An Argument For Monogamy

This last week in my Human Sexuality class we were discussing difference in sexual behaviors and preferences between men and women. We already discussed gender differences in general a couple of weeks ago, so this time we were only talking about sexual behaviors specifically.

During the course of our discussion our professor brought up a theory that argues women are biologically driven to cheat during their most fertile days of the month. Some of you may have heard of this study before where you have women rank the attractiveness of various pictures of men during different points of their cycle. An alternative method is to have them take pictures of men on a computer that can be manipulated to adjust basic features (jaw line, brow, nose, etc.). What they've found is when women are menstruating or during normal days they prefer men's faces that are slightly feminine; however, when women ovulate they prefer faces that are more strongly masculine.

The researchers who did this study then argued that women must have a biological drive in them to find spouses who can take care of them, but when it comes to getting pregnant, may secretly look elsewhere for better genes. (A sad fact of DNA genealogy projects is that there is about a 10% paternity discrepancy, meaning about one in ten people are not biologically related to the man they think is their father).

I was not about to let this theory go unchallenged though so I asked the teacher about a specific study I had read about once that presented a biological argument for monogamy. He had never heard of it before but told me if I found it he would like to read it. Well, find it I did, and since I can't link to it because I found it on one of those proprietary campus search engines, I'll summarize it for you all here:

The study was done at the University of Adelaide in Australia to try and figure out why some women with perfectly healthy reproductive organs had repeated miscarriages. What they discovered was that their partners didn't produce a specific protein in their semen (only about 1% of semen is sperm). When trying to figure out what this protein is they realized it had implications beyond simply miscarriages. You see a pregnancy is a lot like an organ transplant, it is a body of foreign material growing inside of a human, and human immune systems do not like foreign material. What they discovered is that this protein tells a women's body that the DNA from her husband is permissible and not a hazard to her system. The thing is though, is that it doesn't work perfectly until there has been a critical mass. One thing that I think a lot of us know is that for a good number of people, that a first pregnancy is a bit tricky in terms of conception. In addition, if a women becomes pregnant within 4 months of her first sexual encounter with a specific man, the incidence of preeclampsia is 40%, while those who waited 12 months or more only had an incidence of 5%. Preeclampsia is in terms of symptoms very similar to organ transplant failure.

Well, I hope you all found that interesting. My professor did, I got 2 extra credit points for my effort. Of course, it would mean a whole lot more to me if this information became a part of his regular lecture.

Another Interesting Excerpt from one of my textbooks

This is from my Abnormal Psych book for you ladies:

(Hint: read it slow, and read the whole quote, this one is pretty technical)

• Hippocrates (Greek Physician from about 400 BC) also coined the word "hysteria" to describe a concept he learned about from the Egyptians, who had identired what we now call "somatoform disorders." In these disorders, the physical symptoms appear to be the result of an organic pathology for which no organic cause can be found, such as paralysis and some kinds of blindness. Because these disorders occurred primarily in women, the Egyptians (and Hippocrates) mistakenly assumed that they were restricted to women. They also presumed the cause: The empty uterus wandered to various parts of the body in search of conception (the Greek term for Uterus is "hysteron"). Numerous physical symptoms reflected the location of the wandering uterus. The prescribed cure might be marriage, or occasionally, fumigation of the vagina to lure the uterus back to its natural location. Knowledge of physiology eventually disproved the wandering uterus theory; however, the tendency to stigmatize dramatic women as "hysterical" continued unabated well into the 1970s, when mental health professionals became sensitive to the prejudicial stereotype the term implied. Somataform disorders (and the traits associated with them) are not limited to one sex or the other.

Please do me a favor, the next time your husband calls you "hysterical," and you throw this information back in his face, don't tell him you learned it from me.

Never Again

I saw this post on my Jenni and Brad's blog and it got me thinking.

Since going back to school I haven't made it to the gym as frequently as I was before. So I went through some old photos to remind myself why I need to go to the gym.

This is me maxed out at 210 in March 2005:

Currently I vary between 175-180, but I was below 170 earlier this year.

I guess I need to start being careful again and get some gym time back in my schedule. Thanks for the reminder Brad.

Wikipedia

Having never edited a Wikipedia article before I decided to give it a try. No one had ever done anything for the comic strip "Retail" so I gave it a try. It isn't the best wiki article ever, but I thought it was okay for a first try.

Wikipedia

PSYC 4470

I've been sitting on this blog post for a while now, but finally got around to writing down my thoughts on my PSYC 4470 class, aka Psychology of Sexual Behavior.

Now, first of all, let me state that I wanted to take Psychology of Marital Adjustment. Unfortunately that class was only offered at 6:00 pm on Tuesdays, and being a one-day-a-week class, it goes until 8:50 pm. That would have been acceptable except for the fact that my Tuesday morning class gets out at 9:45 am. So in order to avoid being stuck in Denton for 10 hours between classes, I opted for the Sex class, which starts at 2:00.

For those of you wondering, this class would definitely be rated "R" if anyone ever made such a scale. In fact, the teacher warned us that one class will be "NC-17" since he will show a sex instruction video that leaves nothing to the imagination. Fortunately, that is the only lecture in the course that is optional, and will not be in the tests. Also, I've read ahead through the textbook, and it is to say the least from a "liberal" mindset.

Now, let me tell you about some of the students in the class. In our first class as everyone was sitting down I saw a guy walk in who was wearing socks with his Birkenstocks. This caught my attention because I always got annoyed by the Californians at BYU who would say that socks and sandals was a fashion faux pas only preformed in Provo. Then I looked over the rest of this guy: his hair hadn't been washed in days and he wore it in a pony tail, I think he was trying to grow a mustache but couldn't, and was wearing a white t-shirt that had stains all over it. As the teacher [totally unrelated: Laura just turned on Christmas music, feel free to mock her] was asking what professions we students are interested in he asked if anyone was planing on becoming a sex therapist (think Barbara Streisand in Meet the Fockers) this guy's hand shot up so fast, he looked like a preschooler being asked "who wants candy!?!" During the class he kept on interrupting the professor asking about theories no one in the class seemed to have ever heard of. The professor professor handled himself quite professionally, and kept on replying that these theories went beyond what we'd discuss in this class, and kept on asking him to save such question until after the lecture. Fortunately this individual did not attend our second class, so I'm hoping he dropped the course.

During the second class though, despite the weirdo being gone, several other students in the class surprised me with their attitudes. The lecture was on the specific techniques used to study sex, which is by far one of the hardest areas in both psychology and medicine to study properly. We had just finished discussing interview and survey techniques, so the teacher asked the class who would be willing to participate in a detailed interview with a researcher. In our class of about 100 all but about two raised their hands (myself included, I'm willing to sit through an embarrassing interview in order to make sure that our conservative viewpoints aren't overly underrepresented). Then the teacher asked who would be willing to participate in a laboratory experiment . . . seven people raised their hands, including the guy I was sitting next to. The professor was even surprised by that, and he said that in previous classes he rarely had more then two people raise their hands.

Given all that information, some of you may be wondering why I'm sticking to this class. I actually have several reasons. First of all, it is very relevant to what I want to do as a professional. My end goal is marriage and adolescent therapy, and no doubt sex tends to cause a lot of problems in both of those areas of life. We'd all love to assume that things are fine, but sometimes big problems do occur. Whether it is something as dramatic as a teenage being raped, or something that may seem innocuous, such as using sex as bribery in marriage, I need to be educated in what the problems can be, what to look for, and how to help clients find solutions. The second reason is more general, the scriptures teach that we need to seek for light and truth. Unfortunately, too many in our church subscribe to the old Victorian notions of sex, which are extremely unhealthy, while at the other extreme we are surrounded by a world that is as dark and stupid as it could be regarding sex. Somewhere in the middle is truth, and I think we need to find it.

I'll leave it at that, I'm interested in any thoughts you may all have. Let me just say for any of you who read this, and find yourselves wanting more information, I recommend The Act of Marriage. It was written by a minister and his wife and provides good information balanced against Christian beliefs.

My First Day

I got this idea from Jeff and Emily's Blog, so I'll give props to them upfront.

I thought I'd do a recap of my first day of school at UNT. It didn't go perfectly well, but everything that needed to get done got done. It just took quite a bit more work then I intended.

I'll start with the fact that we got home from vacation at about 6:00 Saturday night meaning that I missed any chance of getting some pre-school errands finished ahead of time. So on Monday, I was planning to leave about 7:30. That way even with the hour long drive would I should have had plenty of time to get the parking figured out, find my classrooms, and hopefully even buy my books before going to class at 10:00.

I knew that I'd have to get started early though because right from the start one of my cars tires was flat. I'd been told by Laura's Aunt Terry while we were back in Utah that I had a flat and I knew that I had a slow leak in my drivers side front tire, so the information really hadn't registered while I was on vacation. Besides, my inspection was going to run out at the end of August and all 4 of my tires were going to fail, so I knew I'd be needed to buy tires this week. Also, I had a small pump which does a great job filling it up, so I wasn't worried.

Well, do to a lack of foresight on my part I never took the time to checkout the tire all day Sunday, so on Monday morning I was surprised to discover that it was my rear passenger side tire that was flat. Not only was it flat, the top of the stem had been completely destroyed. That meant having to put the mini-spare in order to go anywhere, and driving a maximum 50 mph all the way to Denton. I finally go out the door about 8:55 am.

My problems became even more fun as soon as I got to Denton. For help, please refer to the map. Remember, I'm trying to get to a 10:00 class.


1 - 9:59 arrive on campus hoping that they would have free parking today since it was the first day of class and not all of us could come get our passes last week. Drive past sign that says all lots being enforced.
2 - 10:03 pull up to traffic and safety building. Read big sign that says "COMMUTER PARKING PASSES ONLY AVAILABLE IN BOOKSTORE" hung over front door.
3 - 10:06 pull up to information booth and ask where I'm supposed to park if all the lots are being enforced and access to the location that sells parking passes requires parking on campus. I'm directed to the metered lots and parking garage, or returning to the traffic office for a single day pass.
4 - 10:10 - 10:30 circle around the two metered lots and the parking garage praying that a spot will open up. Finally giving up. Figure by this time I've missed class and my goal is simply to get a syllabus.
5 - 10:33 pull back up to traffic office and buy a single day pass.
6 - 10:42 finally find a parking spot on the far side of the football field. Start running in the direction of class. (Blue Line)
7 - 10:45 see a shuttle passing me, realized that it was impossible to making it to class on foot, I decided to bet on the shuttle and hop on.
8 - 10:50 (the minute class officially ends) Not knowing the route of the shuttle and if there is a better stop I jump off and start running for class.
9 - 10:55 Find the classroom and hoping the professor is still hanging around answering questions I look inside only to see some guy setting up for an American Government class. Look around lobby for professor (whom I'd met in July, so I knew what he looked like), but he's long gone.
10 - 11:00 find my 12:00 class to make sure I don't miss that one.
11 - 11:10 go the my 10:00 professor's office to see if I can get a syllabus there. His door's locked so I ask the department secretary if she has any. She didn't but told me the professor would be back at 1:00.
12 - 11:20 get to the bookstore to buy books and a parking pass. I get all my books, but the parking pass line is too long.
13 - 11:55 make it to my 12:00 class. All we do is talk about the syllabus.
14 - 1:05 return to 11:00 professor's office to finds a line of people. It turns out he's an adviser, so I have to wait in line even though what I need takes 15 seconds and everyone in front of me is taking about 10 minutes.
15 - 2:00 return the to bookstore to buy a parking pass.
16 - 2:40 finds a shuttle stop with route maps. Figure out how to get back to my car and use the shuttles in the future.
17 - 3:10 finally get back to my car. Begin my slow drive back to McKinney. Stop by Discount Tire on the way home to make sure that my Tuesday goes better then Monday did.

University of North Texas

Some first thoughts on starting school yesterday. I've now been to all of my classes all I've got to say is why didn't I do this earlier. No offense to UNT, but my first thought of your classes is that they are going to be CAKE.

I'm taking four classes: Quantitative Methods, Experimental Methods, History of Psychology, and Human Sexuality.

Each of these classes have 3 exams and they are all multiple choice or true/false except for Quantitative methods which does require hand written answers. In my Human Sexuality class I can drop my lowest test score or skip the final if I already have an A. Not one of my classes require a research paper or project, although I can earn up to one extra credit point per page of research paper I submit for History of Psychology (max 10 points).

I know what you are all thinking though, "well sure the assignment load is light so they must be pounding you with reading assignments." NOT AT ALL. Most of my reading assignments are 15-40 pages a week per class. Back at BYU my Political Science classes tried to average 100 pages per week, and never did I have a class that didn't require a 12-15 page research paper. On top of that, they'd usually require either 1-2 short papers (5-6 pages), a short one page essay due about every week, or daily quizzes on the reading assignment or last lecture.

For any of you who may know a UNT Professor, please don't pass my assessment on to them. I've had enough bad history with education systems, and I honestly think I've earned this kind of a break.

Woo Hoo! 4.0 here I come. knock on wood.