Men and Women, by Gillian

Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then. 

Katharine Hepburn

If I remember rightly, which seems increasingly unlikely these days, we went through a phase a few decades ago when we were supposed to believe that men and woman were really not so different. It was probably a '70's thing. Then in the early 1990's along came John Gray's best-seller, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, and accepting our differences became OK again. He wrote a sequel, Why Mars and Venus Collide, in 2008, so clearly he sees no reason to back down! And for all that George Carlin responded with,

“Men are from Earth, women are from Earth. Deal with it.”

I must confess, I'm with Gray.

Now don't get me wrong. I have loved, and do love, a number of women and men; some family, some not. I always worked with a lot of men, but when I retired, long out as a lesbian, I entered an essentially female world. I found myself actively searching out ways to be around men. I had always had men in my life. I missed them. But missing men and loving men in no way suggests that I see them as some alternate version of women. Men are different. They make me different. I interact differently with them, I feel differently about them, I expect and want different things from them. Indeed, if women and men are in fact NOT very different from each other, I will make them so; at least in my own mind.

But to me the differences are glaringly, blaringly, obvious. You only have to watch groups of little girls playing, versus little boys. Surely most of us have seen it in our own families. Mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, are different not only because they each have unique personalities, but simply by virtue of their gender. Sure, some of it is nurture, the established norms of society, but I believe it is also, overwhelmingly, nature. If we are all basically the same, why do transgender people feel so compelling a need to be 'the other'?

Years ago, our neighbors had two little pre-school girls. Being extremely liberal parents, they determined not to channel their daughters along any pre-established gender lines. They bought them toy bulldozers and trucks to play with in the sandbox. And there they lay, rusting and abandoned while the girls played happily indoors with dolls and tea-sets.

Take one, admittedly very negative, example. Violence. Of the 12.996 murders in this country in 2010, over 90% were committed by men. Over 90% of ISIS member are men. Almost 90% of the domestic violence cases in this country are committed by men. Looking back, just in my own lifetime, at violent leaders: Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Pot Pol and the Khmer Rouge, those responsible for the Rwanda genocide, Jim Jones and his Temple, Timothy McVeigh. All men. Not one of all our horrific school shootings was done by a woman. Nearly 90% of victims of domestic violence in this country are women. A statistic on this issue which I find truly horrifying - the number of American troops killed in Afghanistan and Iraq between 2001 and 2012 was 6,488. The number of American women who were murdered by current or ex male partners during that time was 11,766. That’s nearly double the amount of casualties lost during war. And of course it's not just women who suffer. Just look at our history of male violence against people of color and native peoples. Surely there is something other than nurture responsible here?

Testosterone springs to mind as the easy answer. But that begs another question. There is little evidence that gay men have less testosterone than straight men, so why are gay men, on the whole, not so given to violence? At least, I believe they are not, although statistics are hard to come by. Gay men, indeed, are much more likely to be the victims than the perpetrators. Dictators historically have consistently destroyed their gay populations. ISIS tosses them off roofs and stones them to death so I doubt gays are flocking to join their cause.

I have never in my life been abused personally. I have never been a victim of any kind of violence. But, tragically, that leaves me one of few outside of the straight white male population of this country, and most of the rest of the world, who can say that. I look forward to a world led predominantly by women and gay men. I truly believe it would be a better place. Unfortunately, I don't see it coming any time soon.

© May 2017

About the Author

I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have been with my wonderful partner Betsy for thirty years. We have been married since 2013.