What are the real differences between boys and girls?

Wow! I set out to find at least some of the answers to this question, prompted by the ongoing sparring between Big Mike and I. We can argue all we want with each other, point to our own personal experiences, and claim until we are blue in the face that our own point of view is the correct one. But what do experts have to say about the matter?

What I found was such a wealth of material on the subject, that I have enough gathered to write several posts. I thought it might be helpful to go in chronological order of the “facts” uncovered.

Here is a smattering of some of the archaic research I found. For instance, examine these statements made by George Napheys, in his 1879 treatise, The Transmission of Life.

“The male is everywhere, and in all his manifestations, characterized by peculiar traits, and the female by others quite as much her own. In the highest types of human physical beauty, the feminine and masculine traits are brought into intimate union and a perfect equilibrium.”

“On the other hand, in that most perfect model of the female figure, the Venus of Milo, exquisitely feminine as it is, there lurks constantly some line or vague expression which reminds us of a man. Instinctively the ancient artist…recognized and gave to his work that unity of the sexes which the philosopher reasons must belong to the perfect human creature.”

As they grow, boys’ “mus-cular force becomes one-third greater than hers; his flesh is firmer and his bones larger; his collar-bone becomes more curved so that he can hurl a stone or swing a club better than she can; his hips are narrow, while hers are broad, and thus he can run faster and more gracefully; he grows more rapidly, and he seeks the rude exercises which she shuns. All these traits presage his destiny to wage the rougher battles of life, and fit him to meet the buffets of untoward fortune with courage and endurance.”

Girls, on the other hand, are characterized by “the delicate skin, the fragile bones, the rounded outline, the abundance of fatty tissue.”

From additional pens recorded in infamy:

Female students were concluded to be pale, in delicate health and “prey to monstrous deviations from menstrual regularity.”
(Clarke, 1873, last printing 1963)

The woman who uses her brain loses her “mammary function first and had little hope to be other than a moral and medical freak.”
(Hall, 1905)

Women are “closer to children and savages than to an adult civilized man.”
(Le Bon, 1879, reported in Gould, 1981)

Clearly, scientists and other researchers of the 19th century were sadly mistaken in many of their claims. Is it no wonder, then, that women have been fighting the expectations attributed to them by mere dint of their sex for over 150 years?

To be continued…

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Free books from the Chest of Books: “The Transmission Of Life. Counsels On The Nature And Hygiene Of The Masculine Function”, by George H. Napheys. Available from Amazon.