Yesterday I got a comment on an older entry from "Mike" who said:

This has been a subject upon which I’ve reflected often and discussed often. I think that there are women who prefer to be subservient in their roles. I doubt that it is the majority of women, but I'm not a sociologist, and I don't actually know. But I certainly do know plenty of women who can’t do enough to please others, and often at their own expense. Sometimes even at their own child’s expense.

However, I don’t believe that this applies to all women, nor do I think it is biological. This is a cultural response to the way women have been treated over hundreds of years. Biological explanations for human behaviour are being shot down in flames year after year, and are an old fashioned, outdated and oversimplified way of attempting to explain the way people work.

A fantastic resource for anyone who's interested in this is the work of Laura Berk, an American academic who is at the cutting edge of developmental psychology and writes psych text books for universities the world over (which is, obviously, where I've come across her work). Even Freud is being superseded and discounted these days. Although his work laid the grounds for what we know today as psychoanalysis, his work is just too old fashioned, and has no scientific basis.

Finally, the testosterone thing. Injecting it into rats hasn’t increased "dominance" per se. The increase is in aggressive behaviour. Call it a fine a line difference if you will, but I see it as a rather significant difference. You can find arguments saying that dominance means aggression (see here… but note that this is an unpublished paper, not peer reviewed, and targeted at a money-spending audience for "the hormone shop"), but you can also find arguments saying that Jesus Christ was an alien. Just because it’s printed in a book doesn’t make it true. Statistics are just as misleading - I mean, after all, statistically speaking, everyone on the planet has one testicle. (think about it)

I found a couple of published articles for academic psychology journals talking about this experimental procedure and aggression:

"Effects of chronic adminstration with high doses of testosterone propionate on behavioral and physiological parameters in mice with differing basal aggressiveness" (Aggressive Behaviour, 2003, Vol 29, 173-189. Authors: Martínez-Sanchis, S.; Arnedo, M. T.; Salvador, A.; Moya-Albiol, L.; González-Bono, E.) - discusses conflicting results in research, e.g. animals which behave aggressively during low-testosterone cycles, which doesn't support the high T = high aggression theory (p186). Also, regardless of the sex of the mouse, the predisposition to aggression or submission altered the result of the hormone injections - submissive mice became more submissive, dominant mice stayed relatively the same. In fact, the more aggressive mice, after their injections, spent more time exploring their environment than the control mice. All the mice in the experiment were male, showing that submissive behaviour is not limited to females.

"Effects of Pubertal Anabolic-Androgenic Steroid (AAS) Administration on Reproductive and Aggressive Behaviors in Male Rats" (Behavioral Neuroscience. Vol. 117 (5). Authors: Farrell, S. and McGinnis, M.)  - hormonal injections increased aggressive behaviour towards everyone, not "dominant behaviour towards females".

(I can't reproduce these articles here due to copyright, but you should be able to access these articles through most university libraries. If you are a library member, you can access many of these journals via the web.)

People desire power and dominance. Not just men. People. You suppress a woman’s rights and cut off her avenues to power, and it just bubbles up in another way, for instance passive-aggressive behaviour. There is no way that women are designed to allow people to use them as a doormat. Even the doormats I know engage in idiotically manipulative behaviour to try somehow to combat their situation of being dominated.

Don’t believe everything you see printed, boys and girls. And don’t fucking tell me that women are biologically designed to be submissive. I don’t give a shit about political correctness, and yes, I believe that men and women both have to give ground in their relationships, but it’s less about dominant-submissive dynamics, and more just about mutual respect and care. I agree with Mike's "give a bit" - but this is something which men and women can take on board. Life is a two way street, and too many men grab on to idiotic, narrow-minded, biased research such as Mike's example and use it as an excuse to treat women like shit, and then say "but that’s the way nature/God intended it".

By the way Mike, where was this experiment documented? Is it a published, peer-reviewed journal article, or something out of People magazine? I wouldn’t mind having a look, and the source of your information would make a big difference as to how much weight it carries. Oh, and you spell it "testosterone", not testostarone.

Thanks boys and girls. Now, try not to rip each other’s heads off, as I know this is a controversial topic, and KEEP YOUR COMMENTS IN THE COMMENTS SECTION, NOT ON THE TAG BOARD. Tag board comments applying to this post will be moved to the comments section of this post. I’m not trying to upset people, just respond to Mike’s comment.

Remember: I reserve the right to remove any childish or abusive comments from anywhere on this blog, and subsequently ban that person. Have any opinion on anything you want, but present your case as an intelligent adult, not a wailing child.