No worries, it's all good.

Just to be clear...everything after this, had nothing to do with this thread

All of my later posts were on gender as gender, not on gender as related to this thread. I'm sorry if I failed to make that clear.

I live in a community that includes a number of people who would not state that they are "generally male" or "generally female". To claim that they are male or female in "a general sense" would be an incorrect description. They do not identify as male or female, they do not utilize gendered pronouns...their realities do not fit into male or female, either for something like this poll or in day-to-day life. I don't really have much else to say on this and will leave it at that.

Whether or not we identify ourselves as "male"/"female" is irrelevant. First of all, men and women DO have slightly different brains and thus slightly different psychology. Secondly, it is almost always true that humans with penises (peni?) are raised to be "male" and humans with vaginas are raised to be "female". A girl's childhood is completely different from a boy's childhood, and so the behaviors, values, and beliefs of men and women have different contexts, even if they are the same.

Does having a "male" childhood versus a "female" childhood affect one's views and use of psychedelic drugs and concepts?

I think that the above is a valid question, and whether you acknowledge gender identity is irrelevant because it's more than likely that your parents did.

It's probably also a fair statement that some individuals naturally are comfortable in more feminine roles, while others identify with masculine or neutral identities... And that you could probably expect different outlooks on things like risk aversiveness from each of these parts of the spectrum. And that these factors, way more than genitalia, would influence the desire to experiment with psychedelics, I would think.

My wife and I started out around the same time taking psychedelics in similar amounts. She was as enthused as I... But she got the message/hung up the phone after one bad experience, while I kept soldiering on after a good handful of them. This may seem like cliche male/female behavior... The sensible one vs the guy competing for a Darwin Award. But these cliches exist for a reason, I guess.

One other thing I'd like to mention is that the results of this poll could potentially be skewed by a male/female disparity in eagerness to participate in polls like this...?

What a conundrum! Defiled from the beginning! haha, no but seriously...

To speak of myself as to my gender, physically I am male. Mentally I would say that I am more male than female but my female parts are strong and sometimes dominant. Logical and opinionated I am, sometimes overly sensitive and always caring as to the feelings of others. <-- This last sentence is the part of me that enjoys psychedelics the most. I am also hard headed/stubborn in my ways which often gets in the way of me being open minded.



This is interesting to me and also very alien. I have not experienced a community where members affiliate in this way. Where i am, the sign on the bathroom door is the determining factor as to what gender category you fall into. I was raised as such (male) and everything around me was tailored as to that gender specification. As I got older I adjusted things more according to my personal taste, but it hasnt really strayed far from my gender classification.

Aside from that the only other gender types that are encountered are those that are physically male that believe they are female, or vice versa. Although through my own thought and analytical skills I classify people mentally into a wider spectrum of such, which is basically what you are talking about. So i definitely understand it, but not in the same way you do, from experience as well.



And I would say, for a poll to reflect a link between personality traits and psychedelics it would require a wider range of choices that were based on types of personality rather than gender. As has already been discussed gender is extremely general. Which is fine for a poll like this one, and interesting as well. But very different as to what the results mean. Two people, a male and a female, can have very close or even identical personality traits. If you did these two polls next to eachother I think you would have two different conclusions. I would believe, if my understanding is correct, that personality types are more reflective of the broad spectrum of gender types that SnozzleBerry speaks of then the general categorization of male and female.

Cultural conditioning seems to play a much larger part than gender:

Krasheninnikoff ascribes the shamanistic gift among the Kamchadal almost exclusively to women; Steller, who travelled through Kamchatka after him, states, however, that there were also men-shamans among the Yukaghir, Koryak, and Chukchee. Bogoras, Jochelson, and others saw as many notable women shamans as men. Tretyakoff (op. cit., p. 213) affirms the existence of women-shamans side by side with men-shamans among the Samoyed of Turukhan, and the same, according to Bielayewski,[1] is true of the Ostyak. Among the Tungus of Baikal [2] the woman can be a shaman as well as the man; and Gmelin [3] met among them a woman eighteen years of age who was held superior to any man-shaman. Among the Yakut and Buryat there are shamans of both sexes.[4] Solovieff [5] thinks that among the Yakut the female shamans are considered less important than the male, and the people ask their help only when there is no man-shaman in the neighbourhood. The shamanesses, according to him, are especially good in foretelling the future, looking for things that are lost, and curing mental diseases,

Among the Palaeo-Siberians, women receive the gift of shamanizing more often than men. The woman is by nature a shaman,'

1. A Journey to the Glacial Sea, p. 114.

2. Siberian News, 1822, pp. 19-39. 3. ii. 82-4.

4. Sieroszewski; Potanin.

5. Remains of Paganism among the Yakut, 'Siberia' (Annual), i. 414.]



Much Peace and Happiness

Yes. By nature any and all voluntary polls are extremely skewed. This is why good statisticians try to avoid them. Take into account that this thread has been 'viewed' 916 times, at the time of writing this. Thus far, there have been 5 voters to choose 'I am female.' and and 58 voters to choose 'I am male.' for a grand total of 64 votes. Even if half of the views of this thread are repeat views that would still mean that only 14% of all the people to read the poll actually participated. In the worst statistical case, 916 is the number of visitors to the thread and doesn't include multiple views by the same viewer. In that scenario less than 7% of the people who checked the thread. This doesn't take into account all of the people who haven't even noticed the thread or those that chose not to even view it. At 10,000+ registered members (I think it is around 11,000 members, but we would have to have The Traveler to verify that) then we only have data from about 0.5%-0.56%. Additionally, that doesn't take, at all, into account the number of Guests, that viewed the thread.

Basically, the sample is not a simple random sample because it relies on volunteers of a very specific group. Therefore, it is by nature, inaccurate. Unfortunately, sometimes it is the only type of data available. As long as we recognize that the results are inaccurate we can still makes speculations.

I think it's more likely the increased trend in males to come on a message board to talk about their psychedelic experiences moreso than males tend to take psychedelics more than females.

I find it interesting that the girls just pushed the button...
and the boys all start posturing and arguing semantics...
hormones anyone?

Much Peace and Happiness

I second that and raise with a

Statistically, only a tiny percentage of us are arguing. If there were more girls in the room- providing a bigger statistical sample- I bet some of rhem would be arguing too (but fewer, probably).

I wash dishes and do some hoovering. I must be female just kidding ladies much love

It would be lovely to see more females entering the world of psychedelics. Girls are my favourite gender

Is it so much to ask for to stumble upon a giant mushroom in a secluded field with a beautiful woman sitting on top of it wondering what's taken me so long to find her?

+1 for all the trippin' ladies out there.

I'm thinking that f/m ratio of the Nexian population is not representative of psychedelic enthusiasts in general. When I've attended psychedelic themed events in person the gender ratio is much closer to 1. For instance, attending an ERIE (Entheogenic Research, Integration and Education) conference in San Francisco last June it seemed there was close to an even balance, certainly plenty of female presenters, including many people from the counseling and therapy professions. Scanning the members list on the ERIE website I counted about 74 female identifiers out of 217 total, about 34%. FWIW

This subject has sure taken a few turns. And quite a few viewings as well. I wish more people would vote so that there is a better measurement. Do you think it should be a sticky?

Nope. I think this thread has been largely redundant. Some simple searching will show this.

I think there are more males on the internet. Just like the cat is the official animal of the internetz (see http://ohinternet.com/Cat), male seems to be the official gender.

I can't seem to vote, but yeah I'm female.

Just click on the words "I am female." There isn't a button or anything. When you put your mouse over the words the mouse pointer should change the same as it would if you hover your mouse over a hyperlink. I have also edited the initial post to reflect this because you aren't the only one to have this difficulty.

So please, cast your vote. I would really like to see how this balances out.