Ciao a tutte/i
girando in internet ho trovato tanto materiale su un argomento su cui sto un
po' indagando ultimamente che mi affascina moltissimo: la differenza
biologica tra uomini e donne.
l'articolo che sto mandando in realta' sottolinea l'esistenza di due generi
ben dimarcati tra di loro con diverse capacita', funzioni biologiche,
neurologiche ed ormonali. in questo modo ci spiegono il perche' le ragazze
sono meno protate per la matematica e perche' i ragazzi sono meno bravi
nella materie linguistiche.
per questo io personalmente non mi trovo per neinte d'accordo. credo che gli
individui sviluppano delle capacita' al di la' del proprio "sesso biologico"
lo trovo abbastanza limititivo come classificazione e che ci riporta
indietro quansi ai tempi del medioevo!
lo mando perche' potrebbe essere un interessante punto di partenza per
riflettere: le differenze di genere esistono? le differenze biologiche di
genere esistono? il maschile ed il femminile esistono?? noi eisitiamo?!?
un po' mi spiazza sentire che gli scienziati hanno trovato il motivo per la
quale le bambine prediligono le bambole e i maschietti le machine. mi
impaurisce perche' le scienze hanno spesso un forte peso nella societa' e
nella politica (il darwinismo sociale ne e' un esempio), e non vorrei che
queste ricerche poi finisco per castrare gli individui nel non farli vivere
la loro esistenza come meglio credono.
un altro argomento che sta andando alla maggiore, e si sta parlando anche di
differenza cerebrale tra i due sessi. in questo caso si pensa che non si
legato necessariamente al sesso biologico, ma piuttosto a delle attitudini
personali. riguardo a questo nel sito della bbc c'e' un quiz (in inglese)
che alla fine ti dice di che sesso e' il tuo cervello!?!? :)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/sex/add_user.shtml
come ho detto all'inizio e' un argomento che mi affascina perche' rimango
stupefatto di come piccole cose, come la differenza del 23esimo cromosomo
poi possa determinare tutto il resto...di come cose microscopiche come gli
ormoni possono influire sul umore, su come i pattern sinaptiche posso
cambiare da individuo a individuo e come questi pattern determinano il modo
in cui rielaboriamo la realta' che ci circonda...
...buona lettura :)
lamp
------------------------------------------
http://www.narth.com/docs/york.html
from Medical Issues
Gender Differences Are Real
By Frank York
It's time to root out the imposition of gendered behavior stereotypes from
all aspects of our lives. Ending gender oppression means encouraging our
children to experiment with alternative gender expressions...
- Nancy Nangeroni, a transsexual activist quoted in Transgender Warriors
It is fundamental that individuals have the right to define, and to redefine
as their lives unfold, their own gender identity, without regard to
chromosomal sex, genitalia, assigned birth sex, or initial gender role.
- From The International Bill of Gender Rights, approved by the
International Conference on Transgender Law and Employment Policy, 1993
Are men and women different? They're different anatomically, of course, but
are they different in any other ways? Do their hormonal differences
influence their behaviors and attitudes? Do they process information
differently?
Feminists and gay theorists often say "no" to these questions. They maintain
that the differences between men and women are mostly the result of
socialization in male-dominated societies, and that it is patriarchal
oppression that has relegated women to feminine gender roles. Biology is
said to have little to do with abilities or sex roles in our society.
Some feminist writers actually believe that the idea of "two sexes" (male
and female) is a myth. Dr. Anne Fausto- Sterling, writing in "The Five
Sexes: Why Male and Female Are Not Enough," says that western culture is
defying nature by maintaining a "two-party sexual system," for "biologically
speaking, there are many gradations running from female to male; and
depending on how one calls the shots, one can argue that along the spectrum
lie at least five sexes--and perhaps even more." (1)
Not content with denying the reality of two sexes, a subgroup within the gay
rights movement--the "transgendered" --is attempting to normalize
crossdressing and transsexualism (where the person has a sex change from
male to female, or female to male). Some of these transsexuals actually
prefer to live as "she-males" - having the physical characteristics of both
men and women.
The effort to erase gender distinctions and redefine deviant behavior as
"normal" is evident in the efforts of transgender activists to remove
"Transvestic Fetishism and Gender Identity Disorder" from the Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual, Fourth Edition, (DSM-IV). If transvestites are
successful in removing this disorder from the diagnostic manual, they may
well prevail in arguing that because their behaviors are psychiatrically
"normal," their condition should be affirmed and protected by society.
Efforts to that effect are already well underway. In 1996, for example,
Katherine Wilson with the Gender Identity Center of Colorado, presented a
paper, "Myth, Stereotype, and Cross-Gender Identity in the DSM-IV," to the
Association for Woman in Psychology, a feminist psychologist group.
According to Wilson:
"The pathologicalization of transgendered people in the DSM-IV raises
substantive questions of consistency, validity, and fairness and serves to
enforce notions of essential gender role that denigrates all too many human
beings." (2)
In effect, Wilson is saying that cross-dressing and tranvestism are simply
another normal sexual-identity variant.
Sexual Mythology Versus Scientific Facts
Professor Steven Goldberg, Chairman of the Department of Sociology at City
College of New York, has written a book with the provocative title, Why Men
Rule--A Theory of Male Dominance. In the book, he debunks much of the
feminist mythology surrounding the issue of differences between males and
females.
Goldberg maintains that although males and females are different in their
genetic and hormonally-driven behavior, this does not mean that one sex is
superior or inferior to another. Each gender has different strengths and
weaknesses. However, he believes the neuro-endocrinological evidence is
clear: The high level of testosterone in males drives them toward dominance
in the world, while the lack of high levels of this hormone in women creates
a natural, biological push in the direction of less dominant and more
nurturing roles in society.
Goldberg writes:
"There is not, nor has there ever been, any society that even remotely
failed to associate authority and leadership in suprafamilial areas with the
male. There are no borderline cases." (3)
Feminist theorists maintain that socialization is a primary reason why males
have dominated the world's cultures, but Goldberg counters:
"...if socialization alone explains why societies are patriarchal, there
should be any number of societies in which leadership and authority are
associated with women, and one should not have to invoke examples of
non-patriarchal societies that exist only in myth and literature." (4)
Biological Differences
To say that men and women are the "same" is to deny physical reality. Child
psychologist Dr. James Dobson relates a humorous story about men and women
in his best-seller, Straight Talk to Men and Their Wives. Several years ago
a drug company conducted an experiment with all of the women in a small
fishing village in South America. The women were all given an experimental
birth control pill. They were given the same pill on the same date, and the
prescription was terminated after three weeks to permit menstruation.
"That meant, of course," he says, "that every adult female in the community
was experiencing premenstrual tension at the same time. The men couldn't
take it. They all headed for their boats each month and remained at sea
until the crisis had passed at home. They knew, even if some people didn't,
that females are different from males . . . especially every twenty-eight
days." (5)
Science makes plain that males and females are different from the moment of
conception. As Amram Scheinfeld notes in Your Heredity and Environment,
these differences between men and women are evident in the chromosomes which
carry inherited traits from the father and mother. Humans have 23 pairs of
chromosomes within each cell; twenty-two of these are alike in both males
and females. But, says Scheinfeld, "...when we come to the twenty-third
pair, the sexes are not the same. . . every woman has in her cells two of
what we call the X chromosome. But a man has just one X---its mate being the
much smaller Y."
It is the presence of this influential Y chromosome, says Scheinfeld, "that
sets the machinery of sex development in motion and results in all the
genetic differences that there are between a man and a woman." (6) Right
down to the cellular level, males and females are different.
Sex differentiation takes place immediately as the male or female begins to
develop within the womb. The sex hormones --primarily estrogen and
testosterone--have a significant impact on the behavior of males and
females. Why do boys typically like to play with trucks and girls like to
play with dolls? Feminists usually claim this is the result of
socialization, but there is growing scientific evidence that boys and girls
are greatly influenced by their respective hormones.
Hormones Trigger Aggression or Nurture
In an ABC special, "Boys and Girls are Different," television host John
Stossel described several studies conducted by universities on what appear
to be innate differences between males and females. He explained the following:
At the University of Wisconsin, researchers injected testosterone into
unborn female monkeys. Monkeys engage in very sex-stereotyped behavior,
according to Stossel; the males are aggressive and fight, while the female
monkeys typically groom and nurture the young. When the testosterone-
injected females were born, they didn't groom or nurture their children.
They fought and behaved like males.
In one out of 100,000 pregnancies, a genetic defect causes human female
babies to be exposed to a bath of the male hormone androgen. These are CAH
girls--short for a condition called congenital adrenal hyperplasia. These
children are born female, but they behave like "tomboys." The male androgen
influences their behaviors and desires. These girls typically play with
"boy" toys more than their female counterparts.
Child psychologist Michael Lewis conducted an experiment with one-year-old
boys and girls to see how they would react to being separated from their
mother by a barrier. The boys tried to knock the barrier down while the
girls stood passively, crying for help. (7)
Brain Differences
Males and females are not only markedly different in the hormones that drive
them, but they are also different in the way they think. The brains of men
and women are actually wired differently.
George Mason University professor Robert Nadeau, the author of S/he Brain:
Science, Sexual Politics, and the Feminist Movement, describes significant
differences between male and female brains. In an essay on this subject in
The World & I, (November 1, 1997), Nadeau observes:
"The human brain, like the human body, is sexed, and differences in the
sex-specific human brain condition a wide range of behaviors that we
typically associate with maleness or femaleness." (8)
Nadeau says that the sex-specific differences in the brain are located both
in the primitive regions, and in the neocortex--the higher brain regions.
The neocortex contains 70 percent of the neurons in the central nervous
system, and it is divided into two hemispheres joined by a 200-million fiber
network called the corpus callosum.
The left hemisphere controls language analysis and expression and body
movements while the right hemisphere is responsible for spatial
relationships, facial expressions, emotional stimuli, and vocal intonations.
Men and women process information differently because of differences in a
portion of the brain called the splenium, which is much larger in women than
in men, and has more brain-wave activity. (9) Studies have shown that
problemsolving tasks in female brains are handled by both hemispheres, while
the male brain only uses one hemisphere.
Differences in the ways men and women communicate is also a function of
sex-specific areas of the brain. Women seem to have an enhanced awareness of
"emotionally relevant details, visual cues, verbal nuances, and hidden
meanings," writes Nadeau. Similarly, while male infants are more interested
in objects than in people, female infants respond more readily to the human
voice than do male infants.
Different Brains: Different Abilities
The difference between the male and female brain is not evidence of
superiority or inferiority, but of specialization. Michael Levin, writing in
Feminism and Freedom, notes that, in general, males have better spatial and
math skills than females. While feminists often claim that these differences
are due to social expectations--and if girls were encouraged to be
mathematicians, they would have the same ability as boys--there is evidence
that these differences are inherited and appear in childhood, actually
increasing during puberty. On the other hand, girls tend to be more vocal
than boys, are better at hearing higher frequencies, and do better than boys
in reading and vocabulary tests.
Males have a vastly superior ability to visualize a threedimensional object
than do women. This gives the male his often-observed superior abilities in
math and geometrical reasoning. In addition, males are better skilled in
gross motor movements than are girls. (10)
Strength and Endurance
Not only are men and women fundamentally different in the way their brains
are wired, they are also vastly different in physical strength and
endurance. The differences are rooted within both the genes and the hormones
of males and females. Michael Levin notes that women only have 55- 58
percent of the upper body strength of men and on average, are only 80
percent as strong as a man of identical weight. Sex differences also appear
by the age of three in the ability of males and females to throw a ball far
and accurately. (11)
Feminist leaders naively believe that physical differences between males and
females should not be taken into consideration when hiring women to become
policemen, firemen, or combat soldiers. Yet as Levin points out, females
simply do not have the strength or endurance necessary to be effective
combat soldiers. Yet in order to accommodate women who desire to be combat
soldiers, the military has designed less stressful physical exercises and
standards which would allow them to participate in roles for which they have
sought inclusion.
Facing Reality
Contrary to the wishful thinking of feminists, bisexuals, and transsexuals,
there are profound differences between males and females--and those
differences are programmed within the DNA from the moment of conception. The
brains of females and males are clearly "sexed," and testosterone and
estrogen are the juices that augment maleness and femaleness.
To be sure, gender-distorting prenatal abnormalities do affect some
individuals, and may increase the likelihood that such an afflicted person
will later self-identify as transgendered or transsexual (and in some cases,
homosexual).
But barring such unfortunate developmental errors--- which we should not
normalize as if they were not disruptions in normal growth and
development--the simple truth remains: maleness and femaleness are innate
and integral parts of our human design.
Endnotes
1. Leslie Feinberg, Transgender Warriors, Beacon Press: Boston,
Massachusetts, 1996, p. 103.
2. Katherine Wilson, "Myth, Stereotype, and Cross-Gender Identity in the
DSM-IV," 1996, 21st Annual Feminist Psychology Conference, Portland, Oregon,
1996, Internet posting.
3. Steven Goldberg, The Inevitability of Patriarchy, Open Court, Peru,
Illinois, 1993, p. 15.
4. Ibid., p. 23.
5. James Dobson, Straight Talk to Men and Their Wives, Word Publishing,
Dallas, Texas, 1991, p. 181.
6. Amram Scheinfeld, Your Heredity and Environment, J. B. Lippincott, New
York, 1965, p. 43.
7. John Stossel, "Boys & Girls Are Different: Men, Women, and the Sex
Difference," ABC News Special, January 17, 1998, tran script from the
Internet, The Electric Library.
8. Robert Nadeau, "Brain Sex and the Language of Love," The World & I, Nov.
1, 1997, p. 330.
9. Ibid.
10. Michael Levin, Feminism and Freedom, Transaction Publishers, New
Brunswick, New Jersey, 1988, pp. 82, 88.
11. Ibid., p. 210.
