“Testosterone does not invent aggression, testosterone exaggerates pre-existing social patterns of aggression”
Edit: everyone on this post is asking some really good questions that I also have. I tried to find the research article this professor is referencing but everything is blocked behind paywalls🙃.
What I took away from this is that males are more predisposed to aggression because of testosterone But it’s the way that we have normalized violence against women in our society that causes a testosterone spike to be triggered when we set boundaries with them and tell them no. So basically men are taught that they are the dominant ones in the social hierarchy (compared to women) and since we have normalized violence against women in our society, women doing anything to upset that hierarchy triggers their testosterone and triggers their aggression. If we did not normalize VAW or have a gender hierarchy, then those things would not trigger a testosterone rush/aggression. I hope this makes sense. I don’t even know if it makes sense to me lol.
I also don’t know whether or not this could be generalized to humans (it might be unethical to replicate the study with human subjects). Also, Thank you to the people posting more resources! All in all, it would be ignorant to say that male aggression is purely biological or purely social. The good old “nature v.s nurture” debate. It’s for sure a combo of both. As a psych major this topic really interests me and I might email some of my professors about their thoughts on this.
Remember when she became a meme about killing her husband (which would have been justified and based btw) and everyone was so cruel and ripping on her. Hmm…
We’ve been saying this for years, glad it’s being discussed now, but the comments are heartbreaking. How many girls with a similar story were just thrown into the transition pipeline…
currently the “inclusive” thing to do is to use “they” instead of the male default (which like, we should get rid of) “he” presumably to include nonbinary people. But the problem with this is that because of male default thinking, most of the time this will still bring to mind a man. Instead, use “he or she” or if you are feeling really radical, use the female default “she.” this makes it more difficult to ignore the existence of women and girls in a statement. (my source on this is one of the early chapters of “Invisible Women” which is like, my bible)
for example if i say “a programmer should always properly comment their code” a male programmer probably comes to mind. but if a say “a programmer should always comment his or her code” you are more likely to consider the existence of female programmers.
and imo, its much more important to challenge male default thinking than to make a feeble attempt at inclusivity that really just lets the status-quo stand
Trans activists think they’re super fucking smart when they point out that some women don’t have cervices, uteri, vaginas, breasts, etc. They like to say that radfems think these women aren’t women because of it. Yes, we are all aware that some women are missing body parts or have body parts that don’t function due to injury, illness, or developmental disorders. But in the same way that some humans missing a leg doesn’t mean all humans are not bipedal, some women missing components of their reproductive system does not make them not female.
Trans activists, by insisting that women having missing or dysfunctional reproductive organs make them the same as men who identify as women, YOU are denying them their womanhood. Being female cannot be taken away as much as it cannot be opted into. Stop using disabled women, women with DSDs, and women who have had parts of their body removed as your pawns.
if a black person doesn’t enjoy the black experience because they experience racism, does that make them not a black person anymore? if a gay person doesn’t enjoy being gay because they experience homophobia, does that mean they are not gay? if a woman doesn’t enjoy womanhood because she experiences misogyny, does that mean she is no longer a woman?
oppressed groups expressing the discomfort that comes with who they are in a world that is utterly cruel to them doesn’t mean they no longer want to be who they were born as. the thing with systemic oppression is that it is designed to make the people affected by it uncomfortable and unhappy, it’s inescapable. thinking women have to be happy within the confinements of our oppression to be considered women or else it suddenly indicates we are identifing out of our material realities is frankly doing nothing to help our situation but only suggests that, unless we ignore or enjoy our oppression like monkeys in a zoo, we should just stop fighting and live delusionally as someone we are not and never will be. if women who don’t enjoy womenhood thought like that there would be no movements fighting for our liberation, which is exactly what MRAs are striving for. this just proves that trans activists are utterly anti-woman.
its possible to BOTH be disappointed and frustrated at women who aren’t helping each other, AND still think that ALL women deserve rights to abortion, equal pay, and safety from men regardless of if those women “give back” to feminism in any way.
sexism against “bad” woman is sexism against all women.
ALT
