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> But just because testosterone makes you more aggresive, and more competitive does not mean women are not, or can not be, competitive or ambitious. People alw

by belorn 3y ago

> But just because testosterone makes you more aggresive, and more competitive does not mean women are not, or can not be, competitive or ambitious. People always jump to biology when there isn't much to support a cultural observation. Often than not conclusions based on hormones tend to be false. Testosterone makes people aggresive as estrogen make people hysterical. The trouble with this model is that when tested (within levels that occur in nature), Testosterone does not make people aggressive nor does estrogen make people hysterical. Hormones are about sexual reproduction and neither aggression or hysteria provide benefits in that domain. What Testosterone (using more modern research) does (among other things) is to increase behavior towards maintaining social status based on whatever social behavior has in the individual person culture been imprinted. To use other words, Testosterone trigger learned behaviors in specific circumstances in order to maximize chances of sexual reproduction in specific cultural environments. Estrogen too is significant more complex and research on this subject is even more spotty. There are multiple forms of Estrogen, and the effect is generally about its proportional relation to other hormones.

Arkhaine_kupo 3y ago
The conversation is very technical and I just wanted to point towards a "simple" example that most people can relate to. Yes the behavioural effect of hormones goes beyond simple "aggresion up" nonsense, however it is reported that feelings of loneliness, aggresion and hornyness are reported in many transmen when starting the test treatments. Between this observation and the memories of male puberty many cis men have I think using aggresion as a proxy to describe some of perhaps bio causes of our societal understanding of masculinity is not a terrible example. I used pink/blue as an example of non bio masculine and feminine traits that point towards the core issue of masculinity being entirely a social construct and the bio argument being almost irrelevant when discussing the whole thing. I just thought it was a simple example, but I do concede that hormone effects on the body are multiple, complicated and in many ways misunderstood so perhaps it was not a great choice.

by belorn 3y ago

Arkhaine_kupo 3y ago

The conversation is very technical and I just wanted to point towards a "simple" example that most people can relate to. Yes the behavioural effect of hormones goes beyond simple "aggresion up" nonsense, however it is reported that feelings of loneliness, aggresion and hornyness are reported in many transmen when starting the test treatments. Between this observation and the memories of male puberty many cis men have I think using aggresion as a proxy to describe some of perhaps bio causes of our societal understanding of masculinity is not a terrible example. I used pink/blue as an example of non bio masculine and feminine traits that point towards the core issue of masculinity being entirely a social construct and the bio argument being almost irrelevant when discussing the whole thing. I just thought it was a simple example, but I do concede that hormone effects on the body are multiple, complicated and in many ways misunderstood so perhaps it was not a great choice.