Batting for the boys...
Neal Anthwal
You’ve probably seen the adverts for the magazines with names such as Toss and Balls: Mr Ladsy McBloke is sat with his feet up, reading his journal of contemporary unreconstructed masculinity, whist Ms Pretty Girlfriend is seen struggling to put some shelves up/fix her car/do a bit of spot welding.
She is, naturally, rubbish at it and her shelves are wonky/she gets her nice top covered in oil/she burns the house down, before breaking down in to uncontrollable sobbing. Women, tsk! Useless huh?
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Let’s start with a classic: women cannot read maps, and get lost easily.
It is a scientific fact that males are better at navigation than females.
One study by James M. Dabbs Jr. and co-workers of Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia found that while men and women scored similarly in remembering the geographical location of objects, men scored much better at navigation and giving directions.
When giving directions, men tend to use many more useful terms, like compass directions and distances, whereas women give more personal instructions, using landmarks and left/right type directions.
Now you might argue that one style is no worse than the other, but I want you to think about it for a moment. What if Captain James Cook described his first voyage by saying “We went right out of Plymouth, turned right at the bottom of South America and just sailed about a bit from there where we saw some nice things”?
This was a voyage in which he tracked the transit of Venus, observed Tahitians riding the waves in their canoes, mapped the coastline of New Zealand and became the first European to discover Australia.
Without Cook's steadfast navigation and recording of the voyage there would be no bar staff in London and surfing wouldn’t be quite so popular.
Next I want to address the fact that men have superior targeted motor skills. It would be hypocritical of me to claim that all men are ninja-like in their catching and throwing skills.
However, no matter how rubbish I am (and I’m pretty bad), there are many women far worse than me. This is because we chaps, back in prehistoric times, were the mighty hunters, out on the savannah stalking mastodons for dinner. This is much like today, when the heirs to those steely huntsmen hunt for points in the arena of sports such as darts; it’s a noble tradition.
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As a scientist, I don’t want to be distracted by such things as “emotions”, “caring for people” or “what other people think”. I want to be a machine; an analytical machine, but with the imagination of a human brain, which is basically how men think.
Seriously, ask Simon Baron Cohen (he’s Sacha’s cousin, fact fans). Baron Cohen is a professor at Cambridge who theorises that, on a population level, women’s brains are hard-wired for empathy, and men’s brains are hard-wired for understanding and building systems.
Who needs empathy when you’ve got data to be analysing? Not me that’s for sure, all that stuff gets in the way of objectivity.
So there you have it, the evidence has spoken. I’ll finish with one final factoid: in 1991 two scientists, Gouchie and Kimura, demonstrated that women with high levels of the male sex hormone testosterone performed better in cognitive tests. Need I say more? (Like a typical man, I’ll ignore the fact the same study showed that men get more stupid with increased testosterone).
More from Neal on his page.
And while we're on the subject...
Rom coms aren't just for girls
Why girls can't throw
Treatments for bearded ladies
Why sexism is a good thing
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