I worked on this project for all of 2020. It feels great to have the paper out in an open access journal so people who are keen can check it out. The paper is about how endometriosis and PCOS, the two most common female reproductive conditions, are related to one another.
Read MoreWhy you should not put wombs in males
This blog is about a topic that I only recently discovered, though an important voice in the dialogue about transgender activism and women’s rights mentioned it earlier this year.
I do not recall how I first stumbled upon this small – but growing – corner of scientific literature. When I first discovered it, it stirred me up so much that I knew I had to write something in response.
I initially thought I’d write a letter to the editor of the journal, but of course academic publishing has myriad constraints and rules. Here in my own corner of the web, I can freely oscillate between emotional reactions, scientific facts, and gut wisdom in my response.
The topic is uterine transplants in males.
Let’s back up.
Read MoreThe Clitoris Does Not Only Exist for Your Sexual Pleasure
There is a popular idea out there that the clitoris is the only organ of the human body whose sole function is pleasure:
“orgasm has persisted as a pleasurable evolutionary legacy, without the reproductive association.”
It’s a sexy idea, isn’t it?
That women’s bodies are special, containing a little button that exists purely to enhance our pleasure…
This idea is widely shared in sexology, feminism, science, and popular media.
But it is wrong.
Read MoreComplacency & Conspiracy
We are in an age of information; this is of course not a novel claim. An astrological cycle involving the planets Jupiter and Saturn indicates that we are shifting from a 200-year ‘age of earth’ (focused on resource extraction and hierarchy) into a 200-year ‘age of air’ (focused on information and networking) (1). Broadly speaking, astrologers of the past (and present!) use Jupiter-Saturn cycles for tracking shifts in social, cultural, and political matters.
Read Morethoughts on orgasm in women
Studying orgasm in women is an interesting experience because it evokes both curiosity and discomfort while revealing connections between history, sex/gender relations, politics, science, medicine, spirituality, cultural conditioning, and more.
Read MoreExtreme Female Brains, the Issue of Nature vs. Nurture, and the Emergence of Capitalism
Ok. I’ve recently published a paper with my mentor and colleagues about the ‘extreme female brain’ hypothesis of mental illness. Basically, the paper makes the case that sex differences in evolutionary pressures predispose females and males toward different prevalence rates and manifestations of mental illness. For example, more males than females are diagnosed with autism and more females than males are diagnosed with depression.
There are a few things to be clear on first:
Even though the title of the hypothesis has the word ‘brain’ in it, the study does not involve direct studies of brains. We extended this hypothesis from a large body of work done by Simon Baron-Cohen, who has made a strong case for autism spectrum conditions (ASCs) as an extreme manifestation of male-typical psychology (1).
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