Men.
I am a woman raised by a female dominated household, with my
baby brother as the only Y chromosome- unless you count the family dog. I have
grown up with boys as my friends since the awkward age of 13. In my English 151
class we had many discussions about the male and female natural characteristics.
I always found these traits interesting to think about.
What I want to focus my attention is on the biological
differences and how they may affect our human behavior. I believe that saying
women like shopping and men like sports is stereotyping the genders. These
stereotypes are usually also dependent on cultural settings. Although I do want
to focus on men in my current location (Lincoln), I want to discover what is
attributed to their physical make-up.
Below is a link to a report that talks about some of the theories being investigated currently by gender psychologists. It can give you a bit of an insight into what I am thinking directing my attention towards.
For example, the male body is fit to build muscles, while a female’s
body is fit to store fat for future children. This biological difference causes
men to be, generally, a stronger gender. How does this strength in men affect
them? Could aggression be associated with this different body make-up?
I do not want to identify stereotypical gender roles or any
kind of societal created male gender qualities. These generalizations anger me
and do not interest me in the slightest. I want to strip away what the context
has done to different genders and focus on the truly basic natures.
Below is a very funny, and quite accurate video. This is a video by a marriage counselor, who is highly trained in the differences in the wiring of male and female brains. Of course, he is created a comical sense to the whole thing, bu it actually has factual information behind it.It focuses on the multitasking, interconnected brains of women vs. the focused individually brain of men. I find it interesting.
Works Cited:
http://thebioblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/genetic_male-252x252.gif
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P77JnDHUw6g
http://www.psychlotron.org.uk/newResources/developmental/AS_AQB_gender_BioBasics.pdf
I enjoyed the link to the white paper on psychological research in gender. I'm glad that they drew attention to the difference between correlation and causation. It's crucial! I'm glad that you choose sex as an organizing identity. It often gets overlooked in terms of intercultural communication.
ReplyDeleteMy only question is: how do you plan to study men based on biology? The assignment is definitely slanted towards the interpretive or possibly critical paradigms given my general orientation to research. I am not opposed to it, but I just want to us to be clear about how we can meet the goals of this project.