Survival of the Loudest

Even I was speechless when I read this amazingly researched and well-argued chapter by Warren Farrell that proves that women are more violent than men. I figured that at the very least, physical aggression (as opposed to other forms of abuse) is a realm ruled by men and that women are by far the more obvious victims of the fist. But no.

Of course, a search for words like 'domestic violence' on the internet produces only stories of battered women and organizations that synonymize domestic violence with men, but that was to be expected.

Since he presents such a strong and comprehensive case, I have nothing more to add except an amusing scene I witnessed the other month: I was at a rock concert where two girls were running around biting men (biting as in hard enough to leave huge ugly bruises). Of course this was all ascribed to crazy fun but when I asked one of her shocked victims why he didn't simply punch the girl that was biting him, he said: 'I can't - it's wrong to hit girls'.

Segregation Power

Mary Daly, a Radical Feminist teaching Feminist issues at Boston College, fights against including men in her college courses claiming that men are disruptive, distracting, don't understand what she's teaching, that they 'dumb down' the class, and zap creative energy away from other students.

This is only one example. Many single-sex female institutions fight and have fought against going co-ed for similar reasons.

And I agree. When it comes to developing the mind, I would prefer an all-male college. When it comes to developing the body, I prefer an all-male gym. It's only when I want to socialize that I will hang out in mixed crowds. I think the reasoning behind this is obvious and so does Mary Daly.

But you feminists can't have it both ways. Stop harrassing and suing all-male institutions and clubs, you hypocrites!

Till $ Do Us Part

I usually don't see the point in posting articles that show women misbehaving, but this outrageous one stands out:

A woman cons the system for five whole years into believing that she has a child and thus extracts $20,000 from her ex-husband in child-support. Allegedly, she pulled this off with support from government child-support agencies. The husband protested that no child existed and proved that he had had a vasectomy to no avail.

Counterpoint

Over the centuries, women were treated as high-class nobility and men as peasants.

Men gave women their seats, worshipped their beauty, carried their luggage, performed all the hard work for them like mine for coal and work in the factories. Even gentlemen of the highest class held that in circumstances where a woman and a man are suffering from cold, it is the woman that must have the coat since she is more important. Women were bowed to, protected on the sidewalk from vehicles splashing through puddles, and doors must always be opened for them as befitting a queen.

Men protected, cherished and respected women. Some women may have been mistreated by beastly men, but so were noblemen at times. It is natural to periodically lash out in rage at your superiors, especially when your superiors are misbehaving. It was an age where chivalry and gallantry were social staples. Bowing to women and treating them as princesses were moral standards dogmatically taught to all lowly men.

Perhaps women were over-protected and seen as weak, but this was the same attitude towards noblemen by peasants. Women were deemed weaker because of their protected status. Their level of importance ensured that they need not know about such nasty matters of the world as labor, business and politics. All women had blue blood by birth.

Even when life and death were concerned, women always came first. Men fought wars to protect the women staying at home, and in life-and-death situations, it was common law that women were always saved first. A woman's honor was protected even at risk of life since what is a man's blood worth compared to a princess's dignity?

"It is an amazing thing to see in our city the wife of a shoemaker, or a butcher, or a porter dressed in silk with chains of gold at the throat, with pearls and a ring of good value... and then in contrast to see her husband cutting the meat,all smeared with cow's blood, poorly dressed, or burdened like an ass, clothed with the stuff from which sacks are made... but whoever considers this carefully will find it reasonable, because it is necessary that the lady, even if low-born and humble, be draped with such clothes for her natural excellence and dignity, and that the man less adorned as if a slave, or a little ass, born to her service."
— Lucrezia Marinella, Venice, Italy, 1600
The Nobility and Excellence of Women Together With the Defects and Deficiencies of Men

Thanks to Feminism we are now enlightened. We see that women are mere equals and that they don't deserve our special attentions and respect. Women are not of higher class by birth; They are down here in the gutter with the rest of us. No more shall we men treat ourselves as inferior beings. Thank you, Feminism.

Women are Wimps

Here's an interesting article that describes a court ruling that basically says that since women are more sensitive, any non-sexual intimidating behaviour at work that is not directed specifically at women may still be defined as sexual discrimination.

As usual, women want it both ways. Now when we work and talk with our employees, we have to consider their sex before assigning work to them. This ought to help men look at women as equals, wouldn't you say?

Will this whiny, wimpy, hypocritical madness never end? Perhaps the best solution is not to hire women in the first place...

The Way to a Woman's Heart

A study in Northwestern University has revealed interesting test results showing gender differences when it comes to sexual turn-ons.

The tests carefully subjected heterosexual and homosexual men, women and transexuals to erotic stimulation in the form of different erotic movies (or, in other words, they got men and women to watch straight, gay and lesbian porn while they measured their genitals with kinky scientific appendages). The main two measurements taken were related to genital arousal, and subjective psychological arousal.

Having read the published paper, it's evident that the tests were conducted carefully although it would be interesting (and even crucial) to perform the same tests based on stimulation to other senses (e.g. touch, smell).

Also, it may be argued that inhibitions may have been a factor due to location, the knowledge that they are being tested, and the intrusive apparatus used for testing. But this may have been covered adequately by making them feel as comfortable as possible and by measuring a baseline without erotic stimuli.

The results were that men's subjective reactions matched their genital reactions (i.e. heterosexuals responded almost exclusively to heterosexual or lesbian erotica, and vice versa), whereas a woman's genitals reacted to ALL forms of erotica equally (with a slight emphasis on lesbian erotica for lesbians) even though the heterosexual women claimed in their subjective responses that they were primarily aroused by heterosexual erotica.

Although these tests have been used to study and discuss sexual orientations, it raises other interesting issues.

First, interesting snippets from the 'Discussion and Conclusions' chapter in the original paper:

Our findings suggest that women have a nonspecific pattern of sexual arousal that is quite different from men's arousal highly category-specific pattern. Men and postoperative male-to-female transsexuals preferring men showed substantially higher subjective and genital responses to male versus female stimuli; men and transsexuals preferring women showed the opposite pattern. In contrast, women's subjective and genital responses were only modestly related to their preferred category: Heterosexual and lesbian women experienced genital and subjective arousal to both male and female stimuli. Our findings suggest that this result is not plausibly attributable to volunteer bias: Variables that distinguished female volunteers from refusers were unrelated to response patterns.

The difference between men's and women's sexual arousal patterns is unlikely to be due to measurement artifacts, because women and transsexuals had different arousal patterns, despite being measured by the same apparatus, and because transsexuals and men had similar arousal patterns despite being measured by a different apparatus. Other evidence for a fundamental difference between women and men's sexual arousal patterns comes from their patterns of subjective sexual arousal. Regardless of sexual orientation, women reported more arousal to female versus male stimuli, on average, although this difference was not significant for heterosexual women. In contrast, men and transsexuals reported being more aroused by sexual stimuli corresponding to their preferred sex.

A self-identified heterosexual woman would be mistaken to reconsider her sexual identity because she became aroused watching female-female erotica; most heterosexual women experience such arousal. A self-identified heterosexual man who experienced substantial arousal to male-male male erotica, however, would be statistically justified in reconsidering his sexual identity.

Our results cannot directly address whether the sex difference in category specificity of sexual arousal is innate or learned. Our finding that male-to-female transsexuals show a male-typical pattern, however, helps to rule out some possible explanations.

A second limitation is our assumption that participants did not consciously manipulate their genital responses. Past research has demonstrated that some men can control their genital arousal when they are motivated to do so (Adams, Motsinger, McAnulty, & Moore, 1992; Freund, 1963). Could men's category-specific sexual arousal be due to conscious inhibition of erection to non-preferred sexual stimuli? Although the design of our study cannot rule out this possibility, we think that it is unlikely for several reasons. First, concern about suppression of sexual arousal has mainly focused on situations in which men would be highly motivated to hide sexual arousal, such as assessment for pedophilia. Even in that context, however, category–specific sexual arousal usually occurs (Blanchard, Klassen, Dickey, Kuban & Blak, 2001). Second, although heterosexual male participants might be motivated to suppress sexual arousal to the male stimuli, (due to the stigmatization of homosexuality), gay men would not be similarly motivated to suppress arousal to female stimuli; yet, gay men's sexual arousal was also quite specific. Third, research on the conscious manipulation of genital sexual arousal has shown that men are able to reduce, but not increase, the magnitude of their erections. Neither heterosexual nor homosexual men were able to increase erections to non-preferred sexual stimuli, even when motivated to do so (Adams et al., 1992). This suggests that, under typical conditions, men are not suppressing their genital responses to non-preferred stimuli; if they were, they would also increase genital arousal, when motivated to do so, by ceasing suppression efforts.

-End Quote

So, female genitals seem to have a life of their own, and are gung-ho about everything audio-visually sexual in equal measures. It's like they're saying 'we're ready for anything babe, and when you make up your mind regarding what you want to do, just do it and we'll support you'.

Whereas with men in general, it's more like 'you tell me when to get aroused and I will', only the boss issuing the orders is the genital, not the brain. I say this because if it were the brain, the men being tested would have been able to manipulate the results. Chivers argues logically against this assumption in the above summary.

Also, it was amusing to see another stereotype confirmed by this study that all men are even more turned on by female-on-female erotica than heterosexual erotica (personally, I get very bored when I see lesbian erotica, which probably proves I'm from another planet...).

But there are two additional points regarding men:

1. Some men ARE able to partially control the results. Chivers mentions papers in the summary that demonstrate this fact.

2. Just because most men cannot control results and their bodies are usually dictators, this does not exclude the possibility of re-training their bodies over time to respond differently. This is the nature vs. nurture argument and Chivers agrees that these tests cannot address this issue.

But back to the more interesting results with women: What does it mean that their genitals aren't connected to their brain and that they react to all basic forms of erotica? Let's apply a logical razor and explore some possible explanations:

A) Female genitals respond to everything, regardless of whether the brain wants it or not, due to evolution. I.e. just in case women have sex before they are ready, or if they are having sex with someone they don't find attractive, or even if they are forced to have sex, to avoid damage to the plumbing and grab any chance for reproduction they can get, the genitals get the reproduction mechanisms and accessories started without asking the brain. This matches the evolutionary 'logic' that gives a woman strong motherly instincts towards her baby no matter how she was impregnated.

This theory has several holes however. For one thing, it doesn't explain why women's bodies automatically react to lesbian erotica which has no evolutionary benefit. And even if lesbian love has benefits, they would not include reproduction and therefore would not need to get the juices flowing.

B) Women are flexibly designed to be ready for anything until they settle with a concrete orientation (or pursue all orientations at once). But if this were the case, that would mean the reactions would vary amongst women, some of which would have decided on a specific sexual preference by that time. Also, most women seem to have very definite and permanent ideas about their sexual preferences.

Besides, many explanations such as these are disqualified when one reads this article that claims that the women were even shown mating primates and their bodies reacted to this as well. What puzzles me is that this primate porn wasn't mentioned in the paper...

C) Even though women say no, their bodies want it so they really mean yes.

Relax, I'm only kidding.

D) All women are compulsive, perhaps subconscious liars when it comes to subjective reports of arousal, hence the lack of correlation between their reports of genital and mental reponses. This is a somewhat extreme theory however and it would be difficult to explain the universality of this phenomenon.

E) All women are natural lesbians and this is why men want to see them display this natural talent.

Yes, I'm kidding again.

F) Men are simply more comfortable with their sexual passions and preferences than women are. But this doesn't explain why women's bodies reacted equally to ALL forms of erotica. I.e. if women had different comfort zones, their bodies would respond stronger to specific stimuli.

G) Men are better at training their bodies to be aligned with their sexual preferences. Or perhaps their minds are easily led by their physical arousals and therefore mind and body are always in agreement. This, however, doesn't cover the consistency and universality of female test results at all.

H) Alternatively, perhaps it's more important for men to choose a specific orientation whereas women aren't under the same social pressure to define themselves. This doesn't explain the woman's lack of correlation between mind and body however.

I) Then there is the theory suggested in the paper that women don't constrain their bodies based on their sexual orientation because they choose partners in a different way. I.e. women's sexuality is based on 'external' criteria, whatever they may be. This doesn't necessarily mean that women choose their sexual partners based on idealistic criteria, but that they probably involve practical and evolutionary standards that are beneficial for raising children.

In other words, we are simply dealing with an alternative sexual drive. Combine this with B and this means that a woman's sexual choice simply doesn't affect and constrain her body.

Even if this is true however, it still bothers me that, for some reason, this alternative sexuality seems to effectively disconnect the brain from the genitalia. Having other criteria for choosing sex partners doesn't explain why women's bodies react equally even to lesbian erotica.

Also, this may bring about serious problems if and when the body doesn't co-operate. I believe this problem exists simply because it's obvious that when a woman says she is or isn't aroused, her body doesn't necessarily agree with her choice. Which brings me to my next theory:

J) Women aren't connected to their bodies and, in addition, don't know what their bodies need. This may be innate, or due to social and cultural changes and pressures. This may also be a recent phenomenon since we don't have test results from another generation to compare with. Perhaps women have even actively disconnected themselves to align their sexual preferences with their fantasies, traumas, or modern social standards, leaving their bodies behind to deal with any erotica on their own. Maybe this is why so many women nowadays need to 'get in touch with their sexuality'.

It may be argued that the disconnection only occurs when the brain is not aroused, but when it is, the genitalia always follow suit. But it seems wrong that someone can say 'I'm not aroused' when their bodies are very aroused. This behaviour cries out for a raison d'etre. Claiming that this is because women place their sexual priorities on other factors sure sounds good, but doesn't change the fact that there is a basic schizophrenia here. Evolution-wise, it also doesn't explain the practical waste of automatically reacting physically to a lesbian porno.

K) This is simply the way women's bodies work. There is no neurological connection between the genitals and the brain when it comes to turn-ons, evolution didn't deem this necessary, and there is nothing women can do to change this. This would mean that whether the body co-operates with the mind is a question of coincidence although according to these tests, the genitals don't seem to be too picky. There may be a religious/metaphysical reason for this but I have not discovered it yet.

L) There IS a connection but it doesn't fire up via erotic visual stimuli. The way to align a woman's body and mind is via other methods. This can be proven or disproven with further tests.

Feel free to contribute your thoughts here as I may have missed something. Currently, I'm favoring a combination of J and L with G, H and I all containing partial truths, but I'm still pondering...