I had sent, to a friend of mine, this link about males being hardwired and hence emote differently from females. She replied that usually both boys and girls were similar in showing their emotions till the age of 5 and then everything changes - their choice of game, their way of handling things around them as well as emotions.
She asked me: if their (boys) brain are wired differently then why were boys emoting the same way as girls till the age of 5? Meaning where is the hardwired difference in the early ages?
She told me that she always felt that boys learn to emote differently because of the nurture and it was not hardwired. She was amused that most of the men or boys emote similarly.
Having set the stage for the discussion I would request you to read the link. It's awesome.
Now my take on this issue:
Male hard-wiring of poor communication and anger etc are not seen at a very age probably because all children communicate poorly. Well there are toddlers, even males, who have exceptional vocabulary and they go on, when they become adult men, to communicate as well as any woman.
Quote from P.G. Wodehouse, Uneasy Money: "At the age of eleven or thereabouts women acquire a poise and an ability to handle difficult situations which a man, if he is lucky, manages to achieve somewhere in the later seventies."
But the average male is hindered from good communication. And the details are explained in the link about which my friend raised her questions.
Anger and crying are kinda similar... Boys are taught not to cry and women not to show rage or anger. Hence to some extent men tend to stifle their sobs and women their anger and this is partially due to nurture. Anger needs energy as a raw material. Males have more energy and more anger. Look at any woman with exceptionally high energy and look at her anger level. You will agree that anger comes from energy and its at least partly due to nature. Can you make a deer or cow really angry? Have you seen anger in a lion or tiger?
Anger is men's way of expressing discomfort and unhappiness. It's like an animal's emotion. They cant express / communicate well and hence they show it as helpless anger. Women, with far better communication skills, can make their discomfort shown without raising their voice. For more details see the "interesting scene" in the movie 22 Shey Shrabon. It's in Bengali and I think without English subtitles. But if you focus on the scene where lady, in the middle of a discussion with her man, gets out of the car and walks off you can see how well contempt is shown (you may not need to understand the dialog). Only an F(eeler) can show that. Males can't show contempt easily.
Now if you cannot show contempt what other resort do you have? Anger only, despite being an inferior alternative. Now you can relate to PG Wodehouse's quote shown above.
Males show anger or violence when they are upset. Crying on the other hand is the feminine equivalent of anger. And it's socially accepted for a woman to cry than for a man to show anger. Many a times men do not show their rage, they suppress it. Were they to display it, it would shows ill breading.
How well we women have molded the world our way and still continue to bitch that its a man's world?
Basic character like touchiness, generosity are more innate than nurtured is my belief. External manifestations like hiding anger or displaying more sweetness, saying sorry and thanks etc can be taught.
The final question is: what is the master list of our traits that cannot be changed much? This is such a painful topic for the believers of nurture theory.
No comments:
Post a Comment