I have heaps more male friends than female. I think its because I enjoy acting and speaking like a boy. I surprise myself sometimes by how unladylike I am. But at the same time I dont sit with my legs open, have a deep voice, or be overly vulgar about "pussy" and "****" I'd say I just have a mans sense of humour... On here the people I speak outside of the boards are about 70% male. I only speak to a few girls reguarly. Even though I am very friendly with them on here. I get on with box sexes I'm just a "tomboy" and prefer male company and the way males speak.

I actually thought you were a complete girly-girl. I didn't pick up any tomboyishness...

Haha, dont get me wrong I like girly stuff. I just don't think like one. At all. I have more trainers and jeans than i do heels and skirts. I used to play football until i broke my ankle...

You still seem very feminine to me.

You don't really have to wear heels and skirts to be feminine either.

I definitely have more male friends than female friends, too. In fact I only have one good friend who is female, all the rest are guys. I get along with them way better. We share the same interests, like doing the same things... I live in a flat of only male friends. I dunno, I've actually always found it weird. Growing up I only ever played with my brother so maybe that's got something to do with it.

You could be on to something there...I only ever played with my brothers too (mostly because my mom made us do everything together). Us and the neighborhoods guys would play football or kickball or go swimming or be doing some sort of sports all the time. I don't every remember a time when I played house or dolls. I loved sports though. I hope that if I'd grown up with sisters or as a single child I would have still been into sports, but who knows.

Typing this just now made me a little disturbed to realize that I automatically associated sports with guys. :\

@booboo yeah I ofcourse know that, I'm glad I come across as feminine then. But when I'm in male company I really am not. I know girls dont have to wear heels and skirts to be feminine but girly girls make a big fuss over stuff like that. I was also said to be the least romantic woman ever, and would rather greet my boyfriend with a punch on the shoulder and say "awrite mate" than a cuddle. Probably true.

Why do you think that is? You don't come off as a tomboy to me at all (Kayliegh does sorta) you're just not very posh, you still come off as very girly girl to me from the way you act, your voice and your taste for classy dresses. Maybe girls in your area like to wear more makeup and more glammy/revealing dresses and consider you unhip but nothing about you strikes me as unfeminine, you're just a more down to earth kind of feminine that's all. And I love you for it. :love:

TONS of chicks play and enjoy sports so to me sports being just a guy thing is a totally outdated concept.

I do dislike the great majority of sports fans for being sexist alpha male douchebags though.

I dunno why, it's very common now to see girls in t shirts, jeans and tennis shoes these days, which I also consider outdated as a "masculine" trait. If you wear flannel, are growing a beard, pee standing up and have a desire to penetrate chicks with your penis, then I'd have some concerns about your lack of femininity. :laughing:

Haha well shucks :o: Yeah, I don't really know why it is. I'm not a tomboy, I do act very much like a girl, I just get along with guys better. We tend to share the same interests like music, video games, sport, the outdoors... whereas most girls I know aren't into these things. I know many girls enjoy these activities and are they like me in that they aren't heavily into gossiping or hair or makeup or shopping... I just don't know many!

And yeah, like NSW I only played with my brother growing up, I don't remember having barbie dolls or any girly toys... I remember kicking a football outside with my brother, or playing in the mud, or making things out of lego.

I don't think girls that grow up around boys and play boys games are automatically going to become tomboys. I've seen too much evidence to the contrary. I think it's natural and healthy for girls to get rough and not have to tip-toe around with tea cups on their heads all day to be "lady-like" (Please don't, Vegangelica).
If anything, I think the entire term "tomboy" is thrown around like a frisbee far too much and for far too little.

Yeah I agree... which is why I made it a point to not immediately use the term "tomboy." What is a tomboy anyway? I think it's a stupid term. I'm glad I grew up playing with a range of different toys and genders. That being said, I do know a lot of families full of girls who have grown up to be very girly and I often wonder if it's because they didn't have a brother or access to other games/ activities. Maybe their parents only bought girly toys because they only had girls. I don't know, but it's interesting.

And yeah, I think I act like a girl, I just get along with guys better, we generally share the same interests... it's just the types of guys and girls I know, I guess.

I don't blame you for wanting to hang out with guys.
If I had to hang out long-term with some of the girls I've known in the past, I'd slit my own throat with a rusty butterknife.

Maybe things are different in your country.

But here guys have an increasing desire for girls who share their interests. We have a lot of attractive heterosexual girls who love sports, video games, rock music, gory horror movies and so on and are still very "girly" in nature. Being girly is no longer about barbie dolls and high heels and whatever. We don't have finely distinguished gender roles like we used to so a girl who is into that kinda stuff is only considered a "dyke" or whatever by idiots. These days only really old guys complain about all the women of today being unladylike because they don't fit all the gender roles as they were from their generation.

Being feminine for me goes deeper than how people choose to define it, it is more about behavior and class than stuff having to do with personal interests and fashion. Empathy, tenderness, elegance and motherhood are more important to me as feminine qualities than press on nails and lip gloss. And just because a broad loves getting dirty every now and then and playing sports and video games and dressing in ts and jeans means she lacks these qualities. I just don't judge how feminine someone is by fashion. You have a lot more class Katie than sluts like Paris Hilton and Tara Reid ever will, they're not more "feminine" than you because of how they dress.

Anyway. It's not a requirement for me that my girlfriend shares my interests and tastes in stuff like music, film and gaming but it's certainly a plus.

Also, there's a lot of kids in my area and the boys and girls play together all the time with no segregation. All the girls here love riding their bikes and playing with the boys, but they're still girls, it's something all girls do now so it's no longer something exclusively for boys, this gives me great optimism that there will be less gender segregation in the future, because girls who prefer barbie dolls and tea parties to video games and outdoor activity are really becoming a rarity.

Gotta admit though, I actually owned a few barbie dolls when I was a kid and my friends poked fun of me for it, but whatever I didn't really do girly things with them I just used them with all my other action figures, I needed at least a few girl dolls to play girl roles (damsel in distress, love interest, whatever) because I liked making stories and acting them out with toys, like a lot of kids do. I mean lets be honest, a ninja turtle doesn't make a convincing lady, every boy needs a barbie to give their toy collection some gender equality. :laughing:

Actually having a girlfriend with awful taste in music would be an interesting experiment, a lot of girls with these tastes simply haven't been exposed to the finer things, they need assistance and I'd be glad to provide. :)

You just have to take it one step at a time. If she listens to a lot of crappy music, I'd try to get her into good music of the same genre, and then sneak in the more progressive stuff as we go along until eventually I'll have her digging Amon Duul II and Henry Cow records. :thumb:

Agreed. For me riding bikes and playing in the mud isn't a boy thing, it's a KID thing. All my girl cousins around my age loved playing with the boys when we were kids, though they did tend to enjoy the girlier things on the side.

I do feel girls have more options, as in nowadays parents find it much more acceptable for their daughters to do "boy" stuff than it is for their sons to do "girl" stuff. Girls are now given variety of boy and girl toys to play with while few dads would ever let their boys play with barbies out of fear of them becoming homosexuals, which is stupid because there is no surefire way to prevent homosexuality anyway it's something you're born with.

I used to envy my cousin Ashley's dollhouse. :(

You know how I know you're gay?

I'm not gay, lol.

Liking girly things doesn't really translate to homosexual desires. Gay men can be very masculine and heterosexual men can be very feminine. I may prefer chatting it up with middle age women at salons (my mom owns one so I do this often) to watching sports but I'm not gay I just have my own interests and don't give a f*ck weither they are manly interests or not.

I am suspicious.

I am not gay. But I admit I'm kinda surprised that I'm not, because my mom used to do sh*t like this to me as a baby for a cruel laugh.

http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-...8_760973_n.jpg

And yes, that really is me. :o:

You never had a chance in life did ya boobs?

I think I made a mistake.

But you did have a sweet shirt.

F*ck yeah!

I see a lot of girls seem to prefer the company of guys and I'll admit that although I usually have a lot more fun with guys, I'm usually more relaxed in the company of girls. It sort of depends on the people, but if we say they are people I don't yet actually know, then that's almost a certainty.

I think that's the way it's supposed to be. We don't subconciously compete with members of the opposite sex.

Yeah, I agree. With other girls I immediately feel as though they are 'competition' even if that thought is completely out of context. It's odd. Plus, girls can be really catty and bitchy. There are very few girls I get along with well! And like you said tore, if I'm out somewhere I don't know a lot of people, I will mainly pal up and make friends with guys. Maybe because we're just supposed to be attracted to the opposite sex.

But even outside of those kind of situations, all of my good friends are also guys. If I needed to talk to someone about something important or personal the first three friends I would probably run to are all guys.

I dunno maybe it's because the girls are just sick of being amongst their kind too much? That isn't the reason I prefer girls because girls have always played a bigger role in my life than males.

And yeah Tore has a good point, it's natural for people to feel more competitive with people of their own gender and thus relating to the opposite sex is less competitive and also it teaches you how to better relate with the opposite sex in romantic relationships. And also our sexual attraction plays a role making us more interested in the opposite sex and wanting to learn everything we can about them and so having more friends with the opposite sex than our own has it's many share of benefits.

Still something doesn't set right with me, the fact that so many males have answered the question with yes and so many girls have answered no or not sure and it tells me that the girls here generally feel more uncomfortable with their gender or lifestyle or both, much more than the males feel about theirs.

And so that's one reason I like to keep assuring the girls that boys are not as great and glamourous as we're made out to be and have our own faults as well. As long as society keeps perpetuating the idea that it's objectively better to be a man the more often girls will unfortunately feel that way.

One thing I really like about being a guy is that we seem to take things less seriously. I know a lot of guys as well as girls and generally, right down to everyday social dynamics or what have you, guys tend to joke about stuff more often and just seem to have more fun than girls. There are exceptions of course, but that's my general impression.

It seems to me guys more often use humour as a way to take the edge off serious situations and so on and more often as a way to grease the various cogs in social relationships and that's cool with me. We're generally a bit more easy going I guess.

Every girl here has a pretty great sense of humor as do a lot of girls I know.

Anyway it's super pretentious babble time, I'm a believer in statistics myself and those always make it clear that there's a wide range of advantages that each sex has over each other, enough that they are equal despite all their differences.

99% of the opinions expressed in this thread including my own are influenced by our intuition and perception of our environment, rather than knowing all the statistics and facts required to provide a truly sound and objective grasp of things. Sure we can look up statistics and scientific articles that are most consistant with our point of view but that's really just confirmation bias.

And so we just go around in circles. Tore can say that guys are less pint up and have more fun because that's how he experiences things and I can say that the exact opposite is true because of how I experience things. I mean all these things, "fun", "comfort", "easy", they all mean different things to each of us because we have different ideas of what is fun and comfortable and we have our own conceptions of intelligence, as in different people learn and percieve things in different ways and so what is easy for some is difficult for others.

A less pretentious way of putting it is, it's all subjective and sh*t and there's no winner or loser in the great gender clash, just go with the facts and accept what you have, when life gives you lemons make lemonade instead of wishing you had oranges instead. Even if oranges would have been nice.

But the primary reason any heterosexual should be proud of their gender is that they have the best equipment for sexually satisfying the opposite sex. Even though I think about what it would be like to be a chick, I'm happy to be a male because I love chicks so much that they are who I am interested in sexually and I have the best equipment for the job, if I was a chick it would be more difficult and I would have less sexual options, and the same applies for heterosexual girls because they have the best equipment for satisfying males. That's not to say same sex couples don't have awesome sex I'm sure they do but I dunno, I can't grasp my mind around the concept since it's the males job to penetrate and the female's to be penetrated and so when you pair two of the same roles with each other you have to be more creative and don't get as many options.

It's simple Freud stuff, if each sex secretly has a desire to be each other that's why they compliment each other so perfectly since sex kinda symbolizes union of sorts, if we were the gender that we sexually desired we wouldn't be able to make that kind of union as biology intended.

I hope Adidasss doesn't get too offended by that, it's not a knock on homosexuals just some of my opinions on what it means to be hetero. I even admit that when I was younger and my sexual feelings were very new I did experiment with the concept of homosexuality (because I was very depressed at that stage in life and taking my fustrations over my lack of a romantic life out on girls) but in the end it didn't click with me, it felt like I was forcing myself to be gay just so I could be a rebel, back then I tried to fit in with other guys but once I realised that wasn't what I really wanted, dudes have become increasingly less attractive to me.

Once I got to socialize with people better especially women, my gender confusion was resolved and I've accepted that being attracted to women is not something I should try to unlearn just because I have no success with women and I've come to realise that the real reason I never had a girlfriend is because I'm too introverted and don't approach people, I just selfishly expect them to make the first move and this is something I'm still trying to improve on but since I've come to realise these things, my opinions of women have grown more positive.

dude! i'm drinking for the orange version of that exact cup RIGHT NOW (the green one is in the dishwasher) :beer:

Yeah that does sound dangerously close to a standard Christian argument (replace biology with God etc). Anyhow, my standard answer to that is that anal sex is actually (despite popular hetero male opinion) pleasurable so I'm guessing "biology" did actually intend it to be a valid sexual option (we're not sadists, you know. I remember a letter from a guy to Playboy wherein he states that his girlfriend put a finger up his ass just as he was about to come and he came harder than ever, and omg, does this mean he's gay?? Heaven forbid anyone should come near that holiest of male regions...:rolleyes: ).

And as for "not as many options" I'd say the opposite is actually true, because same-sex couples can actually switch dominant roles while with hetero sex one party is always the "receiver" if you will. :\

P.s Slightly related...getting just a little tired at the slight digs at homos on this forum lately...(not by you boobs ;))

I don't know what's wrong with that statement, I'm just saying that homosexual intercourse isn't what we were biologically programmed to do, not saying that makes it immoral or deviant behavior. We were not programmed to shave our hair either lol.

And I mostly meant optional in terms of sex positions rather than dominant/submissive roles, like vaginal intercourse and variations of it, I can assume it's just easier for opposite sex couples to sexually pleasure each other at the same time (especially if neither is an anal fan) since their sexual organs were made to cooperate with each other, and in regards to what you say about switching roles that can work with heterosexuals too, women can play the dominate role over the man as well, they'll just need a dildo and they're ready to go. Yeah I know it's not the same. :laughing:

Yes, but if I was a chick I'd be a slut.

How do you know? Same sex sexual intercourse is very common among social mammals and is believed to strengthen social bonds and lubricate the social machinery. It's likely that human males are adapted so that they are sexually compatible with eachother biologically. As adidasss points out, we do have a G-spot up there. If you imagine a society (or lack of one) where we didn't label ourselves as "hetero" or "***" and tried to live accordingly, but instead were more open minded and free in regards to our sexuality. Then I'm sure many heterosexual men would have sex with other heterosexual men. The idea that sex is only ever used for reproduction is what has given rise to the idea of homosexual "activity" as unnatural, but that idea was debunked a long time ago.

As for shaving the hair, it might not be such an unnatural thing to do either. I wrote earlier that body hair on women can be indicative of relatively high testosterone levels which may well lower a woman's chance of getting pregnant and having a child. So, it makes sense that the preference for less hair is to some extent rooted in biology even if the actual action of shaving isn't.

We can't say for sure that there were no cultures where women had methods for getting rid of body hair many thousands of years ago ;)

really?

Appearantly.

I'm not digging on homosexuals at all, I just gave reasons for why I think a heterosexual lifestyle is aight, sheesh.

I'm not really opposed to sex acts even if I deem them as not being compatable with what was biologically intended because we do so many unnatural things anyway and I don't consider these things morally wrong by any means. We have free will now, we're not cavemen anymore having to do things purely out of instinct.

Sex's primary biological function IS reproduction, but do I believe that's all sex should be used for? F*ck no. It has many other benefits and that includes for homosexual relationships, I think it's perfectly healthy. Sorry if I came off sounding like Ted Haggard.

Well I do think the ancient Egyptians (women included) shaved their heads because of the excruciating heat.

Anyway all I ever meant was that homosexual intercourse isn't what was originally intended biologically but I'm not saying that makes it unhealthy or unnatural. In the same way I don't think my fetish is unhealthy or unnatural. I know what it's like to be different and how people can be d*cks about that so I have great respect for homosexuals who aren't ashamed of their sexuality.

I'm also aware that homosexuality is present in other animals.

Still I think an assh*le is a poor substitute for a vag. Anal sex doesn't seem very appealing to me no matter which role I'd be filling. That's just personal preference (and assumption) though and if you love the butt sex more power to ya.

Very true. Humans don't have sex just for reproduction and often don't want to reproduce when they have sex. Sex is often just for pleasure, for love, for company, or just to satisfy a partner...and you can have that with someone whether that person is male or female. Homosexuality is completely natural and healthy.

A preference for less hair in women may be rooted in biology, and yet, Tore, if it really were the case that an anti-hair feeling were strong due to instinctive reasons, then we would no longer expect to see the very common trait that girls going through puberty start to grow darker, more visible hair, since this trait appears to be easily eradicted biologically. For example, people (women AND men) of Asian ancestry often have very little visible body hair.

Most ethnic groups of humans, however, DO have women who develop very visible body hair. I suspect that this trait, if it were selected against through natural selection, would be an easy one to negate (we'd all have Asian body hair, for example). The fact that many men in many cultures don't appear to mind women's body hair suggests that the dislike of women's body hair by some men (mostly in the U.S.?) is mostly cultural.

Also, Tore, the recent emergence of the shaving fad for women's body hair began only in 1915 in the U.S. So, I would argue that this distaste toward women's very natural body hair is mostly a result of cultural influences, not deep biological drives. Men in the 1800s didn't appear to be complaining about their women's body hair...at least, I don't think so!

If environmental influences can turn a baby into a vicious killer (such as a Nazi concentration camp worker who used Jewish babies for target practice...a common occurrence), then it can also turn him into someone who feels repulsed by leg hair. Take the same baby, put him in a friendly environment, and he'll probably end up being caring toward all religious groups and accepting of, even affectionate toward, women's leg hair.

German women, for example, didn't shave their leg hair very often for much of the last century. When I visited Germany in the 80s, a lot of high school girls had their leg hair, and it was a non-issue for the boys in their lives. I think the "hair-is-bad-on-women" commercials have made shaving more common in Germany since that time, though. Sigh.

Actually, Tore, shaving in one form or the other apparently HAS gone on for several thousands of years in some pockets of humanity:

But before ascribing strong biological reasons for the above hair removal, consider that you will also then have to claim strong biological reasons for THIS hair removal:

Mouseskin eyebrows, anyone? Hey! Maybe that's what Freebase has!!! ;)

I think what Tore means is that the desire for hairless women is influenced by the basic biological desire to have an attractive mate, this is common animal behavior, not just human behavior. Shucks some birds actually remove feathers they deem undesirable to make themselves more attractive to mates, sound familiar eh? ;)

While it's true that the preference is influenced by our culture. So are many things that we still have the right to prefer and often do prefer. Even if there was no longer social stigma against people like you who prefer not to shave, people will always have their own preferences meaning that many people like me will still prefer women with smooth legs, the same way many women still prefer men without beards even though beards are acceptable as a symbol of masculinity.

I think everybody has the right to choose what to do with their bodies, and in fact they already do have that choice. Sure they will be mocked but people who get mocked for being weird are by no means a minority and they still have made their choice, because that makes them feel better and that's more important than what complete strangers think about you.

And vice versa people have a right to "conform" if that makes them feel better. A lot of women still choose to have long hair which is what is culturally desirable but I don't consider them weak or slaves for doing so nor do I have a problem with it because I still like women with hair and besides as long as there's a few gals who will challenge the norm by going dome I'm satisfied.

In that case nothing would be different. :wave:

I don't think Tore was talking generically about sexual selection, which is an accepted reason for the selection of certain sexual traits over evolutionary time, such as women tending to have larger breasts than men.

I think Tore is arguing that women having less body hair, and men desiring women with less body hair, resulted from evolutionary processes hardwiring this preference into people's psyches.

Yet we really don't know if early female hominids developed less apparent body hair than males due to sexual selection for less body hair (which would mean that men picked as their mates the women who had less body hair), or due to natural selection favoring other female attributes, such as hormone levels that increase fertility, with less body hair simply being a byproduct of the traits that actually were the focus of the selection pressure.
Perhaps men, raised without a culture that condemns women's body hair, actually would have no preference for shaved women over women who have their body hair. I argue that the evidence suggests that men are just fine with women who have their body hair, except when the culture has taught men and women that hairless women are more desirable and sexier than women who have their natural body hair.

Humans are *very* susceptible to environmental influence. In fact, that plasticity in our feelings and reactions is one of the defining traits of humans, I'd say. All humans probably feel a sensation of "disgust," but WHAT we feel disgusted by is partly and sometimes largely or solely a product of culture. I argue that culture (not innate biology) has caused people to feel disgusted by women's body hair.

Culture has an influence over all of our lives weither we like it or not including yours.

The fact is female bodyshaving beaome a social norm because somebody, a lot of people actually, felt that this was desirable. So it's silly to say that anyone who prefers the shaved look only prefers it because we have been told to.

The fact is for most people, what we end up finding sexually attractive is very often influenced by what we were expiencing growing up and during puberty, because that's the stage where we are coming to terms with our sexuality and what we are attracted to.

And because women exposing their hairless legs is more common it's natural to be more attracted to them because of how that has influenced us when coming to terms with our sexuality, we now associate it with being a feminine trait. For one nobody EVER had to tell me that women were supposed to shave their legs, I just always felt that way out of preference. In fact it took me a while to realise they could even grow hair there.

I associate hair on the body with masculinity, and lets be honest that isn't too irrational a belief at all, because hair on the body is a byproduct of testosterone, naturally hairy men have higher testosterone levels than less hairy guys and vice versa if a women is naturally more hairy than others that's a sign of low estrogen levels and not balancing out the testosterone causing more hair to grow.

It's a fact that women do have less hair than men because we have more testosterone. And it's not irrational to associate testosterone with masculinity and estrogen with femininity because there is some truth to that. And because we've gotten used to seeing women with less hair it became a sexual preference over time because that's biologically natural to happen.

We find boobs attractive because women have them and we don't and it's easier to be attracted to something you don't have. If most women were flat chested we'd probably find boobs grotestque. Because women shave their legs and we don't that becomes something we desire too, naturally, not because we're told to find it attractive. It's natural for people's ideals and perception of beauty to change over time because the environment changes and when the environment changes so do people's tastes, that has always been the case and it's basic human nature, it's not some conspiracy.

I agree sexual preferences are shaped a lot by experiences we have while growing up. I also agree that nature (inborn desire) plays a role, too.

No, it isn't a conspiracy, but I also don't like how shaving was pressed on women to a large extent by "the environment."

Shaving large areas of women's bodies became common in the West in the 1900s due to companies wanting to sell their shaving products and using advertising to get women to think they should buy them. Though not conspiracy, it was marketing that exploited women's insecurities at a time when women NEEDED men for financial security and survival (in the early 1900s). If women were told they needed to do XY&Z to be attractive, they probably would, and companies knew this.

Back in the early 1900s, when women responded to advertisements that told them their hair was superfluous and unattractive, women's job opportunities and legal rights were not good in the Western world. If women didn't marry, they often faced a pretty bleak future. Shaving companies preyed on women's fears of economic insecurity. In fact, they advertised shaving for women by telling women that it would bring them economic security. So, this is how shaving became a norm. I feel that is sad.