#229： How Men and Women Socialize Differently
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Summary
The popular idea out there is that women are more social than men, and that men are more competitive than women. What's more, these tendencies are socially conditioned rather than biologically innate. But what if it's the other way around? My guest today is a psychologist who has spent 30 years researching the differences between how boys and girls socialize, and she's discovered that many of the ideas that people have on the subject are completely wrong.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast so the popular
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idea out there is that women are more social than men and men are more competitive than women
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what's more these tendencies are socially conditioned rather than biologically innate
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but what if it's the other way around my guest today is a psychologist who has spent 30 years
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researching the differences between how boys and girls socialize and she's discovered that many of
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the ideas that people have on the subject are completely wrong her name is joyce bendison and
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she's the author of the book warriors and warriors the survival of the sexes and today on the show
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joyce and i discuss the biological origins of male and female socialization why men prefer all male
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groups and why women can be just as if not more competitive as men we also discuss how men compete
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to cooperate and why men can make up much faster with an enemy than women can really fascinating
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podcast after the show check out the show notes at aom.is slash bendison that's b-e-n-e-n-s-o-n
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for links to resources where you can delve deeper into this topic
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joyce bendison welcome to the show thank you um so you are the author of a book called warriors and
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warriors uh talks about the differences between how boys and girls socialize uh but before we get
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to the details of your research can you tell us about your background what led you to researching
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these social differences between boys and girls okay so i was trained as a developmental psychologist
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and i spent a lot of my time out on the playground watching kids far away from adults do what kids
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do naturally which is not so easy to see these days um and what i was seeing is a tremendous
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difference in how boys and girls were playing with boys in large groups um engaging in either fighting
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or team sports um being as far away as possible from their schools or any adults that were around
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and so forth and in contrast girls either with a best friend or a small clique not engaging in any sort
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of competition if possible staying as close as possible to the teachers and actually staying in
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the schools if they're at a school or a camp um near the counselors and helping out teachers and trying
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to be with adults okay so yeah right there you talked about the the big broad differences and i thought
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it was interesting you said that it's harder to to see nowadays because there's less play time less
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recess exactly it really is and adults are trying to control everything kids do so um what you're
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saying is not natural it's what kids are being forced into um by protective adults so um it's
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harder to look at what kids would most like to do okay and so uh these differences are they are they
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innate or they the result of culture and socialization or are they a bit of both okay well always they would
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be a bit of both but um regardless of how they begin initially um certainly if they're beginning early
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in childhood there's a lot of socialization that occurs long before kids get to be adults
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so um the reason i study young kids is i do think it's more likely to have an innate bias if you see
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it really early and some of the research i do is even with infants so if it's there with infants i kind
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of think there's probably good evidence that there's some innate bias but regardless if it's there with
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infants or an early childhood there's a lot of practice which is socialization not necessarily by adults
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which is how usually people think about socialization um but by peers and so there's a lot of that
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happening so you talk about the research you do on infants on in your book i thought that was
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interesting how can you tell for example that boys prefer you know larger groups um you know
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rough and tumble play even when they're six months old and they can't really socialize
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okay so um what you do is children including babies are have lots of preferences just like anybody
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else just like animals do so you put two videos side by side and you just determine which way kids
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are looking so you put an infant on his or her mother's lap um and you blindfold the mother or
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sometimes as a father and then you just play um on these screens pictures of groups or pictures of
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individuals pictures of hitting motions or pictures of cradling motions and we find even at six months of
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age that boys are more likely to prefer the groups over the individuals and boys are more likely to
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prefer the hitting motions as opposed to the cradling motions that's really interesting i mean that's
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pretty funny that even infant boys like to watch people get pummeled um yeah so i mean do they i mean
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i imagine um i mean you kind of you described yourself as a a human primatologist i think that's what
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you talked about in your book i mean do you see this these this this these differences in other primates
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between boys and girls or males and females okay so so um i work most closely with richard wrangham
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at harvard and he studies chimpanzees and the reason i started working with him is because he was the
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only one i could find who was looking at exactly what i was looking at which is the social structure
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of humans and he was looking at the social structure of chimpanzees and we were both finding the
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exact same differences which is that males were organizing themselves spontaneously in large
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groups very interconnected constantly fighting but also fighting against other groups and in contrast
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females in both species were either by themselves and just with adults or their own children or
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sometimes females will form one close best friend relationship so um it was just uncanny and when i
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discovered that as a graduate student i started thinking why isn't anyone who studies humans
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talking about the basic social structure of humans and they weren't and they still aren't for the most
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part but primatologists are this is what they do when they study a species one of the first things
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they establish is what's the social structure that's amazing yeah we had uh richard wrangham on the
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podcast a while back so for those of you who haven't checked that out uh just search for it on the site
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a really fascinating uh podcast about demonic males was what his book was exactly um so let's talk about
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like so why do these differences exist what's the i mean i guess it's an evolutionary explanation why do
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boys or men prefer large groups large social networks uh fighting while girls prefer smaller
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tight-knit communities maybe just like one or two close friends and more cooperation or i guess not
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cooperation more i don't know what you would call it not rough and tumble well exactly i mean what we
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talk about with cooperation is females cooperating with their families with kin with taking care of
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children so you know that's what they're doing um males are cooperating with unrelated same-sex
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individuals and just building on the reference to demonic males humans and chimpanzees are one of the
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very few species that engage in intergroup lethal aggression which in uh human parlance we call war
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so basically if you're going to have a community try to kill another community or in these days uh
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country try to invade another country um you need very very strong cooperation and the individuals who
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generally do that throughout human history are males and in chimpanzee communities uh across africa it's
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the same thing individuals who do that are males so it's really important that these males are
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successful it's important to the whole community because if not your community gets taken over by
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another community and they get your food and they kill you and that's kind of the end of your community
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so the cooperation and the self-sacrifice and the trust that has to exist amongst the males of your
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community is really really important and that is true whether it's chimpanzees or humans and i
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became so fascinated by richard rangham's work because it was so similar to what we have in humans and
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so rare in animal species yeah and you talk about in the book sort of uh about the the fears the
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different fears that boys and girls have uh and how and how that influence influences the way they
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socialize and you say like for boys the big fear that boys have are enemies like they want to think
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they fear enemies but they also kind of like having enemies exactly i mean enemies are really really
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attractive to boys so you know they have sharks and tiger enemies they have you know mean uh men
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enemies and of course they make up all kinds of enemies that come from mars and that come from all
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kinds of other alien spaces and whatever so boys are really i see that by three they assume they assume
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the responsibility for getting rid of the enemy which is a whole group or horrible individual who can
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decimate their community and girls have no interest in this whatsoever girls are much more concerned with
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making sure they don't get sick making sure things are healthy making sure you know that um they don't get cut
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all kinds of things that really in the real life of three-year-olds make a bigger difference to their survival
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so that's why i find it so funny because um boys are doing things that at three they're not going to
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be responsible for at all um which is why they more often end up in the emergency room all over the world
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yeah and i mean you talk about um that these differences are all based on survival for for boys
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for the community to survive uh they need need men who can fight so it makes sense that boys would
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kind of be had this tendency to fight and cooperate in large groups where women the survival thing is
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all about taking care of your kids and making sure that they survive and they can pass on your genes
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exactly so by age five in a lot of communities in the world um girls are already taking care of their
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younger siblings so it's really important their work and that continues of course for the rest of
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their life when grandmothers take care of their grandchildren and it really does affect the chances
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that their grandchildren live so girls jobs are really important boys don't have that level of
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importance until the enemy uh attacks or they need food or resources for their community and they
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have to be the one attacking attacking so you have you know really a whole different set of
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responsibilities for girls versus boys at least that's how i see it and i see it by age three
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yeah that is it's really amazing um so like going back to this idea common i what you said earlier about
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cooperation i think there's this common idea out there that you know women are more social than men
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but it seems like your research suggests that's not actually true that men um might be even sometimes
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more social than women uh why do we have this idea that women are more social than men and how are men
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oftentimes more social than women right okay so um most of the social sciences describe women as the
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communal sex the cooperative sex the emotionally connected sex the caring sex whatever and men are
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independent and agentic and you know status driving and not really into anybody else um this is what
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the social science literature says and i think what they're doing is they're looking at the incredible
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bonds that mothers form to their children to husbands to their own mothers um and these really um
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are last throughout a lifetime so they're very very powerful in contrast right boys are off going as far as
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part uh as far away as possible from you know their their parents their homes they're going off with
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each other so and they're fighting and they're you know committing homicide with ratios 10 to 1 um so
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this does not sound communal or caring or interconnected in fact though if you look at relationships between
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unrelated same-sex peers girls with girls women with women or boys with boys and men's men
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you find that boys and men are cooperating much more with each other they'll die for each other in a war
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and if you look at who's running the government who's running religious institutions who's running
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educational institutions um just now women are kind of entering these bastions of male cooperation
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but they've always been male and they've built society men have built society there is no other way to
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say it women we are keeping people alive but men have cooperated to build societies and so i think
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you need to say okay are you talking about with families with kin or are you talking about with
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unrelated individuals who shared none of your genes and that's where i see men as much more communal and
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cooperative and as i say in my book what could be more communal communal or cooperative than warfare i mean
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you're living with these filthy swearing you know uh same age unrelated men and you're having a ball a lot
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of the time yeah and and i think it's interesting too you talk about how men you know compete with each
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other and with other groups to bond which seems really counterintuitive that you would you can bond that
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way through competition right so i have an article out this week that's that's received a lot of press
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and what it does is it looks at four different sports tennis table tennis badminton and boxing
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where they literally try to kill each other and i looked at those sports to try to build on what i had
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done in the book and say how do you get from constant one-on-one competition and even aggression
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to cooperation in a group against other groups and the mechanism that richard rangham and i came up with
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was reconciliation so what happens in chimpanzee communities is males who are fighting all the
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time whereas females barely fight um males who are fighting all the time also reconcile a higher
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percentage of their conflicts by engaging in post-conflict affiliation they hug each other they
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actually shake hands they touch each other's hand and they shake it um and that allows them then to
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turn around and bond with their former opponent and what what we did um there what richard rangham
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and i did just recently um and published this week is try to make that um link clear in humans so
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across these four sports males after losing a competition because it's hard for me to understand as a
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woman but they will hug each other they'll warmly shake hands they'll give each other pets on the back
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and you know they just run uh lost a grand slam tennis championship they just almost killed each
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other in a boxing match sometimes they actually do kill each other in which case they can't do this
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but they always feel bad really bad about it afterwards in contrast after these competitions
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where you would expect that women wouldn't care as much you know they're supposed to be more
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cooperative but of course they're with unrelated females women can barely touch each other they'll like
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uh rub each other's fingers and then run off the court um they'll give each other a quick hug in
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boxing and get out of there as fast as possible and you can see that they're really having a hard
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time and i understand this if i just lost to somebody and i really cared about winning because i'm a
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top athlete and these athletes came from 44 different countries i too would want to get out of there
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you know and hate the person who just deprived me of the status and the money and everything that i worked
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so hard to achieve but men don't do that they they literally somehow managed to get over it really
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fast i mean is the thinking the reason why men do that is because you know that person that beat them
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could be a potential ally in the future so you want to make up that's exactly our thinking so
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basically you know if in one chapter i'm talking about competition and fighting and you know
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constant competition among boys and in the next chapter i'm talking about group cooperation and
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the question is you know how do you go from a to b something has to happen in the middle which
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doesn't make sense um to me as a female but this is the best evidence that we have now which is there
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is this post-conflict affiliation and it happens within five minutes with chimpanzee males and it
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happens immediately within five minutes for these sports competitors and it's just it's just unnerving
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to watch because i don't know i can't stand it because as a woman i'm thinking how could they do
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that but the men really look warm they really look like they care about the person who just killed them
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or who they just killed and the women look just stunned and like they they're disgusted
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and i think it's interesting you highlight in the book um a famous experiment that happened actually
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here in oklahoma the robber's cave experiment that sort of highlights this different this this um
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contrast between boys competing with each other but then reconciling with each other to you know
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go after another enemy can you talk a little bit about the robber's cave experiment yeah that's one of
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the most classic studies um they brought two groups i believe is 11 year old boys um to two
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campsites that were distant so they didn't know about one another and these boys gave themselves names
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the eagles and the rattlers and um then slowly the counselors let them become aware of the fact of
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one another's existence and immediately after these boys within their own groups have been competing over
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all kinds of things that boys at camp you know compete over having their own tugs of war and
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you know um baseball and whatever now all of a sudden there's another group so they drop this
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extreme competition and they let whoever is best at whatever is the domain whether it's tug of war or
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it's baseball or tent building or whatever the competitions that the counselors organized were
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these boys then chose the best boy from their group to lead all of them supported him totally
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they had hierarchies and their sole goal was try to try to beat the other group and boy was it intense
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they had to actually break them up sometime they felt so strongly about winning against the other
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group yeah i think there was like raiding going on like they would like go and raid the other guy's
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cabin steal stuff demolish things yep and i think the experimenters even thought about calling off the
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experiment because it was getting a little out of hand yeah it was out of hand and they thought they
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could you know bring them together and watch some movies and everything would be okay so they
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started getting really worried and they're trying all these joint you know having dinner together and
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all this wasn't working finally the only thing that worked is they created an emergency that required
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the two boys to get together as one team and that's where you see organizations like nato and
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and these um alliances across the world that seem to be the only way to get warring nations together in
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many cases and in this case i think they had a truck breakdown and the boys were really stranded and
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both the eagles and the rattlers were on the truck and they needed all of them because the truck was
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so heavy to push the truck i can't remember the details and and to save all the boys and then
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that broke down the barriers between the two groups right so they had the enemy the enemy was the truck
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was the common enemy exactly yeah that's really interesting well and going back to this difference
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between how you know boys and girls socialize um you talk about in the book that boys prefer all male
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groups while girls aren't very particular about their group of friends if it's co-ed or not why is
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that well okay again i have an evolutionary explanation um so what i would argue is that male
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groups and that means unrelated boys right really benefit from one another so they mutually need to grow up
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together form their bond so they can defend their communities if another community attacks or if they're
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going to attack another community i don't and i know this is very controversial but i don't see the
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advantage of unrelated females spending time together and even though it feels wonderful to have a best
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friend and a best friend certainly can be a source of relaxation and she can even be a protection
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against other girls trying to hurt you in terms of socially excluding you and so forth but basically
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a woman is faced with bringing up her children and she never has enough energy to accomplish that on
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her own so who's going to help her well not another woman who also doesn't have enough energy to bring
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up her own children that makes no sense so therefore a woman a mother turns to those who have a genetic
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interest in her children her own mother her husband um any other female relatives maybe her in-laws
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those are the people that are going to be most likely to invest hopefully they've already had
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their children so there's no competition with raising children but an unrelated woman she can be a source
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of sharing similar experiences which is wonderful to have feels good but in the end it's amazing to me
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how much women do not help each other raise their own kids they don't get together and say okay listen
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we all have kids we're all stuck we don't have enough energy we need to produce we have you know
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unreliable husbands so why don't we share this burden all together you know because some of us will work
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and some of us will take care of the kids and and we don't need to you know have husbands we don't
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need to have families we can do it ourselves and i i'm not aware of that happening that's really
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interesting and so going back to to boys like how so the boys prefer all male groups how do they decide
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who's in the group or who's not okay so i talk about this quite a bit um you know i was describing
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a lot of results people have found in developmental psychology but from a theoretical point of view
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who should be in the group well who will help you if you are fighting against another group you want
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people that you can trust so who can you trust well girls are just so much weaker and slower and really
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much less strong at throwing projectiles and so forth so you don't want girls that's not helpful
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and you don't want your mother as much as she loves you and takes care of you she's going to be of no
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use if there's a war um so eventually when you get to be a teenager you're going to be at the height of
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your physical prowess you want others who are also at the height of their physical prowess so you want
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strong individuals you want emotionally cool individuals who are not going to break down because
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they're so afraid because they might be killed you want individuals who are going to be sociable
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and follow the rules so that you don't have uh males going off and doing whatever they want they're
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going to be loyal to the group and they're going to be able to listen to the hierarchy so you make
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sure that the best people are at the top you want people who have expertise so those who are particularly
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good for example with leadership those who are good at repairing things those are good at
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understanding strategy for how to attack whatever it is even those who are good at cooking you know
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any kind of strength that can contribute to the war effort is really worthwhile and you don't want
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girls and i talk about homosexual boys but i only mean homosexual boys who are not willing to help out
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the other boys i always found it so horrifying and yet amazing that so early in life boys ostracize
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other boys who are more effeminate and i thought why do they bother do this right it's so costly to
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spend so much time what is it and then i realized i mean there's a lot of men who are homosexual who
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are just fine with fighting there's no problem with it and you know many people think you can be
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heterosexual and hetero homosexual at the same time but those boys who don't like other boys who would
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prefer to be at the girls prefer to play house who are scared who don't want to follow the rules
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because girls don't like these rules either who don't want to you know basically be cool and who
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aren't particularly physically tough they're not going to be a help you know if there's an enemy that
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fights and fights you so therefore what you want are boys who have certain characteristics that would
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contribute to the fighting force and of course everyone in developmental psychology knows that boys don't
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like other boys with these particular traits they you know they break all the rules they they're not
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sociable with the other boys they're not physically tough they're not emotionally cool so forth
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um and so i i everyone knows this but i then i it suddenly occurred to me well there's a good reason
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that boys would come so early with these preferences because that's exactly what the army is describing
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they don't want either and you know going back to that idea that what boys and men don't like
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is not necessarily homosexuality it's just effeminacy
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exactly so like so are there instances where a girl could be a part of the male gang if like if
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they're like tomboyish yes i do think boys will accept tomboys um all over the world boys are always
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superior dominant to girls and you know i think a girl has to put up with that but if she really likes
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playing with the boys if she likes following the rules if she's physically tough if she's emotionally cool
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if she's got some expertise she can contribute boys will take that and of course more and more
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girls are entering you know the army the military in the united states in some countries they do all
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the time um and it is true actually with chimpanzees too almost all of the ones who are engaging in
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intergroup war um are male but occasionally you have a female who's really tough um the ones i'm aware of
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didn't ever have their own children they were sterile and they'll join and the males will treat them as
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another male and you know they're they're not going to be dominant they're going to be subordinate
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but they'll take them along and they're useful because there's power numbers yeah and i think
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going back to this idea i thought it was something you just mentioned earlier about how boys are
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obsessed with rules and rulemaking which is kind of weird because you always think of like as boys
00:25:53.340
as being troublesome they don't obey the rules in class you know etc etc why are boys obsessed with
00:25:59.980
rules and rulemaking okay so again very important they certainly not obsessed or willing to even
00:26:07.720
follow the rules of authority figures they're obsessed with their own rules and my best guess is to
00:26:13.820
the reason this is the case is this is how you create a hierarchy and boys are constantly competing
00:26:19.380
over everything i mean at three years of age they're competing over the to me silliest things like
00:26:23.920
who can make the best paper airplane who can jump highest in the air who can you know run their
00:26:28.020
tricycle facets across the room whatever it is they can think of they'll compete over it um but
00:26:33.640
it's very important that the other boys fall into line so they need to acknowledge and they do
00:26:39.160
acknowledge who's best who's second best who's the third best but just because you're the best in one
00:26:44.520
area like uh making the best paper airplanes doesn't mean you can jump the highest so the idea is
00:26:50.720
these are rules who who is top who is second top who is third third and that means that if you happen
00:26:57.920
to be facing another group you can put your best man forward and so i think that's part of it now i know
00:27:04.220
that there have been studies looking at um team sports where boys will spend more time negotiating the
00:27:10.460
rules and renegotiating them than they will actually playing the game so i don't totally understand
00:27:16.720
what's the reason but i have to guess it has to do with strategy in terms of okay this is how we are
00:27:23.180
going to run our team our group perhaps our military outfit and listen you can't break it you can't break
00:27:30.220
the rule because we're gonna die if you do so that is again totally guess but that is my guess that you
00:27:37.400
need others who can flexibly create new rules break them but agree to follow whatever that group
00:27:43.420
rules are at the moment very interesting so we've been talking about um competition amongst boys um
00:27:49.220
but girls compete too but they do in a different way how do girls compete with each other
00:27:54.860
okay so um girls um have to be really careful not to get hurt because girls are responsible for their
00:28:04.260
whole lives really starting at age five in many you know traditional cultures for taking care of their
00:28:09.520
younger siblings and grandmothers as i said will take care of their grandchildren and and really
00:28:15.940
there's studies showing they can affect whether their grandchildren live or not so throughout their
00:28:21.160
lives girls are responsible for keeping others alive um they're born with a finite number of ova
00:28:26.680
they have to make sure they don't hurt them they have to protect their bodies which are many ways much
00:28:32.280
more complicated than boys bodies so they can't get hurt so no fighting physically if you can help it at
00:28:39.300
all and therefore girls have to figure out a different way to compete because there are things to compete
00:28:44.820
for um in most societies girls in adolescence do compete for men um even when their parents are
00:28:52.420
helping make the selection girls will have some say in it almost always in hunter-gatherer tribes
00:28:57.840
women make their own choices which is like here so there's really good reason to compete and before
00:29:04.700
that girls compete over friends they compete over resources they compete over activities so they do
00:29:11.160
compete so um the question is what do they do and of course they're going to use some type of
00:29:17.040
aggression where they can't get caught and they can't um face retaliation which could which could
00:29:22.840
physically hurt them so what do they do they disguise their aggression um you can disguise aggression
00:29:28.120
a lot of ways you can um well you can beat up somebody's stuff like um ruin her art project or
00:29:35.880
whatever when she's not there um you can say terrible things about anyone when she's not there
00:29:41.080
you can try to ruin someone's reputation um and you can do it even when a girl who is your target is
00:29:47.440
right there as long as you're subtle enough so if you're saying to this girl oh you know poor you
00:29:53.960
you know it's such a shame that you have whatever vulnerability and it sounds good to the outside
00:29:58.840
world but in fact you're putting this girl down and then if there's enough people around you can
00:30:04.620
damage this girl without her knowing even what's happening because it's so subtle and you can do this
00:30:09.860
with non-verbal gestures so you can flick your hair you can roll your eyes you can emphasize some
00:30:16.660
words or make a very prescient pause whatever it is um and you say to others this girl's no good
00:30:24.060
and if it's serious enough so you have a really pretty girl you have a newcomer girl in adolescence
00:30:29.720
you have a girl who's vulnerable in some way so she's a low-hanging fruit you can get together
00:30:34.580
with the other girls and you can really effectively ostracize a girl and because there's not power
00:30:39.840
numbers in fact there's more resources and more males around if you get rid of a girl or a woman
00:30:45.440
um it's scary to be a girl or woman with only unrelated girls around because girls do aggress
00:30:52.580
and eventually of course they in adolescence and adulthood girls will turn to authority figures
00:30:58.160
like men and others and try to ostracize a girl from the community and even i will say in um preschool
00:31:06.180
girls will go tell the teacher much more than boys will to try to get rid of some other girl who's
00:31:11.300
breaking the rules so and those rules are teacher's rules and so what you have is girls using completely
00:31:17.560
different strategies than boys but nevertheless aggressing and competing so yeah girls will use
00:31:22.820
third parties while boys will just try to take care of you know self-help yeah okay um so how does uh
00:31:29.860
environment affect these innate um tendencies for socialization like is when times of stress
00:31:36.320
and danger do they amplify and in times of like prosperity and safety do they kind of diminish
00:31:41.860
yeah that's exactly what you know i would argue now again here the research has not been done and it
00:31:48.920
ought to be but what i argue or theorize in my book is that if you're living in a society where
00:31:54.480
there isn't an imminent threat of war or you're not sending a lot of boys to the military then mothers
00:32:01.020
kind of communicate to boys that they needn't be so aggressive they and they do this by being closer
00:32:06.180
to them having secure attachment spending a lot of time with their sons and the boys do not spend that
00:32:12.320
much time then relatively with other boys so therefore you have a lot more of expressing emotions and
00:32:19.600
taking care of younger siblings and and doing things that you know are more similar to girls but should
00:32:25.860
there be a threat of war or you have a large percentage of individuals entering the military mother
00:32:30.060
can't do that so she says okay you're on your own you've got to be independent the boy will spend
00:32:34.900
more time with males other young boys are going to fight compete engage in intergroup competitions
00:32:41.040
and then you have boys who are getting prepared to actually enter warfare so i that is what i would
00:32:47.740
hypothesize that mothers are somehow communicating to their sons not consciously but inadvertently by their
00:32:54.720
actions what kind of life they can expect and how secure is it going to be and how much are they
00:32:59.980
going to have to take responsibility for dealing with the enemy i think all boys are interested in
00:33:05.160
this but in some cases they end up dealing with it much earlier than in other cases as for girls
00:33:11.340
as far as environmental stressors there is some research that suggests that if there's not a mother
00:33:18.940
around who can really invest in her daughter then girls are more likely to start menstruating earlier
00:33:24.840
and to look for a mate much earlier and so she grows up faster still however you get girls who are
00:33:32.920
going to be primarily taking care of children and they will try to maintain their bonds with their
00:33:39.000
mothers and you know going back earlier what you said about schools that also it seems like they're
00:33:43.120
trying to communicate the message that you know you don't aggression is not needed right now
00:33:47.820
cooperation sort of like how you know what we think of as cooperation not male cooperation is what we need to
00:33:53.740
emphasize yeah i mean that's what a middle class or rich school communicates to boys i'm not sure a
00:34:01.880
poor school might try but they're not going to be as successful i mean certainly we know throughout
00:34:06.440
the united states um you look at a low socioeconomic status school and the boys are given a lot more
00:34:12.580
freedom and they're getting in a lot more trouble and they're spending a lot more time with each other
00:34:16.240
certainly when i'm in a very poor school a lot of times there's not even a teacher in the classroom or if
00:34:21.420
the teacher's there she's just doing something else and the boys are beating each other up um when i
00:34:27.020
lived in britain it was kind of um actually even in the upper class schools it was kind of um i would
00:34:34.180
say encouraged that if a boy has a fight with another boy well just leave them alone they'll beat the hell
00:34:39.800
out of each other sorry but they will beat the hell out of each other and um they'll figure it out and
00:34:45.140
they'll be stronger for it and actually the teacher shouldn't um intervene in any way of course
00:34:51.140
the upper classes in britain are more likely to get involved in the military but in the lower class
00:34:58.320
schools in britain as well you see what you see here which is the teachers are just not paying as
00:35:03.640
much attention so the boys are naturally getting their education on the side not exactly what the
00:35:08.520
teachers had in mind but in fact if there is a war or if you need to send military
00:35:14.260
you know send males into the military it may be exactly what the teachers have in mind
00:35:19.820
unconsciously right so i mean joyce what are the implications of of your research i mean i know
00:35:24.940
you're primarily describing what's going on but uh what can say parents or educators do with this
00:35:31.780
knowledge and how they educate or rear boys and girls okay well i think the first thing is to kind of
00:35:39.380
think that there are natural tendencies that boys and girls have now people would argue with me and
00:35:45.080
say oh well it's the tv that is teaching these tendencies or adults are somehow you know passing
00:35:51.640
these tendencies on whatever it is by three years of age boys and girls are being socialized in two
00:35:58.540
different worlds and i feel very strongly that that's the case because i see it in in real life
00:36:03.200
and so therefore whatever you think are the origins of these sex differences by the time
00:36:09.240
children become adults they have very very different ways of thinking about the world and about each
00:36:15.680
other so when people say oh my gosh what's going on you know the men are dominant to the women in
00:36:20.660
this organization something must be wrong or what is it you have these uh young men in the military and
00:36:27.400
um they don't feel that comfortable when you put young women into the military what what is going on
00:36:32.820
what's happening or you look at the fact that you know men are um being asked to stay home and you
00:36:39.180
know women are feeling that their husbands aren't doing enough and then you know you see the i know
00:36:44.500
my husband once i asked him to help out after a dinner party and he started vacuuming you know the
00:36:49.720
the table and the placemats so because i'd asked him to help and i thought oh my gosh what is the matter
00:36:54.760
with you you know and of course he hasn't had any experience cleaning up and he doesn't like cleaning
00:36:59.300
up so he just wanted to get it done so you have you know years and years and years of socialization
00:37:04.960
that's occurring from infancy that's different for boys and girls so you should expect that if you're
00:37:12.040
going to try to enter the other milieu um that it's going to be rough that it's going to be different
00:37:18.060
that you're going to not have the experiences so that that's one obvious um ramification and the
00:37:24.240
other one is i think a lot of people think that males really aren't aggressive that we've caused it
00:37:28.620
that there's some unnatural thing that we've done and it's just awful which is just absurd to me
00:37:34.180
having studied lots of other non-human primate species um and the other is this idea of girls
00:37:40.260
being so sweet you know girls need to attain status those who have the highest status are the ones that
00:37:45.540
live the longest that's true for boys that's true for girls so it makes sense to fight over status
00:37:50.620
however you can get there and this idea that you know oh yes go to school and you'll find these
00:37:56.060
lovely best friends and everything will be really nice um is missing what's really going on underneath
00:38:01.900
it all and so i think there's a lot that parents could understand if they want to better help their
00:38:07.900
children and and be and be sympathetic and and help their children when they get to be adults
00:38:12.800
right well joyce has been a fascinating conversation where can people learn more about your book and your
00:38:17.060
work um um well i've published a lot of articles obviously um my book is is for sale um i have a
00:38:26.400
recent article that's just come out on um sex differences in reconciliation in sports in current
00:38:33.120
biology um so all of these are kind of looking at the dynamics of males when they're together at all
00:38:39.220
different ages and females when they're together at all different ages very good well joyce benenson
00:38:43.100
thank you so much for your time it's been a pleasure thank you very much my guest today was
00:38:47.560
joyce benenson she's the author of the book warriors and warriors the survival of sexes and that's
00:38:51.740
available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere also check out the show notes at aom.is
00:38:56.560
slash benenson for links to resources where you delve deeper into this topic
00:39:00.620
well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice
00:39:14.900
make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com and if you enjoy
00:39:18.760
this show i'd appreciate if you give us a review on itunes or stitcher helps us out a lot thank you
00:39:23.080
so much for your continued support and until next time this is brett mckay telling you to stay manly