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Memories of the 28th Century

Human Sexual Differences

Rating: 8 votes, 5.00 average.
An interesting question came up on another site where I am a member. It is a site for writers, and a woman member asked what it felt like for a man to fall in love or be in love. Of course, the question cannot be answered in full, but it is interesting, and it makes me wonder about the same thing. Personally, I would ask a female friend who had a fair grasp of neurotransmitters, hormones, and her own anatomy, but I wouldn’t expect a complete description, because of differences in anatomy and brain chemistry; although most of the brain chemistry is similar. And what might be ordinary background feeling for one might be something completely unfamiliar to another. And the same experience might feel different from person to person.

I would expect that some of the feelings that women have are in parts of their anatomies that I don’t have. So a woman’s warm feeling in the pelvic region wouldn’t correspond with any feeling that I might have, at least not directly. Similarly, I wouldn’t know what a surge of progesterone might do, and that slight amount of testosterone that women produce, especially when excited wouldn’t be meaningful either, because testosterone is something completely different for a man. Another neurotransmitter that would produce meaningless feelings in a woman is oxytocin, which is sometimes called the “attachment hormone”. While men produce some oxytocin, it is much, much less than women, so we can expect that there is a much smaller effect from it, and oxytocin is involved in the warmth, attachment and desire to be with that we usually associate with love, whether maternal love of child or love between men and women. It has been suggested that the differences in oxytocin explain why men are less inclined toward falling in love and desiring committed relationships.

The differences are even greater when it comes to actual sexual satisfaction. Orgasms are quite different in men and women; although there are articles that say that orgasms are identical. From my experience, limited though it is, orgasms are quite different for women. From a look at some articles about orgasms, it appears that the differences are in how one experiences something, rather than being substantial. On the other hand, Women have told me that men couldn’t handle a woman’s orgasm, because it is so much more intense, and the brain activity is so different from what men experience. I suppose this is part of what makes men and women different. I don’t think that we could actually know what the other sex wanted or felt like unless we could actually feel what they do. It probably will be possible to transmit feelings from one person to another in the not distant future. That would be a worthwhile technological development, and, if used well, it would tremendously improve the lives of couples. A related thought that I have on this is that men would like to have as much enjoyment from sex as women have, but for men it comes in smaller does, so they need to have more sexual events for total pleasure to be equal.


This matter is also why I regard “sex-change” operations to be absurd. While it isn’t all that difficult to alter a human body so that it looks like one of the other sex, those alterations do not change genes or the expressions of genes. Extensive hormone treatment might alter some structures eventually, but they wouldn’t change the genes. Cosmetic surgery to alter someone’s sex might actually be a good idea for people who have ambiguous genes, such as XXY and similar, and it certainly is a good idea for those born with incomplete sexual anatomy, as long as the body structures are made to correspond with the genes. But if the physical structures don't agree with the genes, then it wouldn't work well. Or you can’t produce oxytocin in the quantities that are typical of women, if you are working with a male body.

Just as the person posted the question on the board where I post, I am mildly interested in the question, but I have already developed answers. I wonder if using the neurotransmitter supplements that are available for oxytocin and dopamine would allow men to orgasms as intense as women’s orgasms.

Well, maybe that's what I'll get for Christmas.



http://my.clevelandclinic.org/health...Response_Cycle

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/...-men-and-women

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/...t-so-different


http://bigthink.com/world-in-mind/ba...orgasm-edition

http://io9.com/5957691/do-men-and-wo...ms-differently

http://health.howstuffworks.com/sexu...ictionary2.htm


http://kinseyconfidential.org/partne...-masturbation/

Stages of love, includes neurotransmitters
http://examinedexistence.com/why-we-...ience-of-love/

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