Complementarity Of The Sexes...

I have argued for many years against the prevalent wisdom of the day which declares that equality of the sexes means that they are the same. As a teacher, I have had plenty of opportunity to observe differences in the attitudes (and aptitudes) of the boys and girls I teach, and, while recognising that there is a "nurture" effect, I also note plenty of evidence in support of the argument that men and women are very different by nature. Dr. Joseph Shaw has an excellent article on how the sexes complement each other.

On a purely biological plane, this complementarity is obvious, and I am not merely referring to reproductive systems. The proportion of muscle in a man's body is higher than that of a woman's - and the proportion and distribution of fat in a woman's body is very different to that in a man's body. This means that men and women are not equal in physical strength or ability.

The truth of this is recognised even in the sporting arena - there are very few sports where men and women compete on totally equal terms - men's tennis matches, for example, are longer, and you don't have men and women on the same football team... or, if you do, this is very much the exception to the rule, and the women concerned have had to work very hard indeed to overcome any disadvantages they have due to the differences in muscle mass.

I got to see this difference in ability in action yesterday and this morning. One of my friends is in the process of moving house, and I'm preparing to look after her four cats for a week (my chance to be a true mad cat-lady.) In order to prepare my two for the invasion, we thought it would help to get the cat tree installed first, so that strange smells could be explored before the arrival of strange bodies.

My friend arrived yesterday evening. Her husband had dismantled the cat tree prior to loading it in the car. This meant that my friend had no idea of the best way to reassemble the tree. Checking out pictures of the assembled tree on the internet didn't help. After an hour, she decided to give up. The tree was not designed to be dismantled and reassembled. We also didn't have an allen key. She considered taking all the bits home, but, on talking to her husband on the phone, decided to leave the bits here for her husband to sort out in the morning...

This morning, her husband arrived. Within ten minutes the bits had been arranged into their correct positions, and the whole thing fully assembled after another ten minutes. Admittedly, he did have an allen key, but I think it was only used on one bit...