Kevin: Well, it has been found that testosterone makes people more aggressive. It gives people more of a tendency to want to control - which is closely linked with aggressiveness. If men are caused to want to be aggressive, to want to control, then it's in women's interests at least to play a role of being passive.

Gil: Why?

Kevin: Because in that way they can manipulate the man. If they can't compete with him on pure aggression; if they can't defeat him at his own game, they can at least defeat him by means of looking attractive.

Gil: You're looking at it in a very Hobbesean way here - in terms the competition between individuals. If it's true that men want to dominate - and I guess a lot of feminists have said it, and I guess most people say that men want to dominate Nature and therefore they want to dominate women - so they want to dominate anything around them--

Kevin: This is undeniable, I think - in every culture.

Gil: Okay, but we've got to look at how domination can also appear. We've got the word "domination", we've got the word "aggression", but we can display aggression in different ways. And when it comes to the role of men and women, you're assuming that because the males are dominant the females have to figure some way to trap the males or--

Kevin: Get her own way.

Gil: But, surely, there's complementary parts of it? The male and female can complement each other. It doesn't have to be a struggle between them where one entraps the other.

Kevin: Well, I think men and women do complement each other in the sense that men are dominant and women are submissive. Wouldn't you say, Sue?

Sue: Yes, that's the dynamic there. If women aren't submissive then men can't get their pleasure, their sense of themselves through woman. So what's the good of woman if she's not submissive, and vice versa? This is the dynamic between men and women.

Patricia: But that almost sounds as though testosterone is a given. Men are aggressive because they have all this testosterone running about in their bodies, therefore women should be passive! You can almost say that an implication of this is that women, if they're exposed to a threatening situation with a man, like rape, should just lie back and think of England.

Kevin: We're not saying that women should be passive but that women--

Patricia: But you're sort of implying that women should somehow curtail their behaviour, their attitudes, their psychology, the way they just "be" in the world, to accommodate men! I mean, I'm wondering why one would think that?

Kevin: Well, I think women should be given testosterone. But we're going to have a bit of music now, and we'll come back and continue on this very subject.

[ MUSIC BREAK, "What I Am" by Edie Brickell ]

Kevin: Okay, well, that's enough from Edie Brickell. We were talking about the importance of testosterone and the importance of aggression versus whatever it is that women do. We're getting onto the subject of values now. Now Gil, do you have any ideas about what you think is of most value? Do you think that the male lifestyle is more valuable? I mean, given that all the great philosophers, the great artists, the great writers, the great leaders, and the great inventors throughout history have all been men, and presumably this has been because of testosterone, aggression, and the desire to conquer, do you think this lifestyle is of greater value than what women do?

Gil: Well, we've first got to look at why we value and what we value. If you're looking at the type of society we're living in, and the way society has been constructed, and ask, "What do you think would better this world?", and if you're looking at it these days, I think it would be very much the case that dominance is not something we'd want to value. In fact, I don't think that what you've been calling passivity should be valued either. So when we look at values, we should look at the way the world is. And if we look at the way the world is - women through their lived bodies, men through their lived bodies - and if males are dominant and females aren't, well, we should look at it as difference, and say that, once we have this difference, can we value this difference? And then, how do we approach ethics through difference rather than valuing one over the other and saying, "Well, let's equalize that either way"?

Kevin: But what about you, personally? What do you value above all else?

Gil: . . . um . . . apart from myself . . . there's two things I value. And one of those things is that if people could trust a little bit more. And the other one is--

Kevin: Does trusting involve intelligence or understanding or knowledge? Or is it a blind faith?

Gil: Well, that's a bit of a hairy one, but I look at trust as an intuitive thing. When we have trust, it goes upon how we interact with other people.

Kevin: What about the followers of David Koresh, who trusted David Koresh? Obviously, you don't think this kind of trust is wise?