I really enjoyed Dr. Widman's presentation to the class. It was especially interesting to me because we spend a lot of time thinking about how culture plays a role in gender differences but we do not put a lot of thought into the biology behind these differences. Not only are there obvious physical differences to men and women but there are mental differences. For instance, Dr. Widman spoke of the differences in the hypothalamus. He said that there was a clear difference in the nucleus (males being organized and females not). The study also found that homosexual males actually tended to lack a clearly defined nucleus. He provided more evidence along these same lines that indicate that homosexual males possess different mental features than heterosexual males. The research has caused Dr. Widman to conclude that homosexuality is not a choice. Although I think that this research is interesting and I somewhat would agree with it, I think that despite these mental differences culture plays an important role. This is the idea of Nature vs. Nurture in which I believe it is a combination. I lot of people want to figure out what percent of behaviors are a result of nature and what percent is from nurture. I think that this percent varies between different people and between the behavior being studied. I also think that it would be nearly impossible to accurately measure this because they are so intertwined. I do not think finding this percent is important.
Another part of his presentation that I found interesting was about the selection of mates and how it differs for males and females. Within this discussion he talked about how in one study they found that women did not like hookups but felt that in order to get more attractive males they had to partake in them. This topic links back to when we talked about how women are expected to be pure and not just engage in random hookups but then they are also expected to be sexy and live up to expectations from the media. It seems like we always come back to this idea of women having to face contradictions. There seems to not be nearly as many double standards for men as for women. I do not understand why that is the case.
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