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Originally posted by Reeka:
I have to agree with Attalus. Male and Female are genetically determined but masculinity and femeninity is a societal convention and perception. Now saying that, I do believe that hormones contributed to some traits in males and females. I believe that testoterone makes males "tends" to be more aggressive; estrogen "tends" to make females more nuturinb. But that is just a tendency, not engraved in stone and we all know vest exceptions to this.
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Hormones are not just something teenagers go through. Everyone has them, all the time. If you feel happy, or depressed, or hungry, that's all because there's some kind of substance in your blood which decided to interact with your brain.
But what you sense and think does of course have an effect on how much of which hormones are released into the bloodstream, and all they do is encourage or discourage cells to do certain things (like divide, produce a different hormone, selfdestruct or produce more enzymes). Most of the effects don't affect the brain, but work on other organs instead. The ones that do influence your thinking, influence your thinking. They don't usually override everything else in there.
Quote:
Originally posted by Zero Alpha:
just because a woman learns to box would make her 'mascuine' even thoough in reality she may still be the most efeminate woman you ever met.
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It's not the boxing, it's the aquiring of muscle mass under the influence of anabolic-androgenic steroids (like for example... uhm, testosterone) that causes physical changes which we usually associate with a masculing appearance. These steroids don't always enter the bloodstream through needles (doping) but many can and will be produced naturally as well.
That people would think her masculine based on what she does rather than what she looks like comes from our knowledge on what most boxing women look like in our experience. Culture, or what the society thinks of as proper behaviour for a man/woman, play a part in the forming of an opinion as well.