um, but if we put together the whole pattern of personality, um, we get much, much larger differences with not, in this case, not much overlap.

   25. CWChris Williamson45:04

       Uh, because this is not just like rolling a six once. It's the equivalent of rolling five sixes in a row. And that suite of traits when bound together trends much more toward women. I had, um, I had Joyce Bendenson on the show at the start of the year.

   26. DGDavid Geary45:19

       Mm-hmm.

   27. CWChris Williamson45:19

       And she gave me a really interesting example. I w- I'd love to know if you've looked at any of this. She spent forever, uh, studying kind- kindergarten kids playing and the games that they play.

   28. DGDavid Geary45:30

       Yep. Yeah.

   29. CWChris Williamson45:30

       And she mentioned that if you look at the sorts of games that boys and girls play, these are, uh, three, four years old, I think maybe up to five years old, you know, hasn't been a massive amount of time for socialization to occur, especially in kindergarten. This may be, if you're the eldest child or an only child, the first time that you've actually got to spend any significant period of time with other kids. And she said if you look at the language they're using, if you look at the games that they're playing, boys are, um, binding themselves together over shared warfare against cowboys or aliens or something else.

   30. DGDavid Geary46:08

       Mm-hmm.
8. 49:30 – 1:05:12

   The Science Behind Sex-based Behaviours

   1. CWChris Williamson49:30

      as to, ancestrally, why boys, males would have this predisposition for practicing warfare and-

   2. DGDavid Geary49:38

      Mm-hmm.

   3. CWChris Williamson49:39

      ... and why girls would be interested in people, they would be playing doctor or drummer or veterinarian or whatever.

   4. DGDavid Geary49:46

      Family. Mm-hmm.

   5. CWChris Williamson49:47

      How does this manifest? Or what, w- what is happening that's causing this to manifest? We can understand why, right? We can understand the ultimate reason for why this is happening. But, uh, b- what is it that's inside of a male that causes him to think, "Let's pretend that we're fighting cowboys?"

   6. DGDavid Geary50:06

      Yeah. Uh, they don't, they aren't necessarily thinking anything. They're engaging in things that they find fun. So, if, if we look at, um, disorders or just individual variation in either prenatal exposure to testosterone or, um, uh, postnatal spikes, the first six months of life, there is a, a big spike in testosterone, so there's a, uh, second dose there, in addition to the prenatal dose. And, and girls have some, some fluctuating exposure to, um, estrogens during that six-month period as well, although it's not, it's more variable than with guys. But in, in any case, um, the, these hormonal influences are, at least, partly contributing to these sex differences in play. So, girls who have more, had more androgens early in life, uh, you know, prenatally, um, engage in, have play behaviors that are closer to boys than girls, so they're, they're kind of in between those, so, so it's a mix of, of activities. So they're, they're, there's clearly a hormonal component to it. And I think the way that works is in terms of what captures your attention, um, you know, biological motion is probably gonna capture the attention, you know, of, of a baby or something will capture the attention of girls more than boys, whereas the, you know, the physical motion is gonna, uh, capture the attention of boys more than girls. All you have to do is have kind of a s- small attentional bias and built-in reward systems that will kind of keep you focused on that and keep you engaged in related activities and then it can kind of build from there.

   7. CWChris Williamson51:52

      So that, th- the mechanism is heavily driven by androgen exposure, so testosterone pri- primarily, and that's one of the key differences.

   8. DGDavid Geary52:00

      Correct.

   9. CWChris Williamson52:00

      Is there anything else going on here? Is there protein folding in the brain? Are there particular areas of the brain that are, um-

   10. DGDavid Geary52:08

       (coughs)

   11. CWChris Williamson52:08

       ... l- larger, smaller, atrophied, uh, you know, hypertrophied in, in one form or another?

   12. DGDavid Geary52:15

       Yeah. Um, I mean, proba- probably there, there are. I mean, there, there are sex differences in, in certain v- very basic areas of the brain associated with aggressive, sexual, and, and that type of behavior. Um, and there are some really interesting sex differences in overall patterns of brain organization, so if you look at, uh, gray matter and white matter. If you look at one small part, maybe there's no difference or maybe there's a difference, and if there is a difference, it's probably not gonna be huge, on average. But if you look at the whole pattern of the brain, um, you get quite substantial differences. You can take a brain pattern of a 10-year-old and predict whether that brain belongs to a boy or a girl about 93% of the time, almost as good as you can by looking at an adult face of a male and female. So, hu- huge difference.

   13. CWChris Williamson53:07

       And that's fMRI?

   14. DGDavid Geary53:09

       That, that would be MRI. Just, just structural differences. What, what people really need to look at is the, um, coordinated activity of brain areas. So, certain brain areas that are linked together are going to fire together spontaneously, and that kind of helps build that network and, um, uh, keep it kind of well-functioning. So, if you look at those, um, spontaneous brain activity studies, and there aren't that many with really young kids yet, but there's at least one during the prenatal period, where you can put Mom in a scanner and get, um, uh, brain activity indices of the fetus. And we see sex differences there in brain activity patterns at about six months, prenatally. Um, and there, there was a recent study looking at, um, I think it was two and three-month-olds also showing, uh, differences in, in spontaneous brain activity patterns. But exactly how those are related to some of these sex differences we were talking about, w- w- we don't fully know that yet.

   15. CWChris Williamson54:22

       If it was 93% at 10 years old, what is it at six, uh, three months prior to birth and six months after birth?

   16. DGDavid Geary54:31

       Yeah. They, they didn't do that. Th- that, that was a somewhat different technology and approach and they didn't do those particular analyses. Probably it's gonna be smaller, because probably the differences get bigger, um, with age. But, but they, they didn't look at it yet. I think nine or 10 is the, is the youngest that I've seen look at that. There, there's a number of these studies with adults and it gets up to 95% or so.

   17. CWChris Williamson54:57

       Do you know how accurate they could be at predicting the sex of the embryo, though?

   18. DGDavid Geary55:03

       Oh, yeah. They, they didn't do, do those analyses.

   19. CWChris Williamson55:07

       Okay. I understand. Okay. Fine, fine, fine.

   20. DGDavid Geary55:09

       That, um, that are-

   21. CWChris Williamson55:11

       Evidently what the researchers are, uh, amongst another... A number of things trying to achieve here-

   22. DGDavid Geary55:17

       Mm-hmm.

   23. CWChris Williamson55:17

       ... is say, well, at age nine and 10, you have had, you know, social sh- social roles theory comes back in again, perhaps you have been socialized into a mode of thinking which has caused structural changes in the brain. These structural changes then basically beg the question by being the detector thing that is supposed to be detected. And people say that's what a male brain looks like, because we have never seen a male brain which hasn't been socialized as a male brain, despite the fact that there are a wide variety of families that-

   24. DGDavid Geary55:44

       Right.

   25. CWChris Williamson55:44

       ... raise children in traditional and non-traditional, progressive and non-progressive ways.

   26. DGDavid Geary55:48

       Mm-hmm.

   27. CWChris Williamson55:48

       Unless someone is going to say somehow that the brain of the embryo three months prior to being born has somehow been socialized, the sex differences that we see... And I, you know, I'm being, uh, like overly, um, explicit here to just really try and hammer the point home that-

   28. DGDavid Geary56:06

       Right.

   29. CWChris Williamson56:06

       ... there are structural changes that manifest into real world significant differences, not only in disposition, not only in, um, uh, uh, tendency, interest, capacity. Um, there are, it's a whole suite of things that occur. And, um, David Buss, mutual friend of ours-

   30. DGDavid Geary56:27

       Yeah.
9. 1:05:12 – 1:13:33

   Traits that Women Do Better at Than Men

   1. CWChris Williamson1:05:12

      between navigating from one place to another?

   2. DGDavid Geary1:05:17

      Yeah, good- good question. Um, they are... I- I would say, they are, um, you know, m- most of them are kind of contrived situations. You know, they're moderate to large. I- I would say men are better, you know, just kind of dead reckoning sort of thing, you know, you start from some place and you wander aro- round in the woods, and then you try to figure out how to get your way back without, you know, explicitly just backtracking the exact same way you were, get the quickest route back. Men are better in that. I don't remember the exact effect size, but it's- it's- it's- it would be noticeable, um, difference. Uh, map reading is different as well. Interest in maps is different even.

   3. CWChris Williamson1:06:01

      We could see, uh, quite obviously why it would be the case that men need better spatial rotation. They need better, uh, navigation over a broad ranging kind of distance, because if you're going out and on average, men ancestrally hunted more than women, therefore wildebeest goes from right to left. I have spear, wildebeest plus spear, plus throwing, plus trajectory, plus, "How the fuck do I drag this back home?" #whereishome as well also.

   4. DGDavid Geary1:06:30

      Right.

   5. CWChris Williamson1:06:30

      What about female, um, sex differences that give them capacities that men struggle with? Uh, and also, why would these be there? What is the evolutionary justification for why they would have them?

   6. DGDavid Geary1:06:45

      Yeah, so- so the, uh, sex differences and the folk psychology or emotional attentio- uh, emotional, um, intelligence that I talked about earlier, uh, women have advantages in, um, probably related to a couple of things. One of them is, uh, women are, and girls want to develop a social support network, that for social-emotional support and social and other types of problem-solving. Men form networks as well, but they're usually task-oriented or competition-oriented networks. So, if you hang out with all your friends watching, you know, the WNBA or the Super Bowl or something, maybe the Super Bowl would be better, um...... watching the Super Bowl and you were, this last time, rooting for the Chiefs, all of you, and they win, you're all kind of bonded together. Even if you didn't talk about anything during that time, you drank beer and did whatever you were gonna do, that's kind of a shared activity. Um, that kind of helps link, uh, male groups together, and you can have lots of guys there. Uh, you can't l- it doesn't have to be limited to two people. Um, girls and, and, and women form relationships more based on the dyadic interactions and the social and emotional support, talking through issues, talking about what's important to them, and so forth. Um, and, uh, the, the dynamics of, of this are, are very different between males and females. I, I, I covered in my, um, my book on, On Sex Dif- Differences. But one component of it is that to develop and maintain these BFF relationships, you have to be very sensitive to the emotional state of, um, your girlfriend, your, your best friend. You have to read things and so forth. She may not want to really bother you by talking about, you know, problems with her boyfriend or mom or whatever that might be, but you can pick up that something is not quite right. And you know a lot more about her than guys do about their friends. You know, "Oh, you're having trouble with your mom again. Is it such and such?" sort of thing. So, that's the theory of mind sort of thing. You're picking up subtle non-verbal cues, picking up on it, and that's exactly what the girlfriend wanted you to do, and that engages you in, in the talk that, that hopefully will help to resolve, um, that type of issue. So, that emotional intelligence is really important for these relationships. Um, it's also important for dealing with and metting out, um, something called relational aggression. So, the movie, uh, Mean Girls, maybe, maybe you've seen that. So, you know, kind of, kind of bitchy, um, girl. You know, subtle put-downs, um, gossip, and spreading lies. It, it, it's basically designed to disrupt the, um, social networks of competitors, undermine their same-sex friendships and make them unattractive to, um, boyfriends, would-be boyfriends. And, uh, it is most effective if it's done in a way that is plausibly deniable. That is, you do it very subtly. You know, "I'm really worried about so-and-so because I think she's seeing three guys or is drinking a lot-"

   7. CWChris Williamson1:10:22

      Venting.

   8. DGDavid Geary1:10:22

      ... and acting a little. Yeah, that, that sort of thing. And so because it's more s- you know, wh- when guys are mad at each other, they'll make eye contact and they'll push or yell. I mean, you don't have to f- figure it out. I mean, it's usually obvious, um, if they're really upset. But you have to have these subtle social skills to pick up on that relational aggression so that you can counter it. Um, and so I think the combination of relational ag- a- and also have these subtle skills to use it to manipulate other, other people. Um, I think the combination of the, the social support, friendships, and the competition, female-female competition's relational aggression is really, um, the basis for the female advantage in these, these skills.

   9. CWChris Williamson1:11:12

      It seems to me that the, uh, heavier brow ridge that men have, the bigger jaw, the bigger hands, these are our weapons, right?

   10. DGDavid Geary1:11:21

       Mm-hmm.

   11. CWChris Williamson1:11:21

       This is how men would have done their intrasexual competition. It would've been, uh, inter-group warfare as well with different tribes-

   12. DGDavid Geary1:11:28

       Mm-hmm.

   13. CWChris Williamson1:11:28

       ... et cetera, et cetera. The ability to understand and manipulate social dynamics, language ability, reading facial expressions-

   14. DGDavid Geary1:11:36

       Mm-hmm.

   15. CWChris Williamson1:11:36

       ... that is female weaponry in a regard.

   16. DGDavid Geary1:11:40

       Right.

   17. CWChris Williamson1:11:40

       Now, it's also defensive, offensive, uh, uh, affiliative-

   18. DGDavid Geary1:11:45

       Right. Right.

   19. CWChris Williamson1:11:45

       ... um, you know, uh, coalitional, all of that.

   20. DGDavid Geary1:11:49

       Mm-hmm.

   21. CWChris Williamson1:11:49

       Um, but I just, I love, uh, thinking about, uh, conceptualizing things in this way that because women on average weren't getting into physical altercations because they are more fragile, sometimes could be with child. If they die, the danger of the child being on their own is significantly higher.

   22. DGDavid Geary1:12:09

       Yeah.

   23. CWChris Williamson1:12:09

       Therefore, make sure that you don't, uh, how would you say? Explicitly, obviously, accusatorily do something that could cause you to be on the wrong end of a very sharp stick from either the husband of the woman that you just pissed off or the woman herself.

   24. DGDavid Geary1:12:27

       Right.

   25. CWChris Williamson1:12:27

       So, you need to be able to, uh, manipulate social groups. You need to be much more subtle and you need to dance your way through this. You need to use coalitional, uh, tactics. You need to sow seeds of discord. Venting is an example of this. Um, and because of that, you have to have a predisposition, you have to have these capacities to be able to make yourself capable. Whereas for men, everything's out in the open. You got a problem? Let's sort the problem out. We, we don't need to have that quite so much. Um-

   26. DGDavid Geary1:12:58

       Yeah. Uh, yeah, m- men, men engage in relational aggression too, and they play politics, and some of them are very good at it. Uh, but the politics is to organize large-scale groups for a col- collective action sort of thing, rather than manipulating the social dynamics within a smaller kind of social, um, network. But, but, but yeah, you're, you're, you're right. Yeah, you have to be very good at that, um, to navigate all of these complex social relationships in a way that doesn't provoke retaliation.

   27. CWChris Williamson1:13:29

       Yes. When it comes to......

10. 1:13:33 – 1:22:49

    Why Has There Been a Rapid Increase in Transgenderism?

    1. CWChris Williamson1:13:33

       the current trends that we're seeing, this increase in transgender, especially youths.

    2. DGDavid Geary1:13:41

       Mm-hmm.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:13:41

       What's your assessment of the situation? Why do you think it is that we've had such a, a rapid increase in that happening?

    4. DGDavid Geary1:13:48

       Right. Yeah, so I, yeah, I wrote the, that Quolet article that, that you mentioned on that. And, and if we look at it historically, um, well... So lo- let's step back. Let's look at, uh, brain patterns that I mentioned before where, you know, you take a, a 10-year-old, you, you can predict 93% of the time whether it's a boy or a girl. If you take an adult, you can predict 95% of the time whether it's a man or a woman. So, the brain patterns for guys are kind of bunched up in this area, but there are some individuals that kind of go out on the curve. So there are guys that have female-typical brain patterns. Not a lot of them, but they're there. Uh, and there are girls who have, and women, who have male-typical brain patterns. So, it's not, you know, kind of out of bounds to think, well, you know, maybe for whatever reason, um, you know, you didn't see this sex-typical shift in brain development for, for whatever reason. So you're gonna get... It would make sense that, you, you know, you have some guys who really like girl things, um, but they're kind of forced to be boys and to do boy things, and they would develop gender dysphoria, and the same thing for some girls. And so if we look at early, um, transsexual, um, in- individuals, they had a pattern of sex-atypical play. So they, you know, the boys were playing and liked girl things and so forth, expressed wanting to be a girl, had this, uh, dysphoria, depression, and, uh, discomfort with being a boy, or, or a girl if it's the, the reverse of that. And those individuals, if they're carefully screened and so forth, would be fairly rare. But if they transition, um, most of them do okay. They're okay with it, so the detransition rates are 1 or 2%. So it's like, yeah, it worked for them. But now, jump forward to the last s- you know, well, it started maybe 20 years ago, but especially the last 10 years or so, the number of individuals who are claiming to be transgender has really spiked, um, way beyond the numbers you would expect based on these brain patterns, for example. Um, and the demographics of these individuals have changed as well. Typically, it was disproportionately more men than women, and they had a history of gender dysphoria. Now we're getting more women, especially adolescents, than men. And, um, most of them, as far as I know, don't... I mean, some of them do, but a lot of them don't have this history of gender dysphoria and sex-atypical play patterns and other sorts of things that have historically been reliable markers of, um, transgender issues and doing well with, with the transition if, if that's what they, they chose to do. So there, there's been thi- this huge spike, uh, as you know, and it's been argued that s- social media has, has driven a lot of it. Um, and I, I think that's right. A- and I've, I argued that, um, adolescent girls in particular may be at risk for these negative social media influences, um, because during that time, you know, early adolescence, late adolescence, they're really trying to develop this social support network. They're really trying to develop this, you know, couple of BFFs and feel included and integrated and socially supported and emotionally supported and so forth. That's a really important thing. Now, guys go through a similar thing where they wanna be part of a bigger group that works together and so forth. Um, but the girl networks, I think, are more susceptible to social contagion and, um, going along with ideas that maybe aren't a good idea just to fit in and to be part of the group and not to get excluded or rejected from the group, whi- which is a bigger concern for girls than, than it is for boys. And I, and, uh, so I think we have a recipe for when you combine that with social media and all the media attention, general media attention to these issues, it's now become a political signal rather than a, a kind of a personal desire. It's like you support this because you support all progressive sorts of things, or you're against it because you're against all progressive sorts of things. It, it, it's really, um, created an environment that I think is gonna be detrimental and, and is being detrimental to a lot of adolescents and young adults, especially girls.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:18:55

       And this would explain why you have seen a sex difference in the number of F-to-M as opposed to M-to-F transitions-

    6. DGDavid Geary1:19:03

       Right.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:19:03

       ... or desires for transition-

    8. DGDavid Geary1:19:05

       Right.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:19:05

       ... because it... You would presume that, um... There's a left-handedness argument that gets used, I'm not sure if you've heard this used before, uh, where during the med- Middle Ages, eh, people that were left-handed were seen as more likely to be witches, so, um-

    10. DGDavid Geary1:19:24

        Mm-hmm.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:19:24

        ... people hid the fact that they were left-handed. Uh, I think it was around about 2% of people a few hundred years ago said that they were, whereas now it's around about 10 to, it's a teens percent, I think, of the population that are left-handed. Uh, so the argument is when you stop demonizing people for being their true self, being fully left-handed, or being a male that identifies as female or vice versa, um, the...... people open up. That would be the explanation for why you would see this rampant increase-

    12. DGDavid Geary1:19:54

        Yeah.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:19:54

        ... the fact that we are more, as a society, more accepting of it. But that wouldn't explain why you have this massive increase in F to M as opposed to M to F, and-

    14. DGDavid Geary1:20:03

        That's right. Right.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:20:04

        ... uh, this sex difference appears to be explained away, uh, largely by the raw materials that we went through, women's desire to fit in-

    16. DGDavid Geary1:20:13

        Mm-hmm.

    17. CWChris Williamson1:20:13

        ... their greater, um, uh, social queue, uh, a- ability to absorb, absorb that. It also explains why you don't have a completely random distribution of people across the entire United States. You know, one person out of every 10 schools, one girl out of every 10 schools, one male out of every 30 schools, let's say, across the US, it's five girls in one class that all sit at the same table together during lunch.

    18. DGDavid Geary1:20:40

        That's right. Yeah, yeah. Y- you, you see these clusters or in, uh, one school district, I think 10% of the kids, um, I don't remember what the male-female breakdown was, uh, claim to be transgender, non-binary or something, wh- which, which makes no sense. The, the other issue that has changed is the, um, regret and detransition rates are going up from fairly rare, 1%, 2% or so, to, um, you know, de- depending on what you look at, the stopping of, of hormonal treatment can be, you know, one out of three or, or so. So the, the rates of people kind of changing their mind is going up, suggesting that the transgender, the dysphoria, so forth, wasn't really related to that. It was due to some other, other issue.

    19. CWChris Williamson1:21:32

        What I find particularly fascinating and, uh, kind of morbidly ironic about this situation is that the biological sex differences that men and women have are providing the raw materials to cause increasing volumes of men and women to recant their own sex, or at least their own gender identity.

    20. DGDavid Geary1:21:52

        Mm-hmm.

    21. CWChris Williamson1:21:53

        So it's almost like a supply and demand of what's going on is happening in a community of people that deny that there are any sex differences.

    22. DGDavid Geary1:22:02

        Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it- it- it- it- it- it's a mess. So, right. So, yeah. So you're- you're saying that the, um, adolescent women's girls' susceptibility to social contagion has a biological basis to it, which I, I think it does, um, and that biological basis makes them more prone to claim that they're really a guy. Yeah. It- it's-

    23. CWChris Williamson1:22:32

        (laughs) Deny that there are any sex differences.

    24. DGDavid Geary1:22:35

        And, and deny, uh, deny that their, their se- Yeah, it, it is, um-

    25. CWChris Williamson1:22:39

        (laughs)

    26. DGDavid Geary1:22:39

        It's, it's amazing what people can, can spin stories, for sure.

    27. CWChris Williamson1:22:44

        David Geary, ladies and gentlemen. David, I've absolutely adored this. It's been booked on the,

11. 1:22:49 – 1:25:01

    Where to Find David

    1. CWChris Williamson1:22:49

       uh, on my schedule for about two or three months now, and I've been-

    2. DGDavid Geary1:22:51

       Okay.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:22:51

       ... looking forward to it. It's delivered-

    4. DGDavid Geary1:22:54

       Yeah. Me too.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:22:54

       ... more than I could have hoped for. Um, first off, what are you working on next, and then secondly, where should people go if they want to keep up to date with your work?

    6. DGDavid Geary1:23:02

       Right. So, um, related to sex differences, keep up, I published a third edition of my book, Male Female, um, came out in 2021, so it- it's, it's pretty, pretty up-to-date, and I'm pretty anal about documenting things because I know it's controversial and you gotta kind of oversight things. Um, on the sex differences thing, the, the thing I've been working on, on and off as I have spare time, you know, I have a, uh, you know, other things to do, is this, um, tracking sex differences in cognition and behavior, uh, as they are related to the sex differences in height. So suggesting, you know, as, as I mentioned, you know, populations get healthier, sex differences and height get bigger. If there are other biologically based sex differences that are related to, you know, the health of the brain, for instance, then we should see other differences in spatial abilities, verbal abilities, memory abilities, and so forth emerging. So I work on that, uh, I've been working on it off and on on that for, for a long time. And it's hard to get, um, kind of knockout evidence for it, but there's something there. I, I, I just, you know, the, the, the data isn't quite there. But I, I, uh, I have, uh, a number of articles on sex-specific, um, vulnerabilities based on evolutionary theory and basic biology that, you know, if anybody e- emails me, I'm happy to send.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:24:36

       David, I really appreciate you. Thank you so much for your day.

    8. DGDavid Geary1:24:39

       Great. Thank you. Thank you. I, I really enjoyed it.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:24:42

       (instrumental music) What's happening, people? Thank you very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed that episode, then press here for a selection of the best clips from the podcast over the last few weeks. And don't forget to subscribe. Peace.

Episode duration: 1:25:01