Recovering Collaboration between the Sexes

Some of my thoughts on generalizations about the sexes that may or may not be helpful

Searching for art this post, I enjoyed discovering the colorful and perceptive paintings of self-described “old soul” Peter Worsley. Support him here.

When I was a child, I was fascinated by boys. As a girl I was shy and interior and lacked athletic ability (the latter has not changed). I remember standing on the macadam of our grade school playground and watching the third-grade boys hurl those pink high-bounce rubber balls from one end of the parking lot to the other, a feat that amazed me, only to see them perform an even more miraculous feat: leaping into the air and catching those tiny missiles while they were still airborne. It still kind of amazes me, since I can’t catch any sort of ball to save my life, and I am still relieved that adult life in America usually doesn’t involve needing any sort of this ability.

I was also terrified of boys, and being neither pretty enough nor witty enough to be the object of attention for any of them throughout my growing up years, I observed them from a safe distance and had the most minimal actual interactions with them. Much to my annoyance, I ended up in an all-girl high school where I was forced to relate with girls and women, most of with whom I had very little in common. This was a Godsend, because it forced me to learn about women and how to associate with them, a skill I still rely heavily on today. I had no problem connecting with anyone—man or woman—who wanted to talk about ideas, especially big ideas like art, literature, philosophy, theology, political theory, psychology, or history. I had a harder time connecting with girls who wanted discuss shopping and the latest gossip, but thanks to my long-suffering female relatives, I learned how to navigate such conversations.

Women often connect over children. Painting by Peter Worsley.

As an adult, marriage and motherhood have provided a wonderful common plain of discourse for 80% of the women I meet, and keeping up with my professional writing career nearly covers the other 10%. The other 10% of women I encounter I find I can talk to about clothes, or gardens, or good deals online. I also learned how to become good at listening to women, and that pays dividends because you learn a lot! Not just about how to handle infant colic or cross neighbors or personality quirks or dietary allergies but also traveling tips, computer hacks, work personality challenges, marketing strategies—and oh yes, how to find good deals online. Women are by far the most complex and multi-layered of God’s creation, and learning to befriend and love them has been by far the most difficult of challenges for me.

Men, by contrast, are largely wonderfully simple and refreshing. By and large, they tend to say what they think, they mean what they say, and aside from talking about sports teams (which I still don’t really comprehend), they are usually interested in talking about ideas, forces, trends, or how stuff works. It took my final years of college to finally overcome my terror of talking to men but in the meantime, I enjoyed listening to them talk, especially about big ideas, and particularly when the conversation was humorous, and so I decided to arrange my life so I could continue to do so. I have been blessed with pleasant, collegial, and professional friendships with many men in publishing, apostolates, and creative endeavors over the years, most of which have involved discussing big ideas and implementing them. My primary male friendship is that with my husband of nearly 30 years, who is my best friend, biggest fan, harshest critic, and perennial collaborator.

I go over this highly personal history to explain my observations of men and women, which may be useful in approaching Culture Recovery because what I have found is that while there are so many things that unite men and women as human beings, their views and approaches are not identical but highly collaborative: they are meant to work together. It has also convinced me of the fallacies that arise when either men or women presume that their sex-specific view is normative, which may happen when women only collaborate with women — or men only with men. The Lord God obviously meant there to be a heavy and healthy cross-pollination of the sexes in the work of humanity, found most gloriously in the conception and raising of children, but found in so many other realms of human activity as well, and I have an uneasy feeling we are in danger of forgetting this in our polarizing, isolating, left-brain tilting world.

We Need Each Other.

Despite each sexes’ occasional gripe that so many problems could be solved if only the women would stop yapping or the men would stop and ask for directions, it’s becoming abundantly clear in our tribalizing and isolationist culture that so many problems will never be solved without the conversion of men and women and a joint agreement of civility and humility and cooperation. The problems facing us are vast and we need the genius of both sexes to tackle them.

Love this totally typical couple problem-solving together by Peter Worsley.

The following is some of what I found about our valuable differences. And of course, so much of the below I learned from others more articulate than I. And more could be said, and has been said by great minds like John Paul the Great in his Theology of the Body and by practical counselors like Willard Harley. I will not plumb those depths or attempt even to summarize their excellent insights, but instead write of those things I know to be true and which I experienced as the most helpful of revelations in my own life. I am sure that very little if any of it is completely original—but yet I must say it. (As Shakespeare’s Rosalind says: “Do you not know I am a woman? When I think, I must speak!”)

And of course individuals will always vary: these are meant to be generalizations. These differences are most apparent when considering the sexes in groups of ten or more. More men than women will tend towards X —and vice versa. And it is interesting to ponder how Christ encompasses and brings together both in His personhood.

Men value respect: women value love

Both men and women need both love and respect, but each sex prioritizes one over the other, if they must choose. As in all things, individuals may vary, but if they are forced to choose one over the other, more men than women will choose respect over love: more women than men will choose love over respect.

Couple with an interesting dynamic by Peter Worsley

This explains the tropes: the Mafia don or brutal gang leader who is feared but unloved. The abused wife or girlfriend of said don or leader who hangs on because she has love—but no respect. This can make men tyrants and women doormats—but of course, most of us don’t want to be either. This is because we understand that men and women each need both love AND respect. And in real life, this is what each sex can gift to the other.

I remember the few times I experienced the towering anger of my lovable dad as a child: “You children are going to listen to your mother!” I remember him roaring at us, in a rare display of anger. He was defending his wife from the crowd of surly disrespectful and back-talking children she was trying to raise. Because you see, women, left to themselves, will often just absorb disrespect. The nursing infant will pull their mother’s hair, push them or kick them, use them as a toy. Toddlers will climb all over a busy woman demanding her attention while she is talking or cooking. Older children interrupt and backtalk and even mock. Some women do demand respect from their children, but most of us just put up with it, especially when the children are younger. It’s usually dads who lay down the line. “You, son, will wait till your mother is done talking.” “Young man, you apologize right now.” “You are not talking to my wife like that, young lady.” A wise woman will let her husband defend her against her own children. He tends to be more sensitive for her need for respect, even if she is herself denying it.

It’s not only husbands who desire to see the women in their lives respected. This is the gift dads give their daughters: brothers their sisters: guy friends their girl friends: so often their advice is peppered with appeals to respect: “You are better than that…Don’t put up with that… Dress like you have dignity… That guy is a loser… your friends are using you…you deserve better!”

But men need love. “It is not good for a man to be alone,” said Someone Who should know. Men need love but often don’t know how to find it or may even deny their need for it (fearing to lose respect). Women remind them that there is more to life than respect, because they understand that love does not need to be earned. Love is freely given. Persons deserve love by being persons made in God’s image. Women can love the unlovable and delight in wooing and loving the grumpy, disagreeable, wounded, introverted, exhausted, incapacitated man, be he an infant or an elder sliding into disability, or anyone in between. Woman at her best and highest offers love and draws the isolated man into a circle of love: children who love him because he is Dad. Siblings who love him because he’s their brother. Family who loves him because he is son-in-law, cousin, uncle, grandfather, patriarch. Or even neighbors and friends who love him just because he is a neighbor or friend.

George Gilder famously explained in Men and Marriage how women transform a man’s experience of sex from a few moments of ecstasy to a lifetime of meaningful participation in gestation, birth, and child-rearing that fulfills men deeply and unexpectedly, literally improving their health, expanding their skills, and lengthening their lives.

Man and woman creating a family picnic: painting by Peter Worsley.

When St. Paul was summing up Christian marriage, He told husbands to love their wives—the way Christ loved the Church, emptying Himself and laying Himself down for her. One would expect him to then tell wives to love their husbands—but he doesn’t. He says, “Women, respect your husbands.” Why? Women will love the most worthless of husbands without being told to do so. But respecting one’s husband is harder for a wife, yet it fulfills the man’s primal need.

A man can survive without love—but he will wither away in the body or the soul— without respect. A woman can survive without respect—and many do. But she will starve on the inside if she is never loved. In Christian marriage God commands each of us to fill the other’s deepest need. That is the most primary job of a Christian spouse. And everything else follows from that.

Misunderstanding this command or refusing to fulfill it is tragic—or at least endlessly frustrating. I remember years ago talking with a friend who told me she was divorcing her husband. She detailed how he was bad with money, made poor decisions, yelled at the kids, but she still loved him. “But you don’t respect him?” “No,” she admitted. “I haven’t for a long time.” When I urged her to try again, she revealed that her husband had already been unfaithful to her. “We actually get along really well. He tells me he has tons of respect for me,” she said. “But he doesn’t love you?” “No,” she admitted sadly.

Love and respect—respect and love. Both are needed to create a marriage, a family, a society, a culture. The offerings of each sex are so useful and together so humanizing.

Men and Women and Humor

Once you accept that for better or worse, this is how men and women operate, it explains all sorts of interesting and apparently unrelated things. A few years ago on the Catholic internet, there was a debate as to who was funnier: men or women. I said, “Men, because they are funnier-looking.” (Which is actually true: the matrix of men’s physical features is more exaggerated and tends to extremes, while that of women’s is more consistent and symmetrical, which means that women have to work harder at the physical parts of comedy since they’re not as er, funny-looking.)

Respect is usually earned and earning it involves some degree of risk. The preference for respect may seem to explain at least part of the male fascination with competition, and many men can work off this drive for respect to create humor.

Humor turns on a very rapid chain of converging perceptions—that something you presumed or accepted is false, thus triggering an emotion —and you can choose either rage or humility in response. If you choose humility, you laugh. In other words, humor involves humility (and humanity). The reverse of humility is pride, and of course, pride can result in mocking laughter as well, or a mixture of both humility and pride, which is only human. The line between demanding respect and responding in pride is fragile, but humor dances precisely on that tightrope. Creatures who are constantly angling for respect—ie: most men—are more perceptive to the loss or gain of respect, and this often leads to them seeing or making jokes, and learning the humility to enjoy them.

Another reason men tend to be funnier is because they tend to be energized by playing off of a larger and larger audience (each time earning the chance to gain even more respect), which only encourages them to jump higher, reach further, keep the ball going. Whereas the female comic must learn to overcome the tendency to dial it down, back off, get less offensive, the more her audience grows. Again, there are few opportunities for girls to learn this skill from other women. I have laughed myself sick with a group of girlfriends before but I hesitate to repeat what was said to anyone who wasn’t there at the time. Whereas many times male humor translates outside the group because it enlarges naturally with the audience.

If you think of it, respect-driven competition mixed with the lightness of humor is also where play comes from. Girls love cooperative games—much of women’s interactions are diplomacy between queendoms, and you can see that in little girls playing house or re-enacting some story they all know. But boys, being interested in respect, want to create—and destroy—hierarchies. That’s what is commonly called “playing.” Anyone who’s watched the baby lambs on our farm play “king of the mountain” knows how this works. One male leaps up to a high place and everyone else tries to push him down and take his spot. The leaping up is a challenge to play, and sets up a competition the rest are eager to join or watch.

Since love is a serious business, and women seek to give and have love, women in general can be far more serious or intentional in their conversations, which can admittedly be a little too ponderous or emotional. And women making jokes to other women is far more risky, so many women never get the ample chance to perfect this skill. We often learn the lightness of play from men: as more than one expert has observed, mothers nurture their children: dads play with them. Both are needed.

And men’s incessant craving for respect/challenge/competition/humor also makes them far more interesting to watch. This may be why male sports and male athletic prowess garner larger audiences because the participants are more invested and failure is more crushing.

This is because women know instinctively that they are permitted to fail. Love does not mind when a person is weak. It’s actually fairly difficult for a woman to lose all social respect: there will always be someone who will pity her, no matter what horrendous thing she does or what catastrophic decisions she makes. This is because valuing love, she knows that she is insulated against complete psychological failure so long as she can convince herself that the people she truly loves love her back. Even if her queendom is ruined and reduced to one useless man, she can be happy.

Men have no such illusions. If you only play for respect, the danger is you can lose, and lose big, and never recover. Respect demands a public of some sort to judge and evaluate you. Hence the constant turning outwards, the inviting of competitions, even in leisure time, the fascination with risk and even useless or dangerous challenges.

In civilized and complex society, the hierarchy of respect among men need not be harsh, and might even be malleable: which is why I think men find following sports teams so enjoyable: the shifting hierarchy is endlessly interesting. Men can acknowledge that they are not as good in one area and are hence below others in that area while freely acknowledging their superiority in other areas.

But for a man whose entire identity is respect—especially young men—failure does not seem to be an option. Living dangerously means you can be a casualty. You can lose your respect and never get it back. You can fail so catastrophically that you can’t stand to look at yourself, and hence solitude must be pushed away with an addiction so you can’t face the judgment of your own soul.

Understanding this should give women sympathy for what men face as they strive to become men. For a girl to become a woman, all she has to do is… wait. For a boy to become a man, he must do. Something! Anything! Even something pointless or destructive, just to get attention, start a competition, and win.

I remember teaching one winter after a week where the weather had cancelled recess, standing together with a group of my fellow female teachers, staring in disbelief at the drop-tile ceiling of one classroom where, the janitor pointed out to us, were embedded various paperclips and pens and other tiny missiles hurled there with acute accuracy. We women were first stymied by the fact that those things were even buried in the ceiling, and then pondered how in the world anyone could find enough time and patience to perfect the skill of hurling something straight up at the correct angle and with such force—and we concluded—and I think we were correct: a group of bored girls left to themselves for a week of indoor recess might have done many destructive things, but not this…

It’s respect. Prioritizing respect leads to the endless generations of games, games that tend to be interesting to watch. “Women talk in twos: men in threes,” Chesterton said. My male high school students agreed immediately and one explained to me, “You need one guy to say, ‘hey, watch me do this,’ and another guy to say, ‘no way, I can do it better,’ and another guy to be the judge.”

Three men talking in a painting by Peter Worsley.

By the way, you just can’t tell women what to do, especially if you are also a woman. You have to suggest, advise, persuade, cajole, hint, finesse. Among married women especially, each one is a queen, mistress of her own domain, and one doesn’t interfere in such domains without careful diplomacy.

Which leads me to the corollary of the first proposition:

Women value fairness and men hierarchy

This is just the logical results of valuing love versus respect, and also reflect the roles women and men each inhabit. Again, individuals will vary, but these are generalisms that seem to reveal at least the pet peeves of each sex. Being a woman, I tend to hear women more often express their frustration that men are endlessly introducing competition into situations where the women want teamwork. In religious environments, women can slip into thinking such competition is inherently sinful, especially if they have never understood how men work.

Women are often put into situations where their job is to make everyone happy: whether it’s a group of co-workers trying to share the same cramped lunchroom, a sales team where everyone has to make the same contribution, a grumpy class of students of varying abilities and interest, or children of various ages from teen to infant. Especially when it comes to children, mothers strive to love their children equally, and this makes them sensitive to the variations or degrees of love. No mother wants to be accused of loving one child less than another!

Mapping these skills onto the rest of the world makes women favor democracy: a voice for everyone, a place for everyone. When Christ speaks of coming to seek and save the lost, the hearts of women attune to Him, because most of us don’t want to see anyone left out and will move heaven and earth—or at least furniture, carpools, and schedules—to try to include or accommodate everyone, and feel guilty if we can’t.

Shopping women by Peter Worsley. Each woman a queen in her own domain. Notice how their postures reinforce their carefully-maintained equality. But they are all poised and ready to help their friend find the perfect hairpiece.

And yet hierarchy is needed. Men seek it and orient themselves around it. When a woman walks into a space such as a train platform or a waiting room and sees one other person there—another woman—she will typically make an acknowledgement, anything from a nod to a glance to a smile and conversation. A man in that situation seeing another man tends to be more circumspect, especially if he knows nothing about the man and can’t tell anything from his appearance, and I want to hazard that the reason is because the man can’t figure out the hierarchy and waits until he can. The gauge appears to be roughly: is this other man equal to me, above me, or below me? Only if it’s clear that they are both on the same level will the man maybe offer a greeting or acknowledgement. If he senses the man is above him in some hierarchy, he will take pains to not bother him. If the man is below him, he might ignore him for the same reason. If the hierarchy between them is clear— say he recognizes the other man as his boss, or someone else’s father, or a priest—he may offer a courteous greeting. Or he recognizes the man as his employee, his friend’s son, or a parishioner, the same.

Again, individuals will vary! But this seems to be a rather marked difference in how men and women conduct themselves. Add to this that women tend to be more verbal and many men find talking stressful, and you may have situations where men may sit in the same waiting room with men they know and not say a word: which to women is incomprehensible and even rude. Much interaction among women is again, diplomacy among equals and queens, and women will go out of their way to avoid offending other women or even in any way outshining the women they love.

Men enjoy creating and challenging hierarchies. Some men make it a playful habit to state their superiority: this typically surprises women, because for them, it would be arrogant for a woman to state her superiority—to other women. “How dare she!” is what the rest are likely to think. It is as though she is asking for more than her share of love.

Whereas when a man announces that he’s the best at something, it’s usually understood by the other men as either a challenge or a simple statement of fact. (They may still resent it, but it’s not quite the faux pas it is for a woman among women.) Respect can be quantified and measured—love, being mysterious, is harder to assess since it more often than not involves emotions.

Because respect is more measurable, you can have a competition about it in which there are winners and losers that need not be personal. Whereas competition among women can degenerate into the personal—and is unfortunately more interesting when it does, as you can see on reality TV any day.

Without going too much down this road, I want to point out that in the divine economy God allows for both the fairness of democracy and the ambition of hierarchy. Baptism makes men and women equal, but beyond that, holiness is the race to be run. If one looks closely at the Church, one can see the balance, the swaying dance of both democracy and hierarchy at every level.

In America, you have equal rights with commensurate responsibilities and a vote—democracy. (Chesterton on democracy: “I still believe it would be the most human sort of government, if it could be once more attempted in a more human time.”) But there is also a need for citizens to work hard and excel meritocratically, especially because men are asked to take the brunt of the public work in a society. Sociologically most women choose to fulfill themselves by marrying and having children, stepping out of public life into the vital sphere of the home, and only foolish societies pretend this is not valuable work. Some degree of free markets seem to be necessary, because competition motivates men. And yet, there is still a need to keep it fair. That tangle is perhaps best covered in another piece, but I’m merely going to point out that, just as in personal interactions, in human society, there is a place for love and a place for respect—and all humans need both.

Family by Peter Worsley. Notice how the child harmoniously unites the gaze of her parents.

Women want to be generous: Men want to fill needs

Being motivated by respect, men hold back on interfering with other men. If a group of men is watching one of them do something, the last thing most of them will do is help. Sometimes they won’t even speak. They understand this is a de facto contest in which the man involved will, if he succeeds, earn respect, and they won’t dream of interfering because that would be to disrespect him. However, if it’s clear he NEEDS help, they will all leap to assist.

This group dynamic is rarely seen in women. If a group of women is watching a woman do something, they will all support her in some way, either by voicing encouragement or offering a hand. In fact, if the group of women were to not do this, the woman on the job would probably feel hurt or insulted. This is because women generally speaking look for opportunities to be generous or at least appear generous (hence fake compliments), and anticipate generosity from others. Because women are sensitive to layers, they understand that the first, “No, don’t bother,” might come from a generous desire to be self-sacrificing, so they will offer continuously. Acting generously is a chance to give and receive love, and women often presume this is the baseline for all human interactions.

Which is why men and women acting together frequently misunderstand each other. “Are you just going to stand there and not help?” the frustrated woman will yell at the man or boy watching her struggle. “Quit interfering! Get out of the way!” the distracted man will fume at his wife or sister who is trying to assist. What they see as love, he sees as disrespect. In the first example, what she saw as unloving behavior, the men saw as respect.

“Women think of love as taking trouble for others, whereas men think of love as not giving trouble to others,” C.S. Lewis opines in The Screwtape Letters, and this sums up much.

Again, here is where women and men can help one another. Women help men see needs where the needs are not apparent. This mission of womanhood is so foundational that it trespasses on the divine. Mary at the wedding feast at Cana approaches her Son—God and Lord of the Universe, the all-knowing, all-seeing, and shows Him the need: “They have no more wine.” Jesus, being True Man, responds, “What is this to me?” That puzzling comment from God, but a very male response: “And I should care about this…why?” We could ponder this for a very long time. Surely God is not as obtuse as a human man. So why was He behaving in such a trope-male manner? What does this say about God and how He wants us to react to Him?

Mary didn’t panic, nag, whine, try to fix the problem herself, or lose trust in her Man: she just collected the servers and told them, “Do whatever He tells you.” These are her final recorded words in Scripture. She showed Him the need and she made it apparent by bringing the servants that this was not something that the groom himself could fix: this was a genuine need but it needed to be handled tactfully and to save the face of the bridal couple and their family. And God responded—generously, with gallons and gallons of the best wine ever made. Because when the God-Man sees a need, He responds wholeheartedly and fully, thus giving us an example. If a woman shows a man her need, this is how the Christian man responds, like His Master.

This teaches women to ask men for help, to give men the specific permission they are respectfully waiting for, and to trust that men will step in when they see the need. This does mean that women need to spell things out because many men, who are being careful not to disrespect, and who may find many women’s complex layers of communication confusing, often delay purposefully until they are very certain as to what is expected of them, especially in today’s climate.

Painting by Peter Worsley. Notice how she holds the umbrella over him.

It does also mean that men need to be more attentive to women’s hints, and this was what the code of gentlemanly behavior was meant to supply: a tool for understanding and anticipating a woman’s need for generosity—opening the door, giving up one’s seat, offering a drink or to fetch something, paying a standard compliment. Abolishing the code was a sure way to ensure annoyance and frustration between the sexes, especially between strangers, co-workers, and acquaintances, and one useful culture-recovery tool for men would be to re-adopt this code.

It also can teach women to pay attention to a man’s accomplishments, especially if they are doing something that she asked them to do. When a man respects a woman, her praise means much, and her indifference stings. As the mother of small boys, I had to learn this quickly: how much attention—even negative attention—is meat and ale to a small male. It was a useful skill to learn—a win-win-win in every way. By paying complete and careful attention to my son as he enacted some feat of daring or skill or strength and to verbally reinforce what my full-bodied attention was already communicating—to recognize that this was really all it took to keep a boy happy and walking tall, something that took relatively little effort on my part and plus was enjoyable!—this was a mutually enriching experience.

And of course, it translates well into raising girls as well. In many areas of human activity, structuring activity to benefit the boys has the good effect of benefitting the girls as well. Because boys can compete and girls can enjoy the competition and even get involved themselves, as in the healthiest of playground games. As a small child, I would have been over the moon if one of the boys had invited me to play, taught me how to throw overhand or how to leap into the air to catch a ball. Fortunately the men—and women—in Catholic professional circles extended that invitation to me to play, to compete, to excel, and to work together for Christ.

For Christianity fully humanizes men and brings them into touch with the other half of humanity, women. Christianity teaches men to give of themselves generously and to love unconditionally. It enriches a woman’s experience by inviting her into the work of salvation and the adventure of mission, to demand respect for themselves and all humanity. It’s a healthy cross-pollination and leaning into our God-given gifts as men and women can transform our world for the good.

Beach concert by Peter Worsley. You can support his work by purchasing it here.