Finishing up neurons and their forms of communication

I agree with those of you who have said that it is really valuable to consider the influence of social constructs on gender differences in behavior. In a similar vein other situational variables must significantly influence behavior, such as the constraints of the environment that determine the most adaptive behaviors for males and females.

For example, evolutionary psychologist (I'm sorry I don't have a citation but Ben Le teaches it in his Intro Social Psych course at Haverford) have argued that females having a lower number of sexual partners could possibly be more adventageous for their survival since sexual acts could potentially result in a 9-month investment and incapacitation, while the physical investment of males ends right after the act has been finished. Thus males and females have evolved to behave differently sexually. Women are naturally less promiscuous because adaptively they should only want to mate with males who will provide for them in their period of vulnerability (pregnancy), while males will be more so because it helps them spread their seeds. (Of course such a position has been challenged by feminists as merely providing justification for double standards in expectations of sexual conduct for males and females.)

Caitlin Jeschke brought brought up the point of plasticity of the nervous system as it responds to different inputs and new structures. While evolution leads to changes on the level of populations rather than individuals, perhaps environments can cause certain behaviors to be more likely in subsequent generations by favoring certain kinds of nervous systems in survival capacities.

After looking at Madina’s comment, I thought: “salt water running through channels”. We left class undecided on the subject of whether males and females behaved differently, but in when thinking about it, if all nervous systems are made up of “salt water running through channels,” how can human nervous systems make us act so differently from dogs? The answer lies in the receptor proteins and how every cell responds to the binding of a chemical to a receptor.

Many hormones that are found in other mammals are also found within humans, but the cellular response accounts for the different outputs of behavior. For example, when a dog feels threatened, their hair stands up and the dog begins to growl; however, when a human feels threatened, there are various responses that can occur: challenge the stimulus or retreat. The difference between the outputs lies in the connections of the brain. Every individual has distinct connections in the brain, which account for the varying responses among species as well as within a species. The connections that are established during development and through maturation determine whether the organism will growl, challenge or retreat.

So yes, there are the differing levels of hormones in males and in females, and yet it is these varying intensities of estrogen and testosterone that produce the differences in behaviors, whether you perceive them to be vast or minute differences, among men and women because in reality they have the same “salt water running through channels.”

I think Jean brings up a really interesting point about the neurons being the same yet exposed to different "bathing waters" between the two sexes. This implies that neuron activity is identical in all humans yet the difference in hormonal levels between males and females results in different interactions between neurons and their environment and consequently in different observable behavior. This reminds me of our class discussion on neurons, cabling and synapses only I'm having some difficulty accepting this idea of behavioral dependency on chemical composition. If this is the case, and each individual has their own distinct endocrine system that secretes varying levels of hormones, then based on this assumption how are we able to attribute certain qualities to one particular gender? How do hormonal levels dictate the "nurturing mother" quality in women who have given birth? Suppose the father exhibits this quality moreso; would this imply he has higher levels of estrogen and progesterone than normal? Since these are hormones present in males as well, what is the horomone level threshold that makes the interaction between neuron and hormone distinguished as to result in a difference in behavior?

Believe it or not this discourse on gender roles and gender perscriptions v. descriptions is particularly pertinent to one of my art history courses this semseter which focuses on the theme of gender in Medieval art. One of the core tenants of this course is to try and define (or at least explore the possiblity of) the line between sex (i.e. biological dimorphism) and gender performance (i.e. societal norms for the behavior of man v. woman in a gregarious culture). It is clear to me that both aspects are pertinent to this discussion as many have already pointed out and that what we define as "gender" and "sex" are equally important in what goes into how we think of the distinct male organism versus the distinct female organism. There are differences between male and female organism in their biology and thus in their behavior; however, this does not mean that these differences are absolute, after all, we have had several examples of hermaphroditic organisms (worms. bacteria (everyone remember the little "conjugation" demonstration we were fortunate enough to witness), slugs and leeches) that are capable of "performing" both male and female roles in terms of reproductive acts as well as certain species of fish and frogs that can change sex if contained in a single sex environment...which means "behaving" like a male organism or a female organism (i.e. becoming more or less aggressive, even altering phenotype to match the other sex). Thus, the gender discussion cannot be delineated by specifcally black and white borders (or confined to the realm of the human organism alone...for we are still animals even if our behavioral makeup, especially in terms of gender and sex, is particularly plastic---however, we must also be aware that the definitions of male and female roles are human constructs superimposed upon other organisms. Yet, the fact that we are aware of some fundamental difference existing, even on a purely operational level, is important in and of itself) but is more accurately described as a spectrum in which a given individual's postion upon the spectrum is potentially subject to change given the extenuating circumstances and the organisms biological capabilities (including, as is our case, the higher levels of organization that contribute to the very intricate, and very mutable, nuances of gender play, such as those seen in social organisms). However, just because gender play and "sex" can be potentially mutable does not mean that distinctions do not exist (or at least within the realm between sexually reproductive organisms). If one looks outside of our species these gender distinct behaviors are perhaps more obvious, especially in cases where gender dimorphism is very obvious, and is a major part in sexual reprodcution (peacocks and peahens). Organisms where reproductive success is dependent upon sexual dimorphism, where the male is extremely different in appearance (loud, flashy, and ultimately a walking sign post for a meal for hungry predators) and behavior (i.e. mating/courtship rituals, especially were the behavior is potentialy risky--but hey nature rewards risk in many cases) have very clear distinctions in gender behavior, which cannot be so easily explained by "cultural" perscriptions since in many cases these organisms do not have the type of social hierarchy that could dictate such gendered behavior (it must therefore be a more biological and thus neurological distinction).

In the not so distant past of humans as well biological differences were used to describe what was seen as very clear-cut differences between what was male and what was female (and this goes back to Aristotle (grrrrr...) Plutarch and Gelatian)...in which the female was at times viewed as a completely different organism from the male human...or else seen as some kind of failed/flawed male (i.e. something went wrong in the reproductive process and the mutant thing created was a female)--and as such the behavior of the female organism was a gray area, a thing entirely dependent on what she lacked in contrast to the male (she doesn't have this, or it looks like that instead of this and thus she acts like this kind of mentality of providing rational in differing behavior---which would seem to indicate that beyond soicietal perscriptions something fundamentally different was observed in genderal between the two genders), for instance "hysteria" was an intricacy of female behavior arising from that wilely, roaming organ (or parasitic animal as described it as) known as the uterus which was often viewed as an underdeveloped and inverted set of male reproductive organs (also Gelatian had the idea that both males and females secreted two different types of semens which were both necessary and contrary to one another in order to produce a baby). The point is that despite the obvious fact that the dominant discourse back in the day discussed the female gender in terms of the male this sense of difference, and a difference that connected biological/phenotyical dimorphism with large scale social behavior/gender constructs at that, did exist. Why does this persistance for determining a difference between gender exist if there is not some basis for it?

One thing that has been bothering me about our class discussions is that I don't think we have collectively defined "Behavior". We attempted to on the first or second day, but never actually came to any sort of understanding. When Professor Grobstein was talking about the behavioral differences between boys and girls, I really had no answer because biologically boys and girls behave differently, but social behaviors are much more questionable. Obviously boys don't menstruate, so there are clear biological differences.

Jean (I think) brought up a possible Venn Diagram, but even this I don't think covers the entire population. The diagram that Professor Grobstein drew on the chalkboard (two overlapping arches) still doesn't, i don't think, accurately represent social behaviors. Behaviors are controlled by emotions, which are controlled by the endocrine system, which we all share. If I were to take every behavior (laughter, crying, rage, sexual behavior, etc, etc) I don't think I could find a context in which a male and a female wouldn't behave similarly. If a person thinks something is funny, they laugh, regardless of gender. Perhaps males tend to agree on what they consider to be funny, but for every male who disagrees there will be a female who agrees, for every male who agrees there will be a female who also agrees, etc. The population is too large to make such outlandish generalizations. The social constructs of gender roles instilled in young boys and girls make us want to think that boys and girls behave differently, but I would argue that, overall, we don't. Or, at least it's too difficult to measure. Also hormones that regualte behaviors (testosterone, estradiol, etc) have varying levels among all individuals. I would like to further discuss how the levels of such hormones are socially influenced (perhaps cross-culturally?)