Sex differences in people. What are vaginas: which female is a doe, and which is an elephant? & Nbsp Are there sex differences in the structure of the skeleton

1. What are the main parts of the human skeleton?

In the human skeleton, there are: the skeleton of the head (skull), the skeleton of the body and the skeleton of the upper and lower extremities.

2. What is the structure and meaning of the skull? Why are the bones of the skull connected motionlessly?

A large cerebral and a smaller facial sections are distinguished in the skull. The bones of the cerebral part of the skull form a cavity in which the brain is located. The cerebral section of the skull is formed by the following bones: unpaired - frontal, occipital, wedge-shaped, ethmoid and paired - parietal and temporal; all of them are fixedly interconnected by means of seams. The bones of the facial section of the skull include 6 paired bones (maxillary, palatine, inferior turbinate, nasal, lacrimal, zygomatic) and 3 unpaired bones (hyoid, lower jaw and vomer). All bones, except for the lower jaw, are fixedly connected.

The skull protects the brain and sensory organs from external damage, gives support to the muscles of the face and the initial sections of the digestive and respiratory systems.

3. List the bones that form the medullary section of the skull.

Bones of the cerebral part of the skull: paired parietal and temporal bones and unpaired frontal, occipital, sphenoid and ethmoid bones.

4. Name the only movable bone of the facial skull. What is its function?

The only movable bone of the skull is the lower jaw, together with the temporal bone, it forms the temporomandibular joint, in which the following movements are possible: lowering and raising the lower jaw, shifting it to the left and right, moving back and forth. All of these possibilities are used in the act of chewing and also contribute to articulate speech.

5. Name the sections of the spine and the number of vertebrae in each of them. What role do spinal curves play? In connection with what do they appear in humans?

The human spine consists of 33-34 vertebrae. The following sections are distinguished in it: cervical (7 vertebrae), thoracic (12), lumbar (5), sacral (5) and coccygeal (4-5 vertebrae). In an adult, the sacral and coccygeal vertebrae grow together into the sacrum and coccyx.

The human spine has 4 bends (cervical, thoracic, lumbar and sacral), which play the role of a shock absorber: thanks to them, shocks are softened when walking, running, jumping, which is very important for protecting internal organs and especially the brain from concussions.

In newborns, the spine is straight, curves forming as the baby learns to hold the head (cervical), sit down (chest), crawl and stand up (lumbar and sacral).

6. What departments does the skeleton of a limb consist of? What bones form the skeleton of the girdle of the upper extremities; lower limbs? Draw a general outline of the structure of a person's free limb.

The skeleton of any limb consists of two parts: the girdle of the limbs and the skeleton of the free limb. The bones of the girdle of the limbs connect the free limbs with the skeleton of the body. The upper limb belt is formed by two shoulder blades and two collarbones. The skeleton of the free upper limb consists of three sections: the humerus, the bones of the forearm and the hand. The forearm is formed by the radius and ulna. The brush is formed by a large number of small bones. Three sections are distinguished in it: the wrist (8 bones), the metacarpus (5) and the phalanges of the fingers (14).

The lower limb girdle (pelvic girdle) is made up of two pelvic bones that connect to the sacrum. The skeleton of the free lower limb consists of the femur, lower leg and foot bones. The shin bones include the tibia and fibula. The bones of the foot are subdivided into the bones of the tarsus (8 bones), metatarsus (5) and phalanges of the fingers (14).

7. Suggest how you can explain the similar structure of the upper and lower extremities in humans.

This can be explained by the performance of similar functions by the upper and lower limbs in animals, for example, in primates. In the course of evolution, a strict delineation of function and a partial change in the structure for bipedal locomotion occurred in humans, but the general plan of the structure remained similar. This can be proven by the ability to grab objects with their feet in trained people.

8. What is the bone pelvis? Why does it have the shape of a bowl in a person?

The bony pelvis consists of three continuously connected bones: two pelvic bones and a sacrum. The bony pelvis is home to important organs such as the bladder and rectum, and the uterus in women. The shape of the bony pelvis in the form of a bowl is associated with upright posture. In humans, an expanding pelvis, a femur at an inward angle, a strong knee joint and a "platform" foot - all this contributes to even walking on two legs.

9. Are there sex differences in the structure of the skeleton? If so, which ones?

The bones of men are usually larger and more massive. The main differences are in the structure of the pelvis, in women the pelvic ring is wider and lower than in men, and until a certain age the pubic symphysis is more mobile. The position of the wings of the ilium in women is close to horizontal. The small pelvis has a cylindrical shape. This is due to the ability of women to bear and give birth to children. The male pelvis is narrow and high. The position of the iliac wings approaches vertical. The entrance to the pelvis is in the form of a "card heart".

There are also some differences in the structure of the bones of the skull and chest. Contrary to popular belief, the number of ribs in men and women is the same.

Our expert - psychologist, sexologist Ekaterina Fedorova.

Most often, when it comes to this topic, they mean the discrepancy in the size of the genitals of lovers. Women may not be satisfied with either too large or too small a sexual organ in partners. And by the way, what can be considered the norm in this regard? Just to begin with, let's clarify that the norm is just averages, not a standard.

This is too much!

At rest, the length of the penis is usually 5-10 cm, with an erection - 10-15 cm (usually 11-12 cm). The length of the vagina is 7 to 12 cm (usually 8-9 cm).

The ideal match of the size of the genitals is when the penis is 2-3 cm longer than the vagina. With a significant (more than 3-4 cm) difference between the length of the penis and the size of the vagina, sex can cause problems.

Permanent microtrauma and even ruptures are a non-healing focus of inflammation and the risk of developing female diseases. Does this mean that having sex with a partner who has too much male dignity is impossible? It turns out not at all. Another thing is that intimate life in this case requires some adjustments. For example, you will have to reduce the number of sexual positions. For example, the ideal position in this case is the "spoon" position (lovers lie on their side, the woman - with her back to the man). You can also use lubricants (moisturizers) and special restraints - silicone rings, put on the base of the penis (these things are sold in "adult stores").

But even this is not the most important thing. The most important thing for a man is to learn the art of correct arousal. Often, with their inept actions, would-be lovers injure partners even of modest size. And a well-excited woman will not be afraid of great manhood. The fact is that the walls of the vagina are muscles, and muscles can contract and stretch. In medicine, the ability of the vagina to increase for a large penis and decrease for a small one is called adaptation (accommodation). Adapting naturally takes time. As a rule, after 1.5-2 months "lapping" the sizes of lovers easily adjust to each other.

It will not be enough

As for small members, in most cases this problem is far-fetched. Firstly, due to the same accommodation (lapping, which occurs over time in almost all couples), and secondly, due to the fact that the sensitivity of the vagina in the overwhelming majority of women is quite low. Indeed, according to the famous American sexologist Marty Klein“Penis size is unimportant because the clitoris, not the vagina, is the main sexual organ in women. And caressing the clitoris (with hands and tongue) can bring a woman to the highest degree of bliss. And if the penetration is carried out immediately before the onset of orgasm, the partner will not care whether her chosen one has a big penis or not. An excellent result is still guaranteed. The secret is this. Immediately before sexual discharge, with a high degree of arousal, a woman experiences reflex tension in the muscles of the outer third of the vagina. This phenomenon is called the "orgasmic cuff". So with this very cuff, the lady tightly wraps around even the smallest penis. And the more often you practice this, the faster the vagina will adapt to the size of the partner's penis.

But in order for everything to work out as it should, a woman must be aroused to the limit. This can be done without necessarily using a member. It is not for nothing that it is known that the greatest lover of all time Giacomo Casanova did not differ in the outstanding size of the penis, but was extremely skillful in oral sex.

Finally, you need to choose the right positions for sex. In this case, positions are needed for deeper penetration of the penis. These are almost all variants of the knee-elbow position.

And if a woman is not too lazy and does gymnastics for the intimate muscles, she will be able to train her vagina even better, and then sex will become an ideally controlled activity, and reaching orgasm will be not only pleasant, but also a simple matter.

I'm getting used to mismatches

In general, sexologists believe that sexual incompatibility is, by and large, a myth. Everyone can adapt to each other. There would be a mutual desire, that is, the very love for which everything actually happens between a man and a woman.

By the way, in addition to the discrepancy in the size of the genitals, there are many reasons for the alleged sexual incompatibility. For example, it can be caused by the difference in sexual constitutions between partners - when one sex needs much more and more often than the other. In this case, everything is more difficult, but true love will overcome this too. In the end, you can agree on some middle version. And traditional sex can be partially replaced by massage, oral sex.

Inconsistency can be expressed in other things, for example, in the difference in the daily rhythms of spouses ("owls" and "larks"), in differences in upbringing and cultural traditions, in different ideas about what is acceptable and unacceptable in sex (for example, one of the partners is modest, and the other is without complexes). Self-help recipes are different in each case. For example, "owls" and "larks" can transfer sex for a day or not late evening. And a more shy partner can be slowly, over time, gradually liberated and taught "the science of tender passion." In general, everything is solvable. The main thing is to love each other.

An interview with Swedish psychiatrist and father of seven children, David Eoehard, in Die Zeit about his book Children in Power, has spread throughout the Internet and sparked heated debate. Ebehard touched upon a very important and painful topic: the infantilism of modern children, their inability to adapt to society. He frankly wrote that this is the result of educational methods that put the child on a pedestal and force the parents to follow his lead. So children turn into tyrants in the home, and parents - into victims who are not able to resist them. The book "Children in Power", written in defense of parents, is a frank admission of the inadequacy of fashionable theories of upbringing!

Book:

Are there sex differences at all?

Today, adults are teaching children to think that there is no difference between boys and girls. Gender does not in any way affect the assimilation of the school curriculum. If someone breaks ahead or, conversely, lags behind, then, according to some adults, this is due to developmental disabilities, the identification of which should be dealt with by medicine. This is especially true for boys, who are much more violent than girls. Well, in this case, you need to identify the disease and treat it with appropriate means. Girls can also behave badly - after all, it is said that gender differences do not play any special role.

Meanwhile, the development of children and, accordingly, their behavior occurs contrary to the opinion of adults. With all their childish categorization, they are divided into boys and girls. Sex differences for children are a completely natural thing, so a three-year-old girl can clearly say that she is a girl, even if her parents dressed her in unisex jeans from infancy.

I think the belief that gender differences do not exist (in a milder form should not exist) stems from the feminist movement. Feminists have long been saying a resolute "No!" gender discrimination. The fact that men and women look and behave differently, in their opinion, is due only to the peculiarities of the anatomy, and looking back at the anatomy is the last thing.

Could the gender hierarchy opposed by feminists be the reason that some of the cognitive dysfunctions that occur in early childhood (apparently from birth) are more common in boys than in girls? Or that people of different genders have different hormonal levels? Or that puberty occurs earlier in girls than in boys?

Whatever the advocates of equality say, children grow and develop according to certain biological laws. And here it all depends on who was born to you - a boy or a girl. The program of our biological development is predetermined by the laws of nature, and, as they say, you cannot argue against nature. However, what has been said does not mean that there cannot be effeminate men and masculine women. Nature sometimes fails, but this is a rather rare exception.

The book "Blank Slate" by Stephen Pinker, professor of psychology at Harvard University, provides a long list of biological differences between boys and girls. In compiling the list, he relied on the results of scientific research. Among other things, Pinker found that boys who were raised as girls (due to the fact that they were born without a penis, but with normal testosterone levels for a male infant), despite everything, displayed classic boyish behavior. In other words, gender is not determined by the presence or absence of a penis, but depends on the set of chromosomes and primarily on the hormonal background. Similarly, it can be argued that girls with adrenogenital syndrome, in which a lot of male hormones are secreted in the body, become more like boys as they grow up, which affects preferences in the choice of games and the way of thinking. They themselves identify with boys.

The production of sex hormones is regulated by a biological / genetic mechanism. Under the influence of hormones, the brain changes, and this happens the faster, the more actively it develops. Most of these processes take place at a very early age. A normally developing five-year-old boy is experiencing a veritable testosterone explosion, which is often accompanied by an addiction to play violence. Although the boys now have a ray sword in their hand, like the Jedi, their games have not changed: they still enjoy playing war. Testosterone production causes the brain to develop in a male pattern, starting in the embryo and throughout life. Girls also go through a similar period in their development (about four years old). That is why they willingly play traditional girly games - dolls, kitchen, etc.

In men, the brain is larger and has more connections between nerve cells, but the woman's brain contains more gray matter. The corpus callosum of the brain in women is more pronounced, in addition, women have more connections between the right and left hemispheres. So sex hormones have a significant effect on the structure of the brain. It is also noteworthy that in certain cerebral nuclei, which are located in the hypothalamus and are responsible for determining gender identity, the differences are also obvious.

In addition, puberty, as we all know, proceeds differently in boys and girls, and this would be difficult to explain in terms of social gender inequality. Especially if we take into account that girls enter puberty earlier than boys and therefore have an advantage over their peers of the opposite sex, who continue to be children for some time. Advantage - you didn't miss this word? And by the way, no matter how much the boy looks at images of naked women, his puberty will not accelerate from this. Everything is predetermined by the biological program, genes, nature.

Sexual differences in behavior are also pronounced in some mammals. Sarah Tavenius, equestrian of the Royal Equestrian Court of Sweden, gave a funny comment on this matter. In an interview with a Swedish newspaper, she explained why the royal carriage is harnessed by exactly four geldings: “If you want to get something from a gelding, you just order him. And if you are dealing with a mare, then you should submit an application to her in four copies with detailed justification of what and how to do it. Therefore, we give preference to geldings. " I hope you don't call it discrimination.

Pinker's conclusion, drawn from his long list of sex differences, is a rather audacious attack on the proponents of gender theory: “To be honest, there is little scientific evidence to support the theory that proponents argue that boys and girls, with the exception of external sex differences, are born the same. If this were actually the case, then it turns out that we are dealing with a strange coincidence, when, by pure chance, girls all the time fall out one set of qualities, and boys - completely different. [...] The theory that gender differences are due to purely social characteristics - that differences between boys and girls are determined by different parenting methods, that boys who are brought up as girls acquire specific features of the opposite sex - under the pressure of facts crumbles as House of cards".

But why then did theorists come to the false conclusion about gender equality? Let's simplify a little. When they talk about equality, they do not mean at all that everyone should be the same, like a blueprint. It is about the fact that all members of society should be equal and that they should be treated fairly and without gender bias. Neither Pinker, nor anyone else wishing to find out whether there are differences between the sexes, was not at all intended to criticize the supporters of the idea of ​​equality, quite the opposite. Equality is what every modern person desires. This idea, however, conflicts with the views of gender equality fans and adherents of gender theory. A problem that has arisen in most Western countries (and probably reached a very large scale in Sweden) is that proponents of gender theory tend to prioritize one sex, but their formulations are based on the premise that equality can only be achieved if when all people become the same - in everything. There is no evidence of the correctness of this theory, although the ideas of the advocates of gender theory have penetrated into all spheres of our society and even registered in the charters of our preschool institutions.

Mathematician Tanya Bergkvist analyzed plans to “equalize” children during school activities. With a good deal of humor, Tanya drew attention to the fact that the word “strength” is a serious problem for some female teachers, because it is “too masculine” (it goes against the idea of ​​equality).

The famous Norwegian comedian Harald Eyja once studied sociology at the university. He recently shot a television series, where in a simple and accessible form he demonstrated how empty and unsubstantiated the views of many Norwegian sociologists and gender theorists are. When meeting with them, he was interested in what scientific data their theses were based on. It turned out - not at all. Aya then traveled to the United States and the United Kingdom, where he discussed the same issues with academics who were conducting long-term, global and rather daring research on gender equality. Returning to Norway, he entered into a fierce discussion with proponents of gender theory, during which the Norwegian scientists had to go through very unpleasant moments. The television series was an extraordinary success. Eya showed that most studies on gender issues cannot be taken seriously and are not of any scientific interest.

Even in different Scandinavian countries, the idea of ​​equalizing the sexes is treated differently. Here's an example. On one of the Danish television channels, two men were discussing the delights of some naked beauty. Before the program was over, the studio received many calls with protests. Most of the callers were Swedes. Danish anthropologist Dennis Normark commented: “Denmark has a traditional approach to gender differences: there are men and there are women. We have no goal of achieving absolute equality between the sexes. In our country, we can easily watch humorous programs about the "small differences" between men and women, because we like the fact that they exist. Here, in Denmark, the Swedish experiment on the introduction of asexual personal pronouns in kindergartens was met negatively and ridiculed in society. In fact, we should value the differences between men and women. The Danes are not trying to either suppress these differences, or get rid of them. " Normark's words, alas, did not reach the hearts of equality fanatics.

Let me be as clear as possible. All of the above does not mean that women are not discriminated against - this, unfortunately, still happens. Nor does it mean that there is no underlying gender hierarchy in people's heads. However, if you base your theories on false assumptions, it will be difficult to defeat true discrimination. It will be much easier to resolve the issue of gender equality if it is recognized that men and women are different in nature. Thank goodness this sober thought sometimes extends beyond medical faculties today.

Martin Ingvar, professor of clinical neuropsychology at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, has long been involved in identifying specific and significant differences between men and women. In particular, he found that in fact it is the boys who are deprived of some qualities and this prevents them from feeling comfortable at school. From his point of view, it would be more reasonable to make specific arguments related to physiology and proving the deprivation of girls in other situations, instead of making lengthy allusions to gender discrimination in society. Boys and girls have been examined far and wide, and no evidence has been found that they are the same.

Unlike the opinion of feminists about the complete identity of the two sexes, with the exception of the function of childbearing, biology adheres to an opinion devoid of political correctness about the existence of fundamental differences between the male and female sex, which are manifested not only in the function of reproduction, but also in the adaptive capabilities of the organism. These differences are genetically determined and cannot be neutralized by external influences.

8.2.1. Biological feasibility of the existence of two sexes

In the previous section, it was shown that gender formation is a multi-step process, fraught with errors. Why did evolution take the path of creating such a complex mechanism? What is the biological expediency of the existence of sexual reproduction?

Asexual, vegetative reproduction is much easier. With it, each descendant is an exact copy of the parent organism. For example, all peppermint plants - a plant that is intensively cultivated for the needs of the food and perfume industries - are the descendants of a single plant that was accidentally discovered among wild mint plants at one time. Vegetative reproduction is advisable when the conditions of existence are constant.

In reality, the habitat is constantly changing, therefore, for the survival of the offspring, they need new properties that their parents did not have. This is achieved in the process of formation of germ cells (meiosis), during which a combination of individual sections of chromosomes occurs and the possibility of the emergence of organisms with new combinations of characters is created. This method of reproduction, with development from an unfertilized egg (parthenogenesis), also exists among higher vertebrates, for example, some lizards. Even greater variability of offspring is provided by reproduction with the participation of two individuals. For example, in snails, each individual produces both male and female reproductive cells. When they meet, they exchange sex products. During sexual reproduction of hermaphrodites, a wide variety of offspring is provided, and the rate of reproduction of a population is directly proportional to the number of individuals.

This proportionality is absent in the vast majority of species, in which there is a division into males and females. The reproduction rate depends only on the number of females. A change in the number of males has very little effect on the rate of reproduction of a species or population. However, males make up about half of the total number of individuals. The biological expediency of the existence of such a number of individuals, on the presence of which the rate of reproduction does not depend, is not obvious.

You can remove 90 percent or even more males from the population, and this will not affect the number of offspring and, therefore, the rate of reproduction of the population. Nevertheless, out of about four and a half thousand species of mammals, only hyenas have taken this path. In hyenas, born males are destroyed, one is left alive, which is used only as a donor of germ cells, and outside the breeding season, he leads the life of an outcast. In the vast majority of mammalian species, as well as other classes of vertebrates - birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish and cyclostomes (lampreys and mixin) - males make up half of all individuals. So why are males needed if the rate of reproduction of a species does not depend on their number?

Moreover, males sometimes cause obvious harm to offspring, for example, in lions. The community of lions is called a pride. It consists of one male, several females and immature offspring.

It is not for nothing that the lion is called the king of beasts. First of all, he sleeps 16 hours a day. He does not go hunting, the females bring him the best pieces. Moreover, he does not participate in territorial conflicts arising between females of different prides, as a result of which animals sometimes die. The lion's entire contribution to social life is limited to the fertilization of females and the expulsion of males who have reached puberty from the pride. In addition, the lion, of course, drives away competitors, that is, young lions who do not have their pride. When he is defeated in a fight with a rival, the winner begins to own the pride by killing all immature cubs. And, despite such an unsightly social role of males, newborn males are not killed, as is customary among hyenas.

Using Occam's principle, we come to the conclusion that if in the vast majority of species, males make up about half of the individuals, then males are needed for something.

The two sexes differ in the expenditure of energy for the reproduction of one offspring. The costs of the female are several orders of magnitude higher than the costs of the male.

First of all, it is necessary to answer the question - how do males differ from females? In most species, males and females differ in appearance. These differences are so great that often when a previously unknown species of animals is discovered, males and females are mistakenly described as representatives of different species. Man is no exception. It can be assumed that a Martian, for example, is likely to count a man and a woman as representatives of different species. Differences in the following parameters are obvious: body size, body proportions, pigmentation, amount of muscle tissue, distribution of adipose tissue, distribution of hair. Differences in external structure also suggest different functions of the two sexes, not limited to different reproductive roles. Even in those species in which fertilization occurs in the external environment, it is always possible to indicate exactly which of the two is female and which is male. For example, some reef fish may experience sex reversal. In the absence of males, one of the females becomes a male. What gives reason to assert that those reproductive products that this individual previously discarded were eggs, and now she is throwing out sperm?

The two sexes differ in the expenditure of energy for the reproduction of one offspring. The costs of the female are several orders of magnitude, that is, hundreds of thousands and millions of times higher than the costs of the male.

8.2.2. Genetic stability and individual plasticity of females

The theory explaining the biological expediency of the existence of two sexes was proposed by our compatriot V.A.Geodakyan (V.A. energy differences between the sexes). This theory explains well the available facts and predicts many others, much of which has already been discovered.

Since the rate of reproduction is directly proportional to the number of females in the population, females are maximally adapted to the existing conditions of existence. At the same time, the number of males is always excessive, since the rate of reproduction depends very little on the number of males. Therefore, the male sex is the "testing ground" of evolution.

The genetic diversity of males is higher than that of females.

Even Charles Darwin noted a greater variety of forms among males in all species. Due to a more intense mutation process and some other genetic characteristics, the genetic diversity of males is much greater than the genetic diversity of females. Most of the genetic changes in the new generation of males fail. Accordingly, a significant part of the males will die or not leave offspring (in the evolutionary sense, this is the same thing). However, in a small proportion of males, the changes that have arisen will turn out to be suitable for the changed conditions of existence. It is this part of the males that will leave offspring, that is, will ensure the reproduction of the population.

Females are more susceptible to environmental influences than males, that is, they adapt better to environmental changes than males.

Thus, the first feature of the female sex in comparison with the male is low genetic variability. The second fundamental feature of females is closely related to it - high adaptability. More precisely, the higher ability of females compared to males to adapt to current changes in the environment. Somewhat roughly, but, in fact, it can be said that males are “narrow specialists” with a low ability to retrain, and females are not very specialized “generalists”, but with a high ability to learn, that is, .adaptation to current conditions.

In females, both somatic and mental signs are plastic, that is, they change under the influence of the environment of existence. For example, if a woman moves to the north from the middle lane, then in her body much faster than in a man's, changes occur aimed at adaptation to a cold climate: an increase in adipose tissue, a change in the size and number of red blood cells, etc. After returning to a warm climate reverse changes occur in women, too, faster than in men.

But, of course, most important of all, the significantly greater plasticity of the behavior of women in comparison with the behavior of men.

Every woman is unusually easily applied to any social position. The groom, elevated by fate to dukes, will nevertheless give his whole life as a stable, while the sergeant's daughter, who, by the grace of the same fate, became the countess and mistress of the king, for several months or even weeks cannot be distinguished from the most noble lady, already at the birth of his written down on the pages of the Gothic Almanac (Nordau M. (1885) cited in: Lombroso C., Ferrero J. Woman criminal and prostitute).

Of course, the beautiful Isora was right, who, having slept for four hundred and fifty-six years, in response to an offer of help in gradual adaptation to new times, dismissively said: “It is for you, men, you need to adapt, and a woman is always a woman! (Uspensky M. White horseradish in a hemp field.) "

The plasticity of a woman's behavior is often called conformism, condemning the behavior of Chekhov's Darling. But this ability to adapt to changing circumstances gives women tremendous advantages in their daily lives. Of course, any feature loses its adaptive meaning, being hypertrophied. Therefore, it seems controversial to create such a psychiatric category as the "Stockholm Syndrome", when hostages begin to feel friendliness to the raiders who have captured them and sometimes go over to their side, and women sometimes fall in love with obvious criminals. It is the ability to adapt to changing circumstances, pushed to the limit.

An example of the genetic stability and environmental plasticity of female rats is shown in Fig. 8.6. In these data, it is easy to see a general pattern that has been repeatedly shown for different biological species. In artificial selection for opposite manifestations of any trait (in this case, for high and low learning rates), the differences between males of two diverging lines are greater than between females. This is called high genetic variation in males(fig. 8.7). On the other hand, within each lineage, the differences between females are greater than between males, that is, with the same genetic background, the spectrum of changes in behavior caused by differences in individual experience is much wider in females than in males. The high environmental variability of females reflects the high individual plasticity of females.

Rice. 8.6. The results of testing the behavior of rats of genetically pure lines of two different behavioral types - A and B.

In males, in comparison with females, the genetic variability is higher and the environmental variability is lower. The same data is presented both in the form of a table and in the form of a graph. Males are born diverse: the difference between the two lines, which have been bred for more than 50 generations, is much greater between males than between females. The average number of avoidances in type A males is 90 more than in type B males. The difference between females of the two lines is only 60. However, females are more susceptible to environmental influences. This can be seen from the fact that the range in which the measured characteristic of behavior changes is much larger in females of both lines than in males.

8.2.3. Males are resistant to stress

It should be emphasized that the greater plasticity of females is manifested at low stress levels. At a high level of stress, due to a large genetic diversity, some males show high resistance to stress. The high resistance to stress in men, in comparison with women, is manifested, in particular, in the ability to make decisions in a stressful situation (Fig. 8.8).

For example, there is a list of professions prohibited for women in the Russian Federation. It is forbidden to take women to physically difficult and dangerous work. However, some professions related to operator activity are also prohibited. For example, a woman cannot be a bus driver or a locomotive driver. This is due to the high likelihood of a stressful situation in these professions and the responsibility for the lives of dozens of people, which lies with the driver and driver.

Note that when tested in the laboratory, women perform better tasks related to operator activities. That is, the physical qualities required by the chauffeur are better developed in women. Women have a wider field of vision, a better ability to determine the distance to an object and the speed of an object, etc. Even such a feeling as the feeling of inertia, which is very rarely used in everyday life, but which is necessary for a car driver, is better developed in women. Women have better motor skills. Finally, women have better developed sensorimotor integration, that is, higher coordination of movements with the received visual information, etc. But this superiority of a woman is manifested only in laboratory research, in a situation with a very low level of stress. In real life, when the stress level is potentially very high, women drivers are significantly more likely than men to create accidents.

Males are more resistant to stress than females. In a stressful environment, men, unlike women, retain the ability to make decisions.

Once again, we emphasize that the described patterns are of a statistical nature. The existence of tall women does not disprove the general pattern “Men are higher than women”. A girl can become not only a professional Formula 1 pilot, but also a pilot if she has the ability and perseverance. Nevertheless, women are not accepted as pilots of a passenger liner - just in case.

Statistical studies of large groups of the human population confirm the greater genetic variability of men and their higher resistance to stress. Among men, mental illness is more common, with an obvious hereditary mechanism (various forms of dementia). And among women, diseases prevail, in the occurrence of which the role of stress factors is great. First of all, these are depressive conditions, the frequency of which among women is several times higher than among men. The specific biological mechanisms of low resistance in women are unknown, but it has been reliably established that in women the mechanism of regulation of the adrenal cortex by negative feedback is weaker (see Chapters 4 and 5). After exposure to stress, women take longer than men to reduce cortisol secretion to baseline levels. Many other physiological parameters also return to normal after stress changes more slowly in women than in men (Fig. 8.9).

Rice. 8.9. Slow recovery of physiological parameters in women after stress (Lebedev V. I. Personality in extreme conditions. M., 1989). Changes in the heart rate of astronauts before launch and when the spacecraft enters orbit. In all cosmonauts, the heart rate increases as the launch approaches and reaches its maximum at the time of launch. This is followed by a gradual decrease in heart rate. By the time of the onset of weightlessness, all male cosmonauts had a pulse rate less than 5 minutes before launch. A fundamentally different picture of the change in heart rate was observed in the only female cosmonaut. Tereshkova's heart rate at 5-minute readiness and at the start time did not exceed the maximum heart rate that was found in the group of men. After the start, this indicator decreased very slowly for Tereshkova. If at the moment of launch it was higher than the average for men by 16 beats per minute, then at the middle stage of entering orbit it was higher than the average for men by 33, at the final - 34, and in the event of weightlessness - by 36 beats per minute. minute. Thus, the stressful rise in heart rate persisted longer in Tereshkova than in male cosmonauts. The time constant (see section 4.3.4) of fading reactions is greater in women than in men, and for other indicators of stress

Despite the ideological significance of the flight of Valentina Tereshkova, the flights of women into space were stopped for decades. And the reason for this, of course, is not that V. Tereshkova's heart rate returned to normal much longer than that of men. The fact is that she did not fulfill the research programs of her flight. For a significant time of her 72-hour flight, she did not get in touch, apparently due to impaired consciousness. When the connection was restored, she reported that "the ship is not controlled." At the same time, the control center clearly heard the sound "P" in the word "ship", which indicated the disconnection of higher cognitive functions, since this is how Tereshkova pronounced this word before she got to Moscow and learned the normative pronunciation.

But the greatest annoyance of the researchers was caused by the fact that after landing in the field, Tereshkova immediately ate thoroughly - in violation of the strictest prohibition - by accepting the gifts of the enthusiastic collective farmers. In doing so, she ruined the entire medical research program.

It is not known whether the Americans took into account the disastrous results of the Soviet experience of launching a woman into space, but they kept their female astronauts in reserve until disbandment. The detachment consisted of pilots who had combat experience in the war in Korea, experienced parachutists, that is, outstanding women. In training, they showed results significantly superior to those of men. For example, in the "pool of silence". In this case, a person is immersed in a dark pool of salt water to create weightlessness. The subject is dressed in a special suit that impedes movement. A person cannot even touch the index finger with his thumb. Thus, sensory influx to the central nervous system is minimized. Almost complete sensory deprivation is extremely difficult for humans to tolerate. An untrained person can withstand no more than a minute: in addition to indescribable horror, interruptions in heart activity begin. And women exceeded the indicators of men several times! The two best indicators for men were just over two and three hours, while women were kept in the "pool of silence" for 9 and 11 hours.

And yet, excellent training results do not indicate high stress tolerance and ability to make decisions in stressful situations. The subject knows that at the very first signal he will be immediately removed from the pool (or pressure chamber, or thermal chamber), while the astronaut in real space, on the contrary, knows that no one will come to the rescue. And the first space flights were flights into the unknown, since the situation created, despite all the training on Earth, had a huge share of novelty. This purely psychological factor of novelty is what determines the inability of women to work as testers.

It must be said that the flight organizers had data that it was novelty that was a critical factor in space flight, and not weightlessness, overload, noise, vibration and other physical factors. Before the start of one of the first ships, the dog, which was supposed to become an astronaut, fled to the steppe. There was no understudy, so they caught the first Baikonur mongrel that came across, shoved it, strapped it in and launched it. The dog returned safely from space, having withstood all the physical activities, without tearing off numerous sensors and showing no signs of mental disorders. But astronaut dogs were trained for six months, accustoming them to space ammunition, to overloads and other unpleasant sensations of flight. The successful experience of a naive dog has shown that the most difficult thing when launching into space is the unknown. The dog did not know what was ahead, it did not understand that it was in an environment absolutely hostile to living beings, separated from the vacuum by a thin layer of unreliable metal. And the person knew, and the unconsciously working imagination generated stress.

At present, after the accumulation of half a century of experience in space flight, when the novelty has significantly decreased, women fly successfully both as tourists and as commanders of ships. A situation devoid of novelty contains a minimum of stress, so now space flights are quite accessible to women. But repeated experience of flying into space does not increase a woman's resistance to stress, as shown by the incident with Colonel Novak (see section 4.1.4).

The ability of some men to make decisions at a high level of stress (that is, to form a program of behavior, and not to exhibit biased activity) and the plasticity of behavior of women at a low level of stress is clearly manifested in the medical professions.

Surgeons and anesthesiologists are overwhelmingly male. Even a planned operation is fraught with unexpected developments, i.e. stress. What can we say about emergency surgery!

On the other hand, if we take not the great therapists, whose names after their deaths are called clinics, hospitals and research centers, but simply “very good” doctors, then there are no fewer women than men, and maybe more. It is generally accepted that women are better diagnosticians than men. This is due to the fact that the accuracy of perception, observation, attention to detail in women is much higher than in men. Having made a diagnosis, women can change their minds if additional symptoms open up, take into account, if possible, all the numerous factors that affect the course of the disease in a particular patient. A man, examining a patient, goes through the system of possible diagnoses with their numerous options and, having found the appropriate cell in his memory and entering the patient into it, often does not change his opinion, despite the new results of the examination.

Thus, men have a clear advantage over women under stressful circumstances. With a high level of novelty of the situation, men are able to act adequately, choose an adequate program of action, or even develop it. Women, on the other hand, demonstrate displaced activity, and constant stress is an uncontrollable situation for women, which manifests itself, in particular, in a significantly higher frequency of depression in women (see section 5.2). If the situation contains a small element of novelty, that is, changes occur slowly, or do not require an immediate response, then women are much better than men to cope with it.

Eastern wisdom says "Listen to a woman and do the opposite." Formally, it is contradicted by the Russian proverb "Listen to a woman, call her a fool and do as she tells you." Both recommendations are valid, since the first describes behavior in a stressful situation, and the second - in a situation with a low level of novelty.

8.2.4. Resource accumulation and female cycling

Now, some people say that women are vicious. I do not understand this. Imagine a young, plump woman. What can be vicious about it? I do not understand.

Daniil Kharms

In addition to the three listed sex differences - genetic variability, individual variability, stress resistance - males and females differ in two more fundamental features. Both of them result from the different energetic contribution of the two sexes to reproduction. The cyclical nature of the physiology and behavior of females is directly related to the need to prepare for reproduction, to accumulate the resources that will be required to raise offspring.

The physiology and behavior of females, unlike males, changes cyclically.

For women in most modern cultures, most of the cycles are idle. Typically, a woman gives birth once or twice. Therefore, the menstrual cycle attracts much attention of researchers and doctors. In the menstrual cycle, not only affect fluctuates, but also some cognitive abilities. Spatial tasks are better performed by women with low estrogen levels, and verbal tasks are better performed with high estrogen levels; long-term visual memory is better formed in the luteal phase of the cycle than in the menstrual one, but there is no effect of the cycle phase on verbal memory; fluctuations in long-term visual memory correspond to changes in the level of progesterone in the blood, but not to the level of estrogen.

Fluctuations in various cognitive functions during the menstrual cycle are insignificant. But we do not dwell on this interesting topic, since they have little practical value. These fluctuations do not reach such an amplitude that it makes sense to take them into account in everyday life. Serious problems in women do not begin until after menopause.

The main feature of a woman's behavior, directly related to the menstrual cycle, is the cycling of affect, which often develops to a painful degree (see section 3.5).

Changes in cognitive abilities during the menstrual cycle are minor, but affective state fluctuates significantly during the menstrual cycle.

The tendency to accumulate resources is manifested in females both at the somatic level and at the mental level. The reproductive function in females is preserved only with a certain amount of adipose tissue (Fig. 4.2). A decrease in the amount of fat below a certain limit leads to disturbances in the stability of sexual function, and with the further development of the process, to the cessation of egg production.

Since the tendency of females to accumulate resources in the form of adipose tissue is an adaptive trait, it is evolutionarily anchored in stable preferences of males. Numerous polls of men show that the vast majority prefers plump women with athletic and asthenic build. Since the main place of the fat depot in women is the upper thighs and buttocks, it is this part of the female figure that determines the attractiveness of the woman (Fig. 8.10).

From the tendency of men to plump (fat) women naturally follows the standard image of a fashion model, model, pop singer, who should be thin and, if possible, even bony. In search of new erotic impressions and experiences (see section 4.1.4, 4.2), in search of novelty, a man prefers an image that is possibly more different from his usual one, from the one he chose a long time ago. The applause of the public at fashion shows is by no means an indicator of a change in stable male preferences.

Females are more likely than males to accumulate resources. At the physiological level, it is the accumulation of fat. On the behavioral level, it is the accumulation of vital resources.

In the behavior of animals, the tendency to accumulate resources is manifested in the creation of food reserves - in a form of behavior more characteristic of females. When grooming, if the cat is especially cute to him, the cat brings her a mouse.

In man, the tendency to accumulate resources is manifested in a greater inclination of women to save money than in men. Sometimes this statement is objected, pointing to the love of women to shop. But in the process of shopping, only one universal resource is exchanged for another, also a vital resource. A woman always buys things, and does not let money down the drain. A woman will never throw a binge in a restaurant throwing money at gypsies, buy a million scarlet roses and spend all her savings on a rare postage stamp.

Women's tendency to accumulate money is used in practical psychology, for example, when recruiting an agent. Although this is a creative process, which always begins with a careful study of the recruited object, all its individual characteristics - from political views to food preferences - nevertheless, there are general rules in it. According to one of them, it is easier for a woman than for a man to be attracted by the material benefits of any enterprise. It is easier for a man than for a woman to win over to his side by flattery. The fortuneteller (ie, Practical psychologist) from the story of A. I. Kuprin "Gad" says:

A man, although he is a fool and his ears are cold and, so to speak, generally an ass, but still he believes that he has the soul of a tiger, the smile of a child, and therefore he is a handsome man. So, lie to him boldly ...

In accordance with this scheme, they act when it is necessary to attract a man to their side: they admire his merits, intelligence, knowledge, abilities, purely human charm, etc. At the same time, they constantly emphasize that he is not appreciated, that he occupies a low position in the hierarchy their community through no fault of their own, but solely because of the intrigues of envious people and the shortsightedness of their bosses. As a result, a man changes his self-identification, he now prefers to consider himself a member of another social group - another family, another production organization, another state. Changing social self-identification is often called treason (as opposed to betrayal, which is treason associated with damage to the former community with which a person previously identified himself).

The proverb of the traveling artists “Don't applaud, better with money” was formulated by their wives. A woman is interested in vital resources, and a man is interested in the attention (admiration) of others, that is, in leadership. Money interests him not about itself, but as an indicator of social status and as a means of gaining influence on others, which is reflected in the well-known wording: "The American dream is, by earning as much money as possible, to influence as many people as possible."

Males, more than females, have a need for leadership. In a person, this need manifests itself in vanity and ambition.

With the different reproductive roles of men and women, or rather, males and females, it is also due to the fact that female animals are less aggressive than males. In social animals, protection from predators is a function of males, also because males are less valuable to the population (see color inset, Fig. 8.8). The literature describes many cases of altruistic behavior of males, as a result of which they die in the fight against a predator, saving their females. The aggressive behavior of males takes on rigid forms, not only during interspecific contacts. Intraspecific aggression, also often leading to the death of one of the participants in the conflict, is characteristic almost exclusively of males, since it is associated with the struggle for the female. The female does not need to suppress the activity of other females, since this will not increase the likelihood of her reproductive success, which depends only on herself, on her choice. The female will almost always be fertilized. In addition, agonistic contacts, which often accompany aggressive actions, can cause significant damage to the viability of the female, which will negatively affect the entire population. The reproductive success of males varies widely. The male can pass on his genes to all the females of the community, or he may not pass on even one, which is most often the case. This uncertainty prompts males to constantly suppress competitors. Therefore, constant intraspecific aggression takes place almost exclusively between males, and in females it manifests itself only when vital resources are limited, for example, when there is no food.

Females are less aggressive in intraspecific contacts.

The same patterns operate in the human community. Although there is competition between women for profitable suitors, it rarely takes on harsh forms and almost never in the form of agonistic contacts. It should be emphasized that the aggressiveness of men is manifested in all spheres of their social activity, although these activities, as a rule, do not affect their reproductive success. At the same time, the aggressiveness of women, which has no biological justification, is weakly manifested in those forms of activity that are not associated with reproduction (Fig. 8.11).

8.2.5. Male and female psychological types

Summarizing the description of the fundamental differences between males and females, we note that these differences form the category of psychological types: male and female (see section 6.4). From the incomparable energy contribution to the reproduction process, the peculiarities of genetics, physiology and behavior of the two sexes follow. These features characterize not only humans, but also all dioecious animals. Differences between male and female sex can be summed up as different sets of needs and different styles of meeting those needs.

Differences in the style of the stress response are evident. The male style is close to type A. The man seeks to return the changed conditions of existence to the usual. Women adapt to the changes that arise, which characterizes her behavior as type B. Attempts to train a woman for stressful behavior of type A are futile and, moreover, detrimental to her health. First of all, the psyche of a woman suffers.

The differences in the needs of men and women are also obvious. For a woman, the priority is the accumulation of resources, that is, dominance in the narrow sense (see section 7.1.1). For a man, a high rank of leadership is more important. The social behavior of men is close to the r-strategy (see section 7.3.2), while women are more social K-strategists.

Male and female psyche and (or) behavior, like other psychological types, differ in a set of needs and a style of stress reaction. The main difference in needs: in males, the need for leadership, in females - in the accumulation of vital resources. Males are more resistant to stress than females.

The difference between types "man" and "woman" is close to the differences between types A and B, respectively, and r- and K-strategies of social contacts, respectively.

Thus, Occam's principle dictates to discard the typology, which is based on the “male” and “female” set of needs and styles of their satisfaction, as redundant. Indeed, males are r-strategists with behavioral type A, and females are K-strategists with behavioral type B. Nevertheless, the concept of male and female psychological types is widespread both in the specialized literature and among lay people. Probably, the stability of the archetypes "man" and "woman" is explained by the fact that, unlike other typological systems, representatives of these two psychological types are very easy to distinguish by somatic characteristics.

8.3. Cognitive differences

On average, men and women have the same intellectual abilities. This was noted even in the book by C. Lombroso and J. Ferrara "Woman - a criminal and a prostitute", the very name of which reflects a tendentious view of women. The authors acknowledge that female students are as smart as male students.

There are no differences in general intelligence between men and women, as measured by intelligence quotient (IQ), but there are differences in individual abilities. These differences are small, they rarely exceed 20% (for those familiar with statistics - from 0.25 to 1 standard deviation).

The average value of the IQ of men and women is the same.

It should be emphasized once again that the differences in adults are not due to a different hormonal background, but to those features of the physiology and structure of the nervous system that were formed in the embryonic period under the influence of sex hormones. For example, the administration of progesterone improves visual memory in women, but this procedure is ineffective in men.

Differences in individual abilities of adult men and women are not due to different hormonal background, but to those features of the physiology and structure of the nervous system, which were formed in the embryonic period under the influence of sex hormones.

As already mentioned, women have better verbal abilities, speed and accuracy of perception, subtle movements. Men are better at performing spatial and quantitative tests, while women are better able to navigate the terrain by subjects rather than by a map. Women classify objects according to formal characteristics. For example, to the question "What car do you have?" a woman can answer: "Green", forgetting to mention the model, year of manufacture and other significant features of the car. We will not dwell on these features in detail, since they are described in detail in the psychological literature.

There are two common misconceptions about verbal ability. It is often said (and written) about the best "verbal thinking" of women. It is not right. Not all thinking is verbal. Better to use the term "verbal activity". A woman's great verbal activity is manifested, for example, when she asks for a light. The woman uses an extended sentence, with introductory words, a complete phrase construction. A man in a similar situation is limited to facial expressions, gestures and hums. When explaining a concept, a woman uses speech, and a man prefers to draw a diagram or graph.

Another common misconception is that women are talkative. Measurements carried out with maximum accuracy have shown that the average number of words spoken by a man and a woman per day or per week is the same. The difference lies in situations that are accompanied by verbal activity. A man will not have a long conversation with a friend on the phone, he will prefer noisy communication with a wide range of interlocutors and (or) drinking companions.

The great social activity of men is explained, again, by the different energy budgets of the two sexes. Women are more egocentric and show less social activity, while men can afford to spend part of their energy not on reproduction, but on such activity that does not promise specific benefits in the near future.

Three men are already a society, two women are already a kind of mystery. The secret of men is a collective secret; it is the secret of the conspirators, the secret of the Freemasons or the Council of Ministers. The secret of a woman is deeply intimate; this is the secret of Pan X or Pani Y.

Karel Chapek. Secret

It is difficult to find a woman concerned about the situation in East Timor. At the same time, a man, not being a diplomat or financier, can be keenly interested in foreign policy. It is men who plot, play football, and organize learned societies. Such activities are not part of the range of interests of women, not because women are less intelligent, but because they are less inclined to group activity (see color insert, Fig. 8.12). In Lysistratus, the comedy of Aristophanes, the absurdity that engenders a comic situation is that women have conspired, and this is a form of activity in which one must certainly sacrifice one's momentary vital interests. Some credibility of the ridiculous situation is given by the fact that the conspiracy was directed against men who were overly keen on social life and, as a result, neglected families.

The main gender difference in cognitive ability is the rigidity of men and the intuition of women.

Male intelligence is rigid, female intelligence is intuitive.

In the previous section, it was pointed out that, due to their high resistance to stress, men are better surgeons than women, and women are better diagnosticians than men. This difference is associated not only with different stress resistance, but also with the peculiarities of cognitive abilities.

Men make the diagnosis worse, because they study any object, trying to classify it into some already familiar category. If this fails, then the object is analyzed, that is, it is divided into components, each of which, in turn, has already been classified (Fig. 8.13). Naturally, the number of familiar categories, in other words, the number of cells in the table, grows with the accumulation of professional experience. But this number always remains limited and, most importantly, the use of the analytical method of cognition is mandatory.

The woman perceives the object as a whole. The woman is intuitive. This means that she sometimes (as a rule) cannot explain the consistent course of logical reasoning that led her to a certain decision. But this decision is influenced by all the features of the phenomenon studied by a woman. A man often, having found a certain cell for a certain phenomenon in his intellect, no longer pays attention to numerous particulars - the decision has been made! And it is already very difficult to make him change his decision.

The ability to brush aside details, sometimes even ignore obvious facts, enables some men to create fundamental scientific theories. A classic example is the creation of the theory of stress by Hans Selye. The very subject of the study - the nonspecific component of the reaction - aroused skepticism among colleagues. Scientific interests of G. Selye were called by his scientific advisor "the pharmacology of mud".

His other assertion that the adaptive reaction of the body is regulated exclusively by humoral factors was met with hostility by the world scientific community. These were the 30s of the twentieth century, all physiology and medicine were permeated with the ideas of nervousism, the primacy of the role of the central nervous system in the regulation of all functions of the body. Nevertheless, Selye rejected as irrelevant those facts that did not fit into his system. Currently, no one doubts that stress develops with close interaction of the nervous and humoral systems, but Selye's narrow gaze, his self-righteousness, bordering on paranoia, allowed him to create his own theory, which subsequently attracted the attention of world science to the humoral aspects of the regulation of functions ...

Unfortunately, not all men who are deaf to the arguments of others manage to build a scientific theory, which later turns out to be true. The stubborn inventors of a perpetual motion machine, unrecognized poets who write tons of paper, scientists who have been talking utter nonsense for decades - all these categories of people consist exclusively of men. Women have enough plasticity to quickly quit a hopeless occupation.

Because of the cognitive characteristics of the two sexes, men will never understand women. Until the middle of the twentieth century, only men explained the psyche and behavior of women. Such explanations always give only an approximate picture of the inner world of the object under study. For example, it is impossible for a researcher to penetrate the soul of a cat, which feels differently than a person, and also has a completely different spectrum of needs and ways of their realization. Since the twentieth century, the psyche and behavior of women began to be studied and described by women themselves. Perhaps they have achieved significant success in this, but men will never know about this, since women both view the subject under study in a different way and present them in such a way that such explanations do not clarify anything to a man. Consider, as an example, the book by K. P. Estes “Running with Wolves. The female archetype in myths and legends "(Kiev: Sofia; Moscow: Publishing House" Helios ", 2004. 496 p.).

Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D., former executive director of the CG Jung Research and Training Center, is a psychoanalyst with vast experience. Her book has been translated into more than 25 languages ​​and apparently enjoys well-deserved popularity. In any case, the women who read it speak very well of it. They say that they enjoyed the very process of reading, that is, the text undoubtedly has a psychotherapeutic effect.

However, I personally could not find answers to specific questions. For example: what, according to Dr. Estes, the features of the female psyche that distinguish it from the male, add up the female archetype? Or: what features of the female psyche are reflected in myths and legends? What I understood about the female archetype, having covered half a thousand pages, can be formulated something like this: “In every woman there is a woman-girl, a woman-mother and a woman-old woman. Feel them in yourself, wild woman, and you will be blessed. "

The peculiarities of a woman's perception and thinking make the results of the study of the female inner world, conducted by women, a secret knowledge, open to the initiate, but forever hidden from men. Therefore, a woman will always remain a mystery to a man; which, of course, is for the best.

Due to their intuitiveness, women understand animals much better than men. Dressage remains the only sport in which women compete against men. Greater resistance to stress, which is associated with any competition, gives an advantage to men. This is offset by the ability of women to perceive the behavior of the animal as a whole. In the man's head, the following process is going on: “The horse has turned its ears outward, which means that it is necessary to lean forward a little; while she jerked her head to the left, it means that it is necessary to pull on the right rein, etc. " The male consciousness consistently analyzes all the movements of the animal and also consistently develops a solution. And the rider assesses the gestalt of the animal's behavior and changes her behavior not as a result of a chain of separate observations, their classification, the search for an adequate reaction and making a decision about a specific motor reaction, but “intuitively”. Intuitively does not mean by chance, as God puts on the soul. Intuitive decisions often turn out to be correct (otherwise they are called "stupid"), and you can always justify them after the fact. But in the time available for the rider to make a decision, such an analysis cannot be carried out.

In chapter 7, it was argued that the patroness of wild animals, Artemis, kept her virginity. And the fact that she was a woman is also no coincidence: female intuition helps to understand animals that are devoid of articulate speech. In addition, women communicate more easily with animals than with men, due to the less aggressiveness shown towards females by both males and females.

Thus, the main cognitive gender difference is the rigidity of the male mindset and the intuitiveness of the female. The average ability of women for logical constructions is not lower than that of the average man. The widespread idea of ​​the existence of a special "feminine" logic is associated with the egocentrism of a woman, due to the difference in energy costs for reproduction. The logical abilities of women are the same as those of men, but the value system, that is, the set of needs, is different for the two sexes:

There is one painful moment in a conversation with a woman. You give facts, arguments, arguments. You appeal to logic and common sense. And suddenly you discover that the very sound of your voice is disgusting to her ...

S. Dovlatov

If the phrase “I have nothing to wear” is said by a man, it means that he has nothing clean. If a woman says: “I have nothing to wear,” it means that she has nothing new. The value systems of men and women are so different that some statements require special commentary for the representatives of the opposite sex. For example, when one woman says to another: “You have a good suit. I have the same five years since the moth ate it, ”she lets her hairpin go. The fact is that she makes it clear to her friend that she is wearing clothes that were worn more than five years ago. And outdated clothing is an indicator of a low social rank for a woman, since the lack of novelty in appearance leads to a decrease in men's attention.

Some cognitive differences are determined by different energetic contributions to reproduction: greater sociality of men, "female" logic, lack of a sense of humor in women.

The different energetic roles of the two sexes also explain the lack of a sense of humor in women. As a reminder, a sense of humor is the ability not to be offended when they make fun of you, as opposed to wit, the ability to make fun of others (see Chapter 1). “Don't joke with women: these jokes are stupid and indecent,” Kozma Prutkov said quite rightly (Thoughts and Aphorisms, 91).

Without considering in detail the theory of the comical, let us join the opinion of I. Kant, who believed that it is generated by the inconsistency of what is happening with what is expected. In interpersonal relationships, inconsistency is created most easily if the situation is inadequate to a high social status. The gray-haired professor jumping through the puddles is ridiculous, but not a little boy. It's ridiculous to put a button on a chair for a respectable teacher, and not for a sloven neighbor.

A man, unlike a woman, can afford to temporarily find himself in a stupid position, that is, to lower his social rank, that is, to reduce his vitality, finding himself in a ridiculous position. A woman, preoccupied with the constant increase in resources, including the level of social status, which provides access to vital resources, does not tolerate jokes in her address. A joke directed at a woman is tactlessness, hairpin or outright rudeness.

In Maupassant's story "The Norman Joke" during the wedding of a rich farmer who was also an avid hunter, one of the guests shouted: "The poachers will have fun tonight!" The groom barked - they would not dare, but when the young men retired to the bedroom, a shot rang out from the nearest forest. Then another one! The young husband, having been swept away, despite the persuasions of his wife, nevertheless grabbed a gun and ran to catch the poachers. At dawn, his wife raised the people, and only then “... he was found two leagues from the farm, tied from head to foot, half-dead from rage, with a broken gun, in trousers turned inside out, with three dead hares around his neck and with a note on chest: "Whoever goes hunting loses his place."

The most remarkable thing is that such a cruel trick is perceived by the victim as just a joke:

Subsequently, talking about his wedding night, he added: - Yes, what can I say, it was a glorious joke! They, worthless, caught me in a snare, like a rabbit, and threw a sack over my head. But watch out if I ever get to them!

It is obvious that the status of the hero of the story does not correspond to the position in which he found himself - instead of the marriage bed, to be tied up in the forest. But such an incident, clearly associated with a decrease in fitness in a broad biological sense (instead of reproductive behavior, risking life and health, not to mention the possibility - albeit very small - of fertilization of his wife by another man), is perceived by the hero of the story as an amusing, interesting case, about which he loves to tell. The hero, like any man, perceives a temporary decrease in his fitness as a natural event - "Today you, and tomorrow I." It is no coincidence that he threatens the jokers on occasion to repay a hundredfold. And they will perceive his actions not as retribution, but as a return joke.

Obviously, the wife, like any woman, does not see anything funny in this story, but only a tragedy. A woman, like any female, cannot risk even a temporary decrease in vitality and even the threat of such a decrease.

No, the woman is not at all cheerful; and if she passes through life "with a smile on her lips," then this is a pretense: she is a serious being, like death. We, namely we, those other, bearded and long-haired, stubborn and disgusting, - personify the laughter of life; We value this also during our serious studies - machines and philosophy, in the pulpit and behind the plow - we remember that under our skin are sewn up the bones of the Eternal Jester, whom God created to make the world easy and fun.

Karel Chapek. Who is more fun?

Thus, many of the cognitive differences between women and men result directly from the different energetic contributions of the two sexes to the production of offspring. The main cognitive differences between men and women are:

• rigidity of intelligence;
• weak intuition;
• weak verbosity;
• high sociality;
• sense of humor.

8.4. Gender differences

In psychology and sociology, when talking about the differences between men and women, it is customary to use the term "gender", not "sex" differences. Meanwhile, the differences between the concepts of "gender" and "sex" are not entirely clear. As a result of several scientific conferences, humanities specialists came to the conclusion that the term "gender" is due only to good funding of "gender" research, as opposed to research on "sex differences (Bogdanov K.A., Panchenko A.A. GENDER as GENDER (instead of foreword) // Mythology and everyday life: Gender approach in anthropological disciplines. Proceedings of the scientific conference, February 19–21, 2001 / RAS Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkin House) / Edited by K. A. Bogdanov, A. A. Panchenko. SPb .: Aleteya, 2001. S. 5-10.) ". Indeed, "gender" - and sounds solid, since it is a foreign word and does not cause associations with odious concepts: sexual intercourse, genitals, sexual problems, sexual perversion, etc. in any case, not representatives of natural sciences - do not see the actual difference between the concepts of "sex differences" and "gender differences".

Still, it is legitimate to use the term "gender" to denote stereotypical ideas about the forms of behavior and psychological characteristics of the personality of Men and Women. Many of these traits are culture-specific (Figure 8.14), but the vast majority of these stereotypes are biologic — the dramatic difference in the energetic contribution of the two sexes to offspring.

8.4.1. Two systems of ethics

A man, like all males, can theoretically leave a large number of offspring, and a woman, like females of other species, is capable of producing only a limited number of offspring.

This explains the different strategies of reproductive behavior in males and females. In human society, this has led to the creation of two ethical systems. Those forms of behavior that are acceptable for men, or even encouraged by them, are considered unacceptable for women.

The strategy of male behavior is determined Coolidge phenomenon: an unfamiliar female is always better than a familiar one.

The name of the phenomenon is associated with the name of the American President Coolidge. During an official visit to the farm, his wife allegedly asked the farmer, "How many times in a row can a bull cover a cow?" “Ten,” he replied. "Pass this on to Mr. President."
Then Coolidge himself asked: "The same cow?" - "Only different." "Tell this to Ms. Coolidge."

Thus, males try to spread their genes as much as possible, passing on their genes to as many offspring as possible. At the same time, since the production of offspring is very costly, females cannot afford to mate with the first mate they come across. Therefore, the reproductive strategy of females is imitation and waiting. Females prefer to choose proven sexual partners who are already enjoying success with other females. As a result, there is a positive feedback - the more sexual partners a man has, the greater his chances of having a relationship with a new woman.

Two systems of ethics are reflected in such proverbs and sayings as, for example, "The good fellow is not a reproach to be from," "It is not a shame to endure from the good fellow," and, on the other hand, "Weak on the front end." In all cases, we are talking about people with a strong motivation for copulatory behavior. However, this behavior of men is approved, although often not explicitly, and the implementation of the same motivation by women is condemned by traditional morality.

The double ethical standard - for men and for women - is due to the different reproductive roles of the two sexes.

It is appropriate to recall here that humans are predominantly a K-strategist (see Section 7.3.2), that is, a species whose behavioral repertoire includes extensive concern for offspring. And the main burden of parenting, of course, is borne by the woman. The high cost of potential failure in choosing a reproductive partner determines the gender trait of the humble behavior that is prescribed to girls in almost all cultures. Only by giving the initiative of courtship to a man, a girl will be able to appreciate his dignity, which will inevitably manifest in his behavior.

The longer the girl does not let the man understand that she likes him, the more fully his properties will be revealed. It should be noted that modest behavior is prescribed, that is, restraint of motor acts. It is permissible to dress defiantly, immodestly paint a face, etc., but it is impossible to be the first to move towards a man. The first man who attracts attention may not be the best, so a woman is obliged to provoke a potential sexual partner to show her possible merits in the courtship process.

Consider, for example, Watteau's masterpiece Capricious Woman. The posture of the lady is characteristic - she straightened up and leaned forward slightly. With a gesture of her hand picking up a dress, the lady seems to fenced herself off from the persistent admirer. In the silhouette of her figure, rounded, pleasant, quite feminine contours are combined with sharp bends of lines - a sharp toe of a shoe, a vigorously clenched brush - which emphasize the mood of resistance. On the face of the lady, you can easily read the proud rebelliousness and at the same time the willingness to continue to accept courtship. It is no coincidence that the gentleman is preparing to get something from his inner pocket (wallet, gift?). His posture is somewhat careless, his face not only reads attention, but at the same time self-confidence and a grain of irony. The cavalier is not a young man, therefore, most likely, sexually experienced, well acquainted with the ritual of courtship, all stages of which must be completed before the lady provides him with the final evidence of her favor. It can be assumed that if for some reason the lady does not want to deal with him, then the gentleman will calmly leave.

If the woman has already made her choice, then the man has no right to refuse her, since the energy costs of the male for the reproduction of the offspring are negligible in comparison with the costs of the female. Men who rejected a direct offer of a woman go down in history - like Orpheus, Phaedra's stepson Hippolytus and the beautiful Joseph.

All jokes about sex are based on double standards. As we have already said, much of what is considered normal for a man, and even welcomed and encouraged, is indecent or even unacceptable for a woman. Consider the following historical anecdote (Antique anecdote / Ed. S. Venglovsky. SPb .: Publishing house of the journal "Neva", 1995.):

The Roman emperor Octavian Augustus saw on the street a Greek who had a surprisingly similar face to him, and asked him: "Has your mother been to Rome in her youth?" He replied: "No, my mother has never been to Rome, but my father - he lived in Rome for a long time."

This story is ridiculous, because in it the emperor finds himself in an awkward position. Why do we consider such a situation to be inconsistent with the high imperial dignity? Because the image of the father, who at one time had extramarital sex, does not compromise the emperor, and even, perhaps, adds glitter to his diadem. On the contrary, the hint that the emperor's mother was a relaxed girl, led an absent-minded lifestyle, can greatly damage the imperial dignity.

The threat to the reputation of the emperor's mother is intensified by the fact that she is suspected not simply of premarital or extramarital affairs, but in connection with a Greek. In Rome at that time, the overwhelming majority of teachers, doctors, philosophers, magicians, architects and artists were Greeks (more precisely, carriers of Hellenistic culture). The contemptuous attitude of the nobility towards educated people was aggravated by the fact that Greece had been one of the provinces of the Roman Empire for a century and a half. Thus, the social level of a noble Roman girl was much higher than that of any Greek. Communication with a subordinate for any woman, for example, a lady with a coachman, is no longer "relaxed behavior", this is what in Russian is called "swing in all directions (Saltykov-Shchedrin M. Ye. History of the city of Foolov)". At the same time, connections between men and women of low social rank are perceived by those around them quite calmly, that is, they are not a violation of moral or ethical norms.

Any female, including a woman, cannot afford to waste her eggs, producing offspring from low-ranking males. A low social rank of a male means his low fitness. Poor adaptability is most often due to unsuccessful heredity. Even if poor fitness is associated with environmental influences (injury), then even then this means that such a male will not be able to take care of the offspring. Males, like males of other species, can easily afford to spend part of their gametes on fertilization and low-ranking females.

Although the costs of males for reproduction are relatively small, but with the K-strategy of reproduction (see Chapter 7), prevailing in humans, the man would like to spend energy raising offspring that carry his genes. There can be no complete certainty that a woman is pregnant precisely from him. Therefore, the institution of engagement has formed in different cultures. After the girl was declared a bride, her freedom was sharply limited. In patriarchal cultures, she was simply locked up until her wedding day. In this way, the likelihood of sexual intercourse and pregnancy was limited. As a result, the man received, if not a guarantee, then some confidence that he would not have to spend energy on raising the descendants of another man. Of course, the possibilities of contacts between the bride and the groom were also limited. A man rightly believes that it is safer to have a non-pregnant bride than a bride who claims that she is pregnant with him - and what else can she say ?!

In the Russian tradition, the institution of engagement was supported by a large number of fasts, during which weddings were not allowed. As a result, more than two months passed between the engagement and the wedding. Thus, a child conceived by a husband could appear no earlier than 7 months (in case of prematurity) after the wedding.

The biological meaning of the institution of engagement is the attempt by men to prevent the fertilization of the bride by another man.

In Sweden, the country where the largest number of civil marriages is noted (forms of cohabitation of a man and a woman without legal registration of this fact and, of course, without an engagement period), a genetic study of the entire population was carried out. One of the side effects was that 11% of men are not biological fathers of children who are raised as relatives. Moreover, families with knowingly other people's children - adopted or adopted - were excluded from the statistical data set. So it turned out that every ninth man was deceived (perhaps unconsciously) by a woman and spent his energy on raising someone else's child who is not his biological descendant, that is, on the reproduction of other people's genes.

A study of 400,000 Welsh citizens showed that in this sample the percentage of men cheated was approximately 6. It should be noted that biological tests can indicate with absolute certainty that a given man is not the father of a given child. The fact that a particular man is the father of a particular child can be biologically confirmed with a probability only approaching one, but never reaching it. Therefore, the real proportion of men raising non-biological offspring is even greater.

Consequently, such a seemingly purely human institution as an engagement is based on biological laws, in particular on the need to economize on energy.

8.4.2. The social raison d'être of the two sexes

Numerous differences in the behavior of men and women are of a statistical nature. In a fairly large sample, you can always find a woman who will have a larger set of "masculine qualities" than most men. But one function of gender differences is absolute - this is the satisfaction of the social need for self-identification.

The existence of two sexes with rather rigidly defined norms in behavior and especially in social behavior, that is, in communication, satisfies this basic social need. The experience of the Soviet regime related to the establishment of equality between men and women is indicative. Immediately after the revolution, they tried to introduce an attitude towards a woman as a comrade, who, of course, is "distracted" for several months of pregnancy, but otherwise he is the same member of society as a man, and therefore the norms of behavior for men and women should be the same (Fig. 8.17). Despite the fact that such a system of relations was supported not only by propaganda, but also by the widespread use of nurseries, canteens, home kitchens, and other services that minimized a woman's craving for a family, it was not possible to level the gender characteristics of behavior stereotypes.

The presence of masculine and feminine behavior with a rather rigid framework allows a person to feel like a member of a certain community - either men or women. Even if a person fails in other spheres of life, nevertheless, he satisfies the basic social need - for self-identification, feeling that he belongs to a social group formed by gender.

It is no coincidence that, according to unwritten laws, the presence of women on a fishing trip or men visiting beauty salons are not approved. These are clubs closed to the other sex. In the studies of M.L. Butovskoy, it is shown that in the communication of boys and girls of three to six years, there are the same stereotypes of behavior that are noted during the contacts of two tribes of primitive culture (Butovskaya M.L. Ethnographic Review. 1997. No. 4. S. 104-122.).

The words of Julius Caesar, "Not even a shadow of suspicion should fall on my wife," with which he explained his sudden divorce from Pompey, after a young man was discovered in the room of his wife's maid, is widely known. But his wife was not suspected of adultery, but of complicity in blasphemy! The young man was found in the house of Caesar, while the holiday of the Good Goddess was being celebrated there (her real name did not reach us, since it was known only to women). Not a single man could not only be present at the festival, but also be in the house in which the celebration was celebrated. A man who penetrated a closed women's event was accused of impiety, since he was guilty not only before the women offended by him, but also before the city and the gods (Plutarch. Caesar, IX, X.).

Violation of gender stereotypes of behavior causes stress or ridicule. If a person's behavior is very different from what is expected, then this causes psychological discomfort.

In ancient Greece, with total bisexuality, the term “kined” was a nickname for “half-men” who, with their effeminate behavior, gestures, love for outfits, and cosmetic tricks, deserved universal contempt. In the comedies of Aristophanes and the works of other authors, they are given a variety of vulgar nicknames (Likht G. Sexual life in Ancient Greece. M .: KRON-PRESS, 1995). A man should remain a man regardless of whom he prefers to receive satisfaction of his erotic needs with - with women, with boys or with mature men.

The most disgusting of Nikolai Gogol's characters, Plyushkin, looks like an old woman. The accumulation of various vital resources, which is quite forgivable in a woman, is called pettiness in a man and makes a person especially unsympathetic. For example, a woman pointed out the reason for the divorce: "He counted all the empty cans in the house!" Naturally, people divorcing after 20 years of marriage do it for more complicated reasons, but such a "non-male" act was the last straw, a straw that broke the back of a camel.

Naturally, those behavioral features that are considered to be "masculine" when they occupy a significant place in a woman's behavioral repertoire make the attitude towards such a woman non-standard. For example, since it is generally accepted that jokes are the lot of men, a woman who loves to joke and, even worse, knows how to do it, makes men wary. At best, she is not treated as a woman, but as a "fighting friend".

Belonging to a certain gender serves to satisfy the need for social self-identification.

Modern attempts to abolish social institutions that are closed to the opposite sex, which are carried out under the slogans of "political correctness", "equality of rights", etc., are also harmful because they ignore a person's innate need for social self-identification (see color insert, Fig. 8.19) ... For example, the Swedish Institute of Sociology and Medicine compared data on employees of all 290 Swedish municipalities on 9 indicators of private and public life. The results showed a strong relationship between gender equality and morbidity. For example, equal income and the ability to occupy the same positions have led to a decrease in life expectancy. According to the authors of the study, the found correlation can be explained by the fact that representatives of a strong half of humanity experience psychological trauma from the loss of traditionally male privileges, while women suffer from additional workload and long working hours.

In our opinion, the main reason for the deterioration of health due to the erosion of gender stereotypes is the disappearance of the most evolutionarily ancient, simple and reliable criterion of social self-identification - gender. Much has been said in the previous sections about the importance of satisfying the need for self-identification, in particular for the prevention of depression (see Chapters 2, 5, 7).

Attempts to minimize differences in behavior between men and women are doomed to failure. Man is a product of long-term evolution, and sex-related features of the structure and functioning of the brain, associated with sex, are formed during the entire prenatal period of development and after the birth of a child. Women are no worse and no better than men, they are different. Thus, the requirement to grant women equal rights with men is similar to the requirement to grant equal rights to mice and frogs. Mice would be allowed to dive, and frogs would be allowed to live in burrows.

Women are no worse and no better than men; they are different.

Ideas about the peculiarities of a woman's psyche have undergone fundamental changes over the past hundred years. Z. Freud wrote that the root of a woman's psychological characteristics is in her desire to be a man, and the impossibility of changing sex gives rise to all female psychological problems. By the 1980s, the idea of ​​gender equality had gained such strength that American doctors were long reluctant to acknowledge the existence of premenstrual syndrome (PMS). The existence of the PMS disproves the main feminist thesis that there are no differences between women and men. Only the fact that the allocation of PMS as an independent norsological unit, that is, a separate disease, created a new sector of the medical services market, determined the intensive research of this PMS problem at the present time.

It is often written that gender-determined features of the behavior and psyche of a woman do not have any significance in modern society, since the difference in the reproductive roles of men and women has been minimized thanks to the development of medicine and scientific methods of raising children, as well as the disappearance of the relationship between sex life and birth. children. Indeed, the success of contraception has made the relationship between sexual behavior and reproduction very weak. However, sexual behavior even in animals is not limited to the implementation of the reproductive function. Even only the copulative component of sexual behavior in animals and humans can be traced in many aspects of social behavior. It can also be agreed that the biological factors that determined the advantages of the existence of two very different sexes are weak in modern society (although the fact that a person got out of the pressure of natural selection is not a proven fact). But the main thing is that the differences between a man and a woman begin to form from the moment the egg is fertilized and continue at least throughout the pregnancy. Thus, no environmental impact can change:

• greater genetic diversity in men;
• better adaptability of women;
• greater stress resistance of men;
• cyclicality of vital activity;
• a tendency to accumulate resources in women.

In conclusion, recall that these five main differences between men and women, as well as all other differences between men and women, are statistical in nature.

8.5. Homosexuality

Homosexuality is sexual orientation towards people of the same gender. As in many other forms of behavior, in homosexuality there is an obligate form and an optional one. In the obligate form, erotically colored contacts with the opposite sex are completely excluded. Obligate homosexuals in the human population are not more than 5%, and many authors believe that their share is not more than 1% for men, and even less for women (Kon I.S. Introduction to sexology. M .: Medicine, 1988. 319 p. ). Optional homosexuality is often referred to as bisexuality. This form of behavior is quite widespread. It has no genetic or congenital determinants.

Optional homosexuality is manifested as a result of environmental influences. It can be a transient form of behavior due to the situation, for example, in prisons, long expeditions. Bisexuality can be determined by the cultural environment, in particular the rather strict isolation of women, as in ancient Greece. Homosexuality is imitated - children brought up in homosexual "families" begin sex life as homosexuals. Homosexual intercourse may become preferable as a result of unsuccessful heterosexual experiences. Bisexuality may reflect the weakness of gender stereotypes of behavior - "... everything that moves." Homosexuality can be grounded philosophically (Plato) or aesthetically, as Oscar Wilde did. Finally, homosexuality can be one of the forms of psychological protection, such a social self-identification, with the help of which a person tries to compensate for his failures in other types of social contacts (see sections 2.2.2, 5.3.3), as the characters of E.M. Remarque do. and Eduard Limonov.

Thus, facultative homosexuality is based primarily not on biological, but on psychological and social mechanisms. Biological bases, and not in 100% of cases, can be found only for obligate homosexuality. Immediately, we note that there is no relationship between sexual orientation and the hormonal status of the body of an adult. Homosexuals do not have characteristic hormonal abnormalities. None of the endocrine diseases is a marker of homosexuality. No form of hormone therapy leads to a change in sexual orientation.

The influence of hormones in the process of embryonic development can be decisive for the formation of sexual orientation. The nervous system is formed in a male or female pattern under the influence of fetal steroids (see section 8.1.4). Pronounced sexual dimorphism is noted in some hypothalamic structures, for example, in the preoptic region, the destruction of which deprives the male of the ability to copulate. Naturally, an imbalance in sex steroids should affect the formation of these centers.

For obvious reasons, experimental data on this problem have been obtained almost exclusively in animals (homosexuality is also present in the behavioral repertoire of many species, including laboratory rats and mice). The introduction of testosterone to pregnant females leads to masculinization of embryos, i.e., to the manifestation of male characteristics of their morphology and physiology. Masculinization of offspring manifests itself, in particular, in a decrease in the reproductive abilities of females, in their greater aggressiveness, in a greater number of cages on each other. Accordingly, in a pregnant woman, a change in the amount of androgens (for example, as a result of taking antidiabetic drugs) leads to masculinization of the embryo.

The level of testosterone in the body of a pregnant woman rises as a result of steroidogenesis of the embryonic gonads. In rats, in whose uterus the embryos lie like peas in a pod, a more masculinized female develops from a female embryo located between two males than from one that was adjacent to only one male or two females. A similar observation was made in humans. Hearing characteristics of women from twin couples were compared. It turned out that women who had a twin brother, compared with having a twin sister, have masculinized characteristics of the auditory sensory system (McFadden D. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 90: 11900-11904 (1993).).

In the anterior hypothalamus, humans have a group of intrestal nuclei (INPG). Several research groups reported that one of them - ILPG-3 - is significantly larger in men than in women, and in homosexual men, its size is intermediate (Breedlove SM, Hampson E. Sexual differentiation of the brain and behavior. In: JB Becker et al. (Eds.) Behavioral Endocrinology, A Bradford Book, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England, 2002.776 p.). It is possible that this nucleus is the "center of sexual orientation." Obviously, its formation can also be disrupted as a result of changes in the testosterone content in the body of a pregnant woman, which can lead to the formation of homosexuality.

Another type of hormonal influences on sexual orientation is stress. By comparing the birth dates of 794 homosexuals in the GDR, Gunther Dörner's group found a peak in 1944 and 1945 (Dörner G. Adv. Physiol. Sci. 15: 111–120, 1981.). During these years, living conditions in Germany deteriorated sharply: the national humiliation of military defeat was added to the famine, bombings, and battles on the territory of the country. Therefore, the level of stress experienced by the residents was much higher than that of the population in 1943 and 1946. The conclusion about the increased likelihood of homosexuality under stress of a pregnant woman was confirmed when collecting anamnesis of homosexual men. During pregnancy, their mothers experienced much more material and psychological difficulties, as well as nervous shocks, than a group of heterosexual men of the same age and social group.

A certain proportion of homosexuals have deviations from the normal structure of the central nervous system, caused by an imbalance in sex steroids during the embryonic period.

The main mechanism of action of stress on sexual orientation is associated with antagonism of glucocorticoids and androgens. An increased content of glucocorticoids reduces the functional activity of androgens, i.e. prevents their interaction with target tissues, despite the normal content of androgens in the body. Therefore, in the body of a pregnant woman, maternal glucocorticoids prevent the organizing effect of embryonic androgens. This mechanism was confirmed in experiments on pregnant rats that were not stressed, they were only injected with glucocorticoids. The offspring of such animals were distinguished by smoothed sexual characteristics: males were feminized, and females were masculinized. In addition, as a result of stress, the blood supply to the fetus deteriorates, which leads to a lack of oxygen and, as a result, to numerous nonspecific developmental defects.

So, sexual orientation, its deviation from obligate heterosexuality, is associated in a certain part of cases with the organizing influence of androgens. Changes in the concentration of androgens (more precisely, the balance of sex steroids) during critical periods of development, i.e., during the formation of nerve centers responsible for sexual orientation, can lead to the formation of homosexuality. However, it should be remembered that the neuroendocrine theory is not exhaustive in the problem of homosexuality. Nevertheless, a certain proportion of homosexual men and women have innate differences from heterosexual people, and an altered sexual orientation is just one of the manifestations of these congenital anomalies. Consequently, the self-name “gay”, which is an abbreviation of Good As You - “no worse than you,” is biologically justified only in some cases (Rotikov N.N. Another Petersburg. St. Petersburg: Liga Plus, 2000, 639 p.)

• Butovskaya M. L. Secrets of sex: Man and woman in the mirror of evolution. Moscow: Vek 2, 2004.368 p. The book was written by a biologist teaching at a liberal arts university.
• Geodakyan V.A.Evolutionary logic of sex differentiation // Priroda. 1983, No. 1. P. 70–80. Scientific publication.
• Eremeeva V.D., Khrizman T.P. Boys and girls - two different worlds. Saint Petersburg: Tuscarora, 2000.184 p. Popular science about practical pedagogy.
• Imelinsky K.I. Sexology and sexopathology. M .: Medicine, 1986.423 p. Scientific monograph.
• Kon I.S. Introduction to sexology. M .: Medicine, 1988.319 p. Scientific monograph.

Video from Yana Happiness: interview with professor of psychology N.I. Kozlov

Topics of conversation: What kind of woman do you need to be in order to successfully marry? How many times do men get married? Why are there few normal men? Childfree. Parenting. What is love? A fairy tale that would not have been better. Pay for the opportunity to be close to a beautiful woman.

Sex differences in people have been studied in many areas. In humans, biological sex is determined by five factors present at birth: the presence or absence of a Y chromosome, type of gonads, sex hormones, internal reproductive anatomy (such as the uterus in women), and external genitals. People with mixed sexual factors are intersex. People whose gender identity (their inner sense of their own gender) is different from their biological sex are transgender, transsexual, or genderqueer.

A distinction is sometimes made between sex and gender. Sex differences usually refer to traits that are sexually dimorphic. Such differences are assumed to be products of the evolutionary process of sexual selection. In contrast, the term gender differences refers to the average group differences between men and women, which are seemingly based on sexually monomorphic (same between the sexes), biological adaptation - and these group differences are presumed to be due primarily to distinctive nationalization.

Medicine

Gender differences in medicine include sex-specific diseases, which are diseases that appear only people of the same sex; and sex-related diseases, which are diseases that are more common to one sex, or that manifest differently in each sex. For example, certain autoimmune diseases may appear predominantly in one sex for unknown reasons. 90% of the major biliary cirrhosis cases are women, while primary sclerosing cholangitis is more common in men. Gender medicine, also called “gender medicine,” is a field of medicine that studies the biological and physiological differences between the human sexes and how this affects the differences in disease. Traditionally, medical research has been mainly conducted using the male body as the basis for clinical research. The results of these studies were often applied across genders, and health care providers adopted a consistent approach to treating both male and female patients. More recently, medical research began to understand the importance of taking gender into account as symptoms, and responses to treatment can be very different between genders.

Neither concept should be confused with sexually transmitted diseases, which are diseases that have a significant likelihood of transmission through sexual contact.

There are various reasons for sex-related illnesses:

• Genetic diseases related to gender
• Parts of the reproductive system that are specific to one sex
• Social reasons that relate to the gender role expected of that sex in a particular society.
• Different levels of prevention, reporting, diagnosis, or treatment in each field.

Physiology

Sex differences in human physiology are differences in physiological characteristics associated with either or with male women. They can be of several types, including direct and indirect. Directly resulting from differences prescribed by the Y chromosome and indirectly being a feature that is indirectly (eg hormonally) influenced by the Y chromosome. Sexual dimorphism is a term for the phenotypic difference between males and females of the same species.

Direct sex differences follow a bimodal distribution. Through the process of meiosis and fertilization (with rare exceptions), each person is created with zero or one Y chromosome. An additional result for the X chromosome follows, either double or single X. Therefore, direct sex differences are usually double in expression (although deviations in complex biological processes produce a menagerie of exceptions). These include, most prominently, the male versus female gonads.

Indirect sex differences are general differences as quantified by empirical data and statistical analysis. Most of the differing features will fit a bell curve (i.e., normal) to a distribution that can be broadly described by mean (peak distribution) and standard deviation (indicator of range size). Often only the average or average difference between the sexes is given. This may or may not eliminate overlap in distributions. For example, most men are taller and more powerful than women, but an individual woman could be taller and / or stronger than an individual man. These differences and their extent vary across societies.

The most obvious differences between men and women include all features related to reproductive role, especially the endocrine (hormonal) systems and their physiological and behavioral effects, including gonadal differentiation, internal and external genital and breast differentiation and differentiation of muscle mass, height and hair distribution.

Psychology

Research into differences in the biological field in human psychology explores the cognitive and behavioral differences between men and women. This study uses experimental cognition tests that take many forms. The tests focus on possible differences in areas such as spatial reasoning, aggression, emotion, and brain structure and function.

Most IQ tests are designed so that there is no difference in overall score between women and men. Areas where differences have been found include verbal and math ability. IQ tests that measure liquid g and were not constructed to eliminate sex differences either tend to show that sex differences are either non-existent or insignificant. A 2008 study found that for grades 2 through 11, there were no significant gender differences in math skills among the general population.

Because social and environmental factors affect brain activity and behavior, where differences are found, it can be difficult for researchers to assess whether the differences are innate. Research on this topic is exploring the possibility of social influences on how both genders perform on cognitive and behavioral tests. Stereotypes about differences between men and women have been shown to affect human behavior (this is called stereotypical threat).

In the named The field of his book, Nature and Nutrition, psychologist Richard Lippa found that there were significant differences in women's and men's preferences for realistic pursuits (such as mechanics or carpenters) and moderate differences in their preferences for social and artistic pursuits. His results also found that women tend to be more person-oriented and more thing-oriented men.

Hartung & Widiger (1998) found that many types of mental illness and behavior problems show gender differences in prevalence and incidence. “Of the 80 disorders diagnosed in adulthood for which sex ratios are assured, 35 are said to be more common in men than in women (17 of which are substance-related or sexual perversion), 31 are said to be more common in women than males, and 14 are said to be equally prevalent in both genders. "

Differences in male and female jealousy can also be observed. While female jealousy is more likely to be inspired by emotional infidelity, male jealousy is more likely to be brought on by sexual infidelity. A clear majority of about 62% 86% of women reported that they would be more concerned about emotional infidelity, and a clear majority of 47% 60% of men reported that they would be more concerned about sexual infidelity.

In 2005, Janet Shibley Hyde of the University of Wisconsin-Madison introduced the gender similarities hypothesis, which suggests that men and women are similar on most, but not all, psychological variables. The study focused on cognitive variables (eg, reading comprehension, math), communication (eg, talkativeness, facial expressions), social and personality (eg, aggression, sexuality), psychological well-being, and motor behaviors. Using results from a survey of 46 meta-studies, she found that 78% of gender differences were small or close to zero. A few exceptions were some motor behaviors (such as throwing distance) and some aspects of sexuality (such as relationships about casual sex) that show the largest gender differences. She concludes her article by stating, "It is time to consider the costs of claims of the enormous size of gender disparities. They may be detrimental in numerous areas, including female opportunities in the workplace, couple conflict and communication, and research on self-esteem among adolescents."

Hyde also stated elsewhere that “changes within more sexes than changes between floors ".

In 2012, Irina Trofimova reported “middle age - average sexual” phenomenon and suggested that the significant feminine advantage in verbal fluency and the masculine advantage in physical strength disappear after age 25 in an asymmetric fashion. She pointed to several other studies of humans and other primates, showing an equalization of sex differences in sociability and physical strength. Men and women might indeed have different maturation timings of physical and verbal systems: according to McGuinness and Pribram (1978), during the first two years of life, talking and walking rarely occur simultaneously, which suggests that these two abilities compete for the same set of neural systems. connections, or that one type of neural organization prohibits another. This coincides with the higher mobility of boys, accompanied by their lower development of speech rates in childhood compared to girls. These different timings at maturation appear as sex differences at an early age, and are likely to level out into later adulthood (Barbu, Cabanes, & Le Maner-Idrissi, 2011). This average age – average sexual performance might explain why meta-analytic reports and several experimental studies of verbal ability and dominance using adult participants reported no gender differences.

Sociology

The crime

Sex differences in crime - differences between men and women as criminals and / or victims of crime. Such studies may belong to fields such as criminology or sociobiology (which attempts to demonstrate a causal relationship between biological factors in this case sex and human behavior), etc. While they are difficult to interpret, crime statistics can provide a way to explore relationships that might be interesting in terms of gender differences. The marked difference in crime rates between men and women might be due to social and cultural factors, an unreported crime movement, or to biological factors (as sociobiological theories claim). Moreover, the nature of the crime itself needs to be considered.

Crime can be measured by data such as arrest records, incarceration rates and surveys. However, not all crimes are reported or investigated. Additionally, some research suggests that men may have an overwhelming bias against reporting themselves as victims of crime (especially when harassed by a woman), and some studies have argued that men reporting intimate partner violence find disadvantageous biases in law enforcement. in life.

Education

Sometimes and in some places, there are gender differences in educational success. This may be due to discrimination on the basis of gender in law, culture, or it may reflect natural differences in the interests of the sexes.

Leadership

A study was undertaken to investigate whether there are gender differences in leadership. Until recently, leadership positions were predominantly male, and men were stereotyped to be more effective leaders. Women were rarely seen in senior leadership positions, resulting in a lack of data on how they behave in such positions. However, due to current research and women becoming more prevalent in the workforce over the past two decades, especially in management and leadership positions, these stereotypes are changing, and different conclusions about gender effects on leadership are being made. The two main lines of research contradict each other, the first being that there are significant gender differences in leadership, and the second being that gender has no effect on leadership.

However, one notable fact is that women show a greater preference for non-female leadership in the workplace than men. Women and men were polled by Gallup each year about workplace topics, and when questioned about female or male boss preferences, women chose a male boss preference 39% of the time, compared with 26% of men showing a male boss preference. Only 27% of women would prefer a boss of the same gender. This preference, among both genders, for male leadership in the workplace has continued unremittingly for sixty years, according to a survey.

Religion

Sex differences in religion can be classified as either "internal" or "external". Internal religious issues are examined from the perspective of a given religion and could include religious beliefs and practices about the roles and rights of men and women in government, education and faith; beliefs about the sex or gender of deities and religious figures; and beliefs about the origin and meaning of the human sex. External religious issues can be broadly defined as the examination of a given religion from the point of view of an outsider, including possible clashes between religious leaders and the uninitiated; and the influence, and differences between, religious views on social issues. For example, different religious perspectives have either endorsed or condemned alternative family structures, homosexual relationships, and abortion. External religious issues can also be explored from a "gender lens" perspective embraced by some in feminism and / or critical theory and its ramifications.

Social capital

Sex differences in social capital are differences between men and women in their ability to coordinate actions and achieve their goals through trust, norms and networks. Social capital is often seen as the missing link in development; because social media facilitates access to resources and protects urban commuters, while collaboration makes markets work more efficiently. Social capital has been considered as women's capital, whereas there are gender barriers to accessing economic capital, women's role in the family, and the community ensures that they have strong networks. There is potential that the concept can help bring women's unpaid "community and domestic work," vital to survival and development, to the attention of economists. However, research analyzing social capital from a gender perspective is rare, and notable exceptions are very important.

Suicide

Sex differences in suicide have been shown to be significant; there are very asymmetric rates of attempted and completed suicide between men and women. The gap, also called the gender paradox of suicidal behavior, can vary significantly between different countries. Statistics indicate that men die by suicide much more often than women do, however reported that suicide attempts are 3 times more common among women than men.