Word.

If acting in stereotypically feminine ways is somehow mandated by nature, how on earth is it that I am able to overcome this behavior and do my own damn thing? Do these people read history? In just about every society we know of, no matter how sexist, a queen rules at least once. Or as a co-ruler with her husband. Women have fought in wars as long as there have been wars, either openly or by doing the cross-dressing thing. During Victorian times, we used to think college was too hard for women, but now we find that more women than men are graduating from college (although the numbers of both have increased). It used to be thought that biology and medicine were solely male occupations, now they are becoming female-dominated. So, whatevs. I'll do what I want, she can do what she wants, but if "the natural order of things" were so robust, she wouldn't have to be out there stumping for it. It would just happen.

"Why is it so PC to say that lions, bears, and birds have sexual dimorphic traits but 'taboo' to realize that men and woman are different but equal in intelligence?"

It's perfectly PC to point out that there is sexual dimorphism in humans; males are (on average) larger and heavier than females, and almost no-one gets offended when you point this out. But when you claim that men are smarter than women, or that women are more compassionate than men, and that this is a biological fact, then you're going to need to cite some evidence that manages to divorce society and culture from our understanding of intelligence and emotion. This is obviously very tricky to do, and even the best studies can be criticised as being culturally biased. But the evidence, such as it is, points to there not being any measurable innate differences between male and female brain function outside of some fairly specific domains, such as 3-D modelling or face recognition.

So, it's "taboo" to realize that men and woman are different but equal in intelligence for exactly the same reason that it's "taboo" to realise that the sun is made of cheese - because it's fucking wrong.

Of course, the "different but equal" that the poster refers to is probably the sentiment of: women are just as smart as men, but their intelligence is in fields that are utterly useless.

When people admit that women tend to score higher than men on, say, emotion recognition and sympathy/empathy, they never mention how this could lead to a person being an awesome manager, or a brilliant psychologist, or a great artist, or an advertiser or PR person--all of which require you to get into someone's head, which men are "inferior" at (in quotes because I believe these studies are stupidly biased, but if we are too believe that women are inferior in math, then men are inferior in understanding people). When you talk to these people, they tend to say that men are better at these things because there are more male artists, managers, CEOs, psychologists, etc. Much like "separate but equal" during the Jim Crowe era, "different but equal" intelligence is just lip service, because men are still viewed at being superior in everything but the things that are traditionally and unintellectually female.

That place is beginning to remind me of middle school. Scratch that, middle school made sense.

I can't even hang out at places like that anymore, because it makes me tired just to think about responding to people/questions like that. The sad fact is that no response you could ever give would change their minds. They're not asking a question to learn something or to hear other people's opinions - they're just using it as a forum for broadcasting their own views. I prefer to engage in dialogue that's constructive and reciprocal, like this one here. Yay Feministing!