"Women need to feel loved and men need to feel needed." (Rita Mae Brown)
"She's a woman, you're a dude. You're not supposed to understand her. That's not what she's after.... She doesn't want you to understand her. She knows that's impossible. She just wants you to understand yourself. Everything else is negotiable." (Neal Stephenson)
Is it really impossible for a man to understand how a woman thinks? On the other hand, is it possible for a woman to really understand how a man thinks?
In any relationship, understanding is an important aspect (building block), (including the relationship we have with/to ourselves), but does gender actually play a role?
When the book "Men are from Mars, Women from Venus" by John Gray was released, it caused quite a stir, some thought it insightful and helpful, others....not so much.
"Dr Kellie Burns, a gender expert from the University of Sydney welcomed the new research as an important step in challenging ideas around gender. “This research confirms something we already knew”, she says. Gender difference "is an outmoded and limited way of seeing relationships and I think it is an easy way to operate within relationships because it justifies behaviour and patterns in some relationships. I think that science is used to justify gender difference as natural but there is resounding evidence that our culture, society, norms, expectations, customs and ideologies play the most significant role in shaping the gender order.” (Sydney Morning Herald/Life style)
Whether we are men or women, we are human beings. If we define what may be difficult in a relationship by "gender" we may not be able to get to the core of the issue(s) which may have nothing to do with gender and more to do with communication. Some examples:
"Oh, don't start with the waterworks, you women always start crying to get your own way" he says.
"What do you mean, I am crying because I feel hurt by what you said" she says.
"Oh, that's right, walk away, you men never want to talk about your feelings" she says.
"No, I am not walking away because I don't want to talk about my feelings, I am walking away because I feel angry and I don't want to say something that may hurt your feelings" he says.
Expressing in words how we feel may be difficult, but not because of our gender but because we
find it hard to do so. Some of us may have no trouble in expressing our feelings, perhaps because we are very in tune with our feelings, but some of us may find feelings confusing and don't really know how to express what we feel. If we as children are encouraged to speak openly and safely about how we feel, then whether we are one or the other gender doesn't matter. Feelings, in my view, are not gender specific. A man may have a hard time in expressing his feelings, but not because he is a man, but because he was never taught/encouraged/showed, how to do so. A woman may find it easy to express her feelings, not because she is a woman, but because she grew up in a home that encouraged a child to express his/her feelings.
A society's definition of what constitutes the masculine or the feminine, (man/woman) often fail to capture the essence of a being; how we truly feel, behave, and/or define ourselves.
It can be tempting to adhere to stereo-typical gender roles; Women are: soft, dependent, emotional, passive, self-critical, quiet, et cetera. Men are: tough-skinned, independent, non-emotional, aggressive, self-confident, competitive, et cetera. But in doing so, we risk excluding the individual.
We may see the gender, but not the individual person, we may expect a certain behaviour/personality to fit with our perception, rather than seeing the person for who she/he really is.
Our gender, may I suggest, consist of a composite of beliefs, characteristics, genetic dispositions, behaviours, and personal experiences, more so than our sex organs. If we desire to simplify the complicated dance between men and women, perhaps a good starting point may be to look past gender and see the human being.
"Love is based on a two way communication and respect, and that only exists between equals."
(Anselma Dell'Olio)
"It is time that we all see gender as a spectrum instead of two sets of opposing ideals."
(Emma Watson)
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