(Before we continue)
In the first part of this essay we discussed the differences between men and women as outlined in Scripture, and as we move on to the next part, where we talk about the scientific side of things, I would like to make a brief statement about his paper. This paper espouses the complementarian view (as opposed to the egalitarian view) of the relationship between men and women, which holds to the idea the men and women are made differently, and that our various differences complement each other. Men and women each have different characteristics and attributes that set us apart, and this is a part of God’s good order and plan; consequently, the strengths of the man often complement and help the weaknesses of the woman, and the strengths of the woman often help complement the weaknesses of the man. This makes for a beautiful synergistic relationship when each respective role is respected and done right. Finaly, I wish to be very clear about something: It is my position, and the position of this paper, that even though men and women are different, and therefore not equal in role or purpose, we are equally made in God’s image and therefore are equal in value and dignity before Him.
What does scientific evidence tell us?
So last time we looked briefly at what God says about being human in His Holy Scriptures, but what about the natural realm; is there any physical and quantifiable evidence that we can look at that can back up what the Bible says, mainly that men and women are, in fact, different? Well besides anatomical differences – the average differences in height, weight, and bone-density, levels of crucial hormones such as testosterone and estrogen (which affect all of these factors), the human pelvis being sex-specific and distinguishable between men and women, and the fact that men and women have completely different sexual organs and sex chromosomes – there is also an overwhelming amount of evidence that men and women perceive the world differently.
Leonard Sax M.D., Ph.D., is a psychologist and family physician who was a practitioner in his field for around 20 years. As a family doctor he saw countless patients and found that there were typically differences between his female and male patients (despite what he had been taught in university); these differences form the focus of his book Why Gender Matters. In this book he points out that there are noticeable and measurable differences between the sexes when it comes to behavior, like aggression and risk-taking, and concrete senses, like vision, hearing, and smell. On the behavioral side of the things, he found that boys were much more likely to take risks than girls, especially in front of other boys, while girls were not. Boys were also much more likely to report that doing something dangerous was exhilarating and fun, whereas girls were more likely to report feelings of fear or discomfort associated with risk. Boys and girls also see aggression differently; boys engage in acts of aggression with each other much more often than girls do, and when boys do so, they will often strengthen their relationships with each other through them, whereas girls will more often lose friendship over acts of aggression.
For more concrete differences, Sax discusses the 3 bodily senses: sight, smell, and hearing; his research on this is fascinating. Apparently, women have a much better sense of smell than men do, and this is a bio-chemical reality that can be measured and observed: women have 16.2 million cells, on average, in their olfactory bulb (the part of the brain that is responsible for smell), comprised of 9.3 million glial cells and 6.9 million neurons, whereas men have 9.2 million cells on average, comprised of 3.5 million neurons and 5.7 million glial cells . This is a huge disparity between the sexes, and is quantifiable and tangible. Women and girls also differ in their sense of hearing from boys and men, having greater sensitivity, on average, to sound. On average, boys need a sound to be 8 decibels louder for them hear it than girls do . Vision is a little bit different, rather than girls and boys differing in visual ability, they differ in what they perceive and prioritize. Girls are better at perceiving things like color, texture, and detail, and are therefore more interested in “what” is in a picture, whereas boys are better at perceiving motion, and are therefore more interested in “where” things are and what things are doing. You see, our visual system can basically be broken up into two separate systems, the “what system,” that focuses on detail, and the “where system,” which focuses on motion; as it turns out, girls have more resources devoted to the “what system” and boys have more resources devoted to the “where system.
These are only but a few of the difference that are mentioned in this book by Dr. Sax, but they serve to show that men and women, boys and girls, are truly different in many regards. Even looking at just a few of these differences can help us as men and women respectively, because we are different and we see the world differently, including each other. If men and women refuse to recognize the differences between each other, the struggle between us will just continue to worsen. We must recognize these visible, tangible, and testable differences and quite making the mistake of trying to say that the differences are not real or that they are simply social constructions. The final part of this paper will briefly deal with this concept, and then discuss the idea of what this means for us in the Church.
