Recently, a woman I know experienced a medical event serious enough to have paramedics called, who then took her to hospital. Like many, if not most of us, I’ve seen this kind of thing before, but this time I had a reaction that really surprised me. Of course, my first reaction was a natural concern for her wellbeing. She was clearly in a lot of pain. Then I had a very strong emotional response, and found myself struggling to contain my emotions and to hold back the tears, and that was what really surprised me!
But maybe I shouldn’t have been…
How do you tolerate being still when your emotions come up? The way is very simple: you focus intensely on the present moment.
~Martha Beck
Once again, a rather timely arrival of a Compass Point from Martha.
Alison A. Armstrong is a favorite author of mine. One thing she talks about is how differently men and women are built. Women, she says, have diffuse awareness, giving them the innate ability to be aware of many things in her environment all at the same time. For example, when a woman enters her living room, if there are things out of place, she can experience it as though the living room is noisy and those “out of place things” would be yelling at her to put them back where they belong. Men, on the other hand, have single focus, meaning that men can think about and be aware of one thing, and only one thing at a time. In order to think about or do something else, men will stop what they’re doing, go through some form of transition ritual, and begin thinking about or doing the next thing. Men can’t see “out of place” things because they aren’t noisy to them, which helps explain their stepping over the socks and underwear on the floor beside the laundry basket. Of course these traits are “stereotypical” and no one actually fits a stereotype… instead, each person has their own unique expression of a combination of both gender stereotypes, at the same time. Some women and some men express a more feminine nature, while others express a more masculine nature, and some express somewhere in between.
Time for a little science…
Science thinks that what gives men and women such different ways of thinking, communicating, and behaving is, in part, due to the thickness of the tissues in our corpus colosseum, a wide, thick, flat bundle of nerve fibers connecting the left and right cerebral hemispheres, enabling communication between them. Recent brain research has shown that the thickness of corpus colosseum tissues in women is thin, while in men it’s thicker. And it appears that it’s the ratio between our sex hormones estrogen and testosterone that affects the thickness or thinness of our corpus colosseum’s tissues.
There’s a hypothesis that the thickness of our corpus colosseum tissues play an important role in the expression of stereotypical masculine and feminine traits: thinner tissues result in more expression of feminine traits, such as diffuse awareness, emotionalism, and communication skills, while thicker tissues result in more expression of masculine traits, such as single focus, competitiveness, and heroism.
Now, here’s nature’s little trick: as we age, our sex hormones begin to decline (unevenly), and that decline results in changes to the ratio between them, and the changes to the ratio results in the thinning or thickening of the corpus colosseum tissues, depending on gender. For women, beginning in peri-menopause, thanks to declining estrogen levels, the tissues of their corpus colosseum begins to thicken. For men, beginning when they enter “manopause” at around the age of 50-ish, thanks to declining testosterone levels, the tissue in their corpus colosseum thins.
So, declining levels in estrogen and testosterone, as in aging for example, affect the thickness of our corpus colosseum tissues, which in turn affects our expression of stereotypical gender traits. For example, women can begin expressing more masculine traits (think the Cougar stereotype), and men can begin crying at commercials and Hallmark movies when they weren’t so inclined before. I should point out here that women have a super power: they can express both feminine and masculine traits, with little or no effort at all, when they want or need to. The Second World War demonstrated this ability quite well… men were away at war so women needed to step into stereotypically men’s work while simultaneously caring for their family’s needs, and they did a bang up job of doing it too!
Interesting! But is it true? Is there some way to know without having to wait years and years for research to confirm that it’s a cause and effect relationship, or that it’s a correlation instead?
Maybe….
When I was a younger man, it was impossible for me to have more than one thing at a time I was thinking about. I had to stop thinking about one thing before I could think about another. Somewhere around my 58th birthday, I suddenly found that I could think about two things at the same time! And I began being much more emotional than I was for most of my life.
I have a friend who, as part of her treatment for breast cancer, was taking medications to suppress her estrogen levels, and consequently dramatically changed the ratio of her sex hormones. While she was taking those meds, her sexual appetite appeared to be much more masculine… and when she stopped the estrogen treatment, her sexual appetite seemed to have returned to her more feminine-esque behavior.
So, you see, my sudden ability to do two things at the same time, my weepiness during some commercials, my friend’s changes in sexual pursuits seem to show the hypothesis is visibly playing out in me, and the people around me.
I think it’s important to say here that both men and women equally desire sex, pursue sex, and express sexual desires and interests. The difference is in how or if we express them. We are all sexual beings and this nature cannot be made to go away through cultural or social oppression and/or suppression. Human nature offers us lots and lots of warning about the consequences of the suppression or oppression of our sexual nature, yours included. I suggest we all become aware of those consequences in more than a superficial way, put aside our myriad of cultural and social ideas, mores, and imperatives about our sexual lives, and healthfully live our sexual natures accordingly. Healthy, as opposed to cultural or social spin. It’s your sexual life, your sexual being, your sexual pleasure, your sexual everything to own and to healthily express, and it’s not the place of culture or society to suppress or oppress it or use it. The attempt to suppress, oppress, or use our healthy human sexual nature is destructive to living healthy lives.
What are you thoughts? Do you see this in your life, the lives of people you know? Or is this complete bunk? Drop me a line. I’d love to hear what you think, and what you know…
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