MovieChat Forums > Brain Games (2011) Discussion > Black women in the gender episode

Black women in the gender episode

posted 9 years ago by cgraves04
2 replies | jump to latest

Did anybody else notice that the black American women in the battle of the sexes episode won all of the challenges they were asked to compete in against men? It seems to me that many of the differences between men and women presented in this episode are cultural/social instead of being merely biological, and they have as much to do with current gender roles and expectations as they supposedly have to do with hunting and gathering. I doubt the results hold up across many cultures. I mean, granted there were only two black women in the show, but they clearly had no trouble with spatial reasoning. And I've actually read that in cultures in which women share leadership roles with men, the gender gap, at least when it comes to spatial reasoning, becomes virtually nonexistent. It's weird that the show wouldn't even try to delve into that. I hate that they try to make it seem like their findings are universal when they're obviously not.

[–] vertigo220 9 years ago

I take those episodes as them just showing in fun ways differences that have been highlighted in scientific studies, so they're not just basing what they're saying off the results of their competitions. And there's always going to be exceptions, those are just general trends. But you're right, a lot of it is going to be based on other factors, which gets into the nature vs nurture debate. In the second gender battle episode, the first point awarded to the women wasn't even based off a competition, just simply them saying that if you did well in game #2 (where the couple talked about themselves and you had to answer questions about what they said afterward), you were likely a women, and since women typically do better as such tasks they get a point. Well, I'm a man, and I did really well at it, because it wasn't that hard. In any event, neither of these episodes were very scientific at all, and I don't think they were meant to be. They were just having fun.

I've come to realize that while this show is interesting and has a lot of good info to offer, just like pretty much everything else you can't take everything they say as cold hard fact.

[–] Stigger 8 years ago

You mentioned black women; therefore, you are automatically sexist and racist!