Sex bias in Biological hypotheses



Males, who react to stress with 'fight or flight' responses - see life as a
struggle,
a survival of the fittest.

Females, who react to stress with 'tend and befriend' responses - see life as
symbiosis or cooperation.

A good example is female Lynn Margulis who 'discovered that all the plants
and animals
above the level of bacteria .... eukaryotic organisms, are really
partnerships at the cellular level."
Another example is the team of women that discovered that women respond to
stress
with tend and befriend behaviors instead of the fight and flight stess
reaction.
(google 'tend and befriend)
Another example is female Joan Roughgarden who says, "A genetic type may
become more productive by being cooperative, forming friendships, being frugal or
innovative, or any number of strategies having nothing to do with 'struggle."
I believe scientists have failed to publicize effectively that the notion of a
tooth-and-claw struggle for existence was discarded over fifty years ago as
the central metaphor of mathematical natural selection theory." (Quotes from
Evolution's Rainbow by Roughgarden)

It is hard to see biology beyond our gender prejudices. Few can. And biology
has had a history of male prejudice in their hypotheses - only recently offset
by the new female perspective in biology.

My four options or processes (based on food in / waste out) cover both male
and female
aspects of life (with two evolving to 'tend and befriend' responses and two
evolving to fight and flight responses).

And these in turn came from female Karen Horney, the noted psychologist that
saw 3 of them in her inner conflicts hypothesis.

These 3 are:
move towards people (befriend)
move against people (fight)
move away from people (flight)

What IMO she missed was the fourth one, move toward self, which I contend
is 'tend' behavior or tend self-as-extended-family behavior.
And she also missed that all FOUR basic drives evolved from
food in waste out processes.

In looking at life we must be careful not to let our gender
force a half complete hypothesis.

Comment?

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