by Spider » Tue Feb 25, 2014 12:50 am
You aren't reading this discussion, your picking out a single paragraph. Might be the problem. Clearly I made the internet rookie mistake of letting fly with an absolute statement, and you cheerfully took the shot I gave you. I actually do think it goes without saying that there are clearly physiological differences between the sexes. The point I'm making is that these differences are basically trivial compared with gender training. I should have left myself an "almost entirely" or something inside that post.
I didn't say "chemicals become indocrinated" any more than I said water runs uphill. You on the other hand read an abstract of a study that suggests a relationship between TST injected old men who grew up gender indoctrinated and then pronounce it as fact that spatial reasoning skills are a result of testosterone. You wanted to believe it so badly that that was all it took. Never mind that a bunch of old men (male. Plenty of testosterone up until they got old) who lived their whole lives awash in testosterone, which is associated with maleness, were simultaneously invested in male gender roles and developed stronger spatial reasoning as a baseline, and adjusted over the years as the testosterone tapered off. And so when an injection of good old TST was given to them they went back to the mode they'd been living with on a biochemically induced male rush. That this is somehow comparable to an entirely hypothetical group of young children of both sexes where hormones don't really factor very much who haven't been gender trained makes my head hurt.
You study does not prove that spatial reasoning is enhanced with testosterone. It only suggests that old men who have been gender trained and who have depleted testosterone levels perked up a bit in that regard when injected with testosterone.
Even if it were eventually proven out that there was a small boost in spatial reasoning when puberty set in as a result of a male hormone advantage...honestly by that point do we really think it would even matter in any appreciable way? Testosterone seems to me to be more of a problem than an advantage, considering how males sabotage themselves so much more often as a result of it. Girls rock the math classes and guys turn into chest bumping bros that can be distracted at any curve vaguely S shaped. At least that was how it worked in my high school.