Dr. Marianne Legato, MD, on the unique challenges adolescent boys face

At the Male Studies conference 2011, Dr. Marianne Legato, MD, spoke on adolescent boys. She is the founder and director of Columbia College of Medicine’s Partnership for Gender-Specific Medicine, editor of the first text on gender medicine, and founder of the journal, Gender Medicine. Her most recent book is Why Men Die First.

The problem with the adolescent male navigating that difficult transition from puberty to young adulthood is a disconnect in the timing of an abrupt increase in gonadal hormones that occurs in both sexes at the time of puberty, but which for boys produces intense emotional lability, and high intensity feelings, while the part of the brain that develops risk assessment and emotional control and stability, lags well behind. Girls do not have a similar retardation of that center of the brain and therefore are much less likely to incur the kinds of disasters that face adolescent boys until they are 20.

Remember that the next time an adolescent boy is charged with a crime for dating an adolescent girl who is likely at least as physically developed as he is, and more emotionally developed.

Links to part 1 & 2 of the conference where Dr. Legato spoke (she speaks in part 2):

Part 1: http://www.vimeo.com/23289124

Part 2: http://www.vimeo.com/23294130

Discussion at Reddit.

Adolescence is bullshit

From a comment at Inmalafide:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200703/trashing-teens

This guy wrote a book about how artificial a category “adolescence” is, and how treating people who have gone through puberty as if they are still children leads to all sorts of unintended consequences that have huge ramifications for the rest of society, i.e. more violence, isolating teens into a peer culture away from adults, laws preventing teens from taking any responsibility, sometimes into their 20s. I think of how miserable I was in high school, and a lot of what this guy says reflected my own alienation at that time…anyway, it will make you think about what kind of society you want to create for yourself as you get older.

Adolescent sex hysteria debunked by Male Studies conference speaker

At the recent Male Studies conference, Dr. Marianne Legato, MD, spoke on adolescent boys. She is the founder and director of Columbia College of Medicine’s Partnership for Gender-Specific Medicine, editor of the first text on gender medicine, and founder of the journal, Gender Medicine. Her most recent book is Why Men Die First.

The problem with the adolescent male navigating that difficult transition from puberty to young adulthood is a disconnect in the timing of an abrupt increase in gonadal hormones that occurs in both sexes at the time of puberty, but which for boys produces intense emotional lability, and high intensity feelings, while the part of the brain that develops risk assessment and emotional control and stability, lags well behind. Girls do not have a similar retardation of that center of the brain and therefore are much less likely to incur the kinds of disasters that face adolescent boys until they are 20.

We also know that girls hit puberty earlier than boys. Girls mature faster, not only physically but emotionally. Therefore it is ridiculous to criminalize adolescent males having sex with adolescent females, when females are more in control of themselves. Recall that adolescence is defined as the period between puberty and roughly the age of 20.

Yet even so, they'll charge a 13 year old little boy for having sex with a 15 year old woman: http://falserapesociety.blogspot.com/2011/05/study-teen-boys-more-likely-than-girls.html