Forgive me for pursuing this, perhaps beyond where I should for amity's sake. But you are wrong :) Knowing these statistics tells you nothing you can apply to your own or anyone else's life. It tells you about minute, barely discernible differences detected through culturally contexted experiments in a broad segment of the population. The individual, however, is just that. Unique, peculiar, idiosyncratic. I am a female for example, who in school was terrible at arithmetic and brilliant at geometry. Makes no sense, generally. But that's idiosyncratic me. I hate "domestic" work and love science. But that's idiosyncratic me. I am an individual. There is no way my husband or any man can learn anything meaningful about me by looking at statistics.
So, carry on with your studies if they amuse you, but believe me, if you have a relationship with a woman, these studies are likely to be of little use and may end up causing you grief.
Have a great day!
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We can perhaps learn which questions to ask. Aren't psychologists trained like that? They know the signs of a paranoiac, and so if certain red flags come up, they catch them easily.
For example, in certain areas of math, men are better than women. That would make you think that men with higher testosterone are better at math, since testosterone is the main hormone that differentiates women from men. And yet, in high vs low testosterone men, it's the low-testosterone men that outperform them. And in women, it's the high testosterone women that outperform the rest. It seems the ideal is something that lies between men and women! In a way, it's good to be a little bit of both! I don't know how, but I feel this has some kind of 'practical' significance, or is inherently interesting!
A curiosity that occurs to me: we speak of Genghis Khan and his descendants. But he had a mother, who passed on her traits. She was widowed when Genghis Khan (then called Temujin) was 9. She raised her children in circumstances of great challenge. One might say it was her strength, her fortitude, her aggressive desire to survive that was passed on. She was successful, in the sense that her familial line would continue.
If we think of a beehive, it is the queen bee who is important, who passes on the genetic material of the hive. The nurse bees are females, her courtiers, as it were, who help the progeny to survive. The drones fly around and fertilize, but the essential progenitors are female. Just a thought 😁
It's all a matter of perspective, I guess :)
Edit: I'm having a little fun here.
Well no it's true. But what that really leads to is the usual theory that females (in terms of genes) should invest in their sons, and males in themselves.
If you're a male, it serves you best to go and have as much sex as you can. But if you're a female, you'll have to carry and raise the child, which leaves you little time, biologically and psychologically and resource-wise, so it serves you best if you give everything to your sons.
And unfortunately I do feel like my experience mostly confirms this theory, especially when it comes to the older generations: women loving their sons more than their daughters, more zealous about their well-being, more doting. And I guess this is partly where Freud came up with his 'penis envy', women essentially finally having the opportunity to be a male via birthing a son.
Not invest in her sons. Her daughters. Shift focus--I can't help having a little fun, forgive me. The matrilineal line extends through all time. The genes of the mother--mitochondrial transference--carry more material than that of the father. Just because the male buzzes around indiscriminately doesn't mean his genetic material predominates. It's his mother's, and her mother's, that have more significance. Which is why 23 and Me uses mitochondrial material to trace ancestry. Males just appear to be in control. It's really the mother that wins the genetic derby. One might say, the male is a delivery system for the female's genetic code.
I think this is why men fear women (Freud certainly did). Instinctively, they know we win the race.
A little bit of serious jesting here...
An edit here, as I reread our exchange:
You talk of mothers doting on their sons. Perhaps this is cultural, because it is not my experience. My experience is that mothers stay close to their daughters, and vice versa. There is a bond between a mother and daughter that most sons cannot match. I hope that's not true in my family. I think I'm equally close to my son and daughter, but in most families I know the daughters and mothers stay close.
Again, this may be cultural. It is true that in some cultures, where the daughter is married off and becomes part of a new family, the son is expected to support elderly parents. In that case, nurturing a son becomes a matter of survival--not survival of genetic material, but actual survival in old age.
Well what you say is very well and forcefully expressed (and I read it multiple times not to understand the point, but out of sheer pleasure! I'm feeling writer's envy!), and I do know about the mitochondrial inheritance etc. (check out this awesome song, for instance).
But I don't know anything about the conclusions you draw, jesting or not. I'd need to study the issue further, and it does sound highly interesting!
A priori, without really knowing anything about it, I can 'argue' that what you theorize is absolutely false, because if any sex was genetically favored over the other, there'd be more of that sex. So, to take the Genghis Khan example again, every other male failed to the extent that he succeeded. So, being a male is not good. Being Genghis is good. In some societies females were actually favored over males, because they were guaranteed to carry offspring, whereas with males it was all or nothing, a gamble. I think there's places in Africa where that's still the case: most males don't procreate, and a few ones have wives to spare.
So, on average (and obviously) women have as many kids as males do! If female DNA preponderated, there'd be less males being born, until their rarity would increase their value to match that of the female, and then the ratios would balance out, let's say 1 male for every 4 females. I think there is data that actually there are slightly more women born compared to males, which might give your argument some support!
The same line or reasoning, I should mention, applies to the queen/drones analogy: given their genetic similarity, there is no sense in which the queen is favored over the drones. If being a queen was advantageous, natural selection would favor more queens being born.
My dear Steemit friend, alexander.alexis--always a pleasure. Believe me, you have no cause for writer's envy, but it tickles me that you say it. Thank you for the song. That guy is clever, bright, funny. Going to send a link to my kids.
I'm not enough of a biologist to sort this out, but I do like to address issues when it seems an argument is settled. You can imagine, many of my high school teachers did not enjoy having me in class for this reason--but the good ones welcomed the challenge.
Because of you I went to sleep last night watching a video about the "shrinking Y chromosome." It seems nothing really is settled. Fascinating.
This is great fun. I thank you for the engagement and also for sending me on a hunt to get more information.
I can't wait for your next blog :))