Joe Herbert

There are good biological reasons why young people (particularly males) are risk-takers, and are also highly influenced by others in their group. The function of young males is to defend the group against invaders, do some invading of their own (to improve the assets of their group) but, most of all, to compete with other males for a mate. To compete, you need to like taking risks: you may get damaged! The frontal lobes of adolescents, particularly males, stay immature until early adulthood: this may be one neurological contribution to risky behaviour, since assessing risk and danger is one of their functions. I’m sorry, but I think you over-emphasise the role of dopamine in this: it’s no...

A brilliant piece. and beautifully written.

Rebecca Relly-Cooper takes a simplistic view of gender. Gender is not, as she seems to think, a single parameter, but a complex collection of psychological and physiological attributes. She also confuses gender identity with social roles. Of course, the two are interactive: a woman’s view of herself is not going to be the same in the UK as, say, in Saudi Arabia. But all the evidence, both biological and social (and the two are not separable, really) shows that gender, in all its complexity, really is a spectrum: and Rebecca’s insistence on the division of social roles and attitudes with gender confuses equality with similarity. Her example of height (or strength) is a good one, though she...