gzuckier:

...so women have thicker corpus callosums, and that supposedly gives them an advantage in language and emotional processing. well, there are patients who have had their corpus callosums completely severed surgically, and a few who have been discovered to not have one; is it possible to identify these people by their language and emotional skills? no, not at all. well, if not having any corpus callosum doesn't result in any identifiable change, it's hard to imagine that having one that's a bit larger or smaller will be significant.

Interesting question, though, is it possible to identify men versus women by their language and emotional skills? Perhaps not through qualitative assessments of their vocabulary, ability to answer SAT questions, or typing speed, but what about a Turing test?

I know that when I've read novels told in the first person with a male protagonist written by a female author, I can usuallly tell that something seems "off." I've also read comments from women about the opposite case, that men writing as women seems "off."

Certainly some of that is cultural - perhaps it'd be easier to trip up the average women with a football question than the average man, or perhaps not, but I'm thinking more about the emotional qualities of the writing.

--s