Sexual dimorphism and reality-based realities: the differences between men and women.
It’s not that there are no differences. There clearly are.
Take height, for instance. Whether you’re calculating the mean, the median, or the average, women are shorter than men. Yet nobody is daft enough to claim that, say, the extremely short Humphrey Bogart was of feminine stature or that Grace Jones Lisa Harrison is mannishly tall. [ok, I should have picked someone tall who wasn’t a cross-dresser. I found Harrison (based on a random Google search) who’s a WNBA player? —fl]
Or, my favorite example, whether you’re calculating the mean, the median, or the average, women are less strong than men. Yet there’s an absolutely lovely Robert Mapplethorpe photograph of the profoundly feminine body builder Lisa Lyons, gorgeously buff and scantily clad, gracefully posed while holding more than 200 pounds of an equally scantily clad Arnold Schwarzenegger high over her head.
Only a very small percentage of men could lift a barbell of equal weight, let alone an awkwardly asymmetrically balanced live human being.
And yet we don’t imagine that the men who can’t do that are somehow feminine, nor would anyone who’s seen the photo imagine that Lyons was manifesting anything resembling masculinity.
Yet we imagine that if a woman prefers cigars, all nighter coding or gaming sessions, or serial non-monogamy she’s somehow behaving likes a man. And if a man silently weeps while rocking his sick child, or longs for a stable relationship, or cultivates roses he’s somehow expressing his feminine side.
Mentioning Kuhnian paradigm shifts is so 80’s, and discussing Marxian/Hegelian thesi/anti/synthi is so 70’s, but both had a point. Both held that we cling overlong to dominant — but ultimately false — distinctions until the supporting evidence is cartoonishly overshadowed by counterevidence.
I’d just like to suggest that that’s where we are in gender discussions.
It’s not that there are no quantitative differences between men and women (remember, means, medians, and averages are easily tabulated.) It’s not even that there are no individual differences! It’s that there are so many cases, case, after case, after case, where the overlap is so strong that we have to lie, and fudge, and deny, and special-case things away, and in the face of that evidence we become forced to defend, often passionately, often furiously, sometimes even violently, that the differences that do exist are the only ones that matter.
Is it a problem that many men are sexually dominant? Only if you deny that roughly equal numbers of women are or would be dominant and insist that if many men are dominant then all men are dominant. Is it a problem that many men are disinterested in rearing children? Only if you deny that comparable numbers of women are equally disinterested (or wish they’d looked before they leapt) and if you insist that many men are disinterested then all must be.
Yes we have differences but we also have huge overlap. Is it a problem that we have differences? Only if you deny that there’s no overlap. Only if you insist that only the cases that confirm stereotypes count and that counterexamples don’t count.
Yes, we have differences. But we have far, far larger filters. Our unfiltered similarities overwhelm our differences.
Submitted by 897 (not verified) on Tue, 2006-08-29 20:46.
This reminds me of those logic problems on standardized tests in high school.
Cats are lazy. Bobby is lazy. Therefore Bobby is:
a.) a cat
b.) a lazy cat
c.) destined to lose his first few jobs
[Oh dear. Thanks, Veronica. --fl]
Submitted by 897 (not verified) on Wed, 2006-08-30 03:03.
It's the whole chicken & egg conundrum all over again. Nurture vs nature, which came first in determining masculinity vs femininity in certain traits?
But, as to your disclaimers that those viewers of the Mapplethorpe photo did NOT see Lyons as manifesting masculinity; She was photographed exactly because she did manifest stereotypically masculine traits while being clearly female. And Grace Jones did get called "mannish" ALL the TIME. Hell, I think that was the adjective applied to her most frequently.
When you say "we" to whom are you referring? We enlightened gender theorist connaissant (umm...I think I back created that word from French, I meant cognizant) sex bloggers who read you? Because if by we, your we is broader and refers to general American society, than the vast majority would adhere to those stereotypes about men/women.
[First of all I'm saying that it's not chicken/egg at all, not really, because I don't think it's about pre-determined *determination* at all. Instead it's about a series of *decisions* to attribute sexual aggressiveness to men or nurturing to women and the data manipulation that must go into maintaining those distinctions. (Note: one mechanism that's easily observed among children is the tendency to differentiate based on skill -- the first one might be "the reader in the family" so to receive equal attention the second might be the troublemaker and the third, perhaps, the athlete. Yet when you assess the children you find that child two might actually do more reading or child one's the bigger trouble makers... but the niches are already assigned and thus counterevidence is discarded.) By "we" I mean all of us since everyone, even gender theorists great and small, struggle with stereotypes. Oh, and finally, I was thinking specifically about Grace Jone's height but you're right that she was perceived as mannish... especially since she was a cross-dresser. I should have picked someone else tall like (based on a random Google search) WNBA player Lisa Harrison? Thanks, Red. --fl]
Submitted by 897 (not verified) on Wed, 2006-08-30 08:07.
I really enjoy reading your posts - especially when they are as precise and logical as this one. Thank you.
What I cannot understand is why anyone should think that "difference" is of itself so important. Somewhere in the thought process the concept of "better" and "best" is introduced and we are all ?conditioned? to make these judgements from childhood. Bigger, stronger, faster, cleverer, better-looking, - all worthy of praise and to be emulated if possible. Taken together with the seemingly inate compulsion to conform to the local "norms" of our social group, tribe and/or race, this leads to the mis-guided conclusion that anyone deviating from the norms, other than in those directions we have been conditioned to accept as better, must therefore be despised as worse or inferior. Hence the cruelties of the schoolyard, the prevalence of inter-communal strife and the ultimate horror of a genocide which results from unthinking acceptance of these mistaken correlations.
Not that this statement of what may seem obvious does much to further your discussion but I mean it to add support to the views you so eloquently express.
[Not at all, Lapis, you've pointed out things I'd have overlooked. Thanks especially for pointing out that it's probably natural to look for differences, and it's probably natural to look for better's and worse's, but it's also probably problematic when we do mashups and try to distinguish when a difference is better or worse than another. (This is sort of like saying "are apples better than wheat?" We know they're different. We can see and appreciate the differences. But time spent trying to assign superiority to one or the other might better be spent looking for new things to appreciate about both.) Thank you. --fl]
Submitted by 897 (not verified) on Fri, 2006-09-01 17:57.
and yet,
and yet,
and yet,
at the comparatively short height of 5'10" people have often called me "mannish," though i wear makeup and (sometimes) heels and dresses and do all the feminine things women are supposed to do. i am even sexually submissive -- though i do like to game, and code, and so forth. but they were talking about my height and the broadness of my shoulders.
i think that there is a difference between what people accept in their celebrities (nicole kidman, etc.) in terms of "mannish height" and what they want in their real people. i mean, tom cruise stands on boxes to appear taller in his movies, and so on.
these signifiers are not as important as one might assume -- but they are still important to many people.
[I agree they're important as *signifiers* but that's my whole point -- people are confusing signifiers with signs. Talk about confusing maps for territory! (It reminds me of the ongoing joke in the Steve Martin movie "The Jerk" where the Martin character insisted quality drinks must be served with little paper parasols.) Thank you, A. --fl]