On Gender Issues

Dear Michelle,

One thing you will have to keep in mind as you navigate the treacherous waters of adolesence (and, for that matter, even throuought adulthood) is that the matter of male/female is a very complex and convoluted one.

For starters, the issue is much more diverse than a simple male/female dichotomy. The truth is that there are thousands of "switches" in the human genetic code that determines masculinity or femininity, and not all of them get switched (or very few of them). While on average, most people have the majority of their genetic markers flipped in one direction or another, there are some people who have a more balanced set. It is less true to see the population as 50% male and 50% female, but more as an inverted bell curve, with the majority of people at one end or the other while a small portion of individuals drift towards the centre (the area of androgyny).

But even if we discount the small percent in the middle, the question of man vs. woman is still a complicated one. There are many people who feel that there are (and should be) exactly two genders, each separated by specific behaviour traits (this example being best summarised by the statement in a character from Neil Gaiman's Sandman: "[If God] makes you a boy, you dress in blue, He makes you a girl, you dress in pink." On the other hand, many people believe that there is no difference at all between men and women. Personally, I think that the truth (as with so many things) is somewhere in the middle. In some ways, men and women are the same, yes, but in many others, they are different.

Ignoring the obvious physical differences, there's the fact that men and women think differently. It's been proven in study after study that males and females use different parts of the brain to accomlish the same task. Men generally excel at three-dimensional reasoning, while women tend to navigate by landmarks. Women are better at multi-tasking than men, and generally focus on details and specifics. Men are usually physically stronger, and do better with understanding the overall general nature of a situation. 

This does not mean that men and women should be treated differently; each deserves the same rights. But the fact is that they are different, and you must always remember this. And more to the point, we must also remember to acknowledge those people that fall in the middle of the male/female spectrum, and deal with them accordingly. You must also understand that the different ways that men and women generally perceive the world will be guaranteed to result in miscommunications and misunderstandings. It seems obvious, but many a serious disagreement has resulted from men expecting women to think like men, and vice versa.