Thread: Guys or Gals?

I've never read or heard anything about gender affecting Lucid Dreaming ability. It's more about awareness than anything. The only thing I know about gender and awareness is that males are more likely to have good spacial awareness.

I don't think gender has anything to do with chances, either can be as good as another if one practices enough with intention.

Actually there may be one gender related issue or rather gender and age related:

One of the chemicals that helps with lucid dreaming is choline, which is found in foods such as eggs. I read that in postmenopausal women there is more likely to be issues with choline deficiency due to menopause. Estrogen levels may affect choline absorption. So it may be that older women may be statistically more likely to have issues like that with chemical that helps with lucidity.

However, I just read that somewhere, and I am not sure how accurate it is. And it is not all older women, and even if one is affected, one can counteract such a chemical deficiency.

I don't think that this has anything to do with the gender... but it might be interesting to find out if there is one gender who is (at an avergae) more determined or has easier times being consistent or something like that. I don't know if something like that is correct, but if there was one gender that on average has some qualities that help with attaining lucidity, maybe then there might be some slight effects

However if the motivation/determination levels of one given male and one given female are equal then I don't think that there would be any difference at all...

I think I heard once that females had a better chance, but I don't remember where I heard it from.

Also never heard about how gender could affect lucid dreaming.

I think games have a lot to do with lucid dreaming, especially when you are trying to understand how game world is working you are getting a feeling of a creator and it is easier for you to create your dream world then.

I read a study about it--an interview with this doctor who studies lucid dreaming (wish I could remember where it was). She said at first she did find a gender difference in lucid dreams--but she had forgotten to account for dream recall. When she accounted for dream recall (women do tend to have better recall than men, at least initially), there was no difference between genders that she could find--for lucid dreaming anyway.

As I said though, in this article the woman DID find that women tend to have better recall than men do; I don't remember the explanation for this. I wish I had the article for you guy's, I'd copy and paste it here. But that's good news for us guys--we're on an even keel with the ladies when it comes to lucid dreaming!

~SilverWolf~

There may be another effect and that is the inclination to LD.

I just wonder if it would be a bit like gaming. I appreciate that more women are now gaming than before, and that one of the reasons for the male predominance in gaming is because many of the games are written by men with a very male slant to the content, but there is a definite slant.

It does seem that there are more male than female on this forum for instance.....

I personally believe that everyone should be able to experience the wonders of LD; male, female, young or old.
Maybe like gaming there is a perception that a large part of the fascination is escapism, which is a bit like gaming, so perhaps the male slant is there for the same reasons?

I wouldn't think there would be any difference at all really. I feel women and men are on the same level when it comes to having a Lucid dream. However, I beleive the general dream content may vary from gender to gender, which you could argue would give a slight advantage to whichever gender has less realistic/logical dream content. But I doubt that there would be such a significant difference in the two that it would lead to one gender having an easier time having lucid dreams then the other.

On another note, it has been proven some people are naturally gifted in Lucid dreaming. So, if you really wanted to find out, you could try taking a survey and see which gender had more naturally gifted lucid dreamers. However, this probably wouldn't mean one gender is better at LDing than the other, since it's not the whole gender that has the ability, it'd just mean one gender has more naturals than the other. But since we are talking about normal people, without the natural ability to Lucid dream, then like I said before, both genders are equal.

Well physiologically men and women do differ, especially in terms of their brains. Obviously after thousands of years living in a male dominated society the male brain will be slightly different to a female brain. On a single basis this probably accounts for nothing, but on a large scale there might be a very slight effect. This effect would be clouded by all the other variables though, and as silverwolf said the advantages and disadvantages of being male or female might cancel each other out.

whats with all the assuming. We don't know for sure, and we won't know if its not tested.
For one thing why are there more men on this forum? What does that say about gender in relation to lucid dreaming?

Maybe there are more unsatisfied guys that are just itching for for some lucid sex.

Maybe more since more males are into adventurous fiction, high fantasy, shounen manga, and other such "nerdy" things; this may cause us to earn for adventure which this physical world can not offer, to the point where we are more likely to discover lucid dreaming, in books and on the internet. I would think these topics are more prone to throw in the otherworldly dreamer now and then, for example the literary works of H.P Lovecraft.

Now since a fairly high amount of girls are not interested in this stuff, and would rather read romantic novels, shoujo manga and other such things whose topics are of this world; they would be less likely to accidentally stumble upon lucid dreaming references and material. Also the lack of fantasy may lower the chances of accidental DILD.

Now of ofcourse their are people of both genders into these things, but i think these, often gender influenced interest, may affect the chances of DILD and knowing about lucid dreaming in the first place. If so it could affect the gender ratio of lucid dreamers.


Just throwing stuff out there, don't kill me girls.


P.S Why are there always more males than females on internet forums? (and i've been on quite a few)

Maybe more males are introverted. But that is a whole other thread...

Originally Posted by DarkFlatTop

Maybe more since more males are into adventurous fiction, high fantasy, shounen manga, and other such "nerdy" things; this may cause us to earn for adventure which this physical world can not offer, to the point where we are more likely to discover lucid dreaming, in books and on the internet.
...
Now since a fairly high amount of girls are not interested in this stuff, and would rather read romantic novels, shoujo manga and other such things whose topics are of this world; they would be less likely to accidentally stumble upon lucid dreaming references and material. Also the lack of fantasy may lower the chances of accidental DILD.
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I am very sorry but this is so funny, thank you for giving me a good laugh.

Let me enlighten you on the "romantic novels" since clearly you have not ever read any to claim that their topics are of this world:

There are romance novels with love with vampires or ware wolves or shapeshifters. Romance novels set in historical times, for example in the Victorian era. Romance novels where the love interest is an alien or the love story is set on another planet. Romance novels including serial killers (preferably not as love interest). Romance novels with ghosts (as love interests).

I have read a number of romance novels which included dreams, including lucid dreams and shared dreaming. For example there was one which included a female coma patient and her very exhausted doctor who fell asleep on duty, and entered a shared dream with her, and he was lucid (knew it was a dream but still blamed himself for the improperness of it all) and it almost broke her heart that he thought she was just a dream character not real, but then he believed her, and they got her out of the coma with the help of a voodoo priestess or maybe it traspired that a voodoo priestess was to blame for the coma - I don't recall any more.

Originally Posted by DarkFlatTop

whats with all the assuming. We don't know for sure, and we won't know if its not tested.
For one thing why are there more men on this forum? What does that say about gender in relation to lucid dreaming?

You're on the wrong forums. Last internet dreaming group I paid attention to was on Livejournal, where there were by far more women than men. LJ's pretty dead now, but I imagine any discussion of dreaming on tumblr for example would also be primarily by/for women.

Any one forum isn't likely to give you a representative sample.