Found this interesting.
http://www.mermaids.freeuk.com/st002.html
Opinions?
I don't have an opinion if you don't. What's yours?
;)
Cindi
Oh, I'm not exactly qualified to... I'm no doctor and I've never been on HRT.
But - I do think too much stock is placed on hormones. I think a man is a man is a man and thus will behave as a man without copious levels of T emanating from his person. And the same for women.
That's not to say hormones haven't a marked effect but are not the 'mind altering' drugs they're made out to be.
I agree with you Nero. I think that they are attempting to say that all of this gender and sexual preference stuff is pretty complicated. It can not be explained by chromosomes or hormones alone.
And that, my dear, makes perfect sense.
Let's take a simple example of shooting a projectile into the sky, have it go around the moon, and return to earth. Simple, right? It's just a thing you throw up and it will come back down right? Nope. I thought of this example because I was reminiscing about my college years in another thread. It was also a final problem on one of my tests. There is a lot of math and considerations of power, thrust, size, and mass of the object. You also need to know many similar things about the earth and moon, distances, orbital information, etc.
Now... throwing a rock around the moon is infinitely much more simple than explaining life.... or even life that is self determinate like us.
Ya think that they can explain all of these things with just an X chromo or a T hormone? Hehehe... you and I both know that it will never work. It's an exercise in denial.
Cindi
I entirely disagree with the notion at the end that men can be trained. :P
The rest seemed like it was just saying there are factors other than testosterone that can account for what makes a man. Though, there was no serious consideration given to the possible cause of male antisocial behavior.
I almost said 'typical' antisocial male behavior, but that would be a stupid generalization.
Any actual science that might be found in the nature vs. nurture debate has become so thoroughly contaminated with ideology that the only sensible response is skepticism. The Right insists on nature to the exclusion of nurture, e.g. "boys will be boys." The Left insists on nurture to the exclusion of nature, e.g. "the New Socialist Man." When anyone with a lick of common sense can see that the truth depends on a complex interplay of the two, and that they're inseparably intertwined. Screw ideology, I just want science.
QuoteBut - I do think too much stock is placed on hormones.
Be it male or female too much testosterone can increase the sexual urge. Like any drug it is easy to be addicted with out self control.
I found this bit of support for the limited effects of testosterone on aggressive behaviour. While not directly associated with gender it does offer a clue to the biosocial model of childhood development.
Aggression and testosterone: Testing a bio-social model
Anne Campbell 1 *, Steven Muncer 2, Josie Odber 2
1Psychology Department, Durham University, England
2School of Social Studies, Teesside University, Middlesbrough, England
*Correspondence to Anne Campbell, Psychology Department, Durham University, South Road, Durham DH1 3LE, England
Keywords
testosterone ï aggression ï masculinity ï instrumental
Abstract
Based upon reports of a positive correlation between circulating testosterone levels and aggression, we draw upon evolutionary psychology to place the action of testosterone in a broader perspective. We propose that testosterone affects competitive status-seeking and that under certain circumstances (including youth) this is expressed as aggression. Involvement in aggression in turn is associated with adherence to an instrumental social representation of aggression which justifies aggression as a means of imposing control over others and increasing self-esteem. Measures of salivary testosterone, masculinity, preferred social representation of aggression, and multiple aggression scales were collected from an undergraduate sample of 119 men. An Aggression factor was derived from principle components analysis of the aggression measures. The strongest correlates of Aggression were holding an instrumental social representation of aggression and youth. Testosterone showed no significant relationship to the single or aggregate measures of aggression or to any of the other psychometric measures. We suggest ways in which previous work may have over-estimated the strength of the association between circulating testosterone and aggression and discuss the possible relationships between age, social representation, and aggression. Aggr. Behav. 23:239-238, 1997. © 1997 Wiley-Liss, Inc.
If anyone is interested I can get the entire article from my computer at work.
Does that mean I can vomit up a bucket of testosterone, yet still be mellow old me?