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From: sunny@sun.uucp (Ms. Sunny Kirsten)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: Sunny's  PMS comments
Message-ID: <2724@sun.uucp>
Date: Wed, 28-Aug-85 21:42:44 EDT
Article-I.D.: sun.2724
Posted: Wed Aug 28 21:42:44 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 31-Aug-85 05:49:47 EDT
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Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
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> It's hard to deny that hormones have some effect on mental state, but I wonder
> whether you're overstating your case.  Please don't take this as an attack,
> Sunny, but is it possible that there is some placebo effect here?  Did you
> have any expectations, concious or unconcious, of the effects that hormone
> changes would have on your thought patterns?  Is it possible that you have
> preconceived ideas about how women think, and unconciously altered your
> thought patterns to meet your expectations when you started to become a woman?

My only expectations were of physical changes to my body, i.e. the reason for
taking them was related to my transition from male to female body
characteristics.  My observations of mental changes were unexpected, and are
mostly of less agression/assertion/sex-obsession and  more passive/peaceful/
sensuality/emotionality.  

> > 	When I said that testosterone (which is *not* a poison) clouds the
> > mind, I referred to my own firsthand experience with sexual obsession and
> > agressive behavior which was not within my ability to consciously control.
> > I don't call estrogen a problem like I do testosterone, for the following
> > reason:  The behavioral patterns brought about by estrogen influence, which
> > tend to be beyond conscious control, tend to be passive behavior patterns,
> > and non-harmful release of emotions (crying).  The behavioral patterns
> > brought about by testosterone influence, which tend to get beyond conscious
> > control, tend to be active/agressive behavior patterns, often leading to
> > violence (or other physical agression (e.g. rape)) and harmful release of
> > emotions (anger).
> 
> This is beginning to sound like a philosophy lesson, but I don't agree that
> anger is a harmful release of emotion.  Anger *is* an emotion.  One can
> release anger by crying, or shouting, or punching, or playing basketball.
> One can suppress anger instead of releasing it.  Women are more likely than
> men to cry when they're angry; men are more likely to resort to aggressive
> behavior like verbal or physical violence.  May I point out that all of
> these behaviors are debilitating?  That is, they make a person useless for
> any kind of real action until he or she gets over it.  The only use such
> behaviors have (besides avoiding an ulcer) is to let the person who made
> you angry know that he or she did something wrong.  One doesn't usually
> choose how to be angry, but each type of release is appropriate in some
> situations (even physical violence).  Crying gets the message across to
> someone who really cares about you better than shouting does.  Shouting works
> better when dealing with a bully.  Physical violence is OK when defending
> oneself against similar violence.  I believe that many women would be better
> off if they learned how to be aggressively angry sometimes, and that many men
> would be better off if they learned how to be non-aggressivley angry.

Actually, anger is usually a defense mechanism against feeling hurt, whereas
crying is a reaction mechanism to actually feeling the hurt.  Crying is
a cathartic process which deals with the hurt, whereas anger leaves the
hurt un-dealt-with.  Too much stored hurt tends to produce successively
larger and larger anger/violence reactions to smaller and smaller trigger hurts.
> 
> I'm back from my lecture now.  Sunny, you lean toward attributing mental
> state and behavior to physical factors, such as hormones.  I'm still not
> convinced that culture and upbringing don't have at least as much effect
> as hormones do.  For instance, strong displays of anger are uncommon
> among Eskimos; is this because they have low testosterone levels, or is it
> because their society has to insure that they can stand each other while
> stuck in an igloo for 6 months of darkness?

I know one Eskimo girl (actually a princess of her tribe) whose Eskimo
father was a batterer, and left her deeply emotionally scarred with his
anger and violence.
 
-- 
{ucbvax,decvax,ihnp4}!sun!sunny (Ms. Sunny Kirsten)