Indeed. Although, some research does exist indicating that women se a wider range of colour shades than men normally do due to cone density in the eyes.
As a trans woman, I've always been able to see really tiny differences in shades that others around me haven't.
The fact that socialization could be factor in why it occurs doesn’t change the fact that research shows it does.
A study had people look at photographs of people. Each photograph had a number of names with it, including the subject’s actual name. When participants tried to pick the correct names of children, the results tended to be the same as someone picking at random. When participants tried to pick the correct names of adults, there was a noticeable increase in accuracy, enough to suggest that gene expression can be affected by how someone thinks they should look. With that in mind, it is possible for socialization to cause someone’s eyes to develop denser cones. However, it’s also possible, and more likely given the consistency with which women have dense cones, that something about the different hormone levels causes it.
I didn't say biology wasn't a factor. I said I was sceptical of it being the only major contributing factor. The comment under me made clear the nuances of this topic.
You can make claims based upon research. That's how it works.
There indeed probably is a sociological difference, but that doesn't make it any less real. Biological development often works in tandem with sociological gendering. It might be the case that women actually retain a better capacity for colour differentiation due to a societal need to do so. When you grow up as a girl, with an emphasis on beauty, colour differentiation becomes a more central task.
This would also fit with some evolutionary psychological theories that state males are biologically inclined to be more rash and hardline in their perception of all things due to a need to make critical, split-second decisions on safety.
It would also be congruent with other findings about the senses and nervous system in women, such as them retaining more of their cerebral cortex density post-puberty than men do (trans women retain more, as well).
In reality though, different neural presentations occur throughout both sexes. There are some that are found primarily in one sex, though, such as the neural presentations that seems to correlate with possessing ASD (mostly evidenced in males).
Yes, this is the more complex and nuanced nature I was talking about. I was just sceptical of the idea that it’s due to cone density and that this also applies to all trans women.
I’m trans too, but everything gets complicated when it comes to the brain. Sex is a social construct(a useful one, but still a social construct) just like gender, so it’s not all clear cut on “this neurobiological thing happens in cis women so therefore it must happen in trans women)
Have you ever read Brain-Storm by Rebecca Jordan-Young? I've been meaning to since my prof recommended it (only read a few chapters so far). It's an investigation of the research behind what she calls "brain organisation theory" and where it fails / succeeds. Really interesting to see how the sociological constructs of sex and gender are sometimes not understood by scientists who take it as a given, which then influences their research. It's made me very skeptical of any research that claims to find general sex based differences in human brains. Not to say that it's impossible for such differences to exist but it seems more likely to me that individuals vary far too much amongst themselves to neatly fit into any category
Gender is a social construct. Sex is not. A lack of properly studying and taking into account the differences between female and male biology has resulted a lot of preventable injuries due to safety measures being made for female-shaped males instead of females and illnesses being written off as “menstrual issues.”
Sex is a social construct in the same way that classification of species is a social construct. It is a loose collection of traits grouped in boxes we colloquially refer to as male or female. It is a very useful social construct, yes. It is extremely important to be able to classify these traits effectively in order to ensure the best treatment. But in the end, it is a trait only we as a society prescribe to individuals, not a fundamental aspect of the universe.
This exactly. We group a lot of shit into the “female sex” and “male sex” boxes that are either entirely environmental and thus extremely mutable and individual or just outright false. For a prime example of both, see the ways pain is handled in male-socialized/male-presenting patients vs female-socialized/female-presenting patients.
You get the social aspect that teaches each gender that they should ignore pain under different circumstances, and then supposedly evidence-based but often subconsciously cherry-picked medical praxis about pain tolerance that collapses utterly as soon as you try to find any physiological explanation. Or apply the tiniest shred of empathy without layering it in sexism (the big one here is assuming that labor pain can be compared one-to-one to other pain. In reality, the hormones associated with labor have major effects on how the pain is experienced and later recalled, making the comparison even less useful than other pain comparisons, which are pretty useless to begin with.)
Counterpoint: many more men are colorblind than women, and women have the legendary fourth cone type more often. This is actually about a sex-based trait, not gender.
Although gay men’s fashion does show the limits of the physical differences.
Sorry, what point are you trying to address? Psychology is extremely complicated, so different attributes have completely different (and often multiple) causes.
Yes, colourblindness is a chromosome-based trait, so of course it's based on sex. How does this show that women see more shades than men, and that this is entirely sex-based? They're completly unrelated.
The only claim I made was that psychology is too complicated to solely attribute "women seeing more shades than men" to sex without some scepticism.
Like seriously wtf even is the problem here? Are you getting upset because some research might suggest women can see more colors? Is that enough to offend you? Holy shit actually get a job bro
i think this is a misconception, and it's origin would be due to having two X chromosomes, which increases the chance of tetrachromacy. Almost everyone has 3 cones. An extremely small number of people with XX chromosomes have 4, but on average there's no difference
Tiny colour differences usually come from undertones or art training or simply caring more lol
Part of it is that often, men can notice the difference between colours but don't really consider it worth considering it as an entirely separate colour, where's women often do see those subtle differences as worthy of being considered entirely separate colours.
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u/Upset-Elderberry3723 29d ago
Indeed. Although, some research does exist indicating that women se a wider range of colour shades than men normally do due to cone density in the eyes.
As a trans woman, I've always been able to see really tiny differences in shades that others around me haven't.