Puerile sexist shite

This thread moves on at such a rate... It's so hard to keep up. I had to take issue with this though. I work as a diversity professional (maybe not for much longer, but at the moment it pays the bills and I happen to be rather good at it...) and the idea that men and women could be so different, or that stereotypes serve a useful purpose is such a huge insult.

Why should anyone be defined by a single, almost inconsequential aspect of how society tries to define them? There is such diversity in people, but to try and reduce someone's behaviour and characteristics down to either 'male' or 'female' is just insane...

The point about stereotypes is that they are to some degree fairly accurate. If they weren't there wouldn't be any. They have cultural resonance. Observation has confirmed them. We don't have stereotypes about, say, Welsh people having a great interest in shoes or Scousers preferring playing with dolls to cars or trains because there's no evidence to support either assertion. We do on the other hand hold these as stereotypes about women, largely because the majority of them conform to these stereotypes.

Men and women do have characteristics and patterns of behaviour that are massively governed by their gender and the hormonal balance that goes into the development of their brains. Things like cognitive processes, interests, likes and dislikes, talents and so forth differ significantly and consistently between the sexes. These are either reinforced or accommodated by upbringing and society to strengthen the stereotype. Of course we generalise and some men and women do not conform to their stereotypes (which is usually considered admirable), but the majority do. And that's no bad thing either.