Posted by alexandra_k on August 3, 2005, at 14:36:25
In reply to Re: Lott: Q on getting attracted to older, wiser men » Jakeman, posted by Tamar on August 2, 2005, at 21:57:23
> When I hear women talk about Brad Pitt I think there might be something innate going on. He doesn't do it for me, but maybe I'm not a proper woman.
LOL! Me neither...
>the suggestion that men are more likely to play the field because they need to pass on their genes as often as possible, while women are more likely to be faithful because they need to protect their genetic progeny by standing by their man.
Hmm... I think there is a bit more to it. Apparantly... It is in the females interests to have her partner believe she is faithful... they went and discovered such things as 'fighting sperm' and some other stuff... I was hearing about this a couple summers back... I can't really remember but I think that the upshot was that females were just as likely to have an affair but they were much more likely to be very discrete...
> > Many of us in the US have learned to downplay or even repress aspects of our inborn masculinity or femininity in response to conforming to outside notions of social or political correctness.
Many of us all around the world I dare say..
> it may be that our masculinity and femininity aren't actually inborn or innate. Unfortunately we don't know for sure: does biology precede social behaviour? Or can social categories influence biology?
Biology influences social behaviour by restricting the options. I mean... I can't fly because of my biology. My biology allows me to walk (there is that 'innate' potential - if you like) but if I don't get food then I probably won't grow so I probably won't end up walking either.. Sorry that was a useless example... How about language acquisition. If Chomsky is to be believed (about linguistics at any rate ;-)) then we have this innate ability to 'hook into' the structure of any natural language. But then... There has been some talk around whether you are ever able to hook into the structure of a natural language if you don't have adequate exposure to it by age 7 I think it was. But then we don't really know. I just mean that biology and social factors are a complex interaction. I think biology is primary though - which isn't to say that it can't be modified quite significantly by our social environment
> The main difficulty, I think, is that many people cannot be easily categorised as male or female.depends what you mean by male and female...
>Some people are born with ambiguous genitalia, and others are born with chromosonal arrangements that are not simply XX or XY.
yes, but not very many that we know of...
>In social situations we can never be sure just by looking whether someone is a man or a woman. There’s always a possibility that the categorisation isn’t straightforward.
??? You don't think we might have something like a 99.9% chance of getting it right???
poster:alexandra_k
thread:535438
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20050801/msgs/537116.html