Can we talk about sex differences?
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When I first read Tom Matlack’s collection of stories about defining moments in men’s lives, I felt I was among kindred spirits. Tom found there was a connection between all the stories:
There was a moment when each man woke up, looking in the mirror and said, “I thought I knew what it meant to be a man. I thought I knew what it meant to be good. And I realize that I don’t know either.”
The only difference for me was that growing up I never had a clear sense of what it meant to be a man or what it meant to be a good man. My father was a writer and actor who became increasingly depressed when he couldn’t find meaningful work to support his family. When I was five years old he tried to commit suicide and spent the next seven years at Camarillo State Mental Hospital.
I grew up being raised by a single mother who tried to teach me what it meant to be a good man … from a woman’s perspective. For the last 66 years I’ve been on a mission to understand what happened to my father, whether it would happen to me, and how I could discover my own definitions of what it means to be a man and what it means to be a good man.
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A recent discussion focused on 21st Century Masculinity: What Does It Mean?
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Each Friday there is an opportunity for those who write for The Good Men Project to participate in a call with the publisher, Lisa Hickey, and other editors to share ideas on topics relevant to our personal and professional lives. A recent discussion focused on 21st Century Masculinity: What Does It Mean? and an article was posted that captured some of our thoughts and feelings.
Men also feel the pain of sex and gender stereotyping.
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Talking about sex and gender issues triggers many feelings and fears. Too often sex differences have been used to put down, or exclude, one sex or the other. There was a time when the idea that “a woman’s place is in the home” kept women from having equal access to jobs in the workplace. Men also feel the pain of sex and gender stereotyping. I still remember the pain when my first wife and I divorced and she was automatically given custody of the children because “women are better at nurturing young children than are men.”
There are false dichotomies between men and women, but there are also important differences. That’s not to discount the fact that there are also important similarities. But the fact that differences have been used to mean “worse than” or “better than” shouldn’t keep us from addressing these differences in a responsible, respectful, and caring ways.
I’ve been writing about sex differences for many years. My first book, Inside Out: Becoming My Own Man, was published in 1983. I opened with the 10 Commandments that I had learned growing up:
- Thou shalt not be weak, nor have weak gods before thee.
- Thou shalt not fail thyself, nor fail as thy father before thee.
- Thou shalt not keep holy any day that denies thy work.
- Thou shalt not express strong emotions, either highs or lows.
- Thou shalt not cry, complain, or ask for help.
- Thou shalt not fight a woman, even if she abuses you.
- Thou shalt not be uncertain or ambivalent.
- Thou shalt not be dependent.
- Thou shalt not acknowledge thy death or thy limitations.
- Thou shalt do unto other men before they do unto you.
Like many who have felt wounded by sex differences, I wanted to just be a person. However, the more I tried to deny my identity as a man, the less like a person I felt. I thought being a good person would make me a good husband and father. But after two divorces I felt I was on the wrong track.
In 1979 I joined a men’s group (which is still going strong after 36 years), and I met and married my present wife in 1980. Both of us attribute our loving and committed relationship, in large measure, to my involvement in my men’s group and hers in the women’s group. Here are a few of the things I’ve learned about the importance of sex differences to our health and well-being:
We are different in every cell of our body.
There are 10 trillion cells in human body and every one of them is sex specific …
says David C. Page, M.D., professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Every cell has an XY chromosome if we’re male or an XX if we’re female (with a few people who have chromosomal variations).
There are significant genetic differences between men and women.
It has been said that our genomes are 99.9% identical from one person to the next. Page continues:
It turns out that this assertion is correct, as long as the two individuals being compared are both men. It’s also correct if the two individuals being compared are both women. However, if you compare the genome of a man with the genome of a woman, you’ll find that they are only 98.5% identical. In other words, the genetic difference between a man and a woman are 15 times greater than the genetic difference between two men or between two women
A unisex view of humans is scientifically inaccurate.
Even in this era of genetic research, this fundamental difference has been overlooked. Says Page:
We’ve had a unisex vision of the human genome. Men and women are not equal in our genome and men and women are not equal in the face of disease.
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Women clinicians and researchers are leading the way in recognizing the importance of sex and gender differences in health.
In 1992, Marianne J. Legato, M.D. published The Female Heart: The Truth About Women and Coronary Artery Disease and revealed that women’s presenting symptoms of heart disease are taken less seriously than men—and when women undergo cardiac surgery, they are less likely than men to survive.
In her book, Eve’s Rib: The New Science of Gender-Specific Medicine, written in 2002, she says,
Eve’s Rib is not just about women’s health, but about the health of both sexes and the new science of gender-specific medicine …. Everywhere we look, the two sexes are startlingly and unexpectedly different not only in their internal function but in the way they experience illness.
Just as using a gender-neutral lens in looking at heart disease has been detrimental to women, so too has using a gender-neutral lens for looking at depression been harmful to men. My own research on sex, gender, and depression shows that men are under-diagnosed and under-treated.
The future of health-care is gender-specific.
Until recently we’ve treated men and women the same as far as health is concerned. We now know that there is a better way. Gender-specific medicine is the wave of the future. Dr. Page writes:
We need to build a better tool kit for researchers that is XX and XY informed rather than our current gender neutral stance. We need a tool kit that recognizes the fundamental difference on a cellular, organ, system, and person level between XY and XX. I believe that if we do this, we will arrive at a fundamentally new paradigm for understanding and treating human disease.
I’m on-board for better health now and forever.
I grew up as a sickly kid, and I’ve spent a lot of my life looking for ways to stay healthy. As I move into my 70s, this becomes even more important. I feel blessed to be living at a time when gender-specific medicine allows us all to live longer and better.
What do you think? Can we talk about sex differences? Are there risks and dangers of talking about them and not talking about them? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if men didn’t have to live sicker and die sooner than women? I look forward to hearing your feelings and thoughts.
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So….is your entire article basically telling us trans men to go f*ck off? Cause that’s pretty much what it sounds like.
I am a man – sorry my chromosomes don’t align to your expectations.
Women and men are the same species. Gender is not biological. Up until the latter third of the last century, medicine was focused exclusively on sexually male bodies and implicitly treated the male body as the default human, the female body as an offshoot, devoting less time, analysis, research, and money on one-half of all humans.
Love reading your ten commandments and it is too bad men had to follow them even though it hurt them physically and mentally especially when women were abusing men physically and mentally.
Yes Jed.
We can and should also talk about sex differences.
“Can we talk about sex differences?” I am raising a 14 year old boy…we talk about all kinds of subjects all the time…sometimes it will be sparked by a controversial news item or some book that he is reading in class (ie., “A Lesson Before Dying”)….we talk about his friends, social groups, etiquette and parties/bat mitzvahs…sometimes I will bring up some article that I have read here on GMP if it is appropriate…I try to keep the conversation open for any topic… sometimes he shocks me with how much he knows or things that he heard…last night we talked about… Read more »
Leia, It sounds like you have a great relationship with your son. Being open to talking about anything and finding ways to use things he is interested in as a springboard for talking about life is great. Is his father involved as well?
Yes, of course…! He and his dad have a great relationship….they take guitar lessons together…sometimes my son teaches my husband a thing or two on the guitar…and it’s wonderful to see them communicate through the music…they jammed together with a friend of my husband’s, which was great for my son to be around a bunch of cool, awesome and mature people…sometimes I am the pushy parent when it comes to academics…my husband is the one who sees when my son has too much on the brain and needs a break….!
A large part of the problem is that the discussion on men has already been poisoned. Just look at the current conversation. What’s the problem with society? Patriarchy. There’s a problem with masculinity rather than there is a problem with society’s perception of masculinity. We need to remake masculinity rather than we need to understand masculinity. Every conversation that we have on men and masculinity starts with the premise that the problem is men and masculinity. After we’ve made being a man synonymous with being bad, you wonder why the conversation isn’t about good men, but good people.
John, I agree that there has been a lot of social shaming about men and masculinity that needs to be addressed and confronted. We certainly have problems with the way some people view masculinity in negative terms, just as we’ve had to confront the negative perceptions that some people have about femininity and women. That’s why I like the dialogue on here at GMP. There’s room to explore and discuss in respectful ways, even with people whose views may differ from our own.
It’s The Good Men Project, not the Good XY Project. Not to be pedantic, but the lived experiences of men go beyond a genetic commonality—especially one that we don’t all share. Being a man is a social reality, and how anyone else knows, or how I know, I’m a man doesn’t come from studying my genes in a lab.
Justin, For me, it helps me better understand myself, and others, based on everything I can find including the genetics of being male, hormonal aspects, as well as all the range of child-rearing, and social aspects.