Engineer's disorder and Extreme Male Autism Why women can't read maps..? Well my chickadees and cockadoos, it's all because men are just autistic super-pigs.

Autism, in its many guises, is an overwhelmingly male affliction, characterised by an abnormality in social development and communication skills and, usually, an obsessional interest in all sorts of weird, mechanistic stuff, from an early age (usually between three and five years). The current thesis among those studying autism holds that the condition is simply an extreme example of male behaviour. Simon Baron-Cohen, at the Autism Research Centre at Cambridge University, has put forward the ‘Extreme Male Brain’ theory of autism; simply that those abilities typical of the ‘average’ male brain — an ability to systematise, a facility for mechanistic analysis such as mathematics, computer programming and engineering — become, in their extreme form, part of what is now called a spectrum of autism. At the other end of the scale, the extreme female brain would be characterised by an extraordinary ability to empathise but a greatly impaired ability to, as he puts it, systematise. By ‘systematise’ he means an ability to read maps, do mathematical calculations, understand technical systems and so on; all those things which, colloquially, over the years, men have accused women of being hilariously useless at. The trouble is, men may now have the beginnings of scientific proof for what was previously seen as chauvinistic prejudice.

My one question.. why is scientific proof for non-egalitarian social phenomenon so much trouble for some people? Follow the evidence, said the wise TV forensic scientist, not one's wishful thoughts. When facts collide with ideology, it is ideology that must give way to adapt or else risk fading into irrelevancy. A parting thought, not entirely farfetched given the PC-ridden educational system in this country. What effect is the predominantly female teacher population having on young boys, as they teach them from an early age that they are hardwired improperly, their existence barely tolerated during classroom activity. How much damage is caused by the forced molding of young male minds into unsustainable personalities? It's not hard to imagine otherwise healthy behavior, even an "obsession" with mechanical objects like guns, becoming pathological and self-destructive. Harris & Kelbold, anyone..? Razib adds: During my freshmen year in college I took a survey course titled "Human Evolution." The professor asked the class (about 400 of us) if it was likely that Australian Aborigines had more "Erectine features" than other human races-should this possible fact be explored and publicized? 3/4 of the class answered in the negative (I was part of the 1/4 minority). The point is that for some people, facts are irrelevant. There are those who will blind themselves to the truth in the service to their ideology, but now there are those who don't even believe in the importance of facts at all. Didn't anyone tell them that sticking their heads in the sand won't help when the lion is prowling around the bend? They might not see it coming, but it will tear them to shreds nonetheless.