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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!bellcore!decvax!mcnc!rti-sel!wfi
From: wfi@rti-sel.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.singles
Subject: Re: Diphormism in people.
Message-ID: <719@rti-sel.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 11-Mar-86 16:25:16 EST
Article-I.D.: rti-sel.719
Posted: Tue Mar 11 16:25:16 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 14-Mar-86 04:25:24 EST
References: <431@cuuxb.UUCP>
Reply-To: wfi@rti-sel.UUCP (William Ingogly)
Distribution: net
Organization: Research Triangle Institute, NC
Lines: 50
Summary: 

In article <431@cuuxb.UUCP> frye@cuuxb.UUCP (frye) writes:

>I can understand why a woman's hips are a bit wider than a man's.
>That would allow a little more room to pass a baby through the birth
>canal. I suspect that people are just not muscled the way the rest
>of the animal kinkdom is. 
               ^^^^^^^

Cough, gasp... I suspect a lot of jokers out there will jump right on
this typo, so tempting as it is I think I'll pass... :-)

We've got the same basic bones and musculature as any mammal. I'm 
not sure what the difference is that you're trying to point out.
It has something to do with the claimed great sexual dimorphism in
Homo Sap, I suppose... in actuality, I don't see that male and female
Homo Saps are all that different. Back when I was a field biologist I
was studying a southern population of the meadow vole, Microtus
Pennsylvanicus Pennsylvanicus. In this population, males were on the
average twice as heavy as females. Now there's dimorphism for you.
So I'm not sure the poster's claim for Homo Sap's being an example of
extreme sexual dimorphism in mammals is correct... aren't female
baboons quite a bit smaller-framed than male baboons, for example?
But maybe my biology is rusty.

You're right about the pelvic girdle. Women's hips are wider because 
women who can't pass the enormous heads our babies are afflicted with 
die in childbirth. A powerful selective force for wide pelvic bones, no?

>An overlying muscle structure would make
>quite a bit of difference in outward appearance. A covering of body
>hair like a lot of animals have would also make a difference. So,
>maybe the difference is only as large as we humans can perceive it.

Men and women have the same musculature. Their body fat ratios are
different; this, I think, is due to hormonal differences that are
ultimately genetic in origin (note that a male transexual is placed on
a regimen of hormones that changes his/her body fat ratio to something
approaching a female's). Certainly differences in bone structure are
ultimately genetic. Given a larger frame, you can support more muscle
tissue; but the success of female body builders in creating muscle
mass illustrates that the soft, frail and weak stereotype for females
has cultural rather than genetic origins.

"...He slowly removed the evening wrap from her
 broad shoulders. At the sight of her firm deltoids
 rippling in the moonlight, he had to suppress a
 gasp of delight: she was the strongest, most 
 alluring woman he'd ever seen!..."

                                   -- Cheers, Bill Ingogly