On Asian 'manhood'

An interesting take.

As Barriers Disappear, Some Gender Gaps Widen

[quote]The biggest changes recorded by the researchers involve the personalities of men, not women. Men in traditional agricultural societies and poorer countries seem more cautious and anxious, less assertive and less competitive than men in the most progressive and rich countries of Europe and North America.

To explain these differences, Dr. Schmitt and his collaborators from Austria and Estonia point to the hardships of life in poorer countries. They note that in some other species, environmental stress tends to disproportionately affect the larger sex and mute costly secondary sexual characteristics (like male birds’ displays of plumage). And, they say, there are examples of stress muting biological sex differences in humans. For instance, the average disparity in height between men and women isn’t as pronounced in poor countries as it is in rich countries, because boys’ growth is disproportionately stunted by stresses like malnutrition and disease.

Personality is more complicated than height, of course, and Dr. Schmitt suggests it’s affected by not just the physical but also the social stresses in traditional agricultural societies. These villagers have had to adapt their personalities to rules, hierarchies and gender roles more constraining than those in modern Western countries — or in clans of hunter-gatherers.

“Humanity’s jaunt into monotheism, agriculturally based economies and the monopolization of power and resources by a few men was ‘unnatural’ in many ways,” Dr. Schmitt says, alluding to evidence that hunter-gatherers were relatively egalitarian. “In some ways modern progressive cultures are returning us psychologically to our hunter-gatherer roots,” he argues. “That means high sociopolitical gender equality over all, but with men and women expressing predisposed interests in different domains. Removing the stresses of traditional agricultural societies could allow men’s, and to a lesser extent women’s, more ‘natural’ personality traits to emerge.”

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Mongolians are great. My Mongolian friends are really good to get along with, like Australians only even more tough. The girls are great fun, very good sports. The men are very attractively masculine.

Say, whatever happened to Boy George?

Okay, studies show “Asians” (read: self-identified East Asians living in North America) have lower testosterone levels than whites or blacks. No similar studies have compared the nomadic and sedentary populations of Central Asia (to the extent that these can be distinguished nowadays). This would effect traits like aggression and outgoingness.[/quote]

Are these the same guys that conducted studies that “proved” blacks were colour blind and had bad night vision so they couldn’t be trained or deployed as fighter pilots etc…?

Not much of a PC fan, but I do feel somewhat uncomfortable with so-called studies that attempt to prove racial traits. This sort of research would suggest that because “Asians” have lower levels of testosterone they would be less inclined towards violent behavior such as rape and murder, whereas the average white or black guy is just a powder keg of raging testosterone on the verge of exploding into a murderous or rapine rage…

Question… Did this study take diet into consideration? It seems to me (and I’m no scientist, so I may very well be quite wrong) that eating large quantities of tofu based products (high in the female hormone estrogen) rather than beef based foods (high in testosterone) may in fact play a very big role.