move from a time of sharply drawn lines to a time where the line drawn is against the drawing of lines. Fifty years ago a man was expected to play the dominant role; expected, if successful, to provide for his wife and children. Today the great expectation is of a sexual parity at home and at work, in the ways we relax and in the games we play, in our learning and in our parenting. Lines of demarcation, present for millennia, are being blurred.
The traditional male draws lines too tight, with himself as the norm. Postmodernism denies the existence of any lines, yet to deny the existence of the major sexual differences (always done, of course, in the name of toleration) is to play the most dangerous gender game. Those who believe that our differences are all culturally caused wish to eradicate those differences. Their burning ideology is to eliminate the distinct in society. There are historical antecedents, rooted in the conviction that we are all one; if you disagreed you were placed beyond the pale, and beyond the pale lay the cleansing fire with its waiting stake.
‘Failing to draw the line,’ says Anne, ‘they give equal voice to the absurd.’
‘Which is to say themselves,’ says Bill.
The new orthodoxy claims that there is no distinctive male mind – nor, indeed, a distinctive female mind. The old demarcation between him and her has been replaced with a muddling whirl of complex and shifting social assumptions.11 A reverence for equity in all things has dulled the critical faculties. ‘You can’t generalize about people.’ ‘You mustn’t stereotype people.’ ‘All generalizations are misleading [except, of course, this one].’ ‘We are all different’ [a safely vacuous remark to which is often added] ‘but not that different’ – which is to collapse meaning. Such claims are good ways to paper over cracks; but they hardly lead to understanding.
Return, for a moment, to the postmodern ideal of a man. He rejects the old traditional male assumptions, preferring to recognize the existence within himself of female virtues: co-operation, tolerance, non-judgementalism and an instinctive acceptance of equality (meaning sameness). O brave new world, that has such creatures in it. Get rid of the artificial lines and how the barriers will fall! There will be no more ‘glass ceiling’ (the barrier traditional males erect against female success), no more ‘homophobia’ (the barrier which encourages heterosexual males to treat gays as lesser beings). The lion, lioness and lamb are all one.
But suppose this postmodern ideal is wrong. Not morally wrong, but scientifically wrong. Suppose, perish the thought, that there are lines, not drawn by society but etched by blind, uncontrollable nature. Lines as ineradicable as the leopard’s spots. Lines drawn by biological forces.
That is the subject of this book, which attempts to explain the findings of current scientific research into gender differences. The assumption of the book is not that ‘we are all the same’, but rather that we are distinctly different. That to be a man is not to be an inferior version of a woman, nor a better version, but to be what nature intended. This is not to say that a man (or woman) cannot change, but it is to claim that there are constant masculine values. The postmodernists want men to change, to become, indeed, more like women; when men constantly fail to live up to their expectations it should be allowed that the expectations themselves might be false, and here science can be of assistance.
Science can help because it sets certain limits to the probable. Like an accurate record of the past (postmodernists, of course, claim that no such thing is possible), science is a benchmark as to what is improbable. Science offers a large measure of explanatory power. The probabilities of science, like the events of the past, are impervious to the human will. You might wish the earth were the centre of the universe, but blowing out every last birthday candle will not make the sun revolve about the earth. You might wish men and women to be the same, but the scientific evidence suggests your wishes are fantasies. Men and women possess different neural nets, hormonal systems and neurotransmitters – splendid differences that make the sexes distinct.
A discrete body of knowledge is building up. Evidence is being brought together from mainstream science – from psychology, psychiatry, neurophysiology, endocrinology – and the sum of the evidence suggests that men and women are different. It does not suggest that one is better than the other, it makes no claims for ‘equality’, it simply describes the differences. To understand those differences is to understand each other. Mutual respect can only be based on a clear-eyed acceptance of sexual difference; not on their denial. To insist on sexual sameness – to be blind to male, female or homosexual characteristics – is the sexism of the late 20th-century intellectual. Victorian prudes would be delighted with the postmodern refusal to face up to the physical basis of sexual difference.
Those who look forward to the social transformation of human nature often reject science when it suggests certain things are unchangeable. If something, say a biological finding, does not square with an aspiration, then the science must be rejected, or its findings must be vigorously (though unscientifically) rebutted. Thus those who believe that gender differences are socially caused damn the science that finds otherwise. Yet science moves on and those left behind are voluntarily removing themselves from the real debate.
There is more to life than the social and biological. Awe, love, virtue … so much more. We do not hold, as many do, that the beast lies at the root of humanity. We can all learn to tell right from wrong, learn when not to yield to the primal urge to care only for the family, and learn when not to go along with the social norm. Humans can rise above mob and mafia. We tell of the biology which swims within us and, equally, of the social environment in which we swim, so that men and women might rise above both.
He’s Not Part One, Part Another
We hear a lot these days about the ‘new man’. He is more sensitive than the older model, more ready to help about the house or to spend time with his children. He is civilized, de-clawed and gentle. He can still be strong, of course, but his strength is manifested by patience and emotional warmth. This paragon sounds suspiciously like a female; indeed, it is often said that the new man is ‘in touch with his feminine side’. The supposed compliment betrays a fin de millnium unisex ideal. It is RuPaul, supertransvestite, advertising M.A.C.’s Viva Glam lipstick (all profits to an AIDS charity). It is Generation X – with a splash of Calvin Klein’s CKOne – cruising the line between sexual identities and possessing the best traits of both with none of the old male’s inconvenient faults.
Today New Man is updated by another: Postmodern Man, the new man dressed to the hilt in academic theory. He is also a sharing, softer sort of guy, less competitive than the traditional male, and at home with his amorphous sexuality. He too is meant to be in touch with his female side. It might seem, then, that there is a biological component to his makeup. But no, he is entirely moulded by social forces. He is a human object of whom no part is given by nature. Postmodern man is a boy-child of intellectuals who teach gender studies. New man is a creation of popular feminism, media hype and out-of-touch copywriters. What is common to both postmodern man and new man is that they are aspirational figures: neither exists outside the academic mind or Gucci perfume ads. There is one big obstacle to the whole theoretical caboodle: a realistic account of sex differences will close the door on the intellectual postmodern republic.
‘My squeeze, what do you call a guy who irons a blouse?’
‘I don’t know,’ says Anne. ‘I’ve never met one. But this sounds
