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Aug 27, 2017 · 2 min read

The fact that you don’t see strong sex differences in the brain via ‘brain mosaic’ analysis (itself quite questionable) doesn’t mean that there are no such differences.

Research on early infant development and cognition, for example, shows many such differences, and gives a causal explanation for those differences in terms of androgen levels, which affects both bodily and brain development in early infancy. For a detailed and clear review that is really well worth reading, see “Sex differences in early infancy”, by Gerianne Alexander and Teresa Wilcox, 2012, https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/7f84/8898be00e243a9c8748b453c1f3420292345.pdf (these are two female researchers, if that makes any difference).

Part of this research shows that female infants with higher androgen levels show behaviors more similar to typical male infants (who have high testosterone levels: did you know that male infants have a testosterone peak around 6 months that matches that at puberty?), while male infants with significantly lower testosterone levels show behaviors more similar to typical female infants.

To me, this suggests that the level of analysis that focuses on “men versus women” is flawed. We get a clearer picture if we talk about brain development and behavior for people with higher/lower androgen levels (who are not always male/female).

Finally, of course, androgens are not the only story: culture plays a huge part in developmental differences. In particular, differing androgen levels produce differences in physical appearance in infants, and people respond differentially to these (as Alexander and Wilcox point out, these androgen-driven differences in physical appearance are one proposed reason for the fact that early-infancy boys are dropped significantly more often than early-infancy girls).

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