THAT’S JUST THE WAY MEN ARE, OR ARE THEY?

It is clear that men and women were not created equally. And I am not talking about equality, but to the specific traits that characterize us as male or female, beside the physiological ones. Biology determines sex and society determines gender. The biology of a person is something we have no control over. The gender of a person, and the roles that person plays as taught by society depending on his/her sex are learned, modifiable, and hopefully, evolving.

We already know all the characteristics attributed to men. There is also the notion that males are incapable of multitasking like women, focus on something with complete dedication (except for work) like women, care for and nurture others like women, be gentle and detail oriented like women, and so on. I was having a conversation with a mother of a pre-teen boy, and she said that teenage boys are not as dedicated, focused, and able to take care of children (babysitting) like girls just because they are wired differently. That made me wonder: is it really that boys are not wired to do this or that, or is it that parents do not teach and enforce their boys to be nurturing, care givers, and caring and giving in general? Are we (men and women) categorically biologically different and therefore incapable of sharing the same degree of involvement in things? About everything that is said about men, is that just the way men are, period?

I guess right now there is no direct answer to that question. Although there are undeniable differences between a man and a woman, my thought is that the differences are mostly physiological and physiologically driven. The fact that most men act in a certain way may be the result of all of them being raised to act and react to some situations in an expected way, enforced to do so, reinforced when done so, and the behavior just keeps going on. For example, if a boy leaves a mess after he has been playing with his toys, he is just a boy. If a boy is rough when he plays, he is all boy. If a boy is restless and loud, he is being a boy. The boy then grows up to be a man who is not organized, does not pick up after himself, is not detail oriented, but will probably end up with a woman who will be all those things, so he does not have anything to worry about.

I believe gender issues and gender differences will take a long time to figure out and resolve. The only way of knowing if sex and gender is really not the same thing is going back to the Blue Lagoon (like in the movie) and seeing what happens. However, I would guess, and research backs me up, that ever since the day we are born parents and everyone around us treat us according to the preconceived notions of gender already stored in our brain, so we are highly influenced by gender constructs since birth and throughout all our lives, which would still have an impact on the way things develop in the Blue Lagoon. In the meantime, I do not think that men ARE, I think that men have been taught (or not) to be a certain way. That been said, men can also be taught to be different, to be better men, to be whole persons, and women can learn to do the same.