Men And Women Are Naturally Different — Why Do We Keep Fighting About It?

Every day, we see articles where someone is flinging shit at the opposite sex, and in the comments, we see the opposite sex fling shit right back. It’s not upsetting that we haven’t evolved past the behavior of our closest evolutionary cousins. What is upsetting, however, is that we’re even attempting to involve ourselves in a “gender war”.  Because when it comes down to reality, it’s not necessary. Here’s why:

We Enjoy Different Things In The Same Places

This is something we’ve been aware of since our youth. Like the first time we entered the playground, we noticed differences in how we enjoyed ourselves as boys and girls. Girls played with dolls and little fake tea sets, boys played with sticks, rocks, and dirt (well, at least I did). While girls sat there looking at boys like they were a bunch of barbaric little sociopaths, sipping away on their imaginary tea talking about God knows what, boys were too busy flailing sticks and throwing rocks at each other to care what girls were doing. Since we were young, we knew the opposite sex enjoyed different things. You obviously had the odd tom-boy would come around and stuff a nice mixture of mud and dog shit down the back of your shirt, and of course you had the random boy who was more than happy to relax with a nice cup of invisible green tea with the rest of the girls. As you ponder the the Taoist proverb of how can the tea have color if it’s invisible, you start to remember that we all knew in a general sense that we were different and enjoyed different things.

But while we enjoyed different things, we always came to the same place to enjoy them. This is just a basic trait of human evolution: we always go where people are having the most fun or success. This is one of the reasons society works. We group together, not only for the safety in numbers, but because it’s easier to have tolerance for the differences in people than it is to survive in small groups that are always fighting with each other. We see the same effect today in society as a whole, and on the social scale between men and women. The playground became the bar, and we still exhibit the same habits. Girls will crowd around at the most comfortable spot (especially if it has a couch) to sip on drinks with tea-set styled names that make them feel proper and chic, while the guys tend to stand in a circle talking with each other, nostalgically kicking around the dirt on the floor. The point is that we’ve always known we’re different but enjoy similar activities differently. So, it’s always more fun to enjoy these differences together.

These Differences Are Needed

While we might be having fun at the same place, boys and girls still complain about these differences, forgetting that they didn’t just pop up out of nowhere. If we look at boys and their dirt, we can recall our fathers saying things like “you gotta be willing to get down and dirty” especially when “the shit is going down”. Whether dad said it as a euphemism to illustrate hard work, or as part of his drunken rants as he grabbed for his Klan hood and a jerrycan of gasoline, many will say that young boys were raised to believe that “getting down and dirty” is the “man thing” to do. Girls play with tea sets because women are raised to enjoy their time relaxing and socializing. But why do we reinforce such things?

Truth be told, these difference go much further back. WAY BACK. We’re talking walking across the fucking ice from Canada to Russia way back. From our earliest ancestors, these differences helped us survive. As men went out to get their hands dirty with the blood of a DEFENSELESS SABER TOOTHED TIGER WHO DID NOTHING WRONG, women were sitting around at the camp site making preparations and repairs and helping with the kids and the making of tools and a bunch of other cave-womanly stuff. Why did we do this? Was it purely a social construct? First of all, we were way too busy surviving to come up with some bullshit like that. Understand this. We are a sexually dimorphic species.  This means that the physical traits between men and women will be different. As such, men tend to have stronger upper body mass when compared to women. This was due to our elevated testosterone levels, which interestingly enough, means less empathy, which made it easier for men TO KILL DEFENSELESS SABER TOOTHED TIGERS WHO DID NOTHING WRONG!

These traits ensured that we could hunt larger pray to feed and clothe the tribe. As women evolved, they were always socializing with each at the tribe site as men would leave to hunt. They became much better at communication and language, as the neurons in the brain’s left and right hemispheres tend to mix in women. We still see this today. So when it comes down to it, our differences had purpose. Not just to MURDER THE INNOCENT SABER TOOTHED TIGER INTO EXTINCTION! But to work together with complimenting differences that helped propagate the continuation of the human animal.

Breed And Multiply

One of the things you sometimes read about is the how the sexes look at sex itself. Constant misunderstandings between each other, with stereotypes always being brought in, we tend forget that sex is not only fun, but that it’s purpose of two people coming together has a deeper responsibility than just enjoying a form of mutual masturbation.

Some people might wonder, if we’re so advanced now and can’t stand each other, why the hell don’t we just clone ourselves or something? Let’s all have pity upon these people, as they’ve most likely lived lives devoid of sexual pleasure. For those of us that have had those 45 minutes of fun every once in a while, it’s probably best to understand that the purpose of breeding with each other, and not being asexual, is because selective breeding and genetic variation allows for nature to chose which is the best qualities for us to use to continue to survive.

While some of you might look at certain people you know and question the logic, remember that nature has billions upon billions of variables to work with and we’re still working to understand how it all works. Having genetic variation in our species is the reason why cloning ourselves won’t help either. Even today, a select few are born with a natural resistance to various types of HIV/AIDS. Evidently, humans are continuing to evolve. If we were to have 200 years of no genetic variation through cloning, then there’s a high possibility that a lot of our future cloned selves will die off before we can find a cure for any new disease that might come about. So remember, when it comes to sex: Coming together is more fun than coming by yourself.

We’re All A Bunch of Spoiled Brats

While we begin to reflect on our behavior and the reasons for our differences existing, some people might start to question why the hell we bicker in the first place. You have to remember, that most of us were born post-Salk vaccine. Before mass vaccination started, you had a slim chance of living. In fact, the term we use to describe the moment a child comes to fully realize its hedonistic nature, the term “The Terrible Twos” was originally used to describe the fact that by the age of 2, a child had a 1 in 3 chance of dying of a disease. Looking ever further back in history, The Black Plague could be regarded as nature testing to see if humanity had what it takes to be the dominant species on the planet. A large enough portion survived, so nature forgave our arrogance and let us could continue to grow and advance. The great thing about the introduction of mass vaccinations, is that people would could have easily died of a disease 100 years ago, had the chance to grow, learn, and create new possibilities for human society to advance even further. But it has a down side. Aside from tackling mother nature and giving it a nice, hard kick in the clitoris, it gave us a new set of problems. To illustrate this, the 1960s rat experiments of John Calhoun showed that when a society has more than it needs, and lacks the need to compete, those in the society tend to just focus on solitary pursuits and engage in behavior that’s uncommon to their natural tendencies. Which basically means, that when we have nothing to fight, we will fight each other over trivial matters. When these trivial matters get blown out of proportion, we will start to forget the things that not only helped us survive, but the things that brought us together in the first place.

TL;DR: The luxury of contemporary society has made us spoiled and egocentric. While a very select few of us are more intelligent than the common lab rat, many of us get caught up in these trivial issues. With our intelligence and luxury, we are too focused on our individual wants and desires, and forget that in order to keep society running, we have to compromise and remember that our differences have purpose. So in short, let’s stop bickering and focus on the real problems in society. Like helping to bring back man’s greatest ally and friend, the saber toothed tiger.