Now if we were to mix up all these subjects according to their typologies as offenders, liars, cheats, thieves, bullies, of course, we might find sub typologies….for example, as has been discussed extensively, elsewhere, low and high esteem bullies. It may well be appropriate to deal with such sub-types differently, – that is defensible….but not to simply fail to consider all say liars initially alike until there is evidence to the contrary because some are male and some female is in my view mistaken.
There is a further complication, what my headmistress friend calls the ‘sugar and spice’ belief. She claims that too many staff both male and female will accept a girl’s explanation without demur, but consider all boys born liars. Actually polygraph evidence from the US indicates this is untrue and the propensity of both sexes to lie is pretty equal but the propensity to be believed is often far higher for women except in certain specific categories of statements, including, as we know, for the crime of rape.