A feminist scientist has been a bit annoyed by her studies –

I know it is not politically correct to say this but I’ve been torn for years between my politics and what science is telling us. I believe women actually perceive the world differently from men.

Girls arrive already wired as girls, and boys arrive already wired as boys. Their brains are different by the time they’re born, and their brains are what drive their impulses, values, and their very reality.

While women are wired to get pleasure from talking, men’s brains are apparently wired to get pleasure from thinking about sex. The ‘fact’ is stated that men think about sex every 52 seconds (when I first heard this idea, it was said to be every 8 seconds – we’re obviously slowing down) while women may only think about sex once a day. Clearly these people do not know most of the women that I’ve met as an adult, several of whom could probably make a marine blush. If I was given a clicker and told to carry it around all day and use it whenever I thought about sex I would probably be constantly asking myself ‘Am I thinking about sex?’ and the correct answer would be ‘well I wasn’t, but I am now’, which would make the whole study rather pointless.

Back on topic – an Oxford professor argues against the findings: ‘If you aggregate a large number of studies you will find there is little difference between the amount men and women talk.’ Which is fair enough, except that wasn’t specifically what the original study was saying: it only argued that women get greater pleasure from talking than men do – not precisely that they do actually talk more, only that they enjoy it more when they do.

More here.