November 15, 2007

• Featured Question #97: Is what’s good for the goose really good for the gander?

  
  Can men and women ever be completely equal? Should they?

  Equality and fairness are the foundations of cooperative societies. A recent study with one of our close cousins indicates the desire for equality may be genetic. It makes sense that equality would become an environmental pressure in a pack or herd species where cooperation becomes the glue that not only holds the group together but also ensures the species’ survival. We come together for mutual benefit, mutual  being the key term. If cooperation were not beneficial, then we would not be herd animals. To establish what is beneficial, we instinctively observe the people around us. From these observations, we surmise what we ourselves might want and decide that, only if we had these things also, would things be fair and equal. Without equality, there is discord and a desire to break away from the herd. Cooperation falls by the wayside. Without equality, or the quest for it, there is only slavery as one group enforces its will on another.

  Men and women are of the same species and therefore are hardwired to seek equality, to seek their fair share. Women however have been held back for generations by their physical dissimilarities to men. We are physically weaker and have been victimized for generations by our inability to compete. This victimization has also taken its toll on our evolution. Women were used as brood mares, married off young and until the advent of modern medicine, often dying in childbirth. Though I am obviously not a biologist, I’d guess that this may be why women have more neotenic tendencies when compared to men. There have been evolutionary pressures at work to keep us physically immature for thousands of years. This has also served to keep women separate from the male gender in terms of physical equality. For generations young (immature) women who reproduced had such a high mortality rate that they rarely reached an actual physical maturity. This may be why women “mature faster” than men, physically (women stop growing at 16-17, while men stop at 21) and mentally/emotionally. Though there is a great deal of physical difference between men and women, this can mostly be chalked up to their reproductive roles and does not really apply to their societal responsibilities.

  For thousands of years, there have been stories of strong women. Lilith, Isis, the Amazons, Freyja…I could go on. Intellectually and spiritually, women have always known they were equal to men. Our roles may be culturally different, but it is only in one area that we are truly different and that is in the fact that women carry the baby and men fertilize the egg. I have known maternal men, nurturers who, but for their obvious masculinity, are completely gentle and sensitive with the children around them. I have known paternal women who drive their children to succeed, to be better in sports, to be aggressive. We identify aggression and physical activity with masculinity and gentleness and sensitivity with the feminine ideal, but that does not mean that the opposite sex is incapable of displaying these characteristics. It is the very fact that we are capable of displaying our opposite’s stereotypical qualities that proves that these characteristics are not exclusive to a particular gender.

  There has been much made of the differences between how men and women process information as well. Men are supposed to be better at thinking rationally and women are intuitive. Men think spatially and categorically, while women are mavens of communication. That is what science says, but there is a great deal of variation in how individuals within their own sexes act and react to stimuli. I love language, that is true, but I’m not a bad artist, and I can read a map. I am quite intuitive, but that no more implies that I am incapable of rational thought than that men are incapable of intuition. Like as not, most men and women straddle a middle ground between rational and intuitive and draw on both in their daily functioning. Some individuals may be better at one or the other, but that doesn’t necessarily indicate that what one individual does well will transfer to the rest of his or her sex.

  The differences between men and women are superficial and artificial. Can and should men and women be equals? I would say that we already are but for the constructs of society and culture that keep us apart. Every individual has his or her assets and faults. There is nothing in a person’s gender that makes them better for a specific role beyond whether they are physically capable of doing the work. Both sexes are able to cross the artificial boundaries of what is proper for their sex when they desire to do so. This may be by inclination or by need but easily shows that the only thing that keeps us from assuming a life of equality is our own inability to throw off the shackles of what we are taught to think of as “normal.” And one of the things that I like to say on a fairly regular basis is that normalcy is a statistical illusion. 

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  • 12:02 pm
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