Men and women both have certain instincts. Our brains are hardwired to think differently from the other sex.
Correct. And the balance of hormones in someone's system is incredibly influential on everything about their behavior, demeanor, temperament, and even thought processes.
Men and women have very different hormonal balances on average.
Something I found very fascinating in the
2002 episode of NPR's "This American Life" on testosterone, was how a woman who was undergoing all of these sorts of steps to "become a man" talked about some of the dramatic differences in how she viewed women and how her mind worked when she got on heavy testosterone treatments. The absolute most fascinating thing of all was how she said:
Alex Blumberg: Are there other ways, other than the visual, and other than the libidinal, are there other ways that you feel like testosterone has altered the way you feel or perceive?
Griffin Hansbury: Something that happened after I started taking testosterone, I became interested in science. I was never interested in science before.
Alex Blumberg: No way. Come on. Are you serious?
Griffin Hansbury: I'm serious. I'm serious.
Alex Blumberg: You're just setting us back a hundred years, sir.
Griffin Hansbury: I know I am. I know. Again, and I have to have this caveat in here, I cannot say it was the testosterone. All I can say is that this interest happened after T. There's BT and AT, and this was definitely After T. And I became interested in science. I found myself understanding physics in a way I never had before.
[LAUGHTER]
Transcript |
Link to this specific portion of the show
Of course, what she said there is very consistent with what most of us know: men and boys are always more interested, on average, in how things work, taking them apart, gadgetry, cars, etc. All of this is of the same vein as "science." Perhaps if egalitarians allowed themselves to realize that different types of people really are *gasp* ... DIFFERENT they could stop pulling their hair out over the fact that not every possible walk of life or corner of our civilization is exactly 50/50 male and female or exactly a perfect mirror image of the racial makeup of our society.
From a 2007 LiveScience.com article:
"Social scientists have studied it, lawyers have tried to fix it and post-feminist society is over it. But women are still outnumbered by men in math, science and engineering fields.
...
relatively few women continue on to high-level faculty positions. In 1972, women made up just 3 percent of full professors in science and engineering fields, a figure that inched up to 10 percent by 1998, according to the NSF."
They agonize endlessly in an attempt to explain and eliminate differences, which our forefathers completely understood without having nearly so much information or the means to gain it as we do. This isn't to say that there isn't ANY merit to the idea of the exclusionary "boy's club" atmosphere which might discourage women, or people of minority groups, to pursue certain careers, but I think it's safe to say that the largest factor, by a very wide margin, which accounts for gender disparities and such, is biological.
I want to live in the type of society where a woman or a black man who is legitimately qualified and capable to be a physicist or a lawyer or a politician, is able to do so. But I also want that society to be realistic about the expected percentages those people will amount to in certain fields, and doesn't lose its mind when they are low.
You'll notice feminists spend very little (as in zero) time griping about how men dominate workplace deaths (93%) or fields like sewage workers, coal miners, and Alaskan crab fishermen, btw. It's very telling that it's always the high dollar, high prestige fields which get targeted in this way.
As for the body modifications, that can be explained as a mental illness.
I don't know if I'd call it a mental illness or say it's exactly equivalent to wanting your own legs cut off. I actually have a great deal of sympathy for people who feel that they are "born in the wrong body" gender-wise. I VERY strongly suspect this is no fault of their own, and comes down to an incorrect balance of hormones they marinated in while still in the womb. There may be some additional environmental triggers which finish off the effect in early childhood, that I don't know.
But either way, I don't think people choose to be that way, and I sympathize with that feeling.
Personally, I think there's more dignity in working with what you are, and making the best of it. Like how people tend to think the guy with the bad toupee looks like a clown, whereas the guy who embraces his baldness, shaves it, and makes it work gets far more respect.
But hey, if they want to mutilate themselves in a vain attempt to be something they can never be (at least with current technology) that's their decision. I just don't want them to be fooling people who are considering a relationship with them about their actual gender, or trying to unfairly compete in athletic competitions, etc.
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