Male and Female Essences
November 13, 2018
FÁTIMA M. writes:
I’ve been reading your blog between yesterday and today and find it very profound, also stereotype-breaking.
I would like to ask you a question concerning your post about male and female attributes.
How can one be sure that those characteristics aren’t a product of what society expects from people (male and female), so that survival is easier for the person? If that were the case, an attribute wouldn’t necessarily be ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ inherently, but everyone could have the potential to develop any of those, since today, survival is easier in terms of finding food and shelter and evolution is happening quite different from before.
Surely in the past, more activities were assigned to males or females, since they depended on physical strength and people were more likely to survive if they worked more efficiently by separating occupations; however, that’s not the case today as more work is intellectual and a woman who reasons abstractly will be successful in her field (not be a disadvantage in terms of survival as it would have happened before). I know how it works statistically today, but I think these evolutionary changes will be even more noticeable in the future, in my experience, that’s something that can be seen in what are called developing countries (I’m from one of those).
Finally, I wouldn’t conclude that an attribute belongs to one gender, since the human brain is very complex and [I] find those statements to be limiting for people.
Laura writes:
Thank you for your kind interest and curiosity.
Psychological attributes don’t belong entirely to one sex or the other but are more pronounced or common in one than the other. The human brain is complex. And men and women share many basic characteristics. To be nurturing is not exclusively a feminine trait. It is much more common in women. To be physically courageous is not exclusively masculine; it is more common in men. To be capable of highly abstract thinking is not exclusively masculine, but it is more common in men.
How do we know that these common characteristics are not simply determined by social attitudes?
Well, certainly they are to some degree? But why? Why would those social attitudes exist if they didn’t serve some inescapable purpose and reflect reality?
Talk to most kindergarten teachers and they will, while possibly paying lip service to the claims of social engineers, tell you that boys and girls are immutably and fundamentally different. They see it every day. In his book, The Essential Difference: Male and Female Brains and the Truth about Autism, Simon Baron-Cohen confirms what the average teacher sees and why it is disastrous to try to teach boys and girls in exactly the same way despite all our changes in social conditions and attitudes.
You suggest that the basic sex role differences are suited to a previous age and that we no longer need these traditional roles.
Many things haven’t changed at all. Or at least haven’t changed so much as to obviate the need for traditional sex roles with some significant differences from the past.
Take the fact that children still need many, many years of physical, moral and spiritual care and flourish best in stable homes. (If anything, the years of care have only lengthened in advanced society.) Take the fact that over time, societies need to perpetuate themselves demographically. Take the fact that daily life requires all kinds of maintenance — clean homes, healthy food, civilized manners and dress. We don’t have to beat our clothes against rocks in the river anymore, but people of the past didn’t have to maintain machines or do as much paperwork or spend so much time in cars.
Take the fact that men and women are drawn to their psychological differences; the more these differences are marginalized, the less successful men and women are in forming stable and happy marriages.
More importantly spiritual and moral reality never change. We are not robots. We have immortal souls and conform to objective supernatural conditions through our male and female essences.
Society ideally guides men and women into roles that are generally suited to their natures and functions in order to foster their happiness, promote virtue, create stability, perpetuate itself — and promote the eternal happiness of souls. We get to heaven by practicing virtue and following the unchanging moral law. The more male and female differences are denied, the more the moral welfare of humanity is imperiled. Do you doubt that?
You write:
Finally, I wouldn’t conclude that an attribute belongs to one gender, since the human brain is very complex and [I] find those statements to be limiting for people.
But you as a woman will never see the world in the exact same way as a man. No man is a woman. Is that limiting or marvelous? Is it limiting that you will never be a tree? Is it limiting that you will probably never be president of your country? Yes, it is limiting. Life is limiting. To be something you have to be …. not everything.
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