The phrase “listen to the science” needs to be retired. It is obvious that the people who shout the loudest to have science “listened to” are simply advocating for a political position, and since science has a better track record throughout history (but fast losing ground with mask claims, climate change assertions, etc.), than leftism, it makes sense that they are trying to win over new followers via this approach. It is understandably tough to lead with: “This philosophy left over 100 million people dead in the 20th century, and even if people didn’t die directly from forced starvation, forced labor, and outright murder, hundreds of millions of other lives were ruined through failed economic policy and social coercion.”
So they lead with science.
The modern “science” on biological males and females is, as usually happens with leftism, not scientific at all. Men and women are the same, they say. They have the same needs, they can do all the same things, and the only reason differences exist between them is because of societal expectations and pressure. This raises an obvious canonical issue, though, because sometimes they tell us differently, like when Barack Obama told a friendly crowd that women are better leaders than men or when Star Wars asserts the force is female.
What is one to make of all of this? Are men and women different (except when women are better)? As leftists constantly ask for more and bigger government, it seems fair to lean how our agencies make those determinations.
First, the CDC confirms that men and women work under different parameters in their assignments of what constitutes binge drinking. Per their webpage on the matter, binge drinking is classified for females as “having 4 or more drinks on an occasion in the past 30 days and for males as “having 5 or more drinks on an occasion in the past 30 days.” If men and women are the same, why not allot everyone 5 drinks to qualify as binge drinking? And the argument that men and women are sized differently doesn’t fly, otherwise the CDC would have just said “having 4 or more drinks if under 150 pounds,” for example.
Second, military physical requirements belie the asserted sameness of the sexes. Recently, the Army unveiled a gender-blind physical test, thus holding all applicants to the same rigorous standard. The results? While just 7% of male applicants failed, an astounding 54% of female applicants did not pass. Did more chubby, out of shape aspirants just happen to be women, or do physical tests simply expose inherent differences?
In the case of the Army requirements, opponents to gender neutrality commented that “some women fear they won’t be able to pass even with additional training or will continue to score lower than men, potentially affecting their career prospects in an institution already struggling to shed historical gender and racial disparities.” This runs counter to the narrative that maleness and femaleness are interchangeable; if men and women were the same, the test results would be the same and the contention of discrimination would be moot. Is this not an admittance that women need different - in this case, lower - physical standards to achieve the same results as men?
Third, The New York City Fire Department, like other departments across the nation, wrestled with low female recruitment (how dare they have more men than women!) and decided to dispose of physical testing requirements in 2014 in order to remove a barrier to employment. Much like the Army, it noted that while “95 percent of men pass the FDNY’s demanding physical test, only 57 percent of women manage to get through.” It bears repeating: Were the women that attempted to pass the physical test coincidentally less prepared, or is there some greater truth behind pass/fail rates on physical tests?
Fourth, the Department of Motor Vehicles, confirms that “from the time they begin driving, women generally pay less than men do for car insurance.” Citing specific reasons behind the phenomenon, it notes that “this pricing gap is influenced by: the types of cars typically chosen by men; the frequency of accidents among women versus men; the gender-based statistics on risky driving behavior; the average number of miles driven by women vs. men.” The big takeaway is that the DMV is acknowledging the innate difference between men and women.
There’s more. The DMV also notes that “statistics tend to show that as a group, women are less likely to: Get into a car accident; Commit moving violations, like speeding and driving under the influence (DUI); Buy cars that are more costly to insure; Drive as many miles as the average male driver.”
If men and women were the same, why such a disparity in the treatment of them, and why such an effort to reconcile the insurance pricing gap through admission of men’s inclination to engage in more risky behavior and women’s inclination to drive more safely?
The difference in choices that men and women make almost makes it appear as if men and women were wired differently, which is exactly what PNAS (the same government research arm that brought us conclusive evidence that police shootings are not motivated by race) observes. It matter-of-factly lays out that “sex differences influence brain morphology and physiology during both development and aging.” In other words, being male or female influences brain development as well as its functions over time. As it relates to present-day challenges, a university funded research group looked at how men and women coped with social distancing. What they found, unsurprisingly, was that the anatomy of the brain itself was distinct given its biological male or female identity and thus corresponded to unique coping mechanisms and responses to stress and aloneness. In their own words, they admit that ‘“all studied parts of the human social brain” show “some degree of divergence between male and female brain anatomy.”’
The science is settled. Men and women are different.
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