Fighting the Good Fight Over Sex Differences
My second appearance on the Good Fight podcast with Yascha Mounk
I recently rejoined political scientist Yascha Mounk on the Good Fight podcast to discuss my new book, A Billion Years of Sex Differences. We had a wide-ranging conversation about what the science says about the differences between men and women, and why the topic remains so controversial.
Here are some of the many topics we covered:
The three main types of sex differences: Mars-and-Venus differences, Mars-and-Venus-plus-exceptions, and statistical or “fuzzy” differences
Four biases that distort the science of sex differences: the alpha bias, beta bias, gamma bias, and delta bias
The dangers of exaggerating sex differences - and of minimizing them
Why gay men tend to have more casual sex than straight men, while lesbians tend to have less than straight women
Why humans are neither strictly monogamous nor highly polygynous, but somewhere in between
The evolutionary roots of male aggression - and how civilization works to suppress it
What drives sex differences in STEM fields
The gender-equality paradox: why sex differences are often larger, rather than smaller, in wealthier, more egalitarian societies
How even small differences at the mean can give rise to large differences at the extremes - what I call the tail-of-the-distribution effect
Greater male variability in cognitive abilities: fact or fiction?
The episode is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also find it on Yascha’s Substack or the Persuasion Substack, along with a transcript of the conversation.
If you want to dig deeper into these issues, you can pick up a copy of A Billion Years of Sex Differences here.
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Related Reading from the Archive
12 Things Everyone Should Know About Evolutionary Psychology
This is the latest post in my “12 Things Everyone Should Know” series. You can access the full collection here.
A Billion Years of Sex Differences
I recently gave a professorial lecture at my university, focused on some of my theoretical work on the evolution of human sex differences. The following is a lightly edited transcript of the lecture.
Decoding the Gender-Equality Paradox
One of the most surprising discoveries of the last few decades is known as the gender-equality paradox. This refers to the fact that, for a large number of traits, sex differences are larger, rather than smaller, in more gender-equal nations. The finding is surprising because it seems entirely plausible that, in cultures where men and women are treated differently and play different roles in society, sex differences will tend to be magnified. Even if there’s an innate contribution to many sex differences, this seems like a reasonable expectation. But the reasonable expectation turns out to be wrong. In fact, it’s not just wrong; it has things back-to-front, at least for some traits.
Nice to see this topic covered in a conversation among scholars: <<Why gay men tend to have more casual sex than straight men, while lesbians tend to have less than straight women.>>
It is something we gay men and lesbians often talk about, but in increasingly hushed tones of late.
I still recall with great delight a conversation with a lesbian friend who shared how much she loved hooking up with other women. After quipping that she didn't need to sleep over afterwards, she drily observed that she was an outlier in her community.
Another lesbian friend regretted that she couldn't generate interest in a lesbian bathhouse--and this in Los Angeles.