The eyes have it: Men do see things differently to women
The way that the visual centers of men and women’s brains works is different, finds new research published in BioMed Central’s open access journal Biology of Sex Differences. Men have greater sensitivity to fine detail and rapidly moving stimuli, but women are better at discriminating between colors.
I’m curious about this. They say that it’s related to in utero exposure to androgens, which means it’s probably not as clear cut as XX vs XY, because intersex folk and folk with atypical hormonal exposure (such as fraternal twins of different sexes, with a shared placenta) experience different levels of exposure, and different reactions to that exposure.
But most things human are regulated by hormones, because of genes.
Yes, absolutely. But as I said, it’s probably not as clear cut as whether you’re XX or XY, because there are other factors that can also impact hormone levels and sensitivity to hormones
Because only the fittest/strongest hunted and the others gathered/crafted i guess?
Men were long crafters, and women long hunters.
Men need to find animal
Women needed to make sure it was safe to eat
The hunter vs gather comparison seems silly when it was men doing both based on what was readily available
also not to mention, just because someone is 10% worse at doing something, doesn’t mean that they’re completely useless at it, and shouldnt do it at all. It may be something where they each have specific roles in taking down large game for example. Just not the same one.
Men need to find animal
Women needed to make sure it was safe to eat
Most food eaten wasn’t harvested from animals for most of human history in most cases. The obsession with hunting and meat consumption is a cultural one FROM CURRENT CULTURE (especially in the US where I live).
There really is no good reason to enforce our current conceptions of gender, masculinity and feminity on wildly big swaths of human history. It is always a lie best case, worst case it plays into dangerous narratives about who “men” and “women” are “”“”“naturally”“”“” supposed to be.
These kinds of reductive generalizations seem fun to make but they are hurtful, just plain wrong and honestly just kind of boring compared to the actual truth.
Lol, you’re silly
It doesn’t seem that is so clear cut:
Does this mean the visual center is 25% larger or that the configuration of cells is different? If it is larger where are are women’s brains larger then men’s brains?
It means there are 25% more, but neurons aren’t the only thing the brain is made of. Idk how much of a size difference, if any, this makes. Considering how sensitive lips and fingers are compared to equal sized parts of your skin in other areas, there might be a similar situation of just having a lot of space in the total structure for extra neurons. It could be a small increase in size, it could have no impact on size, more studies required.
At the very least it makes a good exercise in questioning facts to make sure you are not coming to faulty conclusions by misunderstanding.
I dont think we need to tread so lightly around this topic, since we already know that brain mass does not directly tie to intelligence from the simple fact that women have smaller brains on average but are not less mentally capable than men.
Nobody arguing or even just reading this in good faith would try to frame this as women being mentally inferior.
Anecdotal proof time:
My dad’s truck.
Me, my brother, brothers’ friend and brothers’ friends’ sister, all XY, all see a greenish gray truck.
My mother, sister-in-law, brothers’ friends’ wife, all XX, all see a dark green truck.
It’s the blue/yellow dress all over again.
So, for XX folk, the increased colour differentiation comes from fact they carry two sets of genes that encode for colour detection, and because they don’t encode identically, each set creates a ever so slightly different perception of colour. And when you get two similar, but non identical perceptions of colour, you see more hues
My two eyes see slightly different color. Noticed this years ago when looking at a florescent ceiling light with my eyes relaxed such that I was seeing a double image. The two images of the light were a slightly different color.
I’m a dude.
Hey, mine too. One gets a warmer white, the other a slightly cooler white.
I’ve heard that women have more cones in their eyes as well, which leads to a more nuanced sense of differentiation between colors.
I would really like to see a study on that. Take a color then slowly remove the contrast and ask when the change is discernible. Take a color then slowly transition to another color and ask the same question. Maybe do that with a few hundred people of both sexes and record the differences.
But it’ll have to take into account where people are from. In Northern countries for example, it wouldn’t surprise me if the difference between blues and whites is much more prominent than reds (snow vs not snow). Or for those living in the jungle all their lives, or those living in cities all their lives, and so on. I’m sure there’ll be obvious differences depending on origin and sex.
There’s definitely studies on it. I don’t know how they measure them, but it’s all about the number and type of cones in your eyes because there are a few different types that see different colors. This is why tigers are orange - because their prey lack the cones that see red, so the tigers look like the rest of the background foliage.
Picture or it didn’t happen.
Now you need to post a picture of that truck!
This reminds me of my wife and I arguing over whether my shorts were grey or brown, she asks her friends and she just says “oh those, they are taupe”. Which essentially means my wife won that argument.
All for boob prrocessing
Speak for yourself I’m too busy looking at ass.
Man ass, woman ass, gay ass, straight ass. Idgaf.
Lemme see them cheeks.
it was more about the word in the background
Didn’t even notice at first. Too busy looking at ass.
I think this is the most upvoted comment I’ve ever seen here
Because one comment has never contained so much truth.
What about trans men?
Their bed nucleus of the stria terminalis should be twice as large as a woman’s, and that’s what guided their gender identities. Not that I’m a biological determinist, just a strict physicalist with no belief in metaphysical choice superceding determinism, but a lot of times the brain’s development has recursive feedback loops such that smaller choices early on can alter the size of brain structures along with sex hormones and the development environment in the womb or even outside of it for a while, the earlier the more significant. All I know is that the size of the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis is pretty consistently twice the size in men as it is in women regardless of the gender assigned at birth.
Hormones are weird and wonderful things
Trans men are assigned female at birth, FYI.
Yep, my point being that a trans man (AFAB) and a cis man (AMAB) both have their bed nucleus of the stria terminalis roughly the same size, twice the size of a woman’s. A woman’s is half the size of a man’s, regardless of whether she’s trans (AMAB) or cis (AFAB). So regardless of what the gender is assigned at birth, the relative size of the bed nucleus predicts the gender that the individual feels most comfortable as.
Has this been proven.
There’s evidence, but I don’t know enough of the science to tell how conclusive it is: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7139786/#:~:text=Regarding grey matter%2C the main,the anterior hypothalamus (INAH3).
yeah… That’s why they’re trans men?
Thank god, i was worried they might be frogs.
That was even more useless than this comment.
They can also process boobs if they’d like to
There have been some pretty interesting accounts of what it’s like to start testosterone. Vivid visual sexual fantasies and the like. Gives a new perspective on what being soaked in testosterone for decades does to your brain.
I’ll see if I can find some when I’m not on mobile.
You find testosterone better when not on mobile?
Yea accessing onion sites on mobile is annoying.
Yeah, ask any female bodybuilder what it’s like and they will tell you exactly that. Despite many of them using doses of testosterone that are still lower than what an average man naturally has
We have processed boobs now too?! First they went for our chicken nuggets, and we didn’t take notice…
Eh, I prefer my boob processing to be tactile. Juuuust to check.
Hmm… Men are more excited through visuals while women are more excited by touch.
I’m not actually sure if you are joking.
Still can’t find your damned socks though
deleted by creator
So what i’m hearing is that i should attach all items my husband regulalrly loses track of to a moving object to play into his sight strengths. Basket on the ceiling fan it is
Super helpful, thx!
Wait a minute, you’re not my husband!
I mean, wouldn’t that be similar to leaves moving in wind though?
Like tears… in rain.
No, it’s because women are smart enough to look under shit and we men are not. 90% of the time I ask my partner if she knows where something is, she asks if I looked under x, and about half the time it is, in fact, under x.
But I did look under x, multiple times! I just didn’t see it. So much for greater sensitivity to fine detail!
Goddamend nature and all these bugs disguised as features!
Socks don’t move of their own accord.
Then how do they disappear from the dryer?
I need to see your clearance from at least one of three or four three letter agencies before I can tell you the real answer.
Gnomes.
Idk how they go missing, but we do know where they go.
You are a person of quality.
They become Tupperware lids
Ew…take it from experience. Never use a mans sock as a tupperware lid. Even if it’s “clean”.
Because socks don’t move.
Men’s vision is movement based, just like T-rex.
Prob cause we’ve been hunters for so long.
9 upvotes and 18 downvote? yall are actually crazy if yall thought women were hunting even as much as men did.
Women and men were equally hunters, it is a complete myth that it was only been
Equal? No. There’s ONE report from two years ago that claimed that and it was torn up when it was published. Women did hunt, but not as often as men.
Which study is that from?
that it has only been what? There is absolutely no way women were hunting as much as men.
Which study is your information from?
None. I made it up. You have to be bonkers crazy to think females were not hunting less than men. They have probably hunted some less cuz more busy bearing and feeding babies and also less aggressive cuz lower testosterone and also physically weaker so hunting for them was harder.
IF YOU THINK MEN WERE HUNTING LESS THAN WOMEN - I JUST KNOW YOU ARE WRONG. I AM WILLING TO DIE ON THIS HILL ANY DAY.
men have a 50 to 90% bigger genitals. I don’t see anyone talking about that! Also they can eat more because they have 20% more inside space, without fucking uterus and ovaries
I mean, in all fairness I sure do hope I have a bigger penis than my sister.
My Thai girlfriend says penis size doesn’t matter, but I still wish hers wasn’t bigger than mine.
I’ve seen multiple people suggest hunting and get correctly told thats inaccurate
But would war fighting, or just fighting in general what with our aggression n shit help explain it?
The only times I’ve noticed this discrepancy in life are when hunting with women of playing competitive FPS games with my wife watching. I’ll regularly see and react to things they don’t, and are shocked when I shoot the sniper out of the tree on the other side of the map because yes, I did see him and I’m not crazy when I say I see shit flicker gdi
Aliasing also bothers me more than any woman I know, and everyone I know who hates it as much as me is a man
hunting is just an extension of fighting, sooo…
realistically, i think it’s probably a little more fundamental than hunting or something, and more to do with the fact that men are generally more muscular, stronger, taller, and probably faster as well. So it’s probably just a general evolutionary advantage to benefit those capabilities. For things like hunting, etc.
Could be as simple as humans get so many neurons and need to allocate them across total set of stuff needed for life.
Women need to devote a good % of those to pregnancy mode, while men just have normal mode.
Therefore some functions may have to deal with reduced neuron allocations, because the ‘missing’ ones are required elsewhere.
Obviously a simplification of things, but with only one way of needing to be men optimize to a different configuration with a different allocation of neurons to match.
Could be as simple as humans get so many neurons and need to allocate them across total set of stuff needed for life.
this is definitely the simplest, and probably most likely, though possibly not super accurate answer.
Maybe, and I’m not a biologist or an expert on evolution, so take my uninformed opinion with a big ol’ chunk of salt, but I feel like what you’re describing is more cultural than biological. Like, generally women just play video games (at least online competitive ones where there’s interaction between players, like the ones you’re describing) less than men, because those kinds of video games are sort of a hellhole for women. So in general, their eyes probably aren’t attuned to things like aliasing and digital sniper glints because that’s not something they experience often, not necessarily because their brains aren’t as well equipped to recognize those things.
women are better at discriminating between colors.
Well I’m red-green colorblind so I never stood a chance anyway. If it isn’t in a box of 8 crayons/markers, I don’t attempt to use that color’s name generally, cuz I will never pick the right shade. All the fuschias, magentas, maroons, burnt siennas, teals, cyans, etc. of the world can fuck off.
Isn’t colorblindness almost exclusively found in males too?
Probably oversimplifying, but it’s something about the mutation being on the X chromosome, meaning women have a backup X and men don’t.
It’s not really a backup X. In any given cell in a woman’s body, one of the X chromosomes has been inactivated into something called a Barr body. The remaining X chromosome is then the active one.
Women carriers of the gene defect for protan (causing protanopia in males) exhibit Schmidt’s Sign, an abnormal insensitivity to long wavelengths (red light). This is due to the highly skewed L:M cone ratio caused by the defective gene.
It is possible for someone with two X chromosomes to still be colorblind, but since this gene is recessice you have to have the mutation on both chromosomes, which makes it way more rare.
You pretty much nailed it
ok so, here’s my theory. The obvious answer here is that this is obviously “for hunting” or something. But evolution doesn’t really work that way.
So my take on this is that this is actually an evolutionary adaptation to the different structure of the male body, as well as it’s general abilities, and how they have been used throughout humanity. If men are generally stronger, taller, and faster runners, wouldn’t it make sense that the visual processing would be adapted to be more responsive to these use cases?
this seems like the only realistic answer to me. Something about men must be different enough, or at the very least, have been used differently enough at some point in time for a long enough period of time, that it has to have been an evolutionary adaptation.
I was thinking it was more to do with dancing, possibly even music. It could even be something really weird.
Usually the way to identify if its about hunting/war or not is to find the exceptions and links: do hunters that perform really, really well have 3x the visual cortex neurons? Is it a socialization thing where doing certain tasks results in higher brain differentiation?
There’s a lot of questions
hmm, that’s definitely interesting.
Usually the way to identify if its about hunting/war or not is to find the exceptions and links: do hunters that perform really, really well have 3x the visual cortex neurons? Is it a socialization thing where doing certain tasks results in higher brain differentiation?
yeah, this is why i think it’s more of a secondary adaptation, as opposed to something directly evolving from the needs of hunting for example. Something like this is generally broad, and generally applied, usually. So i would think the cause would as well.
One thing that i thought of was a nightwatch position, the heightened visual acuity would be highly valuable in a low visibility environment. So maybe it’s something like co-evolution? Where females developed more accurate color perception, while males developed more accurate movement perception.
we’re probably thinking too hard about it, and it’s probably just evolution trolling us and giving us the best of both worlds because we are in fact a socialized species. So this could stem from our social aspect, not directly, but the benefit of it in a social aspect is vastly more impactful, leading to more socialization, and further development of this adaptation.
Women do prefer men who show attention to detail. It’s why men’s attire meant to look good, often contains buckles, buttons and pins that give it a slight touch of detail.
It’s why men’s attire meant to look good
Oh so that’s where I fuck up.
I was thinking it was more to do with dancing
You’re thinking of Homo Groovensis, the famous hunter dancerers.
hell yeah those guys fucking ripped shit up
Not sure what your mean by it doesn’t work that way
If men were predominantly doing the hunting, women would be more likely to choose a more successful hunter (more likely to pass on their genes if they have a better mate)
Also in general the ones who were better at hunting and their mates would be more likely to survive long enough to have children
it’s essentially an excessive over simplification of something that’s not perfectly accurate, that’s the problem.
While it would apply to hunting, when you’re talking about something like visual acuity, it’s super broad in the applications that it’s useful in. Even things such as not falling over would be beneficially influenced by better visual acuity. You could argue that men just stopped falling over and dying as frequently, leading to evolutionary selection over time, but that’s probably not super accurate lol.
I would argue there that there’s a limit to how much better eyesight would affect things like that though, falling over and dying
Using that example if someone’s vision is like an old CRT they might not see a root or something, trip over and die. If they have 1920x1080 they might see it if they have 4k they definitely see it.
Hunting however can benefit limitlessly, the further away you can see the better you can track
I would argue there that there’s a limit to how much better eyesight would affect things like that though, falling over and dying
that specific example was a little bit hyperbolic, but i think there is likely a general improvement with the ability to sight vision and small discrepancies in things.
Also you’re talking about visual clarity, this is specifically about being able to detect motion better.
as for why this matters for shit like not falling over and dying? Well cool little story, sometimes humans like to move around. Things around us move in relation to ourselves, so it could be expected to see some benefit in that regard as well.
I’m not arguing good vision is not important for general survival, but I think hunting has a higher ceiling of usefulness for good vision than anything else humans did in that period
and yet I still miss things right in front of my face
They are not rapidly moving… no wonder you miss them
But they still can’t see why kids love the taste of Cinnamon Toast Crunch…
'Cause it’s absolutely loaded with sugar?
And toast, and crunch!
And most us absolutely love filling those neurons with images of women
I am agree
Fine detail and rapidly moving stimuli ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
That explains jiggle physics then
Hey, I am more complex than that!
