Turning Women Into Men

In today's blog I plan to ruminate around the phenomenon, "Why can't women be more like men?"  Sad to say, this seems to be a major complaint of many men.  Unfortunately, for this apparent majority of men anyway, the more this conundrum is studied, the more, "different" women have been found to be from men.

An example of this mindset, it was found that in the development of pharmacology, research, in determining the safety of drugs for humans, the testing of all drugs was done using only men. 

Probably, at least since the birth of, "science," it has generally been believed that men and women are internally the same, just their packaging is different!  Going on this indoctrination, many women have gone the route of  trying to turn themselves into men--becoming fighting soldiers, boxers, etc.  (As well as trying to get through that glass ceiling at work!)

The earliest written-about women who rejected the idea of the superiority of men were about the Amazons; "(I)n Greek mythology, member of a race of women warriors. The story of the Amazons probably originated as a variant of a tale recurrent in many cultures, that of a distant land organized oppositely from one’s own. The ascribed habitat of the Amazons necessarily became more remote as Greek geographic knowledge developed." (http://www.britannica.com/topic/Amazon-Greek-mythology   In fact, it has become harder and harder to verify that there were indeed such women in the past--one reference now places them in South America.

The latest shot fired in this particular war effort has been to create an app, or something of some kind, that lets women know when they have used the word, "sorry" in an effort to get them to stop saying it.  The idea is that women are always apologizing--saying "I'm sorry" all the time.  In this view, it is a failing--weakness, (something we women have to get over!) rather than a manifestation of our pacific natures!

Let me digress somewhat, (Using the accepted anthropological view, this idea can be  traced back to the belief that we all are descended from those early hunter gatherers.).  Resultant discussions about natures--women's natures and men's nature; probably can be reduced to the idea that early humans, men and women, bonded to crate a team for survival.  Indeed, even until about the '50s, and WWII, generally men were thought of as primarily being the, "bread winners," and doing the heavy lifting, (preferably in command of all they could see!)  Their wives were expected to stay at home and raise, keep up the house, and raise/care-for the children.   For example in my mother's youth, the only occupations open to females were as teachers and servants; as soon as a female married, she was expected to quit work and stay at home. 

(I have had a personal suspicion for a long time that back then, Mothers did not require their young sons to learn how to do practical things around the home in a soft conspiracy to make it necessary for them to marry someone to do those things for them!)

(But, what about those Chefs!  How is it that, until recently, it was generally believed that the best Chefs were men?!?  What about Julia Child, anyway?  I think we females can thank her for changing all that!)

Then came WWII.  During WWII, it was found that there were not enough men to fight the war and work in the factories, thus began the, Rosie the Riveter campaign to enlist women in the war effort, and get them to take the place of men in factories. (Much to their dismay, after the war, the male owners of those factories found that women were unwilling to go back to being just housewives, married more to housework than their husbands.)  Keep in mind that, "secretaries" were men.

But, let us do a, "What if!"  Supposing all that "history," about men's and women's roles in the past is wrong/skewed?  This skewing has come about because the focus of the studies has been the men, (and their societies). Of course, the primary reason for that focus, was that it was male anthropologists who did the studying.  (Margaret Mead,--thankfully--managed to change that somewhat.)

Because of that male research, a primary belief has been that the most important members of those early groups were the men; they brought home, "the bacon" (meat) and were, therefore, the most important members of their society, whereas, the women were an adjunct.  Well, unfortunately for that idea, it turns out, these "early humans" were not, "hunter/gatherers," they were gatherer/hunters.  Women, the perceived "gatherers," actually provided the majority of the food supply, whereas meat was merely a nice supplement, occasionally, to the groups diet.

In actuality, it has been established that many human societies, in the past, were matriarchal, not patriarchal, as we have been programmed to believe!  That reality was, perhaps, a recognition that women seem to have a superior grasp of leadership and social order.

To summarize, in recent research regarding male and female's brains, it has been found that they are very different in their workings, see for example: http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/news/news_releases/2013/12/verma/,  Also, whereas, it is, currently, generally believed that our physical bodies are more similar than different, recent discoveries are also calling that belief into question.  Further, without knowledge of the role of DNA in human lives, the modern scientists trying to determine the natures of either men or women are as handicapped as the proverbial blind men trying to describe what an elephant looks life!

With that, I end this blog.

Shirley Gallup