Call me irresponsible, but I wonder if there are any real differences between men and women. Well, yes, there are some obvious differences, but I wonder if there are any differences so bred in the bone that social roles must belong to one sex or another, like "Only men can kill spiders" or "Only women can sell Tupperware."
The question was prompted by my having to explain to women secretaries the pun in my business' name, Full Court Press. Almost all of them didn't know what it was, and almost all of them didn't really get the pun when I explained it. Now, I could attribute this lack of cultural knowledge to one of two things. On the one hand, women are inherently incapable of understanding sports. (I would have to explain why there are women basketball teams, but let's put that to one side for right now.) Or, on the other hand, they lack access to knowledge and experience usually made available to the more hairy members of the species.
Another, more academic, way to put this is, Are differences in the behavior of the sexes a matter of DNA or cultural conditioning? Now, all of us know people who will advocate the first point, that somehow who sweeps the floor and changes the oil was ordained in the ancient amoebas. Others will soften this cruel determinism by saying it's a subtle blend of nature and nurture (which shows that they cracked open their Intro to Psych text books), but imply that the "nature" part still means that women can never know what lug nuts are. (Many men don't know what lug nuts are either, but that's another one to put to the side.)
But even a momentary sip at the water cooler of common sense would show that beyond a few biological novelties caused by hormones, and the unique ability of women to give birth (which may be outflanked by in vitro fertilization), all sex roles are behavioral outcomes of cultural lesson plans. Change the lesson plans, and you change outcomes. Does this mean, some frightened members of society might ask, that men are going to have wear skirts and blouses? No. In a society that concentrated on differences between people and not job descriptions for the sexes, we would increase our wardrobe as we chose, which means I could wear the bright tartan wrap-around one day and my blue pin-stripe power suit with the yellow tie the next.
We've all been raised to be men and women, and it's been a troublesome, if intriguing, baggage to carry. But it's out of date; we need to raise different sorts of people now. Maybe we could replace "Make sure men can't cry" in today's cultural lesson plan with "Sports conditioning for all." At least then everyone would chuckle at my business' name.
What We Need
Tenderness