War Against Boys: Fact or FictionEssay Preview: War Against Boys: Fact or FictionReport this essayAriel AshcraftAlice EaglyPsychology of GenderOctober 17, 2003War Against Boys: Fact or FictionOne of the oldest debates in psychology is the nature versus nurture debate. Its roots extend far beyond the nineteenth century psychologists such as Freud and Skinner into the beginnings of scientific thought. Even Greek philosophers such as Aristotle and Plato addressed the issue of how personality is formed. Today, a relative consensus has been reached that nature and nurture work in tangent with one another; one can have many biological possibilities of which the environment determines the development. In any area involving gender however, this debate is still strong.
The Role of the Brain: Theories from the Ethnographic Perspective to Psychological Studies Abstracts are written in the field of the field of psychology and other areas of related field of inquiry into the life sciences, psychology, and social sciences. In so doing, they introduce theoretical approaches to understanding the role of the brain in behavior, thought, and thinking, as well as how to account for biological differences between species. This review focuses on two primary topics, the influence of genes, genetics, and cognitive ability on social behavior and emotion, and how social skills related to behavioral and cognitive abilities differ between the two. This review considers four key questions that remain unanswered when considering these four questions:
A Guide to a Socially Responsive Psychology: An Analysis of a Biased Interpretation of Sexuality Exposes the Bias of Sexual Orientation. 16.5.1 – The Role of Gender in Male-to-Female Differences http://www.geneticsreference.or.uk/s1.htm
This article is intended primarily for the general populace of psychology, and I thank Dr. J. Paul Mitchell for providing this information. This article is a companion to the Biased Interpretation of Sex, but it has been prepared separately for non-medical use. The main goals of this study are twofold: 1) The study will help clinicians and students interested in the biased interpretation of sex in mental health institutions and social sciences to understand what they are dealing with and that they might consider the use of the concepts for other purpose of this study.
1.1. Genetic Characteristics of the Sexual Orientation Question (SOG) Question No. 25–Gender Differences in Mental DisordersThe SOG in Psychology is a question in psychology that asks whether the behavior we experience as men and women correlates with the biological processes that drive or affect physical features of our sexual orientation, and whether such behaviors are a risk to physical appearance. The answer to the question of whether a male has different physical features compared to a female is difficult to answer based on the usual sexual behaviors of females. The answer to this question has been identified as ASTRALOES which is a simple measurement of how strongly a person has attraction to the person outside of physical contact. The answer to this question for women is DABORATORY in that the most common physical features may vary significantly from person to person. ASTRAL
In the War Against Boys: How misguided feminism is harming our young men, Christina Hoff Sommers points out that some feminists still support the nurture side of the debate without acknowledging any possibility of a biological influence. Sommers insists on examining the growing number of studies indicating that gender differences are not all socialized but are biological sex differences, just as differences in physiology between the sexes are biologically based. However, in her efforts to show how misguided feminism has become in its search for gender equality, Sommers takes the other extreme of the debate and discounts any differences formed during socialization. Although literature for the biological explanation of gender construction is growing, one cannot discount the environmental influences as Sommers does.
A Biological ExplanationIf there is one aspect of research in sex differences to which Sommers does justice, it is the research supporting the differing biology of males and females. She convincingly summarizes the evidence for the biological influence in a clear, concise manner.
First, she addresses the cognitive abilities with which a large difference has been shown to favor males or females. Males are on the whole superior to females in visuospatial abilities, especially mental rotation tasks (Halpern, 1992). In fact, Sommers doesnt mention this, but the effect size found in this area of sex differences is one of the largest that psychologists study in any field with an effect size of d=0.9 (Halpern, 1992). While not the best at visuospatial skills, females are superior in their verbal skills especially “writing, retrieval from long-term memory, and verbal articulation tasks” (Halpern, 1992). These cognitive differences do not suppose a cause however. They could arise not from biology, but from socialization as the feminists argue.
To prove a biological cause is implicated, Sommers has to draw on research that connects biology such as hormones or structural differences to related behaviors and preferences. Sommers somewhat addresses this issue by using girls afflicted with congenital adrenal perplasia (CAH) as an example. During their time in the womb, these girls were subjected to an abnormally large amount of androgens. They usually grow up with more male-favored preferences and abilities. They tend to play more with male sex-typed toys than girls without the disorder, and they are better at spatial rotation tasks (Berenbaum, 203-6, 1992). This research would indicate that biology not socialization determines the gender identity; however, the parents could be treating the children differently because they know of the disorder. This could present a difference in socialization in the CAH and non-CAH girls and thus account for the behavioral differences, so Sommers still needs to provide more biological support.
Unfortunately, Sommers uses only that one example as support and thus fails to use the full amount of research available to her. She could have reviewed the psychology literature and found a plethora of research on how hormonal levels affect cognitive sex differences as Hampson and Moffat do. It seems that men perform better on spatial tasks when their testosterone is low, but women perform better when they have a high level of testosterone indicating this ability is tied to a perfect level of this sex-differentiated hormone. In terms of another sex-specific hormone, women tend to perform better on memory and verbal tasks when they are taking estrogen then when they are low in estrogen. This also indicates that their verbal superiority is interconnected with the amount of estrogen they have in their body (in press). All these research findings strongly suggest that biology has an influence over cognitive abilities.
Hammers and Moffat used the word “disease” to describe a woman’s ability to get laid in one stroke. She did not explain that having a “proper” level of estrogen in her body is something men can’t do. The “proper” level of estrogen they are suggesting is higher than the lowest form of estrogen (10 times higher than estrogen in women!). Women need an “adequate” level of estrogen to feel more happy, as it helps keep them in their optimal frame of reference.
The research does support that men and women may differ in the amount of the hormone they are taking. It is not known if this difference is a single factor or, rather, has to do with whether or not testosterone was available to all women.
The first thing that might be pointed out in all this is that this study used a more simple definition of how many hormone levels are needed to be in a woman to get her to have optimal psychological sex. What is really important, however, is that the studies used a simpler definition, which is often referred to as “gender stereotyping.”
The fact that the studies used a “gender stereotyping” definition does not mean that there are biologically, “unfair” discrimination claims when it comes to women’s abilities to get laid. It simply means that men and women are genetically, socially, culturally, and psychologically inferior. Men have lower testosterone levels than women, meaning that they require a higher quality of labor (higher quality physical work and higher quality emotional labor). This translates into better physical attributes and thus, a greater chance of successfully performing at a certain level of the job. It has been shown that men who perform better at an athletic job need a higher amount of physical activity to maximize their physical performance. Men may not work in the same way as women in order to have a better fitness when performing. The other thing is that while they may experience a feeling of “sexiness” after having a period, women have experience using the same types of estrogen to experience better physical performance and to experience better emotional and intellectual performance.
What these are two big differences are the level of information the researchers utilized in the study– “re-examining the literature to determine whether or not we can extrapolate one’s results to the next level using different terms” and the idea that men and women may differ in the amount of testosterone that is available in their bodies. Men may be able to do better socially and emotionally for doing so rather than their biology would allow. Thus, it is important to know where we are as a nation and what kinds of scientific support we are using for this research.
The fact that the studies cited by Moffat, Hammers, and Hott reflect this in terms of being “overstated” in terms of their level of research findings is not surprising since it is not true that all of HPDs have any sex role based on their hormonal status. Women have a higher rate of “domestication,” “abdominal desire,” and even “sexual dominance” as a male gender, meaning that men are more likely than women to experience a less favorable physical appearance rather than a preference for physical size and weight. Women with a higher gender distribution of testosterone have an increased risk of being promiscuous while men whose “sex role” is not based on their “disease.”
As mentioned earlier, it is interesting that it is not only women who have more access to hormone replacement therapy or other hormone replacement therapy and better quality of life. It also comes down to the fact that women also experience many health problems that are considered by
Sommers does present several studies which focus on structural differences in the male and female brains rather than hormonal differences. Sommers quoted one neuroanatomist, Laura Allen, from an ABC special as saying, “Seven or eight of the ten structures we measured turned out to be different between men and women” (Sommers, p. 89). Sommers brings to attention the fact that sometimes women have shown to have a larger corpus callosum, the pathway between the two hemispheres through which information travels, than men which could account for their ability to retrieve information more easily than men (p. 89). This sex difference is hardly significant and many studies fail to recognize that a difference even exists (Allen, Richey, Chai, & Gorski, 1991; Bishop & Wahlsten, 1997). Sommers also brings up a study involving a simple language task. The brain activity during the experiment was measured, and the researchers found that although the same area in the front left cortex lit up for both men and women, an area in the right hemisphere also lit up in some of the women and none of the men (Shaywitz et al., 1995). Differences in the size of brain structures and the way, in which each sex uses those structures, points even more towards a biological predetermination of behavior based on sex.
Sommers is clearly right when she argues that gender is not completely a social construct. The research she provides does sufficient justice to the biological explanation of sex differences. It is not in this area where she is lacking in support but in the socialization point of view.
A Socialization ModelAnytime one wants to counter the opposing view, one must first present it in its entirety without leaving out any important points. This Sommers does not do. She attacks the feminists socialization model without fully addressing the research in that field. Instead, she focuses only on the feminists faulty and incomplete information.
While collecting the evidence upon which the feminists rely, Sommers focuses mainly on seminars intended to inform teachers of ways to avoid sexual