Eureka!

[queerbychoice]

Now we're getting somewhere!!! My journal is thoroughly beautiful now.

Actually it will most likely make Frank severely ill, since he's not fond of rainbows. But it suits me well. I have at long last succeeded at combining the beautiful parts of the "default" and "refried paper" styles in a manner that preserves everything I like about both and omits everything I dislike about both, and I am now quite exceedingly pleased with myself.

Comments

Re:

[frankepi.livejournal.com]

i really don't know. this isn't a very developed area of my identity ideas because, as i said, i think the threads of identity are difficult to unravel. as sex drive in males seems to have links to testosterone levels and sex-drive in females to estrogen (and yes i know there are already holes opening up in this statement) it seems likely that there is some kind of built-in gender-bias. i also think that this is far less significant than social conditioning and choice and, as i mentioned, because the structure of the brain and thus possibly even hormone levels are impacted by outside stimulus at early ages, even a biological aspect of identity is conceivably impacted by behavior.

i don't think that attraction to one behavior or another is likely to be biological at all, but that opinion is based not so much on anything i've researched as that it just doesn't make sense to me, and that i'm unwilling to accept the underlying gender issues to begin with.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

1. okay. thanks for explaining. even though i don't agree i have decided that i can deal with your opinions.

2. as i understand it (and yes i've definitely researched it as best i know how), sex drive in both males and females has currently ONLY been found to be linked to testosterone, not estrogen. the exact manner in which this occurs is, however, extremely unclear so far (not just to me but to everyone). since males have something like 600000 times more testosterone than females (okay, i made up a random number but it's a really huge amount, i did see the real number online someplace once) and i think it would be awfully noticeable and irrefutable if males had 600000 times more sex drive than females, the link is obviously not a simple direct case of "more testosterone = "more sex drive." my personal guess, which could certainly be hopelessly inadequate although nobody else seems to have any clear guesses either, is that it has something to do with the fluctuations of testosterone levels over time, rather than the absolute volume of testosterone; but it is also probably more complicated than that and the mere fact that nobody has been able to prove any connection to estrogen whereas they have with testosterone does not necessarily mean that estrogen and/or other things are not also involved in some way at least to a small degree.

3. also complicating matters is the fact that estrogen is actually manufactured in both males and females from testosterone. ovaries and testes both manufacture testosterone, not estrogen, this testosterone is released into the bloodstream and then converted into estrogen. more of it, for reasons i haven't done enough reading to have any understanding of at the moment, is converted into estrogen in females than in males. but initially it all starts out as testosterone.

4. i actually think that attraction to one behavior or another is more likely to be biological than attraction to one body type or another, due mainly to my mother's incessantly reading me all the latest claims about the profound impact of seratonin, epinephrine, etc etc etc on people's docility, tractability, etc.; but again i am no expert and if i bothered reading those articles in more extreme depth the for all i know i might decide they're just as flawed as simon levay.

5. i am willing to cease interrogating you now. thanks.

::unties the ropes and switches off all the torture chamber gadgets::