March 19, 2007
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An interesting (condensed) article
(I am not really reading this book, I just want to make a note of it.)
'The book that convinced me men and women ARE different'
According to a controversial and explosive book, there are differences between the sexes - not only hormonal ones, but measurable, observable distinctions between men's and women's brains. I'd rather hoped that reading Louann Brizendine's book The Female Brain - which is published in Britain in two weeks' time - I'd feel outraged, and rail at her imposition of 'difference' on me and my fellow females.
What The Female Brain reveals is that we women are in thrall to our hormones more than we would care to admit; that we are desperate to be liked; and that our emotions play a more dominant role in controlling our actions than they ever do in a man. But the more I thought about it, the more I decided perhaps it's not such a bad thing to be the more emotionally 'literate' sex. Having read this book, I know that women cry more easily than men by a factor of four. Their recall of emotional events is more vivid and lasting. In the female cerebrum, emotional centres are physically larger than the male's, and vastly more interconnected with the rest of her head.
Because, according to Dr Brizendine, females are biologically attuned to the finest shift of facial expression, body posture, and tone of voice, women have an almost psychic ability to detect what other people are feeling. The one place women do have an emotional blind spot is with anger. Because a woman's ability to control her impulses - and especially anger - is more highly developed, her brain diverts this potentially dangerous emotion to a safety zone.
After reading this book I understand why, when someone offends me, I only get angry later. At the time, I go blank. By contrast, any threatening behaviour will trigger a man's anger in a heartbeat. My husband may be more emotional than most men, but the emotion that comes to him most readily is fury.
The downside of all this emotional action in the female mind is that women are twice as likely to suffer from both anxiety and depression as men. Boys get mad; girls get sad. That response is not as gratifying as rage, but anger can be used merely to deflect something deeper and more complicated. Being disheartened if my hard work has not been appreciated is both more honest and more productively soul- searching than indignation.
There's a second biological distinction between the sexes that puts women, in my view, at a disadvantage: we recoil from conflict. We completely freak out when faced with a little aggro. By contrast, men are fully 20 times more aggressive than women. According to Dr Brizendine, women's prime directive is to maintain a relationship. Men are driven to establish themselves high in the social pecking order, and are more willing to sacrifice relationships towards this end. To put it bluntly, men are more ruthless. I hate to admit it, but I'm totally hopeless at conflict. Perplexingly, I've sometimes been told that I am 'terrifying', but that's only when hiding behind a word processor. In person, I'm a pussycat. This brings us to the heart of the differences between the sexes, according to this book: Men want to be respected. Women want to be liked.
