Have you ever asked yourselves why men have always
accused women of talking too much, and women have always accused men of being
callous? Have you ever thought about where those misunderstandings come from?
The answer is in the sex of the brain. Yes, brain has its own sex. Let’s make
it clear: people’s brain is rarely completely masculine or feminine. These two
characteristics get confused and mixed in every person in a different way, but for
simplicity’s sake we will talk of “male brain”
as belonging to men and “female brain” to women, keeping in mind that body and
brain don’t always match.
Since the dawn of history, women were responsible of
weaving relationships in order to get helpful information for their families.
Talking, then, has always been a synonym for surviving. This is why women’s
silence, when drawn out, can be a punishment: a woman who doesn’t talk to her
partner is uneasy and restless. It’s likely that she’s getting even angrier
with every minute of being ignored. This is something useful for men to know,
because they are inclined to take the first seven minutes of silence as a
reward instead of growing discomfort. On the other hand, women should
understand that men’s silence is not a punishment: they’re only being quiet. In
fact, men protected their families fighting and hunting: talking was nothing
more than a useless waste of energy, especially while building snares and
setting traps. Noiselessness, strength and agility were their strong suits. As
a consequence, men perceive talking as something dangerous. Over the centuries
they’ve learned to hide emotions to better deal with violent assaults. They
tend to express themselves with a basic and straightforward language, while
women’s is more complex and oblique, since they couldn’t count on physical
strength to face their enemies. So, they’ve learned how to gather information
from them. This instinct is what let two women keep chatting for hours even if
they don’t really get along or like each other.
Such distinctions lead to
different ways of dealing with issues. A woman thinks out loud, and she often
wants her partner to simply listen and use his logic to support choices already
taken by her. She wants validations, such as when she asks her partner which
dress she should wear, but she’s already chosen. Women often prefer to minimize a problem by talking about it rather than
focusing on solving it, while men try to fix it with the same approach they
would use with a broken tool. They go for direct questions, which women find
invasive, but they actually aim to find a solution. Men feel useful this way.
She’d better not throw away her broken wristwatch before he’s tried to fix it,
or he will feel deprived of his role.
Furthermore, men’s logical and
emotional brain areas are situated in different hemispheres, while women’s are
almost overlapped. This leads to significant consequences: when a man tells a woman she’s put a piece of
furniture together in the wrong way he’s not implying he loves her less, but
she will feel less loved all the same.
It would seem, then, that
differences between sexes are a real thing. They are rooted in our brain and
concern far more than language and expression. Men versus women, then? The
answer is in the next post.
