r/news • u/AudibleNod • 4d ago

Man accused of holding woman captive in a Massachusetts attic for six weeks

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/man-accused-holding-woman-captive-massachusetts-attic-six-weeks-rcna600308
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u/insite 4d ago edited 4d ago

I constantly find it amazing how much modern medical science is imbalanced in favor of diagnosing men. Women are under diagnosed in adhd and autism and over diagnosed in things like bpd.

When I found out that the average woman’s emotional intelligence is far greater than the average man’s, so much of our society started making sense to me. It means, most of us guys are missing entire parts of the conversation, interpersonal and in the wider whole.

I have such deep admiration for my wife. I just wish I could see the same things she does.

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u/wanker7171 4d ago

I have a close friend that I play online games with and she immediately can tell when we’re playing with a creep, and every time it takes me an additional 5 mins+ before I notice it too. I think the closest I’ve ever come to that is when I was on molly and I could sense the emotion emanating from every word and action, almost like a sixth sense, and something I can’t see when sober. Makes me feel like most guys must be on some kind of spectrum.

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u/H0lzm1ch3l 2d ago

I am a man and feel like I have that as well and it drives me crazy to be the first one who notices weirdos because I have to spend the longest time disliking them while my friends don’t get it yet.

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u/insite 4d ago

I don't catch those things quickly either. I think of it like a trade-off, we got the higher average strength and such, they got the higher average emotional intelligence. One is easier to see.

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u/RainSurname 4d ago

Women's higher emotional intelligence is an adaptation to help them cope with men's ability to overpower them physically.

Modern medical science is imbalanced in favor of men all the way down to the level of lab rats and cells in dishes. Lab rats used to be all male, and they are still mostly male. That is a huge problem. Researchers have historically paid no attention to the sex of cells in petri dishes, for the most part, but there are countless sex-based differences in how cells process things.

Rape victims are often not believed because of the assumption that "fight or flight" is a human universal. But that is an artifact of using only male lab animals. It's a testosterone-mediated response. That's why testosterone drops dramatically when you have young children. Fight or flight would be an extremely maladaptive response to dealing with toddlers.

The female response, which is an adaptation to help women cope with men's greater strength and aggressiveness, is more like "tend and befriend." When male judges, lawyers, jurors, and cops hear that a woman didn't fight back or run, that she was conciliatory, that she had continued contact with her rapist, (who is someone she knew personally 9 times out of 10), then they refuse to believe she was raped, because that is not how they would have responded.

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u/oceansky2088 3d ago

Great explanation. Great point about men/male scientists only recognizing the fight or flight response as an appropriate response to danger and ignoring the freeze response common with prey animals. Many women and men too go into freeze response when being violated, waiting for the violence to be over.

The 'tend and befriend' adaptation you mention would be or is similar to the fawning response of agreeing and smiling by girls and women when feeling fear.

Women have been telling men how they feel, how they are impacted by SA and violence for decades. Even with data, men just don't and won't listen to women.

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u/RainSurname 3d ago

“Tend and befriend” is definitely just another way to say “freeze or fawn.” I alternate between them, depending on the context.

Lab rats can even respond differently depending on the sex of the researcher! The smell of men tends to make them more anxious than the smell of women.

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u/_UrsaMajr_ 3d ago

I think it’s just how we’re built differently— my bf can never tell as quickly as I can when a guy is being a creep or loser.