Stereotypes

It seems that innocent comments really can really cause problems and example being my latest Facebook status which read:

"Fiona is getting to be a stereotypical scatter-brained female already, psychiatrist appt is 19th DECEMBER!"

Also this kind of came up in discussion at work and lead to some talk about driving ability and the affect of gender. Seems that this is a touchy subject. So, to make it up to anyone who is offended or upset by this I thought I'd do a bit of research and put things straight.

First the driving:

"Women and Gay men are the 'Worst' Drivers" - According to the article from 18th April 2008. This only talks about navigational ability though, it's nothing to do with how safe you are just your ability in knowing where to go and getting there quickly.

"Men officially worse drivers than women" - Confused.com has this article from 8th March 2008 with some pretty large numbers to show that men are more often convicted of motoring offences than women.

"Why are men worse drivers than women?" - Trying to pick 'reputable' sources of information here so this article is from the Guardian and seems a little more balanced at the end. Based on the stats men have more accidents but apparently they drive further, correcting for this and things even out a bit.

"Women vs Men" - Not official in the slightest but seems to be based on a very interesting sounding presentation that at least illustrates some of the differences and their affects.

Just one thought on the driving thing: taking the eye-sight differences between men and women, the latter having better peripheral vision, and the navigational ability, it seems that a trans person *could* actually end up with the worse possible situation. I don't believe your eye-sight can be improved by hormones though I read that cognative ability may tend towards that of the hormones you take. So not so good eye-sight and no ability to find where to go!

Okay, onto the cognitive ability and the whole "scatter-brain" idea:

"Men and Women: No big difference" - Haven't read all of this but it seems to point to the idea that there isn't much difference between the genders on average.

"Thinking differently: Differences between men and women " - Haven't had a chance to read all this either (running out of lunchtime in which to write this), but seems to suggest the middle ground again but with some bias in findings for specific tasks.

I think there are differences in how male/female brains work and that does seem to be supported by things I've read. I also did once find an article about how brain volume and other attributes do change in transexuals and it looks like I'm heading for some interesting changes myself once I start on hormones - I'll try and do my own study and document it here.

Last word: things are different but everyone is ultimately an individual and even if they may conform to the sterotypes in some cases it doesn't mean this is a blanket thing that defines everything about them.