The OldDoughouse

(Doug) #21

I have plenty of reservations about Fox News and the “old guard” in power in the U.S. I’m not saying that people, any people, necessarily should feel any certain way about their existence. That’s up to them. Costa Rica is always among the “Happiest People in the World” countries and they have a low GDP per capita of around $12,000 U.S. Low ‘absolute’ wealth and plenty of “soul-crushing, poor paying jobs” doesn’t mean the people on the whole are not among the world’s happiest.

(Doug) #22

But not nearly to the extent that it’s seen in boys. Of course there will be individual outliers, both ways, but some generalizations can be made.

No - it’s just the degree and frequency of noted behavior. Again - of course there is individual variation, but that does not change the facts about the behaviors of the sexes as a whole. There are strong sociobiological facts that stand behind me when I note some differences between men and women. This is taking nature and nurture into account, and really just saying, “For whatever reason, this is the way it is…”

International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences - 2015 - notes that differences in sex with respect to aggression is one of the most robust and oldest findings in psychology.

“The scientific study of gender differences has yielded a wealth of robust generalizations about the way males and females differ across domains, cultures, and developmental stages.” – Marco Del Giudice, University of New Mexico, ‘Gender Differences in Personality and Social Behavior.’

FBI stuff for the U.S. –

Males constituted 98.9% of those arrested for forcible rape.

Males constituted 87.9% of those arrested for robbery.

Males constituted 85.0% of those arrested for burglary.

Males constituted 83.0% of those arrested for arson.

Males constituted 81.7% of those arrested for vandalism.

Males constituted 81.5% of those arrested for motor-vehicle theft.

Males constituted 79.7% of those arrested for offenses against family and children.

#23

No offense but psychology has only just recently stopped describing queerness and transgender as “psychological problems.” Mainstream psychology is leagues behind doing any sort of quality work when it comes to studying gender.

And correlation does not imply causation. The fact that men tend to do violent things does not imply they are biologically more violent than women; again, society has told men they deserve everything, that their feelings are more important than women’s, and that they should constantly compete against each other to decide who is more “alpha,” or else they’re not “real men.” Being born a man doesn’t make you more violent, toxic masculinity and a society that values men more than non-men does.

I mean it’s this kind of stuff that fuels stuff like the transgender bathroom laws. Cisgender people think trans women are secretly cis men and are just going into the women’s bathroom to perv on cis women. And guess what? Never heard of a single instance of a trans woman pulling that shit. Trans women, pre or post transition, simply don’t pull the crap that cis men do, even tho they were “born biologically male.”

(Doug) #24

Not as far as noting behavior - regardless of the exact cause - the same as I’ve done. If it matters, let’s lump nature and nurture together, and say that for whatever reasons, this is the way men and women are, in general. The science and historical reports are pretty darn clear, and so are the crime statistics.

I think that with everything referenced thus far, it most certainly does mean that, and that it makes total sense, evolutionarily, and this is further borne out by the crime statistics, where the vast difference between men and women is undeniable.

If you would state it as, “The fact that men tend to do violent things does not imply they are only influenced by biology, and not influenced at all by nurture/society,” then I would agree with you.

#25

I notice you keep avoiding the transgender question. Where do trans people fit into the equation of this alleged clear binary?

(Doug) #26

Not avoiding it - heck, I’ll talk about anything. :slightly_smiling_face:

As far as a “clear binary,” I’m not sure what you mean. If we are talking about both sexes, in general, then I think everything I’ve said so far is correct. This both allows for many individual variances and notes that it does happen.

I had not thought that transgender people would alter the overall picture because of the small portion of the population they occupy. Less than 1%?

Hadn’t thought about that at all. I have no reason not to believe you, and imagine that if a trans man was convicted of rape, it’d be fairly big news.

I’m not so sure on this. The trans man that John described evidently felt something new due to taking tostesterone. I do think there is a difference between men and women, with our response to visual images - men respond more strongly (or at least differently, overall), usually, to seeing women and to viewing images of women, than vice-versa. Are we really “hard-wired” differently, or is it a hormonal thing, or societal conditioning, or a mixture of all those? There is some pretty low-hanging fruit, as far as evolutionary explanations, but what the hey…

If tostesterone makes a difference, here, it would explain the trans man’s experience. This is not to say it’s going to make anybody a rapist. Being a woman at birth and for so many years is going to have effects, too (the most extreme difference in crime statistics for the sexes is for rape), and I see no evidence that tostesterone can “cancel” that out.

Yeah - there’s been some pretty silly hysteria about it.

I haven’t either, but even if we knew of a few cases, I don’t think it would change the overall picture. I would think that trans women in general feel considerably less safe in our society, per se (than Americans as a whole), and that they’d be very wary of anything that could be seen to be 'pervy."

If there is a difference from tostesterone or not, then I’d think that taking antiandrogenic drugs and hormones, estrogen, etc., could have an effect, but if anything I think it would work against ‘male type’ behavior, and I also think that nobody rational is really arguing that trans women are “doing this stuff.”

It makes sense to me that there are differences. Far less identification with “being male” and likely conscious effort at avoiding some or all of “the crap” as you describe it. :wink:

#27

There’s no reliable data for how many trans, or overall queer, people there are because it’s not currently safe to be out in the majority of the world. At best, we have a severely conservative estimate.

But even this isn’t concrete because gay/bi men are going to response to images of women differently than straight men. Same with lesbian/bi women to images of men. And I’m not even taking non-binary people into account for all of this stuff.

(Doug) #28

Looking at the U.S., seems that if we include the entirety of LGBT, it’s between 3% and 9%…? I’ve seen different estimates and the number in self-identifying polls has been increasing slightly, over the years - one recent Gallup finding was 4.5%. In 2017, 8.2% of millennials answered “yes” to the question, "Do you, personally, identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender?”

#29

Those are conservative estimates, like I said. Millennials and Gen Zers are more comfortable being out, but even then there’s still a large number who won’t come out. It’s even worse to guess for Gen X, Boomers, and older people, we simply have no real idea. We might get a better clue going forward (depending on how far back the Curdled Fanta sets back queer rights), but we can’t really know. Take into account the suicide rates for queer people, the murder rates, the legal discrimination they face, how many we lost to the AIDS crisis, and it’s easy to see why it’s hard to gouge a reliable number.

Put simply, there’s way more than straight cisgender people think there are.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #30

Truth. Men can help themselves, they just like having an excuse. I was a monastic for a while in a religious order that only within living memory had allowed women guests beyond a certain line in the monastery, a line which men guests had always been allowed to pass. The rationale for such restrictions is that “men just can’t help themselves,” so it’s a woman’s job not to be a temptation. This is the whole rationale for the hijab and the seraglio, as well.

I was disgusted to learn that the “Holy Mountain,” Mt. Athos in Greece, is forbidden to women, and not even for some spurious religious reason. The Emperor forbade women from setting foot on the mountain because too many of the monks were raping the milkmaids and fishwives who came to supply the monasteries. Had I been the Emperor, I know what punishment I would have meted out!

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #31

I wonder if this was the interview with Griffin Hansbury on the Testosterone episode of “This American Life.” Well worth looking up and listening to, regardless.

What Hansbury remarked on was how sexualized everything became, once he started testosterone treatments. The treatments transformed his attitude toward and feelings about sex, it seems—and changed his relationship to women, as well. The testosterone also did interesting things to his cognition. For example, his mathematical ability improved, as well as his ability to read maps, if I remember correctly. I do remember the interviewer’s comment that he had “just set the feminist cause back by twenty years.”

In another segment of the same episode, the staff chronicled their experience of getting their testosterone levels tested. The producer, a fairly dominant personality by all accounts, was not surprised to find that her level was highest among the women. What really saddened and amused me both, however, was a comment by the staffer who was really bummed that he didn’t score as high among the men as he thought he should, and who was especially upset that the gay man on the staff had the highest testosterone level. “But he doesn’t even watch ‘Sports Center’! I watch ‘Sports Center’!”—everything that’s wrong with heterosexual American men in two sentences.

(John) #32

Yes, that was it. With that reference, I was able to find a transcript. It was just something that I was listening to on NPR in a rental car when I was on a business trip in 2013 or so, and I remembered that it was interesting hearing that perspective. I didn’t remember (or probably hear - I was driving to my work site) the entire show, but that part stood out - how much that person felt his personality and behavior was changed due to the presence of testosterone. I don’t have a point to prove, it was just something I remembered.

#33

Not that anyone has suggested this, but I’d be hesitant to confuse “taking testosterone” with “becoming a man.” Trans men are men before they take T; some of them don’t even end up taking T. A trans man will usually take T and have surgeries to help with their gender dysphoria but it’s not what makes them their gender. So if a trans man takes testosterone and the hormone has affects on him, that doesn’t mean that those affects are what’s making him a man.

And again, testosterone doesn’t make men sexually aggressive towards women. People make it sound like guys are constantly roided up all the time.

(Doug) #34

Paul, it’s certainly not like “Men cannot help but rape women.”

I do think there are some basic sexual differences here. One thing is how our visual cortexes are ‘wired.’ This would not be affected by tostesterone, as far as I know, but men tend to get sexually aroused by just seeing, more than women. Women are more influenced by the mood, by feelings of emotional closeness, etc.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #35

That is certainly true, or at least as true as any generality usually is, and part of Hansbury’s experience with testosterone, from what I gathered.

I’ve seen this dichotomy in some (though by no means all) of the heterosexual couples I’ve tried to counsel over the years, and it can be a source of a fundamental misunderstanding that is hard to bridge.

Although, by and large, I like the Internet wisdom: “Men are from earth, women are from earth. Get over it!”

(Doug) #36

Pick3Pills

(John) #37

9 and 1. No need for the others.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #38

Six and two for me. Three I know how to do. Nine would be nice!

(Omar) #39

number 1

(John) #40

See, ideally I would like to pick 6. However, there are lots of ways that wish can be granted by the evil pill genie. One way is that you drop dead on whatever day your pet passes away. Another way is that your pet continues to age and become more and more decrepit but never dies, and you have to kill yourself to put it out of its misery.

Or maybe it only works for 1 pet, and we have 4 cats, so I’d have to choose which one to grant a long life to.

Now if it was some sort of happy version where my cats all live long, healthy, and happy lives for the next 30 years along side me, then that would be different.

But I have read enough plot twists not to trust that one. :slight_smile: