Almost everything we do that is specifically human is expressed in language, in code.
Music is language, as is math.
We use cash, checks, credit cards, stocks and bonds as economic language. One of the ways we understand other communities is by learning to read their language, their codes, their symbols. If we are to understand the drama of Classical Athens, the art of Renaissance Italy, the music of Harlem, the culture of Africa or India or Meso-America, we must learn their codes. If men and women are to understand each other, they, too, must be sensitive not only to each others' words, but to the codes and pictographs of gender. Understanding their works is partly a matter of understanding the ways in which those works are coded by gender and culture.