Lets get this out into the open: MRAs

[Narz]

In other words women hold unconscious sexist views about men. That are wrong.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

From what I've read, the main psychological effect of testosterone is increasing one's drive to accomplish one's goals. It does not by itself lead to favoring any particular method of fulfilling those goals, but makes us focus more on whatever seems to work best. In more primitive solitary mammals aggression is the often the only practical way of achieving those goals, so testosterone makes them more aggressive. In more sophisticated social animals, however, cooperation is often a more effective than aggression. Elevated testosterone may thus encourage humans to work together more amicably.

 

[Tarquelne]

From what I've read, the main psychological effect of testosterone is increasing one's drive to accomplish one's goals.

It had long been linked to aggression and violence in humans. But mainly because it seemed to explain the behavior of adolescents.

As it turns out, teen-age boys are just jerks.

 

[Formaldehyde]

Whenever I see a body builder suffering from roid rage, the first thing that crosses my mind is that he is just encouraging others to work together more amicably.

Women should think about taking excessive amounts of testosterone so they can better accomplish their own goals while growing very attractive moustaches.

 

[Farm Boy]

Or that roid ragers have been socially conditioned to have uncontrollable fits of anger? Possibly they're just jerks, hence why they're abusing drugs.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Body building competitions are not exactly the sort of activity that requires a lot of cooperation between participants. Testosterone would not encourage cooperation in that sort of environment. The hormone would not make a man more friendly in general, but rather more friendly to those individuals who seem useful to them. (I guess you could argue that testosterone should make those body builders nicer to their doctors, dealers, or judges, but much crueler to their competition.)

I suspect that the sort of men who use drugs to cheat at competitions over their personal appearance are more likely than most to be narcissists or psychopaths to begin with.

Their early childhood environments were probably not the sort that taught them to value win-win cooperation.


It is possible for hormones to have different effects at different doses too.

I recently heard about a study which found that women with above average testosterone are better at geometry, whereas men with below average testosterone are better at geometry. The low testosterone men still have higher testosterone than the high testosterone women, so perhaps the ideal level of testosterone for that branch of mathematics is the average between the normal male and female levels.


It is certainly possible to be too focused on one goal, to the exclusion of more important things and even to unexpected insights which would help serve the greater goal.

 

[JollyRoger]

Plus, how do you explain the general rage-iness of MRAs despite the beta levels of testosterone?

 

[Narz]

Low testosterone actually makes men more irritable.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

What differences are due to biology is a fascinating question, but since differences between individuals are far greater than differences between the genders, there's not much practical use in considering the gender differences*.

If you think about it, it is a curious thing to say that "differences between individuals are far greater than differences between the genders".
On the one hand - it seems intuitively true. People are so diverse in so many ways. Because of their individuality, not because of their gender. Which makes sense - I mean there are also only two genders, but countless individuals.
So individual factors have naturally a way bigger impact on our uniqueness / our diversity than something so entirely non-unique as gender.
But is this the same as saying that "differences between individuals are far greater than differences between the genders"???

How do you compare those differences?

It is easy to compare two individuals. You lust look at them and will notice differences.
But how do you compare genders? Supposedly, by somehow calculating a fictional person representing the average of its gender in all areas.
So we have proto-male and proto-female and compare the two. If we now compare the difference between the two to the average difference between two random individuals, the one between two random individuals is supposed to be a lot bigger. And that seems like a very safe assumption.
However, that will tell us little about the importance of gender. Because the comparison is fundamentally flawed. Whereas with gender we use proto-types to come up with a difference, with individuals we use real people. And doing so is the assumption that individual factors would not interact with our gender. It makes the assumption that the influence of gender was some kind of static constant while independent of this constant you got the individual factors.
The reality however is that our gender is throughly involved in our individuality, it is a big factor shaping our individuality. And how big can not be determined by such a simple comparison of statistical differences.

 

[Old Hippy]

In other words women hold unconscious sexist views about men. That are wrong.

a good place to start looking at equality between the sexes, something both sexes have in common...

 

[Borachio]

It's feet, isn't it? I'm pretty sure both men and women have feet.