Men and women are different in many ways, this much is clear. Some of these differences are intrinsic because of biology, while others aren’t. Despite these differences, men and women can still find compatibility. But some other times, relationships end because of gender differences, but some traits are tolerated more easily than others. I think this has a lot to do with the human fabricated division between gender characteristics that are biological, and those that are mental.
A lot of the time, I find that when a man and a woman are in a relationship, both of them complain about an aspect of the other person that is for the most part inherent to their gender. ie: he wants sex too often, she wants cuddling too often. But what’s funny to me is that rarely do couples complain about biological differences between them, only mental differences. A man might see very affection focused as a deal breaker, but not the fact that a woman has a period for instance. Or an example with women, deal breaker if they think he’s too horny, but if she had a problem with how much he sweats, it isn’t likely to be a deal breaker. This is very interesting regarding humanity and what we deem as controllable and not controllable – or really, what we are able to choose about ourselves. For some reason, humanity separates the tangible biological events like sweating and periods, from those of the brain like libido and affection. This seems to me like a strange divide to make, since what is the brain if not biological? It is run solely by hormone secretions, neurotransmitters, nerve signals sent from all over the body, etc. I don’t see where choice comes into play there. We can’t choose our brain, unless we feel compelled to ingest large amount of hormones for whatever reason (I don’t agree with doing this because I don’t think humans know enough about the brain to start messing with hormone levels to try to fix something they think is “wrong” with a person’s brain, but that’s another topic). So why do we judge so harshly the feelings that come from hormones and instincts of our respective genders? I don’t see myself (and many other women) feeling like I don’t really desire affection any time soon, much like many men probably won’t see themselves desiring sex any less. This isn’t our fault. This is simply the way nature engineered us.
I’m not at all saying that we shouldn’t judge the actions of people, just that their thoughts are their own, and how is it somehow better to want affection over sex or vice versa? Neither is morally better or worse than the other. Both are very natural processes, and rarely result in harm of another human being. These differences in relationship needs are very tied to gender, most likely because of the different hormone levels and/or instincts so it makes no more sense to judge a person’s relationship feelings than it does to say “you’re evil because you have a period” or “it’s sinful to grow facial hair” It makes no sense to make moral judgements on a person’s thoughts, especially when they’re so heavily linked to our genders. So in my mind at least, when women expect men to be less focused on sex, or men expect women to be less snuggly and affectionate, in essence they’re expecting that they become more like their own gender (being gay for the win? XD) which is an unrealistic expectation and kind of a silly one.
As a concluding remark, I’ll say that these judgements shouldn’t happen because as well as the reasons I said above, promoting tolerance is a very good goal to have. If we don’t promote tolerance, we are promoting prejudice. I’d rather have the former over the latter.
This post was submitted by pengu.