Here's a little question that may separate the boys from the girls:
Remember the kid's game, where you're asked to pat the top of your head, up and down, and simultaneously rub your stomach in a circular motion?
Who here can do this, and who can't? My wife, who is very verbal and social, can't at all. Not only is this easy for me, I can generally perform two fairly simple but independent tasks simultaneously, one with each hand. But I can't type, and she can. [1]
This may indicate connectedness, the white matter and the corpus colusum of the brain. If you have a lot, you are maybe more integrated, more social, more adaptive, possibly more female. If you have less, you may be more able to specialize on a narrow task, exclude distractions, more rigid, possibly more male. With hardly any, you may be autistic.
The pat-rub thing might be a good interview question/test.
John
[1] and I'm up to 3932 lines of assembly code so far this month! And most of it works.
Here's another cute trick. Point your fingers at each other, just in front of your chest. Imagine that this is the axis of a wheel. Hold your left hand in its position, and with the right hand, trace a spot on the rim of this rotating wheel, clockwise from the POV or your right elbow, which would mean that at the top it's going away from you.
OK, stop doing that, put your right finger back on the axis, and with your left finger, trace the spot on the rim that's moving the opposite direction, i.e., toward you on the top (which, interestingly, is still clockwise, but from the POV of your left elbow... ;-) ).
I can, but I cheated. The first time I did it, it was a bit awkward, so I practiced. Now I can do it, pee, and have a conversation all at once. While doing this, peeing is coherent. The conversation is not.
On the same note, if I may continue to generalize, I have noticed that people who are openly homosexual or bi-sexual will often have parents who have physical attributes that appears to indicate a hormonal imbalance. I know of two such individuals personally. I am certain many homosexuals are born that way, but I never went so far as to analyze their parents. But last night, I did, while looking I did, and without saying to much, I could tell from the parent that there was something not quite riight (the father). Sure enough, the daughter is lesbian.
And for all the males who like hard-bodied women, I challenge you to do this. The next time you see a woman who has features that are so sharp, and a body that is so "booming", look closer, and do a mock transformation from female to male. You will find that often, what makes a woman astonishingly sexy is that her features are feminine with a barely noticeable touch of masculinity. There is an extremely famous female like this globetrotting at present, who is like this. Look at some of her old movies and he high school pictures if you know who I am talking about. You will see. She has a bit more testosterone in her than average woman. In fact, there are many women who were considered "hot" who have heightened levels of testosterone.
If any of you have wives/girlfriends that you might think are like this, I'd be happy to suggest things that you might look out for would indicate a hormonal imbalance. Some are pretty obvious and physical, but others are not.
OK. Everyone at Starbucks is staring at me. Now what?
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Paul Hovnanian mailto:Paul@Hovnanian.com
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Big business never pays a nickel in taxes, according to Ralph Nader, who
represents a big consumer organization that never pays a nickel in
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OK, I can count rapidly in binary, 0-15, on four fingers of my left hand 1-2-4-8, while circularly rubbing my tummy with my right hand. But I can't do it very well with the hands reversed. That must mean something.
I've always liked slim, tight, smart, almost androgynous women. When I see a great body from behind, I have to be careful to make sure it's not a teenage boy I'm admiring.
Most of the guys I know prefer a bit more flesh. Or a lot more.
The good thing about women who are naturally skinny is that they tend to stay that way. I tend to prefer thinner too, unless she is a Brazilian or a Belorussian who looks like a giant milk biscuit. Scrumptious.
I wonder if anyone has done a comprehensive data collection on hormones in the body. It would be interesting to correlate levels of hormones with personal traits. I think that could determine all kinds of things, the least of which is predisposition toward homosexuality. What I would be really curious to know is whether there is a correlation between females hormone level and predisposition toward traditionally male sports (boxing, wrestling, etc.)
It seems to me that there is enormous individual variability in humans. All salmon and all pigeons look similar to me, and I suspect thay are a lot more similar than people are. So all the hormone stuff has influence but isn't absolute. Generalisms about male/female/straight/gay/races are sort of true, but the distributions are so wide that you can't predict much from superficialities. But people do use the generalisms as guidelines... you *could* say it's less likely that the average female is going to be a good circuit designer, but that's not a reason to not interview one, or to take her seriously.
Societies that confine females pay a very high price, wasting half of the available talent.
True. I cetainly would never turn down a candidate from prejudice.
However, not to beat a dead horse to death, I got bored an hour ago and thought I would search the Internet for famous people (actors, actresses, politicians), whom I felt might have hormonal imbalances based on physical observation alone. I went for females first, as they are easier for me to spot. I look for women whom men might consider unequivocally attractive, but with a straight jawline and a frontal plate slightly larger than might had by an average woman of her stature. [BTW, The female I was referring to in an earlier post as having a hormonal imbalance was Angelina Jolie.] Angelina Jolie is one such woman. It turns out that she does not simply have a hormonal imbalance, she's openly bisexual! I had no idea.
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I had suspected that she had had a few sexual experiences with women (what young girl hasn't these days), but I did not know she had dated one for a while.
There are also some incredibly famous males who I am pretty sure have had at least one encounter with another male and might be gay. I hate to make a false claim about anyone (as I might have about Angelina Jolie if I had been wrong), but I will say this: Two of these males are extremely popular commedians. One of them has been wearing lip gloss for over 20 years. I canot belive that people cannot tell from looking at his face that his hormones are not quite right. I also remember telling people back in 1984 that George Michael was gay, and he was defended by both males and females. I knew for two reasons:
No one prances around on a stage in tight shiny purple pants like that unless he is.
There was a preponderance of gay males in front-row seats at his concerts, just a bit too many for it to be random.
More dangerously, there is a recent movie where the female star is 13 years old. I would bet $100 that the director, who is female and 51 years old, is at least bisexual (even though she has been married), and I am 100% sure that the star, the young girl herself, is lesbian. I would not be suprised at all if they had some kind of affair. The movie, which I have not seen, contains a lesbian scence, and the director has appeared at multiple "support gay/lesbian rights" conventions as their spokesperson. And having dated a woman who turned out to be bisexual myself once, I can tell you that young bisexual women have no trouble breaking through social norms to get what they want. The things that go on between young lesbian girls and older lesbian women is *ENTIRELY CONGRUENT* to what goes on between, say older males and young women. If you have any notion that lesbian girls behave properly because they are girls and they are supposed to exercise restraint, forget it! I know this. I saw it with my own eyes. Few males could keep up with these women. Their debaucherous acts put them in a class of their own.
More close to home, that same woman I dated told me that young lesbian and bi-sexual women often congregate in jobs were there is high public (pubic) traffic, like health spas, certain types of restaurants, etc. She said they do this because they have insatiable libidos and it's the best way to meet people. I checked this assertion: There are 8 apartment communities on the main road not far from where I live. Five of them have lesbian or bisexual staff! I doubt anyone not in San Francisco, Ibiza, or Mikinos would consider that ordinary. The community closest to me has two lesbians (at least) and one gay male. In retrospect, one morning was jogging on the trail behind my house and I ran into one of them. She was with a woman, both of them with dark hair, same build just taking a walk, standing close together (she's about 32) - they could have been sisters. But they were pushing a baby stroller. Her jaw line is strong (but she is still attractive), and she is uncommonly aggressive from the few times that I have talked to her, and I remember thinking, "I'd say 20%-30% she's a lesbian."
I find this topic so utterly fascinating that I decided to pick a woman who is highly regarded in history and see if she was lesbian. I randomly picked Amelia Earhart, as I am a fan of aviation. I give my gentleman's word that I did *not* know she was, but the circumstantial evidence that she was seems to be overwhelming. *BUT*...while I was looking for her, I came accross this site: "True stories of Amazing Women"
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There are at least 6 women on this site who are lesbian. Try to see if you can guess which ones are and which ones are not. You should be able to tell by looking at just their faces. Don't cheat! It should be self-evident. Some are easier than others.
This does not prove anything, but I think people should start examining more closely how hormones influences a persons life choices, _including_ career choices because character traits are not completely orthogonal. And though I would *never* prejudge someone or deny her an opportunity simply because she exhibits traits traditionally found in males, I do keep my eyes open, and if a situation appears to be too good to be true, I am always curious to see the endocrinologists results. One could argue that it is the heightened testosterone levels that give these lesbian women the courage to face up to oppresive men, but I do not buy that. I do not think you can separate one from being the other. These are not simply females "with turbo boost", they are human beings, who have the sexual organs of women, but who are psychologically different from women.
I also think, that if it is true, that a majority of lesbians, and bi-sexuals, and gays are that way because of hormonal imbalances, it raises an interesting question:
I haven't read previous posts, so I don't know what all has been said, but.......
I believe your theory that gay people can be "cured" is faulty, and divisively mean spirited even if it is offered to be otherwise.
For whatever reason most of those folks were just born different from the rest, and it isn't curable. They are simply the way they are, and it shouldn't be any particular concern to anyone any more than anyone should be concerned with which way you are inclined. It doesn't define who you are or what are your abilities.
That's why I put the word "cured" in quotes. If you must know, I am of the opinion that, if someone is doing something that does not hurt them, the environment, or anyone else, it is their right to do it, or rather, we have no right to tell them that they should not.
The purose of my writing what I wrote was not to judge or to ostracize, but to merely point out evidence that might be used to substantiate scientifc hypotheses. If it *is* determined that people who are gay/lesbian have hormonal imbalances, what they would do about those imbalances is their business. But certainly you would agree that *if* the imbalances exist, I would be only one of millions of people who find it intriguing, and therefore, this is something worthy of further investigation.
"The findings provide a welcome guidepost to help enable future research to track down the underlying neural circuitry, said Bruce Baker, a biology professor at Stanford who first linked the fruitless gene to male-specific courtship behavior. ?That?s a pretty big thing,? Baker said. ?We can think about understanding in molecular detail how we go from the initial genes and the proteins they encode to the nervous system that causes our body to respond in certain ways.? More generally, he said, such studies form a potential bridge between systems neuroscience studies of behavior and modern molecular neuroscience research into individual neurons and synapses."
I understand what you say, but I think there is, in the general population, an excessive concern about the gay community and it usually turns toward critically negative.
Actually, I was referring the article because I thought it was interesting to see a sexual behavior gene that could be moved around so that males behaved like females while still being males, and the reverse of this, too.
I agree with what you just wrote, but that wasn't what I was trying to point out. You wrote, "For whatever reason most of those folks were just born different from the rest, and it isn't curable." I added this by way of supporting that comment.
Another point I failed to mention: Not every lesbian/bi-sexual woman is running around trying to get in bed with every good-looking woman she meets. Some of them are raised under strict religious principles and family morals, etc. These women are under tremendous pressure to maintain social norms in their families. Those young bi-sexual women that I knew all said the same thing - they did not want to disappoint their fathers. They did not want to disappoint their mothers either, but they would always specifically mentioned their fathers.
So I would imagine not all "sexual deviants" are happy with their "situation". There are a lot of bi-sexual women (and some lesbians) who want to vomit each time a man touches them. I know this because they told me. Some of them have children.
Now imagine if you were living this lie? How would you feel? How would you recognize your religious principles with what you really want? Would you not be curious to hear what the endocrinologists have to offer? How do you think your spouse would feel?
And what about the spouse? I tutored one guy about three years go who had been chasing the same woman for four years. She had him walking the tightrope. I doubt she was a gold digger, but he paid for many, many meals with no dessert. I was tutoring him one night, and he is telling me about this woman, what she does, how she behaves. She said that one day he saw her with a female cop and the cop was aggressive, etc...finally I said, "You have to show her to me sometime." I suspected she might be lesbian. He says, "I have her picture here." So he shows me her only, and though she looked feminne, if you looked closely you could see the traits of masculinity. So I told him, "Dude! This woman is lesbian!" His eyes got really wide. He begins to reminisce about all the time they spent together. He was making half-sentences for probably 2 minutes, with mouth wide open. Finally he gets really mad, snaps, goes to the phone, calls her, and says, "Look! I know your secret." She denies it..they fight on phone while I wait on the patio. About 20 minutes later, her brother calls back to his house and threatens him with bodily injury (the family was Catholic). About two hours later, the brother calls again, to apologize, and basically says, "Look, you're right. So she is not 'normal', but why make a big deal about it. Llet's keep this between us. It's not like the whole world has to know." This woman was 32 or
33 I believe, and it did not bother them for moment that this man had been waiting for years for something that would never come. ;)
My point in bringing this up is that those who are sexually repressed often end up engaging in relationships that they fundamentally do not want, and there is typically an emotional cost to their partners. And if they have children with a mate that they find sexually repulsive, the children might grow up with distorted view of what intimacy between a mated couple should be like. I hate to think what happens to young girl's mind when she discovers that their own mother refuses to let her father come near unless 1 or 2 years has passed since the last engagement.
It would be a lot simpler if people would simply state their sexual orientation as soon as they know it, so that no one is confused about anything, especially those where it is painfully obvious.
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