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 like a bar-room joke, a hostage to fortune if ever I –’
‘He’s a postmodern man.’
‘Eyes glaze at the word.’
‘Maana man, then,’ says Bill. ‘Like tomorrow, he never comes.’
‘But how can he be postmodern? Post-all-that’s-present. Post today? Post now?’
‘Post the present era. Us male humans are to be transformed. We’re all to be part one and part another: the world of both. It’s a world in which the dividing lines of opposition – oppression or competition – are no more. It’s a land of blur, of ambiguity. Little wonder the eyes cloud over.’
‘I get it,’ says Anne. ‘Postmodern means post men.’
Some cynics may doubt whether this gender-bending new postmodern man truly exists outside advertisements, women’s magazines and a few urban enclaves, but the ideal persists. It is based on the assumption of bisexuality: that within each of us lies both a male and a female nature, and that the male can be tamed by getting in touch with his feminine side. A man who succeeds in doing so will be less threatening, especially to women and gays, and it is hardly surprising that most of the strident headline pressure for men to cast off their old macho image and become sensitive, caring, new-model males stems from the women’s and homosexuals’ lobbies. Women and gays, after all, have most to fear from the old, unreconstructed male who can be intolerant, crude and show a frightening capacity for violence; the new man, if he can be fetched into existence, will be a much pleasanter creature. We have turned Professor Higgins’s question on its head. Now we ask why a man can’t be more like a woman?
The straight answer would be that it is not in most men’s nature to be like a woman, nor in hers to be like him. That assertion, however, ignores another fashionable belief which insists that our sexuality is not natural at all, but a social construct. This belief, which goes hand in hand with claims about bisexuality, insists that we all have the capacity to be heterosexual, homosexual or bisexual, and the only thing which determines our sexual orientation is social pressure. At first glance this might seem an odd assertion, but increasingly the western world is being driven by the belief, often enshrined in law, that the only differences between men and women, other