Experiencing opposite-sex body in VR causes gender identity shifts

New research shows that experiencing an opposite-sex body in virtual reality impacted the subject's gender identity.

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  • Scientists find that experiencing an opposite-sex body can affect a person's gender identity.
  • A new study utilized virtual reality to get subjects to feel like they had a stranger's body.
  • The researchers found that people's sense of their own gender became more balanced after the experiments.
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Study finds matriarchal societies are good for women's health

A study of the Mosuo women, known for their matriarchy, suggests that gender roles can influence our health outcomes.

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  • An isolated ethnic group in China maintains a matriarchal society, much to the benefit of their health.
  • The Mosuo women were not only healthier than women living under patriarchy, but were healthier than the men too.
  • The findings support the idea that having a degree of autonomy and resource control is good for your health
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Warrior women: New evidence of ancient female big-game hunters

Turns out gender assumptions have been going on for quite some time.

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  • A recent archaeological dig in the Peruvian mountains uncovered evidence of ancient female big-game hunters.
  • This adds to a growing consensus that women played a much bigger role in hunting than previously assumed.
  • Gender assumptions are a constant throughout history, with culture often playing a more important role than biology.
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Should parents de-emphasize gender norms?

The color of toys has a much deeper effect on children than some parents may realize.

  • The idea that blue is for boys and pink is for girls plays out in gender reveals and in the toy aisle, but where does it come from and what limits is it potentially placing on children?
  • Lisa Selin Davis traces the gendering of toys and other objects back to the 1920s and explains how, over time, these marketing strategies were falsely conflated with biological traits.
  • The "pink-blue divide" affects boys and girls on a psychological level. For example, psychologists discovered that when girls exit their intense 'pink princess' phase between ages 3-6 and move into a tomboy 'I hate pink' phase at age 6-8 "that is actually a moment of girls realizing that what's marked as feminine is devalued and so they're distancing themselves from it to prop themselves up higher on the ladder," says Selin Davis.
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Scientists haven’t found any major differences between women’s and men’s brains

Are there innate differences between female and male brains?

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People have searched for sex differences in human brains since at least the 19th century, when scientist Samuel George Morton poured seeds and lead shot into human skulls to measure their volumes.

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