What Ever Happened to the Opposite Sex? Part II: Gender Is a Social Construct?

Part I of this series, examined the complementary between the sexes and compared it to the complementarity in the Trinity,

One of the great buzz terms of our time is “toxic masculinity.” Like all buzz words and terms, it is, more often than not, inappropriately used—perhaps even inappropriately conceived.

Of men and women, the venerable Servant of God Fulton Sheen said, “Men give love to women to get sex; women give sex to get love.” On the surface, his statement—taken out of context—could be taken to mean that men are simply emotional opportunists, that for them, romance is only a ploy, a means to a selfish end (toxic masculinity?). An equally derisive interpretation could be applied to a woman who would “give sex to get love”; is she so needy that she sees herself as unlovable unless she surrenders her body for a little affection?

But the saintly Sheen, as much a romantic as a realist, meant quite simply that men and women are motivated differently, and that we need not only to understand that motivation but to understand how the Trinity and sanctifying grace fit into the equation. In his 1951 book Three To Get Married, he tells us that,

To love what is below the human, is degradation; to love what is human for the sake of the human, is mediocrity; to love the human for the sake of the Divine, is enriching; to love the Divine for its own sake is sanctity.

He goes on to say, “Love is trinity; sex is duality.” For Sheen, God is love, and our connection to the divine is always transforming.

In the first part of this series, we examined the complementary between the sexes, and I compared it to the complementarity in the Trinity, specifically between the Father, who is love personified; the Son, the Word, who is truth personified; and the Holy Spirit, who is generated as the spiritual passion of love for truth and truth for love. In that exercise, I saw man as the reflection of the Word made flesh, and woman as the reflection of perfect love, the reflection of the Father, the creator, and the Holy Spirit as the operating principle of divinely-guided marital passion. Let’s try to apply this explanation to real-world experience.

In current woke culture, is there anything more despised than an alpha male? Those of us raised on a farm know that more than one bull in the herd of cattle means trouble; both will attempt, by violent means, to put themselves in the position of the sole breeding machine. While this is not (let’s hope) an expectation in the realm of humans, there certainly remains an alpha male drive, a competition for leadership roles among men, or at the least, a drive to earn the respect of one’s peers, perhaps even to win the hand of the prettiest girl.

Currently, for some segments of our society, anything resembling normal male competition and drive is quickly labeled “toxic masculinity.” And while there is certainly plenty of faux masculinity that is plenty toxic, it hardly makes sense to apply such a term to normal male drives.

What about competition between women? In my experience, quite a different scenario plays out for the fair sex. At one point in my career, I had a management role wherein I supervised a group of machine operators that was nearly entirely male, and another group, in a separate room, of machine operators that was predominantly female.

In the area with mostly men, there was, expectedly, a struggle for male dominance. But the group that was largely women was a new challenge for me. What I was soon to discover was that a struggle for dominance would never be a concern; instead, there was the never-ending struggle for territory.

I could move men from machine to machine, task to task, and their immediate goal was to master the task and earn the respect of me and their peers but moving any of the women from one task to another was often perceived as a threat or judgment of some sort.

As the wood-products industry is challenging and dynamic, such moves were inevitable and often involved tears. The ladies wanted to know why they were being moved; what had they done wrong? It came to be somewhat routine, and I learned to manage expectations, theirs and mine, but I also began to do everything in my power not to disturb the nests that they had made so that I might keep them happily moving product through those nests. Their work ethic was great and the quality of their work exceptional when their needs for approval and security were met.

I know that it will be argued that these differences can be explained by enculturation; that they are not necessarily innate. Fair enough. The women that worked for me in this situation were, indeed, largely wives and mothers—homemakers whose families needed some extra cash. But the word enculturation is bantered about as though it is a four-letter word.

To be clear, homo-sapiens are a species with extremely low levels of natural instinct. It is no exaggeration to say that, without the enculturation of feminine and masculine roles, our survival as a species would be nigh impossible. The enculturation of methods and values concerning birthing, nursing, childcare, and the rearing of children are beautiful, necessary traditions. We are an animal/spirit composite—simple instinct can never fully meet our needs.

Enculturation is a survival necessity, but not all are created equal. What is the “feminist” insistence on the legal ability to kill unborn children if not enculturation gone stark raving mad? Killing our unborn is certainly not the product of natural instinct. Seriously, could anything be less feminine? The hard question is not whether or not certain gender attributes are the product of enculturation, it is a question of the relative value of that enculturation concerning the survival and thriving of the race.

That being said, there are, indeed, biological differences of which to be mindful. In an interview on SVT TV (Sweden), psychologist Jordan Peterson explains that, though Scandinavia is culturally, concerning the sexes, more egalitarian than most places on earth, that egalitarianism has actually maximized the differences between the sexes when it comes to things like career selection. Simply put, the place with the greatest equality of opportunity has the greatest difference in outcome.

Why is that? Peterson explains that

There are only two reasons that men and women differ; one is cultural, and the other is biological and if you minimize the cultural differences you maximize the biological differences…on average, men are more interested in things and women are more interested in people.

He goes on to explain that, more than anywhere on earth, nearly all nurses in Scandinavia are women (interested primarily in people) and nearly all engineers are men (interested primarily in things).

Interesting but obvious. I mean, we say that “The difference between men and boys is the price of their toys.” We have no reciprocal saying for women and girls, and that is not the case just because of a rhyming challenge. Men are more interested in things, but they’re also more interested in social standing among peers. For the man, his boat, snowmobile, four-wheeler, jet ski, car, pickup, guns, fishing gear, guitars, etc. ad infinitum, besides being things that he likes, are emblematic of his standing.

Women generally don’t care so much about standing as they do about validation; about fitting in, about having a place within the sisterhood. Women, the nest builders, are the primary drivers in home-buying decisions. In fact, women agents dominate the real estate industry. I’m reminded of the lyrics to an old Van Morrison song, “Wild Nights”:

And all the girls walk by
Dressed up for each other

I think old Van nailed it. Acceptance. Validation. And competition—not to lead, but to stand out, to be noticed, perhaps even envied by peers, and sought after by men.

I happen to love all things naturally feminine, from girly giggles to grandmotherhood, and I deeply respect Christian cultural femininity—virginity, spousal fidelity, purity, sanctity, and Christian sisterhood. I’m also very fond of the cultural peripherals: dresses, skirts, scarves, lace, ruffles, beads, bows, perfume, pumps, pastels, pink, and flowered prints. It is not that women need decorating; it’s that creation’s greatest works of art deserve suitable framing. Scoffers equate the cultural with the artificial, all while substituting their own anti-instinctual enculturation for that of the ages.

Returning to the discussion about the two groups that I supervised, I think it is fair to say that some women would be found to be more driven to dominance than are some men and that some men are far more protective of their turf than are some of their lady counterparts—plenty of anecdotal evidence suggests that it is so—and it is right and good that we not practice stereotype tyranny. And yet, in our day-to-day dealings, we cannot afford to dismiss either the average or the extreme—statistically, the outlier or the mean—the instinctual or the enculturated.

And what of that fascination with “toxic masculinity”? A huge part of macho culture is adolescent in nature; that is, an effort to impress peers by getting away with stuff—pseudo courage: a dare wherein the more outlandish the deed, the greater the courage. I believe that this chest-thumping is also what drives a disdain for safety gear. Especially where we winter in Mexico, tradesmen don’t need no stinking dust masks, safety glasses, gas masks, welding helmets, rubber gloves, or painter’s tape—even when you supply them, they may not use them. Oft times, this nonsense is little more than annoying, but at its worst, it feeds a cultural glorification of thugs and drug cartels and also feeds the notion that philandering is admirable. This is true toxic masculinity—a reckless game of standing.

Odd, misplaced, machismo manifestations of male competition and the need for peer approval are, of course, not limited to Latin American culture, and there are good, wholesome men to be found everywhere. It would seem that the proper directing of this obviously deep-seated need bears a tremendous burden for the promotion of peace and prosperity. And what is that proper directing?

To answer that question, I will begin with a question: who are the more romantic, men or women? And toward answering that, I ask another: who is more likely to commit suicide after a breakup? And another: who is most likely to nurture their emotional ills with drugs and alcohol?

The answers, of course, are well known—men do not handle rejection from their wives or lovers well at all. Noting male/female differences in blood flow to the part of the brain that processes emotion has prompted some brain scientists to claim that a woman has a four-lane super highway for processing emotion, compared to a man’s bumpy dirt road.

Are women emotionally tougher than men? If, in fact, I am right about women being more territorial than men, I venture that, for a truly romantically-committed man, his woman is the entirety of his territory. Save for those perpetually adolescent men hopelessly lost to the delusion that philandering improves their social standing, she is also the top tier of his bragging rights among his peers. She is his everything—his trophy wife. Returning again to our Trinitarian analogy, she is for him the personification of love in his life. Yes, men are prone to placing their woman on a pedestal. Get used to it.

Women, of course, are committed to their spouses, but I venture that a woman’s approach is more nuanced, more practical if you will; no pedestal required. Woman sees man as part of the larger picture. He is a huge part of her territory, but not the totality of it, for her territory is a nest, and nests are designed for comfort, security, and offspring. He is the truth about the love that she is in his life. His taking her as his own and his proclamation of his love for her is a flag planted firmly on her turf that tells the world that she is desirable and trustworthy, a sovereign territory that stands conquered by his love.

When that relationship is uprooted, he will perceive his loss more deeply than she, and will not be as well-equipped to deal with it. If all husbands were to love their wives deeply with a holy passion and to honor the nests those women have made—and of course the product of that holy passion, the children who have been nourished in those nests—it would arguably solve most of the world’s problems, as it places the male drive in proper context and yields fulfillment.

But, then, what’s the deal with “chick flicks?” Men like action movies, movies about heroes. If making the case that, in a relationship, men are more emotionally invested, more all-in so to speak—why are they not the ones constantly immersing themselves in emotion?

Simply put, it seems that a man’s emotional capital is limited. He struggles. He goes all in with what he has, and doesn’t have a lot of remaining capital to throw around; he doesn’t flirt with emotional rollercoasters. Emotion cannot entertain him in the same sensational way that it does a woman, who deals with it in a teary burst—a guttural sighing release—and then moves on.

Besides, he is busy parading the flag, blowing the bugle, and circling the wagons. Unfortunately, sometimes he is so busy with his own fulfillment, that he fails to see that, for his wife, romance is more than a commitment; more than a one-time, all-in investment.

For him, it is a foundation; for her, a minimum daily requirement which, if not met, will leave her malnourished. It seems that the ability to process emotion is directly proportional to the need to do so. Three out of every four divorces are initiated by women, often because they are emotionally starved.

Complementarity is beautiful in concept, but a lot of hard work in practice; work made easier by the fulfillment of the Trinitarian model: by the power of divine passion—the Holy Spirit—in our lives.