At dinner with some guys the conversation veered to the unfathomability of womankind. “My daughter asked me to translate from Boy to Human.” “I just always say I’m sorry.” “Women say they communicate more, but when they’re upset you’re supposed to know why. Or to ask.” Lest one gender get all the blame, I see plenty of gender finger-pointing from women as well in questions to advice columnists.
Obviously, there are biological differences between the sexes. The mind being rooted in the physical brain (I’m not a dualist), it is plausible that there might be some biological difference in cognitive processes. However, my impression of the studies that I’ve read in the lay literature—and bear in mind this is a pre-filtered and pre-digested set, not at all a metastudy—is that these differences are small variations in the statistical distributions of various cognitive traits: the distributions are not identical, but there is a large overlap.
I’ll admit that I’m biased here: I start from the assumption that we are all much more alike than we are different, and I find validation for my bias in these studies that say the differences are small. If you start from the opposite camp, though, you’ll certainly find plenty of literature to support (I would say hype) the chasm between the sexes: Mars/Venus and all that.
It seems to me, though, that any attempt at communication, at relationship, at progress, needs to start from the assumption that there is common ground. Attributing breakdowns to faults of the “other team” is an easy way out and not at all productive—and, potentially, a slippery slope to (or perhaps vestiges of?) gender inequality.
Why, then, is the Battle of the Sexes so prevalent? Perhaps because gender is the difference that most of the population (straight couples looking for or already in a relationship) is facing every day. Undoubtedly because men and women, individual personality differences aside, are socialized differently. Probably, too, precisely because it is easier to generalize incompatibilities to be the out-group’s faults rather than to work out specific problem between one’s self and another individual self. And, I would wager, it’s also a way to bond within one’s own in-group. All of these seem like building blocks of sexism.
But these are more conjectures than solid conclusions based on evidence or experience. The truth of the matter is that, as a gay man observing the heterosexual ecosystem, I find it utterly baffling that males and females of the species pursue each other to establish long-term relationships, and yet find in the other gender unbridgeable faults that would, by all accounts, make daily life together a grating affliction. And yet they keep doing it, complaining and pairing off!
So I ask my straight readers: is the “battle of the sexes” such a prominent aspect of your lives? Or am I just paying too much attention to the noisy self-righteous? Am I making too much of this?
