Women and men and all of us

Kirk Ericson | Jan 05, 20230

Sixty-three years of age — my age — is a careless time to make proclamations about human behavior: One has enough wisdom to recognize patterns and enough foolishness to believe one can make assumptions about those patterns.

Of all the assumptions someone of any age is prey to, the most hazardous — outside of race — are comments about how women and men differ. The forces that govern the relationships between, and among, the sexes are as complicated as a teenager’s emotions and as unknowable as a cat’s intentions, and a wrong step while talking about those forces can drop you in a pit where sunlight is a slit high above your head and no one is willing to toss down a rope.

But, what the hell. Let’s give it a go and let chromosomes fall where they may.

First, the differences between men and women are not as profound as the similarities. Women and men want the same basics out of life: Love, acceptance, safety, camaraderie, purpose and affection. Second, women and men don’t fit into tidy niches. Not all women and men are similar to all women and men.

This consideration of the differences between the sexes is a sideshow to the real show, the show where we’re all on stage together performing in the same play at the same time. We can have different roles, but the roles deserve equal billing. We’re all just trying to make it through to the final curtain without flubbing too many lines.

Let’s begin our trip.

A woman shouldn’t offer unsolicited advice to a man who’s engaged in screwing up a mechanical task. Men tend to get emotional about that. And a man shouldn’t describe a woman’s unsolicited advice as “shrill” or “strident.” Women tend to get emotional about that.

Men should understand women want to talk. Women should understand that men hear, but don’t listen.

Men should understand that flowers influence a woman far beyond the intention with which they’re given, and women should understand that giving flowers does not come naturally to a man.

Let’s dig deeper.

Those examples of differences are symptoms of something deeper, much as your physical characteristics are projections of your DNA. What is the thing that seeds the emotional gardens of women and men? What’s at the root?

Maybe it’s this: Women give birth to life and men put that life at risk.

Men are boys on their bikes yelling, “Look! No hands!” If the boy doesn’t hurt himself, he wins. If the boy hurts himself, mom soothes him. Males have something deeply wired that makes us think putting ourselves at risk will impress the people we’re trying to impress.

Women have an emotional investment in the species that men don’t have. Women nurture life, they sustain life, they’re the guardians of the life galaxy. Men, meanwhile, are boys figuring out ways to hurt themselves and other people. They start wars, they go too fast and break bones. They like conflict, speed and things that go ka-boom. They’re the ones jumping over bonfires.

And that’s exactly what men bring to the party: Risk. Without risk, life is boring. Risk makes those moments absent of risk more edifying, more satisfying.

Women need men and men need women, just as women need women and men need men. For as long as this corporeal and spiritual experiment continues, it will be so. Women grind men’s edges and men have edges to grind. It’s a closed system that any electrical engineer would admire.

OK.

I’ll stop.

I can see the distant rays of sun recede.