Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Morbid sex distinction and evolution

Perkins Gilman argues that the morbid sex distinction is a result of a woman's economic dependence on attracting a male. However, I would suggest that this idea ignores the basic biological and evolutionary effects that have taken place that serve to enhance female sexuality. The incredibly quick growth of the skull of the human baby, evolutionarily speaking, has placed an enormous pressure upon the development of female hips and a high importance on the mere ability to successfully bear a child. As recently as a few hundred years ago dying during childbirth was a common occurence. As such, while men continued to be evolutionarily favored to be strong and powerful, the single most powerful evolutionary pressure on women was to be able to have children. As a result of this, gender distinctions became much greater between male and female humans than in other species.

Will we ever come to a point where men and women are physically equal in terms of strength, speed, and size, given the basic evolutionary and biological differences which distinguish men and women?

7 comments:

  1. I think that there is never going to be a time where men and women are physically equal,because many factors come in place. For example, the role of a women is to take care of the children and conserve the femenine side. It is not that women do not have the capacity to be more physically stronger it is just that society expects women to behave a certain way. If women start to behave in a more masculine way society is going to reject them. We live in a society that requires us to behave in certain way in order to be accepted.

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  2. Men and women will never be equal in terms of strength, speed or size. Proof of this is found in most professional sports where men have proven to be stronger and faster than women. I think the question instead should be, if men and women will ever be completely equal in spite of their biological differences? I find somewhat controversial Gilman's explanation that women had to emphasize their sexuality to compensate for their lack of participation in the economy. Women are now more educated and more involved in other areas of society outside of the home, so Gilman's arguement is certainly not true today.

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  3. In my opinion I do not see women ever matching ,in terms of stregnth, speed, size, and overall physical abilities, men. I can certainly see individual cases where women can and might surpass men in physical demands, but never on a large scale where there is a majority of women that match men. We can look at track and field as an example, where women have closed the competitive gap, but now we see in the past decade or so a stabilization in the competitive gap. Keep in mind this is only one example. Besides I don't think a majority of women would ever desire to be that manly.

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  4. I don't think that women and men are biologically the same, but I don't think that we are as different as most people make it seem. I agree with Gilman that we have been weakened by centuries of being forced to be feminine. Even though men and women seem to be very biologically different, we must consider the fact that our biological structure is not set in stone. We are constantly changing our body's biological structure through our diet and exercise (or lack of). Even too many extreme emotions can change us (stress = higher cortisol levels). I don't think that ALL men will ever be physically equal with ALL women, but I do believe that if both genders start to become more similar, then their bodies will also become more similar.

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  5. From a biological standpoint of view men and women are different in some ways to mention an example the active hormones in men are different from those in women. It is not just that women don't want to be stronger, it is that men are physically stronger and more powerful than women. The way that we have been socialized to behave different as male or female when it comes to genders that's a different story. Throughout history men have been socialized to behave tough and not to cry while women have been raised to be nurturing and behave feminine. I don't think that men and women will ever be physically the same even when women take masculine hormones their bodies change but just to a certain point that one can easily tell the difference between her and a man.

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  6. I do not believe that men and women will ever be equal. However, what I do believe is that we should all be treated equally just because we are human. Moreover, talking about biological differences I do not think that we will ever change just because we were made that way and that is the way that it is. Furthermore, I believe that women are the way they are because if they would not be able to have children this society would eventually come to an end. I have seen many women that are as strong as other men and as well I have seen many men that are as delicate as some women but that does not mean that it will apply to the majority. I do not believe that all women will become as strong as men because many women are good and happy the way they are.

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  7. In my opinion I do not see men and women ever being physically equal in terms of strength, speed, and size. I say this because physiologically speaking men are naturally stronger and bigger than women. However I dont believe that all men are faster than women. Although in some cases it has been proven that some women are stronger, faster, and bigger than some men (for example the women who compete in the olympics), for the most part or generally speaking men are stronger and larger than women. Eventhough for the most part women may not surpass men in physical aspects they can surpass them through intellingence and by taking on hardships better than any man would.

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