First of all, it's not my article/OP. It was written by Stark Raving, and secondly, the science on this stuff is not that cut and dried and newer studies show that this isn't necessarily so. A lot of the anger, violence and risk-taking that men engage in is sociological and women have just as high a sexual desire as men do when you take out the sociological factors and measure it appropriately.
We found children at a very early age — from the most conservative to the most liberal societies — quickly internalise this myth that girls are vulnerable and boys are strong and independent,” said Robert Blum, director of the Global Early Adolescent Study, based at Johns Hopkins University. “And this message is being constantly reinforced at almost every turn, by siblings, classmates, teachers, parents, guardians, relatives, clergy and coaches.
The researchers found that gender-based restrictions rationalised as “protecting” girls actually made them more vulnerable by emphasising subservience and implicitly sanctioning even physical abuse as punishment for violating norms. They say that in many parts of the world these stereotypes leave girls at greater risk of dropping out of school or suffering physical and sexual violence, child marriage, early pregnancy, HIV and other sexually transmitted infections.
Children are straitjacketed into gender roles in early adolescence, says study
“And although much of this societal messaging is that males are more competent, independent, and worthy of holding power, strict gender norms hurt boys and men as well. The Global Early Adolescent Study, based at Johns Hopkins University, concludes that due to these gender norms, “they engage in and are the victims of physical violence to a much greater extent than girls; they die more frequently from unintentional injuries, are more prone to substance abuse and suicide; and as adults their life expectancy is shorter than that of women. Such differences are socially not biologically determined.”
So in other words, testosterone is a factor, but not the only one, and not necessarily the determining one is all instances because gender is a spectrum, not a binary, just like sexuality is a spectrum. Hormones are just one element of gender.
When you show men sexually explicit images, hetero men respond to ones of men and women together and gay men respond to two guys, but women respond to anything and everything, includes bonobos getting it on. This research was done with sensors on their genitals and not just with self reporting. There's tons more recent research that illustrates how off base our prior assessments of actual female sexuality have been due to the faulty ways it's been studied.
Context is everything. If women were told, “Imagine you are propositioned by this guy, and there is no way he will kill you and there is no way he’ll be a jerk and it’s guaranteed that he’ll be skilled enough to give you an orgasm and you won’t get pregnant or get an infection or disease, and your mom will never know and neither will anyone in your dorm or neighborhood. He won’t make disparaging remarks about your body or gossip afterward. He will text you after or not, and want to see you again or not, depending on what you wish he would do. And so on. These are the kinds of conditions we would have to engineer in order to get an accurate sense of what a woman’s sex drive might be like under circumstances conducive to actually feeling entitled to have and admit to having a sex drive. Until such a test exists, we need to consider the likelihood that we are only measuring men’s willingness to admit they are sexual compared to women’s willingness to do the same. Guess who wins that contest?
Yes, there are some biological differences between males and females but they account for way less than our current patriarchal culture wants us to believe. This can be verified by the fact that in different cultures and in different eras, men and women don't necessarily have the same roles that they do in current patriarchal cultures.
I'm pretty sure I've said this to you before but it needs repeating. These 5 guys are all men, and yet they have little in common with each other because they hold a vast array of traits: Pee Wee Herman, RuPaul, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Dwayne Johnson, Donald Trump. Trying to make it sound like all men can fit in one box and all women can fit in another is laughable when you look at just a small sampling of how very different men can be and women can be.
