RE: Does the Battle of the Sexes Begin in the Womb?

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agmoore 7 years ago

Well, I think the geneticists are guessing. One day they may find this theory of parental conflict ridiculous. I don't know. But I do recall that when I carried both my children I had trouble with my teeth (cavities) and the dentist said this was common during pregnancy. So the fact that a child draws resources from the mother is actually quite feasible. How else does the fetus live, but from the mother's resources?

I love this comment:

(Young) children accept the differences between people without thinking, and envy can probably only develop if it is suggested to them

I think so. We are taught to notice minor differences (and it is minor). As for envying the womb--I agree both penis envy and womb envy seem like absurd propositions to me, reserved for the pathologically inclined :))

So glad you appear to have recouped somewhat. Get strong. Be well. Have fun here. That's the important part.

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erh.germany 7 years ago

Oh, I can remember the same, of course the fetus uses the mother as a resource. I had bleeding gums all the time during pregnancy and aweful heartburn. But again I had a radiant soft skin, my hair was shiny and healthy like never before, etc.

It is not quite right in my eyes that the fetus exhausts the mother as far as the nutrition of the mother tries to balance the substances that are taken from her and carried into the placenta for nutritional value. That is why I think that the typical appetite for other foods than what one usually knows from oneself comes. So I ate lamb with great preference during my pregnancy, but have never touched it again since then, because I cannot stand the taste.
But it tasted great at that time and I had a lot of pleasure with it. I don't think much of such one-sided cause-effects, most of the time it is much more complex.

Nevertheless it's interesting to read your article, but I thought it had something completely different to do with the fact that this imprinting of the father's genes was something else. ... Anyway, thank you for the memories of the pregnancy. ... Oh... were there differences in food preferences as you have a boy and a girl?

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agmoore 7 years ago

When I wrote this, I was actually more interested in the role environment has on inheritance and development. I think that is a pressing concern, something we can affect through policy. Genomic imprinting (epigenetics) offers a great opportunity to separate genetic destiny from external influences. This blog would have been far too long if I explored that, but this is where I am going. This has implications not only for social policy but also for health--all kinds of diseases (metabolic, psychological, cancers) have been associated with mistakes in methylation. Anyway, the battle of the sexes was just a hook :)

During my pregnancies I was hungry all the time. I ate well but wisely. Carried fruit around with me to stave off cravings. I was quite an omnivore :)

I think that your description of diet during pregnancy makes a good point: we don't have scarcity of food resources. We don't have to worry about rationing because we have abundance. Maybe this system of limiting the growth of the fetus evolved in a time of scarcer resources, when we were hunter gatherers and food supply was not certain. Just a thought....

I see you have a post! Look forward to reading it!

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alexander.alexis 7 years ago

In Freud's defense, it does seem like a universal truth that people want more. When our neighbor has more stuff, we envy him. We hoard stuff, even when we don't use them.

A second apparently universal principle is that humans are very visual creatures. It's probably our most important sense, both subjectively and perhaps objectively.

Putting these two together, the idea of penis envy becomes 'intuitively appealing', because visually we can't see what's inside, the dangling thing is more attention-grabbing, and people just tend to want more of everything.

Perhaps, also, if girls notice a difference in treatment from that age, favoring boys, and the only difference they can observe visually at that prepubescent age is the penis, then they might attribute said differential treatment to the penis, and therefore begin to envy it. 🤷‍♂️

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erh.germany 7 years ago (edited)

Hmm.. doesn't convince me. Even if you would have rock solid empirical evidence, women still would not admit that they envy penises. Why should they, after all? There is nothing to gain from. Nothing which is inspirational or bringing anyone forward in his maturation or having the feeling of accomplishing an important thing.

The fact that you drag around such envy from childhood all your life without knowing about it and then justify the adult negative reactions of women towards men with such a penis envy leads to completely fruitless, hostile, emotionally charged debates, where in the end you have learned nothing really interesting. It's just the wrong focus if you ask me. After all, the associations women do have on the word "Penis" as adults is really something you should take into account (to accept penis envy and then let it into me during sexual intercourse seems somewhat crooked).

And you're talking to the wrong person about envy. I am so not jealous at all of the "more" of the others. On the contrary, I think that so many material things are quite a burden. I want to free myself from them and live as easily as someone who just ties up his sack and sets off on the journey with it. ... It will take a while until then, but maybe one day I will make it ;-)

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agmoore 7 years ago

The fact that you drag around such envy from childhood all your life without knowing about it and then justify the adult negative reactions of women towards men with such a penis envy leads to completely fruitless, hostile, emotionally charged debates, where in the end you have learned nothing really interesting

Freud has been so discredited. What saddens me is all the women who were "treated" over the years by psychologists who believed this envy was the root of their anxiety.

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erh.germany 7 years ago

I want to give credit to him for his "finding" of the subconscious - THIS is actually the more interesting thing. Which of course, was long found by others but he deserves the credit for the Western modern world.

Yes, many atrocities were done on people in the name of whatever was the state of the arts. I remember this poor Kennedy daughter which had to endure the brain seizure and was afterwards crippled. Was not because of hysteria but ...you know, in the end those cases bare many similarities.

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agmoore 7 years ago

Of course he changed the way we look at ourselves, and that was revolutionary. But revisions were definitely in order :)

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agmoore 7 years ago (edited)

@alexander.alexis: Sorry---but girls are more likely to be concerned about the fragility of the external, conspicuously vulnerable appendage, if they notice it at all.
I do remember as a child that I resented my Sicilian mother's insistence that my brother take precedence over me in some circumstances. He was three years older so certain privileges were attached to age. But others, clearly described, were not. These seemed so unreasonable to me (you can see the personality forming) that I would just remove myself from the situation. (ex: your brother sits at the head of the table). My father was absent so my brother became "the man of the house". Oh, did that gall me. It may be why I give you so much trouble here :))

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