Beyond being a fun movie, there are some lessons we can learn that can be important in our lives.

1. Sex matters.

When we’re talking about males and females (whether they are male and female monkeys, zebras, or human beings) sex matters. There’s a lot of sex in the movie, most of it raw, addictive, and not very pretty. But there is a primal vitality to desire for sex and more sex.

But sex matters in another way. Most of the young stock brokers, and hence the players, in this movie are males. In the “fun and games” that play out repeatedly these are clearly male fun and games. We all know that males and females are different (as well as similar in many ways), but the difference goes right down to our DNA.

According to David Page, M.D., one of the world’s leading experts on male and female genetic differences and professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT):

“There are 10 trillion cells in human body and every one of them is sex specific. We need to build a better tool kit that is XX and XY informed rather than our current gender neutral stance. We need a tool kit that recognizes the fundamental difference on a cellular, organ, system, and person level between XY and XX.”

In Marianne Legato’s book, Eve’s Rib: The New Science of Gender-Specific Medicine, she says,

“Everywhere we look, the two sexes are startlingly and unexpectedly different not only in their internal function but in the way they experience illness.”

In all aspects of our lives, it’s good to ask, “what does sex have to do with it?”

2. Sex can be as addicting as cocaine. (more…)