no wonder I’m so forgetful…

Really interesting article discussing the innate differences between men and women. The article is a couple years old, and it was probably mentioned in the news this year in reference to the whole Summers incident, but for some reason I haven’t come across until now.

It’s worth reading, but if you don’t care to read the whole thing, here are some clips:

• Males and females, it turns out, are different from the moment of conception, and the difference shows itself in every system of body and brain.
  
  
• Women's perceptual skills are oriented to quick--call it intuitive--people reading. Females are gifted at detecting the feelings and thoughts of others, inferring intentions, absorbing contextual clues and responding in emotionally appropriate ways. They empathize. Tuned to others, they more readily see alternate sides of an argument. Such empathy fosters communication and primes females for attachment.
  
  
• Men focus first on minute detail, and operate most easily with a certain detachment. They construct rules-based analyses of the natural world, inanimate objects and events. In the coinage of Cambridge University psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen, Ph.D., they systemize.
  
  
• The female sex hormone progesterone blocks the normal ability of the stress hormone system to turn itself off. Sustained exposure to stress hormones kills brain cells, especially in the hippocampus, which is crucial to memory.

To back up my justification to my grandmother for why I'm not dating anyone (can't find any normal men):

Having fall-back genes may explain why females are far less subject than males to mental disorders.

And my favorite line:

Baron-Cohen argues that autism is a magnifying mirror of maleness.