How would you argue against this statement? - "Men and women don't have distinctly different brains, rather, the circumstances inherent in being born a certain sex cause each to optimize their sexual strategy for the greatest personal benefit."

I was having a great discussion with a friend who's only vaguely aware of TRP. He made the above assertion. Paraphrasing somewhat - "Men and women don't have different brains, it's just that they employ different strategies to get what they want. You would act the same way if you were a woman."

While I think there is much to be said for the influence of hormones, especially during adolescence and the developmental stages for either sex, I think it's an interesting argument. One of the logical problems I face when exhausting TRP knowledge is the way that sexuality in humans tends to look more like a spectrum than a binary, but for the sake of conversation, we separate people into that binary. It's simpler and easier to strategize with two distinct parties.

As men, we tend to think about ourselves in a slightly "purer" way - as if we've taken on the burden of an inherent lack of value by choice. But in reality, that's just the hand we're dealt. Would we really act any differently than women do if we suddenly had inherent value and the people we wanted to mate with didn't?

Would we go about exploring unknown territories, seeking The Grail, and slaying the Dragon if it weren't absolutely necessary to the formation of our social value? Is that so built into our masculine brains that we (or some of us) would do those things anyway? Or is the human brain relatively consistent between the sexes and the lottery of sex/gender truly determines how we behave and perceive the world?