Well, and for that matter, there are proved tendencies among brains washed with female hormones that differ from brains washed with male hormones. (The brain + hormone effect being one of the strongest arguments against sex assignment surgery among the intersex.)

But those tendencies are effects all over the brain, and the quantitative difference in scores between the sexes is actually very small. Men tend to be better at rotating objects in their minds; women tend to be better at generating words in a 30-second span; but when you graph scores, you'll find way more overlap between the sexes than difference.

The socialization thing has always struck me as a boondoggle: of course women fight as much as men. They're trained to use slightly different weapons, but they definitely fight. Some of the sex-segregated teams on Survivor in years past have been hilarious in this regard.

I'm guessing that the earliest internet fandoms were probably mostly male.

I'm not sure that's true. X-Files is generally acknowledged as the first fandom with a huge online presence, and although it's got more guys in it than most fandoms I'm familiar with, it's still pretty female-centric, and I think it was probably the same way in, say, 1996.

What else hit big online? Forever Knight, which has to be largely female.

Rec.sf.star-trek predates the X-files by quite a bit.

What else hit big online?

Babylon 5?

The socialization thing has always struck me as a boondoggle: of course women fight as much as men. They're trained to use slightly different weapons, but they definitely fight.

Right, but isn't the "slightly different weapons" thing evidence of differing socialization?

Yeah, but in terms of online presence, I think there's a difference between Usenet and, say, Usenet + mailing lists + web archive. Although I am not a fandom historian and don't know when Gossamer was established vs. Trekiverse, but Trekiverse was (and may still be) just an archive for stories posted to ASCEM.

And Dana resurrects the Sondheim.

Babylon 5?

Yes, thank you. That one I wouldn't swear to about the proportion of men to women, but I also think that fandom was hugely shaped by JMS' active participation in it.

If I were really good at rhetoric, I would say "Ah, ", where X is the rhetorical term for the part used to represent the whole.

Unfortunately, I forget that word.

Synecdoche?

isn't the "slightly different weapons" thing evidence of differing socialization?

I would say yes, but most often I read things along the line of "women don't fight, they hug." That's not the same thing as saying men prefer overt attacks, women come at you from angles.