About Sex Hormones
Hormones have been on my mind since the GIC indicated they would prescribe them for me. Nothing much has happened on that front since then, even though the time frame promised by the GIC has passed, so I've written them a dry legalese letter basically saying "Oi!".
Apart from that, I've been thinking a bit more about the effects of the sex hormones, what they do and actually don't do, since I seem to be seeing the effects of having more oestrogen, rather than just less testosterone, and I realised I hadn't written in detail about it.
There's lots of curious assumptions about what the sex hormones do and do not do. The general assumption is something like this: women have lots of oestrogen, men have lots of testosterone, and therefore oestrogen is responsible for the things that make women women and men men. That's way too simplistic, although it is quite a nice and logical chain of thought.
There's lots of things that people ascribe to hormones that really belong to gender and I've written about the difference between internal gender and internal sex. It is interesting that the hormones do interact with gender in some subtle way I've not been able to map out, but that's not the interesting thing I want to talk about today.
The really interesting thing is that about two fairly basic differences between men and women, that women are more emotional while men are more aggressive, the hormones do the opposite to what I and everyone else would expect. Testosterone dampens emotions while oestrogen hits the aggressiveness by making me feel calmer and more trusting. This is interesting, as it seems to predict that humans would generally be quite aggressive and emotionally connected without any of the sex hormones in their systems, which seems a bit odd to me.
Apart from that, I've been thinking a bit more about the effects of the sex hormones, what they do and actually don't do, since I seem to be seeing the effects of having more oestrogen, rather than just less testosterone, and I realised I hadn't written in detail about it.
There's lots of curious assumptions about what the sex hormones do and do not do. The general assumption is something like this: women have lots of oestrogen, men have lots of testosterone, and therefore oestrogen is responsible for the things that make women women and men men. That's way too simplistic, although it is quite a nice and logical chain of thought.
There's lots of things that people ascribe to hormones that really belong to gender and I've written about the difference between internal gender and internal sex. It is interesting that the hormones do interact with gender in some subtle way I've not been able to map out, but that's not the interesting thing I want to talk about today.
The really interesting thing is that about two fairly basic differences between men and women, that women are more emotional while men are more aggressive, the hormones do the opposite to what I and everyone else would expect. Testosterone dampens emotions while oestrogen hits the aggressiveness by making me feel calmer and more trusting. This is interesting, as it seems to predict that humans would generally be quite aggressive and emotionally connected without any of the sex hormones in their systems, which seems a bit odd to me.