Saturday, January 15, 2022

Lies About Testosterone And Gender Stereotypes

The connection between testosterone and the supposed male "obsession" with sex is often mentioned by people who think appealing to fallible sensory experiences instead of pure reason is the ideal approach to epistemology.  Unsurprisingly, because they are less focused on logical deductions without any assumptions at all than they are on agreeing with popular ideas gained from something other than reason and introspection, they knowingly or unknowingly accept fallacies when they think about scientific ideas.  They assume that testosterone must affect men and women differently just because it is an entrenched tradition for people to say so.

Reason exposes their assumptions to anyone who thinks soundly.  Beyond the typical issues with hearsay and stereotypes that automatically render them epistemologically invalid, there is a scientific assumption that could easily go unmentioned.  It is just assumed that the same amount of testosterone affects men and women the same, and then the reported greater amount of testosterone in men is used as an excuse for assuming someone is more violent and more sexually-minded just because they are a man, which motivates sexist people to think less of physical and sexual abuse of men--and motivates people to trivialize female sexuality in general.

What if a miniscule amount of testosterone in women and a greater amount in men have the same phenomenological impact?  How can one know by looking at the quantity of something if women are not more sensitive to a smaller amount?  After all, men and women are equally sexual beings (with the way a person experiences and expresses their sexuality being a matter of individuality and not an issue of being a man or a woman).  It is clear from both an analysis using pure reason [1] and the honest expression of true individuality that gender stereotypes are false.  It is not even that one must approach gender stereotypes from a biological standpoint first, as one can come to truths about how stereotypes are false without ever even bothering to think about or investigate biology; the issue is that people who are fixated on hearsay and appeals to authority do not even ever appear to wonder if men and women do not need the same amount of testosterone to have similar effects.

Despite the very strong social encouragement of or even hostility towards certain behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs specifically when attributed to a man or woman, people act in ways that do not align with stereotypes--fully or in part.  Men still develop sexual connections based on the emotional side of a relationship and women still find themselves attracted to the male body on a visual basis.  All of the stupidity and social conditioning in the world have not driven this out of men and women because individuality still shows masculinity and femininity are myths.  Nothing beyond logic and introspection is necessary to prove the lies of gender stereotypes, with testosterone being misunderstood in order to preserve the social power of the stereotypes.

Ultimately, there is nothing but assumptions and extrapolations that a person can appeal to if they wish to stereotype others (on the basis of being male or female or for some other reason).  It is possible for anyone to reason out that it does not follow from being a man or a woman that one must have or is even more likely to have certain personality characteristics.  One could prove that men and women have no gender-specific traits beyond the appearance and functioning of their anatomy.  As long as Western culture as a whole pretends like social experiences manipulated by cultural conditioning are about something more than superficial perceptions, perceptions which could be misleading or incomplete, it will not look to reason first and foremost.


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