help me to draw a summary of this passage some years ago, when my children were very young, I cut a cartoon out of a maga-rine and taped it to my refrigerator. It showed a young couple welcoming friend saver for Christmas. The hosts rather proudly announce that instead of dolis. They have given their little daughter her own set of tools. And sure enough. the second nanel shows their little girl playing in her room, a wrench in one hand and a hammer in the other. But she's making the wrench say, Would you like to go to theprom, Barbie?”and the hammer answer, “Oh, Ken! I'd love tor"
Oh my, did that cartoon strike a chord. I grew up with Ms. magazine and the
National Organization of Women and a firm belief that gender differences were learned, not inborn. Other parents may have believed that pink and baby dolls and kindergarten teaching were for girls, and blue and trucks and engineering were for boys, but by golly, my kids were going to be different. They were going to be raised free of all that harmful gender indoctrination. They were just going to be people.I don't remember exactly when I began to suspect I was wrong.Maybe it was when my three-year-old son, raised in a "no weapons” household bit his toast into a gun shape and tried to shoot the cat. Maybe it was when his younger brother nearly levitated out of his car seat, joyously crowing “backhoe!”upon spotting his irst piece of earth-moving equipment. Maybe it was when my little daughter first lined up her stuffed animals and began teaching them their ABC's and band aging their boo-boos.
It wasn't that my sons couldn't be sweet and sensitive, or that my daughter wasn't sometimes rowdy and boisterous. But I had to rethink my earlier assumptions. Despite my best efforts not to impose gender-specific expectations on them my boys and my girl were, well, different. Really different.
Slowly and hesitantly, medical and psychological researchers have begun con-firming my observations. The notion that the differences between the sexes (beyond the obvious anatomical ones) are biologically based is fraught' with controversy)uch beliefs can easily be misinterpreted and used as the basis for harmful, oppressive stereotypes. They can be overstated and exaggerated into blanket statements about what men and women “can and “can't” do; about what the gendersare "good" and "bad" at. And yet, the unavoidable fact is that studies are makin.it everodcarar that. as groups, men and women differ in almost every measura blaspect. Leaming about those differences helps us understand why men and womeare simultancously so attracted and fascinated, and yet so frequently stymied anfrustrated. by the opposite sex. To dig into what it really means to be masculineand feminine helps to depersonalize our responses to one another's behavior一tavoid the “My perceptions and behaviors are normal; yours don't make sensettrap. Our differences are deep-rooted, hard-wired, and present from the momenof conception.
To begin with. let's look at something as basic as the anatomy of the brain.Typically. men have larger skulls and brains than women. But the sexes scoreequally well on intelligence tests. This apparent contradiction is explained by thefact that our brains are apportioned differently. Women have about 15 percent more"gray matter” than men. Gray matter, made up of nerve cells and the branches thatconnect them. allows the quick transference of thought from one part of the brairto another. This high concentration of gray matter helps explain women's ability tolook at many sides of an argument at once, and to do several tasks (or hold severalconversations)simultaneously.
Men's brains, on the other hand, have a more generous portion of “white mat-ter”White matter, which is made up of neurons, actually inhibits the spread ofinformation. It allows men to concentrate very narrowly on a specific task, withoubeing distracted by thoughts that might conflict with the job at hand. In additionmen's larger skulls contain more cerebrospinal fluid, which cushions the brainScientists theorize that this reflects men's history of engaging in warfare and roughsports, activities which bring with them a high likelihood of having one's headbanged about.
Our brains’very different makeup leads to our very different methods of in-teracting with the world around us. Simon Baron-Cohen, author of The EssentialDifference: Men, Women and the Extreme Male Brain, has labeled the classic female mental process as “empathizing”He defines empathizing as “the drive toidentify another person's emotions and thoughts, and to respond to these with anappropriate emotion.Empathizers are constantly measuring and responding to thesurrounding emotional temperature. They are concerned about showing sensitivityto the people around them. This empathetic quality can be observed in virtuallyall aspects of women's lives: from the choice of typically female-dominated careers (nursing, elementary school teaching, social work) to reading matter popularmainly with women (romantic fiction, articles about relationships, advice columnsabout how people can get along better) to women's interaction with one another(which typically involves intimate discussion of relationships with friends andfamily, and sympathy for each others’ concerns). So powerful is the empathizingmindset that it even affects how the typical female memory works. Ask a womanr that had emotional content: "That was the summer my sister broke her leg.that was around the time Gene and Mary got into such an awful argument?wvise. she is likely to bring her empathetic mind to bear on geography. She'llmber a particular address not as 11th and Market Streets but being "near thenenurant where we went on our anniversary?" or "around the corner from Liz'spartment”ldn contrast, Baron-Cohen calls the typical male mindset "*systemizing." which 9efines as "the drive to analyze and explore a system, to extract underlying that govern the behavior of a system. A systemizer is less interested in howulee feel than in how things work. Again, the systematic brain influences virall aspects of the typical man's life. Male-dominated professions (such asneering, computer programming, auto repair, and mathematics) rely heavilyengstems, formulas, and patterns, and very little on the ability to intuit anotheron syperson's thoughts or emotions. Reading material most popular with men includesscience fiction and history, as well as factual “how-to magazines on such topics ascomputers, photography, home repair, and woodworking. When they get togetherwith male friends, men are far less likely to engage in intimate conversation thanthey are to share an activity: watching or playing sports, working on a car, bowling, golfing, or fishing. Men's conversation is peppered with dates and addressesillustrating their comfort with systems: “Back in 1996 when I was living in Boston .or "The best way to the new stadium is to go all the way out Walnut Street to 33rdand then get on the bypass..ne final way that men and women differ is in their typical responses to l0problem-solving. Ironically, it may be this very activity--intended on both sidesto eliminate problems--that creates the most conflict between partners of the opposite sex. To a woman, the process of solving a problem is all-important. Talkingabout a problem is a means of deepening the intimacy between her and her partner[he very anatomy of her brain, as well as her accompanying empathetic mindsetmakes her want to consider all sides of a question and to explore various possiblesolutions. To have a partner who is willing to explore a problem with her is deeplysatisfying. She interprets that willingness as an expression of the other's love andconcern.
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But men have an almost completely opposite approach when it comes to deal-Ing with a problem. Everything in their mental makeup tells them to focus narrowlyOn the issue, solve it. and get it out of the way. The ability to fix a problem quicklyand efficiently is, to them, a demonstration of their power and competence. Whena man hears his female partner begin to describe a problem, his strongest impulseis to listen briefly and then tell her what to do about it. From his perspective, he hasmade a helpful and loving gesture; from hers, he's short-circuited a conversationhat could have deepened and strengthened their relationship The challenge that confronts men and women is to put aside ideas ofy"better”' and “worsewhen it comes to their many differences. Our diverse braindevelopment, our ways of interacting with the world, and our modes of dealingwith problems all have their strong points. In some circumstances, a typicallfeminine approach may be more effective; in others, a classically masculine modemay have the advantage. Our differences aren't going to disappear: my daughternow a middle-schooler, regularly tells me she loves me, while her teenage brothersexpress their affection by grabbing me in a headlock. Learning to understandand appreciate one another's gender-specific qualities is the key to more rich andrewarding lives together