1 > Actually, the only sure way to tell boys and girls apart is by their _bodies_. If you're a boy, you have a penis, scrotum, and testicles. If you're a girl, you have a vulva, clitoris, and vagina.
3 > These male and female body parts that show on the outside are called your genitals. Boys' genitals are easier to see than girls', but both are equally important.
5 > —_What's the Big Secret? Talking About Sex With Girls and Boys_, Laurie Krasny Brown, Ed.D., and Marc Brown (published 1997)
7 child more eager to do grammar lesson after Mad Libs made it relevant—child would predictably be interested in girls at puberty, if getting a chance to go through puberty
9 https://www.reddit.com/r/Parenting/comments/ij4npe/mommy_im_actually_a_girl/
11 https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/before-2
13 https://childhood-transition.org/
15 Planned Parenthood on "How to Know If Your Kid Is Transgender": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJdafLVf6xo
17 Trans Kids: It's Time to Talk film: https://archive.org/details/TransKidsItsTimeToTalk
19 HBO documentary Transhood
21 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2016237/
22 > fifty-three percent of the mothers of boys with GID compared with only 6% of controls met the diagnosis for Borderline Personality Disorder on the Diagnostic Interview for Borderlines or had symptoms of depression on the Beck Depression Inventory
25 https://femalesexualinversion.blogspot.com/2020/12/the-problem-with-puberty-blockers-part.html
27 There was that time when M. wanted to see the medicines on the shelf and I was like, "Aw, why do you need to know this anyway" and E. was like, "He's curious"—people don't want to be blamed for hurting the child, and if you're living in an ideological bubble where it's presumed that telling the child the truth about what sex they are
29 E. on "Maybe C. is very competitive, and that's why she likes fighting, because it's something you can win". It's amusing that we have to posit that as an individual trait, whereas normies are allowed to say and think "duh, boys like fighting"
31 https://www.impactprogram.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Kuper-2014-Puberty-Blockers-Clinical-Research-Review.pdf?fbclid=IwAR0Bmr_fS-ewLn1Y9XsA35zrk8X7f9CIJBhLd8pf3b6JttUi05SL41Ot2ao
33 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-55282113
35 Tavistock study https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.01.20241653v1.full.pdf
37 path-dependent preferences: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/3xF66BNSC5caZuKyC/why-subagents
39 "Cognitive theories of early gender development."
40 https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2002-18663-003
42 https://slate.com/human-interest/2019/01/trans-kid-test-psychology.html
44 https://kathleenstock.com/highlights-of-trans-policies-in-uk-universities/
46 Symmetry: trans-booster parent thinks child is too young to know about TERFism (but isn't opposed to the idea of the child thinking for themselves when they're old enough to think critically); skeptic thinks child is too young to consent to transition (but wouldn't refuse to recognize an AGP teenager going in with open eyes)
48 "Cultural Components of Sex Differences in Color Preference" Davis et al. 2021 (shared on SEXNET) says that girl preference for pink was d=1.3 in a city, but not in trad cultures
49 http://unremediatedgender.space/papers/davis_et_al-cultural_components_of_sex_differences_in_color_preference.pdf
51 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0243894
53 Kohlberg 1966 gender constancy (Maccoby p. 160)
55 "My Son Wears Dresses; Get Over It" https://archive.is/FJNII
56 note, "My Son Wears Dresses", and not, "My Daughter Is Trans"
58 The time I told an older boy in summer camp that I wasn't into women with big boobs ... but the reality was that I just hadn't hit puberty yet. A parent in today's ideological environment might transition their three-year-old, thinking, "I don't know what the future holds ... but if she doesn't want to go through male puberty, it would be cruel to force her to." But the kid has no way to _know_ that puberty is going to be terrible in advance (I didn't know what it was going to be like, to like breasts), but if the social environment is grooming the kid to be trans, he's likely to _assume_ it's terrible. When I wasn't doing well at Santa Cruz at first, Mom suggested that I take time off or at DVC, and I said, "Are you _trying_ to sabotage my education?" Because I had been groomed to believe in education.
60 https://www.aboutkidshealth.ca/Article?contentid=716&language=English
61 > Caregivers can help by not connecting sexual biology to gender (e.g., say "people with penises" or "people with vaginas").
63 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2015.1351 claims:
64 > Sex differences in facial morphologyare apparent in six-month-old infants [15], and increasesteadily across childhood [16].
66 * "A longitudinal cephalometric study of transverse and vertical craniofacial growth" https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8237899/
67 * "Ontogeny of facial dimorphism and patterns of individual development within one human population" https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16596605/
69 "Puberty blockers do not alleviate negative thoughts in children with gender dysphoria, finds study"
70 https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n356
72 https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/trapped-priors-as-a-basic-problem
74 https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/when-your-epistemic-bubble-pops-unlocked
76 Shrier says, "It is not uncommon for young children periodically to express the desire to be the opposite sex" footnote goes to: Zucker Bradley Sanikhani "Sex Differences in Referral Rates of Children With Gender Identity Disorder: Some Hypotheses"
79 https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2021.632784/full
81 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-56601386
83 https://segm.org/NICE_gender_medicine_systematic_review_finds_poor_quality_evidence
85 https://acesounderglass.com/2021/04/02/antidepressants-and-medical-uncertainty/
87 my CAH table is derived from the "Developmental Endocrinology" book in /papers/
89 "The Magnitude of Children’s Gender-Related Toy Interests Has Remained Stable Over 50 Years of Research"
90 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-021-01989-8
92 Degree of religiousness is genetic, but the specific religion is environmental—
93 Koenig, L. B., McGue, M., Krueger, R. F., & Bouchard, T. J., Jr. (2005). Genetic and environmentalinfluences on religiousness: Findings for retrospective and current religiousness ratings.Journal ofPersonality,73(2), 471–88. doi:10.1111/j.1467-6494.2005.00316.x.
95 Hines, M., Golombok, S., Rust, J., Johnston, K. J., Golding, J., Parents and
96 Children Study Team, A. L. S., & the Avon Longitudinal Study of
97 Parents and Children Study Team. (2002). Testosterone during preg-
98 nancy and gender role behavior of preschool children: A longitudinal,
99 population study. Child Development, 73, 1678 –1687. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-8624.00498
101 Frisén, L., Nordenström, A., Falhammar, H., Filipsson, H., Holmdahl, G.,
102 Janson, P. O., . . . Nordenskjöld, A. (2009). Gender role behavior,
103 sexuality, and psychosocial adaptation in women with congenital adrenal
104 hyperplasia due to CYP21A2 deficiency. The Journal of Clinical Endo-
105 crinology and Metabolism, 94, 3432–3439. http://dx.doi.org/10.1210/jc
108 Snow, M. E., Jacklin, C. N., & Maccoby, E. E. (1983). Sex-of-child differences in father–child interaction at one year of age. Child Development, 54(1), 227–232. https://doi.org/10.2307/1129880
110 Goy, R. W., Bercovitch, F. B., & McBrair, M. C. (1988). Behavioral masculinization is independent of genital masculinization in prenatally androgenized female rhesus macaques. Hormones and Behavior, 22, 552–571.
112 Lamminmäki, A., Hines, M., Kuiri-Hänninen, T., Kilpeläinen, L., Dunkel, L., & Sankilampi, U. (2012). Testosterone measured in infancy predicts subsequent sex-typed behavior in boys and in girls. Hormones and Behavior, 61(4), 611–616. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.yhbeh.2012.02.013.
114 Munson, B., *Crocker, L., Pierrehumbert, J., Owen-Anderson, A., & Zucker, K. (2015). Gender Typicality in Children's Speech: A comparison of the Speech of Boys with and without Gender Identity Disorder. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.
116 Blakemore, J. E. O., LaRue, A. A., & Olejnik, A. B. (1979). Sex-appropriate toy preference and the ability to conceptualize toys as sex-role related. Developmental Psychology, 15, 339–340
118 Perry, D. G., White, A. J., & Perry, L. C. (1984). Does early sex typing result from children's attempts to match their behavior to sex role stereotypes? Child Development, 55, 2114–2121
120 Wu, T., Mendola, P., & Buck, G. M. (2002). Ethnic differences in the presence of secondary sex characteristics and menarche among US girls: the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 1988–1994. Pediatrics, 110, 752–757.
122 physiology can't account for throwing differences
123 Clark, J. E. & Phillips, S. J. (1987). An examination of the contributions of selected anthropometric factors to gender differences in motor skill development. In J. E. Clark & J. H. Humphrey (Eds.), Advances in motor development research (Vol. 1, pp. 171–178). New York: AMS Press.
125 motor differences!! (compare to Kay Brown's cites, which I recall not impressing me?)
126 Johnson, K. L. & Tassinary, L. G. (2005). Perceiving sex directly and indirectly: Meaning in motion and morphology. Psychological Science, 16, 890–897
127 Hayes, S. C. & et al. (1981). The development of the display and knowledge of sex related motor behavior in children.
128 Child Behavior Therapy, 3, 1–24.
130 Gleason, J. B. & Ely, R. (2002). Gender differences in language development. In A. McGillicuddy-De Lisi & R. De Lisi (Eds.), Biology, society, and behavior: The development of sex differences in cognition (Vol. 21, pp. 127–154). Westport, CT: Ablex Publishing.
132 Giles, J. W. & Heyman, G. D. (2005). Young children's beliefs about the relationship between gender and aggressive behavior. Child Development, 76, 107–121.
134 Pellegrini, A. D. (1988). Elementary-school children’s rough-and-tumble play and social competence. Developmental Psychology, 24, 802–806.
136 Pellegrini, A. D. (1995). A longitudinal study of boys’ rough-and-tumble play and dominance during early adolescence. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 16, 77–93.
138 Pellegrini, A. D. (2002). Perceptions of playfighting and real fighting: Effects of sex and participant status. In J. L. Roopnarine (Ed.), Conceptual, social-cognitive, and contextual issues in the fields of play (pp. 223–233). Westport, CT: Ablex Publishing.
140 Gaulin, S. J. C. & Fitzgerald, R. W. (1989). Sexual selection for spatial-learning ability. Animal Behaviour, 37, 322–331.
142 Goy, R. W., Bercovitch, F. B., & McBrair, M. C. (1988). Behavioral masculinization is independent of genital masculinization in prenatally androgenized female rhesus macaques. Hormones and Behavior, 22, 552–571
144 Berenbaum, S. A. & Hines, M. (1992). Early androgens are related to childhood sex-typed toy preferences. Psychological Science, 3, 203–206.
146 Berenbaum, S. A. & Snyder, E. (1995). Early hormonal infl uences on childhood sex-typed activity and playmate preferences: Implications for the development of sexual orientation. Developmental Psychology, 31, 31–42.
148 Iijima, M., Arisaka, O., Minamoto, F., & Arai, Y. (2001). Sex differences in children’s free drawings: A study on girls with congenital adrenal hyperplasia. Hormones and Behavior, 40, 99–104
150 Servin, A., Nordenström, A., Larsson, A., & Bohlin, G. (2003). Prenatal androgens and gender-typed behavior: A study of girls with mild and severe forms of congenital adrenal hyperplasia. Developmental Psychology, 39, 440–450.
152 Berenbaum, S. A., Duck, S. C., & Bryk, K. (2000). Behavioral effects of prenatal versus postnatal androgen excess in children with 21-hydroxylase-defi cient congenital adrenal hyperplasia. Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, 85, 727–733.
154 Hines, M., Golombok, S., Rust, J., Johnston, K. J., Golding, J., & Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children Study Team. (2002). Testosterone during pregnancy and gender role behavior of preschool children: A longitudinal, population study. Child Development, 73, 1678–1687.
156 The boy analogue of the CAH studies—
157 Jürgensen, M., Hiort, O., Holterhus, P. M., & Thyen, U. (2007). Gender role behavior in children with XY karyotype and disorders of sex development. Hormones and Behavior, 51, 443–453.
159 Alexander, G. M. & Hines, M. (2002). Sex differences in response to children’s toys in nonhuman primates (Cercopithecus aethiops sabaeus). Evolution and Human Behavior, 23, 467–479
161 Hassett, J. M., Siebert, E. R., & Wallen, K. (2004). Sexually differentiated toy preferences in rhesus monkeys. Hormones and Behavior, 46, 91.
163 Serbin, L. A., Poulin-Dubois, D., Colburne, K. A., Sen, M. G., & Eichstedt, J. A. (2001). Gender stereotyping in infancy: Visual preferences for and knowledge of gender-stereotyped toys in the second year. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 25, 7–15.
165 Benenson, J. F., Liroff, E. R., Pascal, S. J., & Cioppa, G. D. (1997). Propulsion: a behavioural expression of masculinity. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 15, 37–50
167 Dessens, A. B., Slijper, F. M. E., & Drop, S. L. S. (2005). Gender dysphoria and gender change in chromosomal females with congenital adrenal hyperplasia. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 34, 389–397
169 Lenroot, R. K., Gogtay, N., Greenstein, D. K., Wells, E. M., Wallace, G. L., Clasen, L. S., et al. (2007). Sexual dimor-
170 phism of brain developmental trajectories during childhood and adolescence. NeuroImage, 15, 1065–1073
172 Skrypnek, B. J. & Snyder, M. (1982). On the self-perpetuating nature of stereotypes about women and men. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 18, 277–291
176 notes from The Pre-School Activities Inventory: A Standardized Assessment of Gender Role in Children by Golombok and Rust
178 toy pref.s as early at 18 mo. and established by 3 years
180 How was the PSAI developed? Ask mothers to identify 10 aspects of sex-typical behavior, and 10 aspects of somewhat sex-atypical behavior. That was 153 items, which got pruned to 90 (10 masc/fem/neutral per toys/activity/temperment). The 90 item version got piloted on a sample, then do item analysis to maximize within-sex variance while only choosing items that discriminated among the sexes
182 question: what is the theoretical justification for maximizing variance?—maybe it's that (as mentioned later), can measure differences within girls and within boys. Confirmed in a later paper ("Developmental Trajectories"): "During the construction of the PSAI, items that, while discriminating between the sexes, failed to differentiate between masculine and feminine boys, or between masculine and feminine girls, were excluded."
184 pooled test-retest reliabiliy (after 1 year) .64
186 validity: ask daycare teachers to rate boyishness/girlishness, and correlate with mother's PSAI responses: 0.48 for girls, 0.37 for boys
188 samples from UK, Netherlands, and Minnesota
192 30-35. (59.70-39.74)/((9.72+9.84)/2) d= 2.0408997955010224
193 36-47 (3 y.o.) (60.58-39.38)/((9.91+9.68)/2) d= 2.1643695763144457
194 48-59 (4 y.o.) (60.14-40.62)/((10.94+11.03)/2) d= 1.7769685935366413
195 60-71 mo. (5 y.o.) (59.2-40.03)/((10.36+10.09)/2) d= 1.8748166259168706
199 notes from Childhood Gender-Typed Behavior and Adolescent Sexual Orientation: A Longitudinal Population-Based Study by Li, Kung, and Hines
201 retrospective studies (as reviewed by Bailey & Zucker) find that gay adults remember nonconforming behavior as children, but those might be biased by memory
203 Rieger, Linsenmeier, Gygax, and Bailey (2008) collected home videos and got independent raters—same result
205 then there's gender clinical referals
207 there had only been one other prospective study
209 retrospective and clinical samples have limitations
211 this paper is based on the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children that recruited English families in '92, 7K each of girls and boys
213 caregivers evaluated the PSAI at 2.5, 3.5, and 4.74
215 computing d values from Table 1—
216 2.5 years: (59.87-40.99)/((8.46+8.24)/2) = 2.261077844311376
217 3.5 years: (61.54-37.08)/((8.69+9.31)/2) = 2.717777777777778
218 4.75 years: (63.42-35.28)/((8.78+9.51)/2) d = 3.0770913067249865
220 GNC and gay were _monotonically_ related; there are similar findings about CAH
224 notes from Developmental trajectories of sex-typed behavior in boys and girls: A longitudinal general population study of children aged 2.5–8 years. by Golombok, Rust, et al.
226 another paper based on the Avon Longitudinal Study. Modified "Children's Activities Inventory" administered at age 8.
228 CAI is completed by the child
230 sex-typical toddlers grow up to be sex-typical children
234 notes from Hines, M., Golombok, S., Rust, J. "Testosterone during pregnancy and gender role behavior of preschool children". http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-8624.00498
236 T and sex hormone-binding globulin were measured in pregnant women
238 T but not globulin were linearly related to gender behavior in girls, but not boys; other obvious factors (brothers, father presence, maternal education) didn't make a difference
242 notes from "Is it a he or a she? Behavioral and computational approaches to sex categorization"
244 d'= 3 for adults, d'= 0.36 for infants
246 d' from signal detection theory is basically the same thing as Cohen's d
247 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitivity_index
251 notes from "Recognition and Sex Categorization of Adults' and Childrens' faces", Wild et al.
253 younger children (1st grade) couldn't sex child (7-10 y.o.) faces (without hair &c. cues), but older children and adults could with some accuracy
255 people's tendency to guess male might be due to a higher cost of mistaking M for F?!
259 notes from "Genital Knowledge and Gender Constancy" by the immortal Sandra Bem
261 Sebley–Frey questions: "If you wore [opposite-sex] clothes, would you be a girl or a boy?", "If you played [opposite-sex] games, would you be a girl or a boy?", "Could you be a [opposite sex] if you wanted to be?"
263 (Modern progressives fail these!!)
265 In less artificial contexts (actually photograph a classmate), 3-5 year olds get it right: Miller 1984
267 > Both the liberation that can come from having a narrow biological definition of sex and the imprisonment that can come from not having such a definition are strikingly illustrated by an encounter my son Jeremy had the day he naively decided to wear barrettes to nursery school. Several times that day, another little boy insisted that Jeremy must be a girl because "only girls wear barrettes." After repeatedly asserting that "wearing barrettes doesn't matter; being a boy means having a penis and testicles," Jeremy finally pulled down his pants as a way of making his point more convincingly. The boy was not impressed. He simply said, "Everybody has a penis; only girls wear barrettes."
271 "Gender differences in children’s singing voices: Acoustic analyses and results of a listening test"
272 https://asa.scitation.org/doi/10.1121/1.3372730
273 > The listeners correctly identified the gender of the singer in 66.0% of the cases, i.e., far better than chance.
275 "Listeners' Identification Of Gender Differences In Children's Singing"
276 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1321103X050240010301
277 > 71.57% of identifications were positive
281 notes from Gender Development textbook—
284 > Although there is some debate about whether this relatively rare condition should be considered a disorder at all (Bartlett, Vasey, & Bukowski, 2000), there are certainly some children who, from a very young age, show discomfort with their gender category.
285 citation goes to Bartlett, N. H., Vasey, P. L., & Bukowski, W. M. (2000). Is gender identity disorder in children a mental disorder? Sex Roles, 43, 753–785.
288 > sometimes even before they know that the toys are gender stereotyped (Aubry, Ruble, & Silverman, 1999; Blakemore et al., 1979; Perry et al., 1984)
291 > So, is a person without a penis always a girl? It turns out that there are some boys who do not have a penis.
293 Because this book was written in 2009, I assume they mean David Reimer-like cases
295 p. 47: estrogen doesn't really play a role in sex differenitation; both sexes of fetus get exposed to a bunch of it
297 Typical T levels for men: 265-800 ng/dL, women: 10-40
299 SRY was discovered when discovered in an XX male
301 CAH occurs is autosomal and occurs in both males and females, but the reason we only talk about CAH girls is that the effects on boys are less noticeable
303 > CYP21 is on chromosome 6 and encodes an enzyme normally present in the adrenal gland called 21-hydroxylase (21-OH). Individuals with CAH due to 21-OH deficiency are unable to produce enough cortisol to suppress the release of adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH). This results in an accumulation of products that normally become cortisol, which in turn results in increased production of androgen from the adrenal gland. This excess androgen has many of the same effects as testosterone produced by the testes in males
305 There's a gradation in CAH—you can have a little 21-OH, or none at all
307 5α-reductase of the famous 5α-reductase deficiency is what converts testosterone into dihydrotestosterone (DHT)
309 That's why 5aR virilize at puberty: puberty turns on enough testosterone for them to make a little DHT
311 > It is about as meaningful to ask "Which is the smarter sex?" or "Which has the better brain?" as it does to ask "Which has the better genitals?" (Halpern, 1997, p. 1092)
314 > It is almost as though some people seem to feel that differences between males
315 and females must be minimized to avoid judging males as superior.
317 > Throwing speed and throwing distance were found to have a still different pattern, with large sex differences even among preschoolers. For example, d for throwing distance was 1.5 by the age of 2 years, and was just as large for throwing speed by age 4. By adolescence, both throwing speed and distance were at least 3 standard deviations greater in boys
320 elementary school activity level d=0.64
322 > Despite the difficulty in looking for sex differences using tests specifically designed not to have them
324 > even though there are no differences in the structure of the vocal chords in childhood, boys speak with a lower pitch than girls do. This difference is probably related to children's unconscious matching of their voices with gender norms (Gleason & Ely, 2002).
326 p. 82 The verbal fluency (word-generation) diff favoring ♀ is d > 1!!
328 p. 82 Shitpost: Women are more valuable under the utilitarian calculus because they have more subjective experience per unit physical time!!
329 Block, R. A., Hancock, P. A., & Zakay, D. (2000). Sex differences in duration judgments: A meta-analytic review. Memory and Cognition, 28, 1333–1346.
331 40% of college women fail the water-level task! (How many men fail?!)
332 Liben, L. S. & Golbeck, S. L. (1984). Performance on Piagetian horizontality and verticality tasks: Sex-related differences in knowledge of relevant physical phenomena. Developmental Psychology, 20, 595–606.
335 > Compared to the girls, the boys sound considerably more aggressive or at least active in defending themselves.
336 Not to mention that everyone assumed the dragon was male ...
338 (I skimmed some of the earlier chapters, but from here on the whole ToC looks super-relevant to my research project)
340 Table 5.1 claims no meta-analysis is available on rough-and-tumble play!! WTF?! (If it exists, you'd expect these textbook authors to have found it)
343 > There is a very consistent set of findings that boys engage in more R & T play in virtually every culture in which it has been studied (Boulton, 1996; Braza, Braza, Carreras, & Munoz, 1997; DiPietro, 1981; Finegan, Niccols, Zacher, & Hood, 1991; Hines & Kaufman, 1994; Pellegrini, 1990; Pellegrini & Smith, 1998).
345 > boys are often drawn to such play styles as soon as they see others doing them, whereas girls are more likely to avoid those activities
348 > daughters complied with their mothers' requests 99% of the time, whereas sons complied only about 25% of the time
351 > Hyde (1984, 1986) reported the overall difference between males and females was about half a standard deviation (d = 0.50); but the difference was greater in children (d = 0.58 in preschoolers) than in adults (d = 0.27) [...] also greater when observed in naturalistic settings than in the laboratory
353 p. 114 Table 4.3, aggression effect sizes
355 It's weird that the discussion of aggression in relationships doesn't mention physical strength differences (which are massive)?!
357 > In intimate relationships, by adolescence both males and females think that
358 male violence against females is worse than the reverse.
359 "both males and females think", without any mention of why they might think that?!
361 > Preschoolers are also able to identify relational aggression as being associated with girls and physical aggression with boys (Giles & Heyman, 2005).
363 p. 117 fewer constaints on gossip and social exclusion as kids get older
365 p. 120 Carol Gilligan's different voice: interpersonal care vs. abstract justice
368 > small difference favoring females in the care orientation (d = ⫺0.28), and an even smaller one favoring males in the justice orientation (d = 0.19).
371 > If you were asked to pick a single psychological characteristic that differentiates boys and girls, you could not do better than the toys and activities that engage them
373 > This is critical because if children do not know if they are boys or girls, or that toys are identifi ed as being for boys or for girls, they cannot be using this information to guide their toy preferences
376 > Some of the "neglect" regarding meta-analysis may reflect the lack of controversy about whether the differences exist
379 > evolutionary explanations are generally concerned with factors that apply to all members of a group—that is, factors that make all boys and men similar to each other and different from all girls and men
380 Not if sexual dimorphism is a matter of shifting the mean of the distribution, rather than a discrete mechanism?
382 p. 139 we know that the Y chromosome doesn't do much because of CAIS (although studies have been limited), but some studies of mice whose Sry gene was limited showed effects
384 p. 143 organizational/activiational hypothesis; p. 144 org/act is actually a spectrum
385 androgen needs to be present at about weeks 7-8 of gestation, later androgen levels don't do the same thing
387 giving androgens to female guinea pigs in 1959 gave them male-like behavior
389 mounting vs. lordosis are two discrete behaviors, as opposed to a continuously varying disposition to rough play
391 guinea pigs get manipulated before birth, rats and mice afterwards
394 > controls for castration would be surgery but no removal of the testes
395 What useless surgery do they do??
397 intrauterine position in animals that have litters
399 Goy et al. gave androgens to pregnant rhesus monkeys at different times in pregnancy. Early administration masculinized genitals. Behavioral masculization along different dimensions varied with timing!
400 early admin—more mounting, less grooming
401 late admin—more mounting of peers only (not mom), more rough play
403 > pretty normal variations in hormones are responsible for pretty normal variations in behavior
405 evolutionary logic to why female default! (I had heard the observation before, but not the deep structural reason)
406 > both male and female fetuses are exposed to high levels estrogens from the mother, so if estrogen affected sexual differentiation in utero, then males would be exposed to a substance that would feminize them
408 CAH girls are a goldmine for studying organizational effects: exposed to androgens prenatally, but not afterwards (there's medication for the disease)
410 modern CAH studies were very careful: study CAH girls and unaffected sisters, videotape the interaction and have it scored by someone who doesn't know which kid has CAH; also study boys to make sure its the hormones and not the disease
412 Measured interests several different ways, and it got replicated, including in Japan
414 > They also say that they wish that their daughters with CAH were less masculine than they are, and, interestingly, that their daughters without CAH were more masculine than they are (Servin, Nordenström, Larsson, & Bohlin, 2003).
418 (authors are not sci-fi fans and use "people" and "human" interchangably)
419 > effect in people as it does in other species.
421 > When infants look at visual stimuli, boys prefer movement and girls prefer form and color (Serbin, Poulin-Dubois, Colbourne, Sen, & Eichstedt, 2001). In childhood activities, boys use motion more than girls do (Benenson, Liroff, Pascal, & Cioppa, 1997). In drawings, boys tend to draw mechanical and moving objects, use dark and cold colors, and have a bird’s-eye perspective, whereas girls draw human fi gures, fl owers, and butterfl ies, use light and warm colors, and array items in a row on the ground.
423 A section on gender ID, oh boy :/
424 > androgen does not appear to have a large effect on gender identity,
427 > if anything, gender identity is more predictable from rearing than from prenatal androgen exposure (Mazur, 2005; Zucker, 1999).
429 Mazur, T. (2005). Gender dysphoria and gender change in androgen insensitivity or micropenis. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 34, 411–421.
430 Zucker, K. J. (1999). Intersexuality and gender identity differentiation. Annual Review of Sex Research, 10, 1–69
432 > data from typical children show the independence of gender identity and gender-typed interests (Ruble, Martin, & Berenbaum, 2006).
433 Ruble, D. N., Martin, C. L., & Berenbaum, S. A. (2006). Gender development. In N. Eisenberg (Ed.), Handbook of child psychology: Vol. 3. Social, emotional, and personality development. (6th ed., pp. 858–932). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
435 > The social environment of these children is probably complicated. It is conceivable that the girls' boy-typical play made parents question the initial decision about female rearing, and this questioning was conveyed to the children.
438 > most XY individuals with abnormal or absent penis (including, but not limited to ablatio penis and cloacal exstrophy) who are reared as girls grow up to identify as girls and women and to be happy with their assigned sex (Meyer-Bahlburg, 2005a)
441 > Compared with girls, boys are seen to have a larger amygdala (important in processing emotion) and a smaller caudate (known primarily for its role in regulating voluntary movement), and perhaps a smaller hippocampus (important for learning and memory).
444 > children learn about the behavior of both males and females, and yet they choose to imitate the behavior done by others of their sex.
447 > "the cognitive-developmental view holds that the child’s difficulties in establishing gender defi nition closely parallel his diffi culties in establishing stable defi nitions of physical concepts in general and that the former are resolved as the latter are" (Kohlberg, 1966, p. 94).
450 conservation—Noticing that changing clothing doesn't change one's sex, is the same Piagetian developmental milestone as noticing that pouring water into a narrower glass doesn't change the volume
452 Schema theory—people asked to recall stories from a foreign culture after a delay tend to replace them with more familiar elements. Similarly, counter-stereotypical information is harder to remember (and people are less confident when they do remember)
454 Liben '77 "Memory in the context of cognitive development"—children will draw a tilted flagpole on a hillside; when asked months later, they sometime produce something closer to the original stimulus—their priors got better in the intermediate months
457 > experimental research has shown that when children’s multiple classifi cation skills are enhanced through intervention, those children are better able to remember gender nontraditional stories (Bigler & Liben, 1992).
460 > one of us was in the campground bathroom when a mother and her preschool son entered. The boy saw a small sink next to the adult sinks, and he asked if it was for boys. His mother explained, "No this is the girls' bathroom, but you're a little boy, so it’s okay." Not satisfied, he said, "No, is this for boys?" The mother tried again to explain that it was the girls' bathroom, but increasingly insistent, her son asked "No, no. Is the sink for boys?" Then, she looked at the little sink, and seemed to sort of give up, and said, "Yes, this is a boy sink."
462 Tajfel, Billig, Bundy, & Flament, 1971 "Social categorization and intergroup behaviour": randomly labeling someone as an over- or underestimator caused them to favor their group later
464 Gelman, Taylor, and Nguyen 2004 "Mother-child conversations about gender": moms often say "boy"/"girl" even when we have a word for "child"
466 > As defined and studied by Gelman (2003), essentialism involves the beliefs that first, members of categories are alike in important ways, including ways that may not yet be known or observable, and second, that there is some underlying causal source for those shared qualities.
467 This is correct!!! Gelman 2003 is _The essential child: Origins of essentialism in everyday thought._
470 Leinbach and Fagot 1993 "Categorical habituation to male and female faces: Gender schematic processing in infancy": babies were seen to respond to male/female headshots differently, but it looks like they were responding to hair/clothing cues
472 p. 237 This 2009 book is the high point; it's only going to get worse
473 > we know of no research on children’s knowledge and understanding of this particular challenge to the traditionally assumed "fact" of gender constancy, and thus our discussion focuses on children’s developing understanding of traditional gender constancy that assumes that birth sex is permanent and immutable.
475 Bradbard and Endsley 1983, "The effects of sex-typed labeling on preschool children's information-seeking and retention"; describing novel objects (a pizza cutter or a buglar alarm) as toys "for boys/girls" did affect the children's behavior
478 effect of stereotypes on memory is manipulable in individuals!
481 male preference is disappearing in Western culture
484 types and mechanisms of parental influence—
485 1. creating a gendered world (choosing names, clothes, activities)
486 2. differential treatment
487 3. direct instruction (boys don't cry &c.)
490 boys names tend to become girls names
493 > children's perceptions about their own ability (especially for girls in math) has been shown to be influenced more by their parents' perceptions about the children than by the children’s own grades (Fredricks & Eccles, 2002; Herbert & Stipek, 2005; Jodl et al., 2001).
495 Lytton & Romney, 1991 "Parents' differential socialization of boys and girls: A meta-analysis": effect size of chore assignments is around d=0.3-0.5 ; but boy-only families still give the boys domestic chores
502 https://www.fatherly.com/health-science/what-age-do-transgender-kids-know-trans/
504 https://www.facebook.com/groups/2264685517005985/posts/3513322952142229/
505 > The kind of thing I find when cleaning Lily's room. The other day she made a petition to "save animals" but neither Jeff nor I would sign I unless she made it more specific.
506 > [image, drawing] SAVE OUR PLANIT FRUM GRENHEWS GASIS
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