I live near a riding school. I asked my son whether he wanted to learn how to ride a horse. He said yes, enthusiastically, and spent days reading and watching movies about cowboys. Then we went to visit the school on the weekend. He only saw girls wearing pink giggling and riding the horses. Before we even entered the gate he said he was no longer interested.

Your son done goofed!!!

No more than a girl having the same reaction from entering a computer gaming club and only seeing boys. I would expect to see this kind of behavior universally in all cultures and across gender, and being most profound around the ages 10-18.

For this to hold true you need to buy into the traditional gender stereotypes

The fact that you disagree with "traditional" gender stereotypes does not mean they have not held true for large parts of history. The reasons for this are debatable, as are its merits, but it is still a part of history.

But if you actually read history, sometimes the stereotypes were the opposite of what they are today. Traditional thinking as we know it now was often invented quite recently.

From what I've read, riding fast horses was much more popular with men before cars.

> sometimes the stereotypes were the opposite of what they are today.

Correct, and this is the reason for which I qualified my statement. They do, however, apply to the section where western "horse culture" as is being debated arose.

I commented on some of this already, and don't want to pollute the comments too much. Link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19780759

>The fact that you disagree with "traditional" gender stereotypes does not mean they have not held true for large parts of history

I didn't take any position.... I simply said that for that argument to hold true you need to believe traditional gender stereotypes. Of course, as with every topic on this site recently, someone downvoted after being confronted with an opinion that made them uncomfortable or didn't exactly align with their own despite it being relevant

Really depends on how you define "stereotype".

It's my understanding that these "gendered differences" have been shown to be more than mere "stereotypes" in a number of different studies across different fields.

That's not to say there's "male brain" and a "female brain", but it very strongly hints at gender influencing preferences which are not entirely based on socialization but also involves its fair share of biological factors.

If this wouldn't be the case, how are trans-people be able to feel like "being stuck in the wrong body" if all brains and consciousness are alike? If there are zero biological factors at play, then that feeling of trans-people would be entirely imagined on their end, wouldn't it?