Week 4

Isn't it amazing how different men and women are, and yet we are still completely compatible together? Many of the topics we've gone over in class this week have brought to my mind the concept of nature vs nurture. Nurture is the outside factors that influence a person. For example; school, work, friends, foods, exercise, etc. Nature is the biological factors that influence a person, such as genes. Both of these play a big part in a person's personality. In class, we were asked to make a list of the things that usually identify someone as a male or female. Although I know that these things vary from person to person, these are the things that I normally attribute to each sex. For females I put that they are generally expressive, socially orientated, nurturing, and passive. For males I put aggressive, competitive, and protecting. After completing my list, I wondered how many of these things are learned through nurture and how many are already there naturally. Often, units of society influence a person to behave a certain way. Units of society are things like family, workplace, school, government, and religion.

From the time I was five until I was about twelve I lived in a neighborhood full of boys. There were probably about five or six of them and one of me. I always hung around (and probably annoyed) them while they played. Because I spent most of my time around boys, I definitely had a tomboy side to my personality. I didn't mind getting dirty or playing sports with them and very often I felt like it was my duty to beat them at being a boy and knock their egos down a notch. But despite the fact that I was surrounded by boys, I grew up to be a pretty girly person and the tomboy side of me is almost completely gone. As I contemplated this change in my personality over the years, it occurred to me that many of the changes I made were a combination of influences from society, culture, and nature. Even during my years as a tomboy, I always looked up to older women and wanted to be like them. I also enjoyed girly things because, well, I'm a girl, and that didn't change no matter how much time I spent with the boys. The differences between mine and the boys' personalities was always obvious despite my efforts to be like them, and yet we were still compatible together. I still like to do some things that are considered 'manly', but I am also fine with using my womanly attributes to compliment and work together with the attributes of the men in my life.

In a video called "A Tale of Two Brains" ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XjUFYxSxDk ) it describes a man's brain as being full of boxes. Each box has something different in it: work, family, school, etc. Men can only pull out one box at a time. Women, on the other hand, have brains that are like a ball of wire. Everything is connected and we can see how one thing influences all the other things. In an example we discussed in class, we talked about how when boys are playing ball and the game stops, it is usually because someone broke a rule and they are pausing to fix it. When girls are playing a game and it stops it is usually because they are establishing and defining relationships/roles.  In other words, boys tend for focus on fixing things, whereas girls look at the emotional side and the connections between everything. A study was done where they asked some men and women to sit at a desk. After they left the room, they asked if they could remember what was on the desk. The men couldn't remember, but the women could remember each object in relation to the others. What I'm trying to show by giving this example, is that women are naturally more inclined than men are to make connections between people and things. Another study showed that men are better at remembering directions (Northeast, street names, etc.) whereas women are better at remembering landmarks in relation to their destination. Both ways of thinking and acting are efficient for each sex and can work even better together.

In summary, men and women are very different. We think differently, we look differently, we act differently...and yet our differences compliment each other perfectly. Where one is weak, the other is strong. Society will sometimes influence the way we see the roles of man and women and often tries to change them, but ultimately we are meant to work together to create an eternal family. This is why it is so important for children to be raised with both a mother and a father in their home, who love each other. Children need both the nurturing nature of their mothers, as well as the protective nature of their fathers to flourish.

If you would like to watch a funny video about the differences between men and women, watch "It's not about the Nail" at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4EDhdAHrOg . In the word's of my roommate's boyfriend, "just stare at that nail", boys.