Womanly Men

Womanly Men

I have argued that all men are biologically women to some degree, because of pregnancy and child rearing.[1]This should have implications for psychology: male psychology should include a female psychological component. Do we see any sign of that? We can certainly imagine a species much like us except that the males are psychologically more markedly female than in our own species. Imagine the men always dressing in women’s clothes, or wanting to spend more time with their children, or being less violent (whatever traits you think are more characteristically female). But is anything like this true for the human species? Well, we do observe some tendency to cross-dressing and attention to domestic duties (assuming these to be characteristic of women). The interesting point is that the opposite is not true: we don’t find many women with an urge to cross-dress and ignore the state of the house. They don’t have characteristic male traits (whatever we take these to be). The reason is that their psychology doesn’t include male psychology as derivative from male biology; they don’t engage in male role-playing, as men engage in female role-playing in the course of procreation. Thus, there is no biological reason to possess any hint of male psychology. Males have a biologically based propensity to share their psychology with females, but the same is not true of females with respect to males. Is this why we don’t find women flocking to drag shows in which they dress up flamboyantly as men? They don’t put on a man’s suit and regard themselves as fabulous. Men are part female psychologically, but women are all female psychologically. The former must act the female part in child production, but the latter never act the male part (depositing sperm in another body and being free to roam away from the fetus). Men may wake up one day feeling a touch female, because they know a baby is on the way; but women don’t ever wake up feeling male because they have had a miscarriage. Women don’t slip into a male psychology at some natural point in their lives. Male elephants have an inner female elephant inside them, but female elephants don’t return the compliment.[2]

[1] See “Are Men Women?”

[2] I was prompted to write this note by seeing the actor Jim Parsons on TV, promoting his new show on Broadway; he remarked that he couldn’t wait to get into women’s clothes. I mention elephants because of a documentary I just watched about orphaned elephants and their human foster parents; they were as emotionally sensitive as any human being, and no doubt elephants have the psychology I am talking about—motherly fathers but no fatherly mothers. The genes see a lot of point in the former trait, but none in the latter. (Elephants, by the way, are lovely creatures, despite their forbidding appearance.)