Question: why are men more likely to commit crimes?

submitted by sosorreal from self.GenderCritical

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[–]snub-nosedmonkey 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

"men and women have different brains, as that becomes a slippery slope. But... is it the hormones? The reason I'm asking is because we seem to all agree that men are more violent, which is why we don't want them in our spaces"

On average, males and females do differ in at least 30 morphological brain features. That's not a slippery slope, that's just empirical data about measurable differences. At the same time, there is a lot of variation within each sex; there isn't really such a thing as a 'typical' male or female brain.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228549134_Gender_Differences_in_Human_Brain_A_Review#:~:text=Male%20brains%20are%20about%2010,more%20neurons%20to%20control%20them.

On average, healthy males who have gone through puberty have much higher levels of testosterone compared to a healthy females. Testosterone "activates the subcortical areas of the brain to produce aggression" so it's perhaps not a surprise that men tend to be more aggressive than females.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3693622/#:~:text=Testosterone%20activates%20the%20subcortical%20areas,testosterone%20to%20reduce%20its%20effects.

There may be differences between brain structures that also account for differences in aggression, but I don't have any resources on that.

Please note: There are some horrible misinterpretations of the science to fit particular agendas. If you want to understand what science says about gender and sex, don't get it from a radfem source, as you'll most likely get a biased interpretation. I've even seen a lot of bias on blogs and articles that don't have an obvious agenda. If possible, read scientific reviews for a good overview and avoid science from popular sources.

Edit: There are differences, on average between male and female behaviour that have biological roots. Of course the environment also has an effect on behaviour and society can reinforce and enhance preexisting differences. The ideology about sex differences in behaviour being entirely down to socialisation is completely refuted by science. Sex differences in behaviour exist in other primates too, despite a comparative lack of sex-biased parental care and socialisation:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jnr.23862

Review of toy preferences in human infants: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-019-01624-7#Sec56

[–]sisterinsomnia 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Studying those differences is a field in flux. Here's a different take https://www.pnas.org/content/112/50/15468

If you scroll down that linked page you also get disagreeing letters and answers to them and so on. One problem in the field is that the tools for studying all this are still fairly crude. Gina Rippon's book has good chapters on the methodological problems. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1784706817/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

And the environment and genetics seem to interact in complicated ways, partly, because brains are also plastic. So in adults we would expect to observe sex differences also due to the way lives differ by sex.

[–]snub-nosedmonkey 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Thanks for the link for the review paper, I'll have a better look when I get chance. Although, the abstract does echo what I wrote in my first post:

"Although there are sex/gender differences in brain and behavior, humans and human brains are comprised of unique “mosaics” of features, some more common in females compared with males, some more common in males compared with females, and some common in both females and males. Our results demonstrate that regardless of the cause of observed sex/gender differences in brain and behavior (nature or nurture), human brains cannot be categorized into two distinct classes: male brain/female brain."

There's still a lot we don't understand when it comes to neuroscience, although from my understanding there are certain areas that are more in flux than others. The point you make about plasticity and how the environment might cause sex brain differences is an interesting one and something I haven't read a lot into. It's possible that pressure to conform to gender stereotypes for example, might cause changes in the brain and account for some of these differences. Having said that, the evidence for innate biological differences is very strong so the interesting question from my perspective would be to what extent does the environment act on these innate differences.