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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Steampunkette" data-source="post: 8675357" data-attributes="member: 6796468">OSTENSIBLY... But also no.Fun story: In the early 2000s a group of scientists decided to look into the fact that Infants and Toddlers of any gender were roughly equal in motor function, but within a year of Pre-School, gender differences would begin to appear.So they got a whole bunch of parents of newborns to sign onto a motor function study. The infants and toddlers were put through endurance crawling, incline-climbing, and "Hold and Stands" where they'd grip onto a bar in order to remain standing as long as they could before their lil' legs were too tired. Cute!In the control tests, there were no differences by gender. All the babies and toddlers went through control tests.The active test involved having the child's parents present.Almost -every- parent who had a daughter would move to 'rescue' their baby long before the test was done. "That angle is too steep, she'll fall!" "That distance is to long to crawl!" "You're going to make her hurt herself on the bar!"And they'd let the test be interrupted. THEN show the parent the previous test in which their baby accomplished the same task, already.Almost -no- parent attempted to intervene to 'rescue' their son.Why is this relevant? Because your body adapts to how you use it from a young age. And if little boys are allowed to reach the edge of their limits they'll be strong, while girls kept from their limits will not.Consider Ballet. If you're over 6 years old they don't want to start you in ballet. Why? Because the bones in your feet are basically "Set" at that point. Actual ballet dancers start early, and the results of their training means their feet are shaped differently because the bones of the feet of young children are malleable. Grown adults who do, or did, ballet often wind up needing physical therapy to deal with the foot-pain they signed on for before they could see over the kitchen counter without a booster seat.Because of this social aspect to gendered expectations, all the data we have over the last 100 years is, at best, flawed.The only way to find out how much difference is biological versus social would be a massively unethical experiment involving taking thousands of kids away from their parents (and their cultures) and raising them identically in a non-gendered environment so they all get the same levels of physical activity for their entire formative life ('til about 25)But for obvious reasons we could never -do- that.</blockquote>

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