MEN ARE FROM EARTH, WOMEN ARE FROM EARTH, TOO
A few decades ago now, John Gray published Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus: The Classic Guide to Understanding the Opposite Sex. It was a phenomenal bestseller and Dr. Gray went on to write other books on the theme. I have a problem with this popular title because men and women are from earth. We are all human beings, and to divide gender into two factions based on physiology is to make too hard a case for our differences.
I’m not picking a fight with John Gray or his work. I’m only commenting on a title, and I know what it’s like to have your work reduced to a sentence or phrase and then criticized. Still, to use the image of men and women with such contrast as to be from different planets is to miss the subtlety of gender and dealings between men and women. Dr. Gray goes further by saying that he will guide you to understand the opposite sex. There he goes again making too much of a contrast between men and women. We are different, not opposite.
Allow me to quote myself from Original Self: “Gender is an aspect of our individuality. I am a man as no one else is a man. My masculinity is like my American spirit, a defining facet. The variations of gender are infinite, and so it is absurd to reduce gender to two categories and insist that everyone fit into one or the other. Besides, all dualisms doom us to division and conflict. They are simplistic descriptions of experience and tend toward easy literalism. Paradoxically, to become less certain about one’s own gender may be the turning point at which one begins to discover the richness of one’s masculinity and femininity.”
Rafael Lopez-Pedraza makes a similar point using the word “hermaphrodite,” intending it in a psychological sense. “When the Hermaphrodite appears in psychotherapy, it is accompanied by a feeling of weakness…essential for making possible the borderline Hermaphroditic condition, which marks the psychotherapeutic movement from the old consciousness to a more psychological consciousness.”(Hermes and His Children, 22)
In other words, when we are on the border between genders we sense a weakening of the heroism that is “normal” and an influx of soul. It is more soulful to be less defined and certain about gender borders. We become more flexible and reflective.
If men want to be less aggressive and violent, they shouldn’t try to be more feminine but rather masculine in an unexplored way. Mainly, men have to, deep down, shed the heroic fantasy of solving problems, beating competitors, and killing obstacles. Years ago I suggested to a talented physician that he change the title of his proposed book from The War on Pain to something less belligerent. Men have a habit of slaying dragons. In a nighttime story I used to tell my children, brave knights charmed and quieted dragons with their enchanting music.
I’m not saying that men shouldn’t be strong, but to be strong is far different from being aggressive. Aggression takes strength too far into the neurotic spectrum, where what looks like strength is actually weakness—weakness of heart, weakness of character. Aggression is a defense against strength. It is only a display and not the real thing.
Women need strength, too, of course, because they are from the same planet as men—earth. Men often can’t handle strong women because they habitually (neurotically) need someone to be weak and submit to their pseudo-strength, thus proving their worth. A better situation would have strong and vulnerable men relating to strong and vulnerable women.
In the end, it might be better to stop talking about men and women as opposites, to find more subtle categories that allow multiple qualities in both men and women to shine forth. Dividing human beings into two groups never works. The number two invites conflict and competition and frequently some form of slavery. In our current dispensation, men clearly enslave women, and women subtly enslave men. Our goal could be to get out of the slavery business altogether and, instead, appreciate and love each other.
