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passive_fist comments on Open Thread, Jul. 13 - Jul. 19, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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If that is true then it kind of comes back to my original point which is that testosterone level isn't necessarily linked with traits considered traditionally 'masculine'. Certainly aggression is considered masculine, far more so than the more abstract idea of dominance and status-driven behavior, which is considered traditionally 'evil' (although in fiction 'evil' characters tend to be more often male than female, so there's that).
Strange, I think aggression is far too often seen as evil, and dominance and status-driven competition as traditionally masculine but maybe we need to taboo both and use some visual examples. For example, when a boy bullies and tortures a weak kid who cannot fight back, I would call that aggression, but when he seeks to brawl with an opponent who is largely his equal, that is status-seeking, because winning such a brawl brings honor, glory, respect. The first is pretty universally seen as evil, the second maybe stupid but not inherently that wrong.
Many women are intensely status-driven (look at their shopping habits, etc.) and dominance is not uncommon, though usually in a "softer" way.
The stereotypical female shopping habits are high-quantity, mid-quality and low price i.e. hunting for discounts and sales. This is not really a status game. A guy is more likely to have status-oriented clothing habits i.e. have only 5 t-shirts but all of them have Armani Jeans written over them in big letters telegraphing the "I am rich, hate me" message :)
I think what you see as dominance amongst women is more often group acceptance / non-acceptance, i.e. popularity vs. marginalization e.g. http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=teenage+girl+syndrome
This is IMHO different. A dominant person wants to have a high rank and if he or she cannot have it then would much rather exit the group and lone-wolf it instead of being a low ranking member. A person who is more interested in group acceptance wants to be a member of the group at all costs and not excluded, not marginalized, does not want to lone-wolf it and accepts a lower rank as long as being accepted inside the group.
So in other words the dominant person will keep asking "Are you dissing me?!" and the group acceptance oriented person will keep asking "Are we still friends?" which is markedly different and the later seems to be more feminine to me.
Don't forget that status signals radically change between social classes.
Lower-middle females indeed shop for a lot of cheap items because the status signal is "I can afford new things" or maybe even "I can afford to buy things".
In the upper-middle class, it's rather about whether you can afford that bag with the magic words "Louis Vuitton" inscribed on it.
And in the upper classes you have to make agonizing decisions about whether to wear a McQueen or a Balenciaga to the Oscars (oh God, but what if there will be other McQueen dresses there?!?!!?)
Or you might go for countersignaling and just release a sex tape X-D
I see no reason to define dominance that way. A dominant person is just one for whom social dominance is a high value and who is willing to spend time, effort, and resources to achieve it. And, of course, it's not either alpha or omega, there is a whole Greek alphabet of ranks in between. Being a beta is fine if there are a lot of gammas, etc. around.
A dominant person doesn't ask questions like this to start with :-) It's a very submissive question.
Very funny. Women begin to compete for status and form alliances at age 4...
That may be more of a group acceptance thing: http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/mgr/open_thread_jul_13_jul_19_2015/ckda
It's extremely weird to me that you do not consider aggression to be a masculine trait.
However there are many cultural differences in what is considered masculine, hence the problem. A lot of Asian cultures consider risk-taking to be anti-masculine, for instance.
Perhaps I do, the point is that we may define it differently, this is why I am trying to taboo it and focus on more concrete examples. In my vocab aggression is something assymetric - like picking a fight with a weaker, easily terrorized opponent, while picking opponents of roughly equal dangerousness (to prove something) is closer to competitiveness for me. Aggression wants to hurt, competition wants to challenge - although often through hurting.
I don't see why you choose to define aggression in that way, unless it is just to support your point. At the risk of being too reliant on dictionary definitions, the various definitions of aggression that I've seen are "the practice of making assaults or attacks; offensive action in general" or "feelings of anger or antipathy resulting in hostile or violent behaviour; readiness to attack or confront." Nothing there about the size or strength of the opponent.
These are victim-centric definitions. IMHO if you want to understand the motoves of the perp you need to see a clear difference between "intent to harm" vs. "intent to challenge". Like, go back a few hundred years in history and you will see a huge, really huge difference of social opinion between challenging someone to a duel to death vs. just back-stabbing them.
I think empirically it is. The personality changes in (usually older) men who start taking testosterone (e.g. as injections) are well-documented.
Link?
Google up "testosterone replacement therapy" which will lead you to a bunch of PubMed papers and a variety of internet anecdata. Or see e.g. this.