No genetic difference between men and women?

I stumbled on this thread and decided to post a reply.
Title of other thread: "Women genetically less intelligent than Men?"
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/viewthread.php?tid=397875

I decided to copy my reply here.

I know I am coming to this discussion late and I appologize if this was stated by someone else, but...
why does anyone care?

We are all people and there is a huge amount of variety in our species no matter how one tries to divide us all into groups (male vs female, race, age, height, weight, ...). I could go into all sort of technical reasons on why there is no basis for "genetic" differences between men and women (men and women are not genetically different).

- huge amounts of chromosomal homology between X and Y chromosomes (for example PRKY (y homolog) and PRKX (x homolog))

- SRY gene (DNA bindining protein coded on the the short arm of Y chromosome which triggers sexual differentiation to male). People with a Y chromosome but a non-functioning SRY become female though. And transgenic mice with SRY addition anywhere in genome become males - it does not have to be on the Y chromosome to work.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14645115
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/dispomim.cgi?id=480000
http://www.ensembl.org/Homo_sapiens/geneview?gene=ENSG00000184895


- SOX genes (SOX1 to SOX18) which actually are involved in sexual differentiation are scattered on many chromosomes (none on Y, but SOX3 is on the X chromosome)

- in some non-mamalian vertebrates, sex determination is temperature induced and not genetic

- some studies in humans are showing that SRY may not be the magic "male gene" originally thought and that there may not be any genetic component to sex differentiation in humans (it may be a complex cascade of growth rate related effects caused by the fact that Y is shorter than X and that certain growth repressors on the X chromsome are in 2x the quantity with XX individuals and only 1x in XY individuals)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11001834

The only purpose of such a discussion is political and social. Someone or some group is feeling threatened or inferior and they propose something to try to make "us" appear better than "them". It is human nature, we are a social species with hierarchy and territoriality. It is much easier to create an artifical "group", label them and create "logic and evidence" as to why "they" are inferior and "we" are superior. Previously such "science" was called Eugenic and it was very popular in a certain part of europe around the 1930s and 40s.

The truth is that we are all the same and all different. There is so much variety within the species that sampling error or bias can easily swing a result from group A to group B. The truth is probably that any human hierarchy is inherently artificial and an illusion of the mind and social conditioning.

I think Eleanor Roosevelt said it well "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."

- Jessica