[Undertoad]

To go back to Undertoad's point about genetic difference being greater between human males and human females than exists between male humans and male chimpanzees: really?

And Undertoad does not have more in common with a chimpanzee than with me.

Men: you do not have more in common with a chimpanzee than with your wives and sisters.

This is the point that you have already debunked, I admit, and so I wish you had not used it as your jumping-off point, center point, and end point.

From before:

If societal, learned gender roles predominantly determine genderish behaviors, where did society learn them from?

From our forebears. From their forebears. From their forebears. from ourselves and from each other. Because they are, on the whole, useful to us.

Turtles all the way down?

Where did the ideas/practices begin, and why do they exist across cultures?

Time and again, initial studies will come out, get a mass reading in the press and become accepted as incontrovertible proof of absolute difference ... The logic of a male brain / female brain model is deeply flawed.

Well dang! Here comes another one, from last month:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...1202161935.htm

In one of the largest studies looking at the "connectomes" of the sexes, Ragini Verma, PhD, an associate professor in the department of Radiology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and colleagues found greater neural connectivity from front to back and within one hemisphere in males, suggesting their brains are structured to facilitate connectivity between perception and coordinated action. In contrast, in females, the wiring goes between the left and right hemispheres, suggesting that they facilitate communication between the analytical and intuition.

"These maps show us a stark difference--and complementarity--in the architecture of the human brain that helps provide a potential neural basis as to why men excel at certain tasks, and women at others," said Verma.

I don't think you should ignore that, and I don't believe you could debunk this one if you worked it full-time with the facilities and colleagues of the University of Pennsylvania.

This post is getting long, so let me address my next point in another one.