I take it you're a bio male? Or are you an F2M too? I thought it was interesting how Max said he understood things about being a guy (like the estrogen thing) because he'd been on natural estrogen, and bio men hadn't been, so they had nothing to compare it to. They don't know what it's like to be under the influence of estrogen, and how different it makes females.
Bio male (that’s why I specified natural production). I can only compare his statements against my own experiences. But even among cis men there’s a lot of variance so a pattern can observed and used to extrapolate. Even in an individual, actually: when I was working out intensely 5 days a week and not masturbating, my testosterone was higher and my feelings were more similar to this guy’s.
But I totally agree that trans people have the most insightful understanding of how hormones affect us. It’s not perfect because hormones have some permanent effects during (and before) childhood but it’s far better than we can deduce from intrasexual differences.
Very interesting and makes sense to me. Strangely enough, I've always had more testosterone than most women (yes we have some), a deep voice, I'm a mesomorph, mostly an alpha, competitive, and a logical math girl. Yet, I share most of the same emotions as women and never felt strange in my body, even if it bothered me that I was so flat. Bottom line, I never felt perfectly in synch with either group but didn't hate either side. I enjoy giggling with girls and giving men joking shit. Maybe the hormones explain it more than I thought. I know that my situation isn't the point of the article but somewhat cathartic to think of it this way. Pretty sure if I had grown up during these times, I'd have been told I was a boy but given my hard head and attraction to men, I wouldn't have bought that BS. Thanks for sharing. We are all unique!
There's nothing weird about what you just related. Sex stereotypes fit up to a point but we're all on the spectrum where some are super-girly, others are super-masculine, and others are everything in between (rather a lot like gay vs straight...I'm pretty firmly on the straight side, but my uncle is more bi-ish). It bothers me how much kids are shoved into rigid stereotypes the way we used to complain about before first wave feminism. I had more of a brain and lacked the fear of getting dirty when I was a kid although I'm less keen on dirt now ;) I'm just glad we weren't born at a time when they'd be hie'ing us off to the doctor for a sex change.
I don't know where hormones and brain wiring end and culture begins but I was listening to a podcast this morning that talked about how scientists have found that newborn babies really do react more to things and faces fairly stereotypically - boys are more attuned to mobiles, girls are more attuned to faces and their stares linger longer on them. And yes, we do have testosterone, and guys I think have a little estrogen too. Kinda really makes me wonder how we see the world in a way that they don't...the Transsexual Scientist was very much a scientist and he didn't get into hormones very much and how they impacted him.
Anyway...I think Rachel Levine conclusively proves every time he opens his mouth that he's still very much a guy. And that's how you tell the difference...I don't think transsexuals can ever really hide their biology...it comes out in the way they talk and think and...you *know*.
One last point and I'll stop. That testosterone spectrum might also help explain how women react/don't react to male bullying to some degree. From my earliest age, if a boy tried to bully me, I'd have a male-type reaction. Luckily, I was strong and fast so until puberty that approach was successful. Was forced to change my technique when at 13 a 15-year-old boy slugged me in the face and broke my nose. Still, I don't back down, just use different techniques. The point is that perhaps I should have more empathy for women who don't stand up. Maybe they are wired and hormonally programed to acquiesce and must be trained to do otherwise. Just a thought . . .
You nailed it. You may be primed (or were) better for fighting and we weren't. I can't say as I was told *not* to fight, when my playmate Barry would hit me and I'd run to my mother she'd say, "Hit him back." But he'd run away. And it didn't seem fair to hit him the next time I got near him. Female thinking at four ;)
I’m kind of like that myself; which is probably why I’ve always had a lot of male friends.
I’ve been mistaken for a lesbian on numerous occasions; probably due to the deep voice, the mountain biking, the Subaru, the comfortable shoes, the love of flannel shirts and the general tomboy vibe. I really am glad I grew up before all this gender shit, because during the awkward teenage years there’s a strong chance I would have been like “hey, I must be a gay trans dude!” or some such nonsense.
Sometimes I simply felt different. Glad to know there were others like me. And yeah, the tomboy thing was part and parcel of my persona--it was way more fun!
I'm a woman who has some stereotypically-male interests (mountain biking), and my riding crew is all men and me. I've been riding with them, including going on mountain bike trips, for over a decade and have been accepted as an "honorary dude", so I get a glimpse of some unvarnished male behavior. It probably helps that I'm one of those straight women who often gets mistaken for a lesbian. Valerio's account confirms many of my observations.
Male banter is something that I think a lot of women misunderstand. I suspect a lot of what is perceived as "hostility" by women in male-dominated spaces is actually just men treating a woman the way they treat other men. In my crew, we all have nicknames that are usually assigned by the group based on some sort of embarrassing incident or characteristic. For example, one guy will forever be known as "Puke Tent" because he got drunk on a camping trip and puked in his tent. If you react to the ribbing by getting upset, it will intensify. However, the thing to remember is that they don't rib people that aren't part of the group, or whom they dislike. It is a sign you've been accepted. The day I was dubbed "Esme Buckets" after I threw up on a hard ride, I knew I was one of them.
I've ridden bikes with other women, and noticed that when a new rider shows up for an all-women ride, everyone will slow the pace down, do easier trails, and in general go easy on the newcomer. For women, taking a newcomer on the harder trails or hitting features like jumps/drops is often seen as being a bit of a show-off and generally just isn't done. It's the opposite with guys; if a new guy shows up, we choose the gnarliest trails at the fastest pace so we can see how he does. They take particular glee if the newcomer is slower or less skilled than The Girl (i.e., me); but they will respect someone who remains stoic despite obviously suffering.
Many of my female friends wonder what their husbands say about them to their friends. I reassure them that in general, the guys seldom talk about their wives or girlfriends. Mostly they talk about their bikes, food, movies/TV, music, or cars. I have a vague idea what they do for a living, but we don't talk much about work because it's boring. I know mostly who is married or single, and who has kids, but it's taken years to learn all that because it's not usually a topic of conversation.
They think about sex a LOT more than women do, and in a different way. Younger men in particular really are life support systems for their dicks. It really is a primal drive with them and it does seem to override the rational part of their brains. And in many ways, they never really get beyond the 14-year-old boy stage, they just get somewhat better at hiding it around women. One other thing that I've observed is that while women are completely capable of having a 100% platonic friendship with a man, straight men cannot ever be 100% platonic with a woman unless she's really, really unattractive. If she is non-hideous, they will always wonder what she looks like naked and what it would be like to have sex with her. Also, most women will find an very handsome man completely unattractive if he has an unpleasant personality or stupid opinions or is just really dumb - but men are not like this. "Well, I wouldn't want to have to have a conversation with her, but I'd sure fuck her!" seems to be how most of them think.
They're much less critical of women's appearances than other women are. Most of them have one particular body part that they are fond of (big boobs, or nice legs, or curvy hips, etc.) and they are quite OK with the rest of the woman's body being imperfect as long as she has the big boobs or nice legs or a nice butt or whatever part they are fixated on. And it is also true that they find about 80% of women to be attractive, simply by being female and non-hideous. They really are not that picky. And they totally do not understand fashion - every time I hear a woman complain about "The Patriarchy" making us wear uncomfortable clothes or "policing our bodies", I have to laugh because most men's ideal attire for woman would be for us to be naked all the time. They don't understand fashion, other than appreciating it when we wear crop tops or tight jeans or low-cut tops or whatever. Women are far, FAR more critical of each others' appearance and clothing choices.
A lot of my female friends fret that their husbands or boyfriends are "suppressing" their feelings about various things. I have to inform them that they generally are not - they just don't care about stuff as much as we do. It's one of the things that I love about men - they are so much simpler and more straightforward to figure out. There's not more to them; there's less.
I just found the part of what I thought I'd lost with the tragic hotkey mistake...."We really do think differently, feel differently, and act differently and it's not always because of Da Patriarchy or MeToo or whatever. The book made me realize that all those men who came on to me when I felt low about myself that I thought were just faking liking me probably really did fancy me, but I'd gotten to a point where i just didn't believe anything men said or did. But I was quite surprised to learn that men actually find 80% of women attractive, including bull dyke lesbians et al. And that they can't tell the difference!"
So I wrote out this long thoughtful response to this, then hit some hotkey on my keyboard the wrong way and it all disappeared and refreshed so I couldn't even do a Ctrl-Z to get it back ;) So just briefly what I said was that I laughed when you said all men really want women to wear is.....nothing at all, lol. Well that's not terribly practical in Canada but...okay, let them invent warm transparent clothing for us during the winter! But fair's fair, they gotta walk around in the altogether with see-through parkas and underwear :)
It's funny what you say about them being far less critical of women's clothing choices than women, that women think Da Patriarchy is 'making' them dress a certain way when in fact they're doing it for other women...guys think we want big dicks and most women I know don't want a big dick, just one that can get the job done. Having written about enlargement spam in the past, I know for a fact these guys order these silly 'aids' to impress the guys in the locker room. Yet the penis enlargement spam *I* got always emphasized how many girls they'd get drooling all over their 'great protuberance' in their jeans, which was the wrong marketing message when the guys were simply comparing themselves to everyone else in the locker room and slinking home feeling.......diminished ;) But I guess it would be just too gay to assure the potential customers of what they REALLY wanted to hear...that they'd be the Alpha Male stud of the parties and locker room and cocktail circuit...remember Smilin' Bob from the Enzyte commercials twenty years ago? He didn't just please his wife, or have women crawling all over him, he got job offers and a higher golf score because of his big dick (dunno, can you use it like a nine iron? LOL!)
I'll have to remember that about guys giving me The Business if it ever happens again. If they're giving you The Business it's not because you're a dumb girl, it's because you're one of the dumb guys :)
I love this. It makes so much sense. Women should be so much less judgmental about men and also less paranoid. A lot of the things they accuse men of are entirely in their heads. Your comment kind of proves that.
Now. If we could just get them to understand what estrogen does to us...and that when we cry at the drop of a hat, we can't help it...our emotions really are closer to the surface than they are for guys!
This is fascinating. Also disturbing. I have always felt that male sexuality is fundamentally different from female sexuality. This fills in a lot of blanks. And it supports Camille Paglia's ideas about sexuality-that it is a dark, chthonic force not amenable to rationality. Of course feminists, with their ridiculously Rousseauian view of human nature, have vilified her for this in the decades since she published "Sexual Personae" (1990). I definitely want to read this book and never would have known about it if you hadn't reviewed it. Thank you for your always fresh insights.
Thanks as always for your kind comments! I couldn't get through SP myself...I found it just too pretentious and self-impressed although she opened my eyes to just how gay the Renaissance painters and sculptors were...don't know why I never realized that myself! I guess I just always assumed those artists had an eye for beauty no matter what it's form...no, as it turns out, they were particularly attracted to male nudes and only did the female ones when commissioned, lol. I have read other collections of her essays though, and they REALLY opened my eyes to the pitfalls of certain types of feminism. Couldn't get behind her assertion that date rape is just a chance you take when you go out with me...she excuses the men far too much. Her essay on Judy Garland's tragic life was spot-on though, and I got so excited reading these books because she really made the wheels in my brain spin...
Max is on Substack, btw, although I don't subscribe to him.
Yeah, she has. Camille Paglia is like that old nursery rhyme..."When she's good she's very very good, and when she's bad she's horrid!" I love so much of what she's written but when she writes something I disagree with it's usually something *appalling*.
I wonder what she makes of the slow encroachment of 'minor-attracted persons' on the alphabet soup set....
Yes, SP is really only for diehard literary/classical art types. I loved it, especially the introduction. I actually used her ideas to teach high school English (simplified of course). The kids responded well to them. And her essay collections are fabulous, especially her latest, “Provocations.”
Sounds like he’s on more testosterone than I naturally produce. Overall seems right to me though, just more intense than my experience.
I take it you're a bio male? Or are you an F2M too? I thought it was interesting how Max said he understood things about being a guy (like the estrogen thing) because he'd been on natural estrogen, and bio men hadn't been, so they had nothing to compare it to. They don't know what it's like to be under the influence of estrogen, and how different it makes females.
Bio male (that’s why I specified natural production). I can only compare his statements against my own experiences. But even among cis men there’s a lot of variance so a pattern can observed and used to extrapolate. Even in an individual, actually: when I was working out intensely 5 days a week and not masturbating, my testosterone was higher and my feelings were more similar to this guy’s.
But I totally agree that trans people have the most insightful understanding of how hormones affect us. It’s not perfect because hormones have some permanent effects during (and before) childhood but it’s far better than we can deduce from intrasexual differences.
The comment ‘more intense than my experience’ confused me a little and left me wondering if you’d transitioned. Thanks for clarifying.
Very interesting and makes sense to me. Strangely enough, I've always had more testosterone than most women (yes we have some), a deep voice, I'm a mesomorph, mostly an alpha, competitive, and a logical math girl. Yet, I share most of the same emotions as women and never felt strange in my body, even if it bothered me that I was so flat. Bottom line, I never felt perfectly in synch with either group but didn't hate either side. I enjoy giggling with girls and giving men joking shit. Maybe the hormones explain it more than I thought. I know that my situation isn't the point of the article but somewhat cathartic to think of it this way. Pretty sure if I had grown up during these times, I'd have been told I was a boy but given my hard head and attraction to men, I wouldn't have bought that BS. Thanks for sharing. We are all unique!
There's nothing weird about what you just related. Sex stereotypes fit up to a point but we're all on the spectrum where some are super-girly, others are super-masculine, and others are everything in between (rather a lot like gay vs straight...I'm pretty firmly on the straight side, but my uncle is more bi-ish). It bothers me how much kids are shoved into rigid stereotypes the way we used to complain about before first wave feminism. I had more of a brain and lacked the fear of getting dirty when I was a kid although I'm less keen on dirt now ;) I'm just glad we weren't born at a time when they'd be hie'ing us off to the doctor for a sex change.
I don't know where hormones and brain wiring end and culture begins but I was listening to a podcast this morning that talked about how scientists have found that newborn babies really do react more to things and faces fairly stereotypically - boys are more attuned to mobiles, girls are more attuned to faces and their stares linger longer on them. And yes, we do have testosterone, and guys I think have a little estrogen too. Kinda really makes me wonder how we see the world in a way that they don't...the Transsexual Scientist was very much a scientist and he didn't get into hormones very much and how they impacted him.
Anyway...I think Rachel Levine conclusively proves every time he opens his mouth that he's still very much a guy. And that's how you tell the difference...I don't think transsexuals can ever really hide their biology...it comes out in the way they talk and think and...you *know*.
One last point and I'll stop. That testosterone spectrum might also help explain how women react/don't react to male bullying to some degree. From my earliest age, if a boy tried to bully me, I'd have a male-type reaction. Luckily, I was strong and fast so until puberty that approach was successful. Was forced to change my technique when at 13 a 15-year-old boy slugged me in the face and broke my nose. Still, I don't back down, just use different techniques. The point is that perhaps I should have more empathy for women who don't stand up. Maybe they are wired and hormonally programed to acquiesce and must be trained to do otherwise. Just a thought . . .
You nailed it. You may be primed (or were) better for fighting and we weren't. I can't say as I was told *not* to fight, when my playmate Barry would hit me and I'd run to my mother she'd say, "Hit him back." But he'd run away. And it didn't seem fair to hit him the next time I got near him. Female thinking at four ;)
I’m kind of like that myself; which is probably why I’ve always had a lot of male friends.
I’ve been mistaken for a lesbian on numerous occasions; probably due to the deep voice, the mountain biking, the Subaru, the comfortable shoes, the love of flannel shirts and the general tomboy vibe. I really am glad I grew up before all this gender shit, because during the awkward teenage years there’s a strong chance I would have been like “hey, I must be a gay trans dude!” or some such nonsense.
Sometimes I simply felt different. Glad to know there were others like me. And yeah, the tomboy thing was part and parcel of my persona--it was way more fun!
Yanno if there's one adolescent weirdness we ALL have in common it's...that we all feel 'different'. And we don't know why.
It's because we ARE different, and that's perfectly normal.
It sounds like you get the best of both worlds. Cool.
Or the worst at times :-)
I'm a woman who has some stereotypically-male interests (mountain biking), and my riding crew is all men and me. I've been riding with them, including going on mountain bike trips, for over a decade and have been accepted as an "honorary dude", so I get a glimpse of some unvarnished male behavior. It probably helps that I'm one of those straight women who often gets mistaken for a lesbian. Valerio's account confirms many of my observations.
Male banter is something that I think a lot of women misunderstand. I suspect a lot of what is perceived as "hostility" by women in male-dominated spaces is actually just men treating a woman the way they treat other men. In my crew, we all have nicknames that are usually assigned by the group based on some sort of embarrassing incident or characteristic. For example, one guy will forever be known as "Puke Tent" because he got drunk on a camping trip and puked in his tent. If you react to the ribbing by getting upset, it will intensify. However, the thing to remember is that they don't rib people that aren't part of the group, or whom they dislike. It is a sign you've been accepted. The day I was dubbed "Esme Buckets" after I threw up on a hard ride, I knew I was one of them.
I've ridden bikes with other women, and noticed that when a new rider shows up for an all-women ride, everyone will slow the pace down, do easier trails, and in general go easy on the newcomer. For women, taking a newcomer on the harder trails or hitting features like jumps/drops is often seen as being a bit of a show-off and generally just isn't done. It's the opposite with guys; if a new guy shows up, we choose the gnarliest trails at the fastest pace so we can see how he does. They take particular glee if the newcomer is slower or less skilled than The Girl (i.e., me); but they will respect someone who remains stoic despite obviously suffering.
Many of my female friends wonder what their husbands say about them to their friends. I reassure them that in general, the guys seldom talk about their wives or girlfriends. Mostly they talk about their bikes, food, movies/TV, music, or cars. I have a vague idea what they do for a living, but we don't talk much about work because it's boring. I know mostly who is married or single, and who has kids, but it's taken years to learn all that because it's not usually a topic of conversation.
They think about sex a LOT more than women do, and in a different way. Younger men in particular really are life support systems for their dicks. It really is a primal drive with them and it does seem to override the rational part of their brains. And in many ways, they never really get beyond the 14-year-old boy stage, they just get somewhat better at hiding it around women. One other thing that I've observed is that while women are completely capable of having a 100% platonic friendship with a man, straight men cannot ever be 100% platonic with a woman unless she's really, really unattractive. If she is non-hideous, they will always wonder what she looks like naked and what it would be like to have sex with her. Also, most women will find an very handsome man completely unattractive if he has an unpleasant personality or stupid opinions or is just really dumb - but men are not like this. "Well, I wouldn't want to have to have a conversation with her, but I'd sure fuck her!" seems to be how most of them think.
They're much less critical of women's appearances than other women are. Most of them have one particular body part that they are fond of (big boobs, or nice legs, or curvy hips, etc.) and they are quite OK with the rest of the woman's body being imperfect as long as she has the big boobs or nice legs or a nice butt or whatever part they are fixated on. And it is also true that they find about 80% of women to be attractive, simply by being female and non-hideous. They really are not that picky. And they totally do not understand fashion - every time I hear a woman complain about "The Patriarchy" making us wear uncomfortable clothes or "policing our bodies", I have to laugh because most men's ideal attire for woman would be for us to be naked all the time. They don't understand fashion, other than appreciating it when we wear crop tops or tight jeans or low-cut tops or whatever. Women are far, FAR more critical of each others' appearance and clothing choices.
A lot of my female friends fret that their husbands or boyfriends are "suppressing" their feelings about various things. I have to inform them that they generally are not - they just don't care about stuff as much as we do. It's one of the things that I love about men - they are so much simpler and more straightforward to figure out. There's not more to them; there's less.
I just found the part of what I thought I'd lost with the tragic hotkey mistake...."We really do think differently, feel differently, and act differently and it's not always because of Da Patriarchy or MeToo or whatever. The book made me realize that all those men who came on to me when I felt low about myself that I thought were just faking liking me probably really did fancy me, but I'd gotten to a point where i just didn't believe anything men said or did. But I was quite surprised to learn that men actually find 80% of women attractive, including bull dyke lesbians et al. And that they can't tell the difference!"
So I wrote out this long thoughtful response to this, then hit some hotkey on my keyboard the wrong way and it all disappeared and refreshed so I couldn't even do a Ctrl-Z to get it back ;) So just briefly what I said was that I laughed when you said all men really want women to wear is.....nothing at all, lol. Well that's not terribly practical in Canada but...okay, let them invent warm transparent clothing for us during the winter! But fair's fair, they gotta walk around in the altogether with see-through parkas and underwear :)
It's funny what you say about them being far less critical of women's clothing choices than women, that women think Da Patriarchy is 'making' them dress a certain way when in fact they're doing it for other women...guys think we want big dicks and most women I know don't want a big dick, just one that can get the job done. Having written about enlargement spam in the past, I know for a fact these guys order these silly 'aids' to impress the guys in the locker room. Yet the penis enlargement spam *I* got always emphasized how many girls they'd get drooling all over their 'great protuberance' in their jeans, which was the wrong marketing message when the guys were simply comparing themselves to everyone else in the locker room and slinking home feeling.......diminished ;) But I guess it would be just too gay to assure the potential customers of what they REALLY wanted to hear...that they'd be the Alpha Male stud of the parties and locker room and cocktail circuit...remember Smilin' Bob from the Enzyte commercials twenty years ago? He didn't just please his wife, or have women crawling all over him, he got job offers and a higher golf score because of his big dick (dunno, can you use it like a nine iron? LOL!)
I'll have to remember that about guys giving me The Business if it ever happens again. If they're giving you The Business it's not because you're a dumb girl, it's because you're one of the dumb guys :)
"Younger men in particular really are life support systems for their dicks." This is my new favorite quote!
I remember seeing it as a BBS tagline in the 90s ;)
I love this. It makes so much sense. Women should be so much less judgmental about men and also less paranoid. A lot of the things they accuse men of are entirely in their heads. Your comment kind of proves that.
Now. If we could just get them to understand what estrogen does to us...and that when we cry at the drop of a hat, we can't help it...our emotions really are closer to the surface than they are for guys!
This is fascinating. Also disturbing. I have always felt that male sexuality is fundamentally different from female sexuality. This fills in a lot of blanks. And it supports Camille Paglia's ideas about sexuality-that it is a dark, chthonic force not amenable to rationality. Of course feminists, with their ridiculously Rousseauian view of human nature, have vilified her for this in the decades since she published "Sexual Personae" (1990). I definitely want to read this book and never would have known about it if you hadn't reviewed it. Thank you for your always fresh insights.
Thanks as always for your kind comments! I couldn't get through SP myself...I found it just too pretentious and self-impressed although she opened my eyes to just how gay the Renaissance painters and sculptors were...don't know why I never realized that myself! I guess I just always assumed those artists had an eye for beauty no matter what it's form...no, as it turns out, they were particularly attracted to male nudes and only did the female ones when commissioned, lol. I have read other collections of her essays though, and they REALLY opened my eyes to the pitfalls of certain types of feminism. Couldn't get behind her assertion that date rape is just a chance you take when you go out with me...she excuses the men far too much. Her essay on Judy Garland's tragic life was spot-on though, and I got so excited reading these books because she really made the wheels in my brain spin...
Max is on Substack, btw, although I don't subscribe to him.
She also excused pedophiles far too much back in the ‘80s, claiming that man/ boy love was perfectly legitimate. She’s since shut up about that.
Yeah, she has. Camille Paglia is like that old nursery rhyme..."When she's good she's very very good, and when she's bad she's horrid!" I love so much of what she's written but when she writes something I disagree with it's usually something *appalling*.
I wonder what she makes of the slow encroachment of 'minor-attracted persons' on the alphabet soup set....
Yes, SP is really only for diehard literary/classical art types. I loved it, especially the introduction. I actually used her ideas to teach high school English (simplified of course). The kids responded well to them. And her essay collections are fabulous, especially her latest, “Provocations.”