Welcome to the "real world"
This is a re-post of something I wrote on Facebook a few years back. Last week, I attended another graduation ceremony and thought about how it still applies.
A while ago, I attended the graduation ceremony of my Interactive Multimedia students. I never miss that. It always makes me a little sad to see them leave (that’s another topic on its own) but it is really an exciting, joyful, and proud day. While sitting up on the faculty platform watching all the students coming and receiving their degrees and medals, I noticed that a large percentage of medalists were female. Even though I’m a man, that made me feel twice as proud. Asking why? Well, hold that thought. I’ll get back to it.
I’m a big Star Trek fan. Have watched and read them since I was a little kid. Like many sci-fi and fantasy stories, Star Trek is the brain-child of people imagining a better world when the human race has reached a state of peace and friendship among themselves and “boldly goes where no one has gone before”. So it was a pleasure when I went home after the convocation and found a documentary on TV titled The Captains, made by who else but William Shatner, the original and legendary Captain James T. Kirk. The film included him interviewing other Star Trek captains. Interesting as they all were, one, in particular, caught my attention. All captains talked about the joys and hardships of playing the role and being involved in the production, from happy moments with fans to frequently failed relationships, but Kate Mulgrew (Captain Kathryn Janeway of starship Voyager, the only female captain to be the lead character in Star Trek) brought up a new perspective. She talked about how she and others had to stay at work till late and be far from family, and added that when you go home all tired to get 2 hours of sleep before next day’s production and your kids come to you in bed, if you are a man you feel you have the right to tell them to go and play with their mom, but if you are a woman, and especially a single mom like her, you have no choice but to get up.
We live in a society that claims to have no discrimination based on sex, race, religion, etc. As a man, I always thought men and women should have equal opportunities, that women have to be treated fairly, etc, etc. But deep down and in many cases, I did feel that well they are finally being treated fairly, they get similar salaries, all jobs are open to them, in fact, there are services for women not available for men, so mission accomplished! If you think the same, I’m sorry to burst your bubble. That’s not true. I’m not talking about illegal behaviours and obvious cases of discrimination that still happen. One can argue that they are anomalies, not the system, and I don’t even want to get into that. What I do want to bring up are the problems with the system itself.
Men and women are not equal. In fact, no two human beings are really equal. They are different physiologically, psychologically, socially, emotionally, and in many other aspects. This by no means implies any sort of superiority but it may mean that each has its own strengths and characteristics. A system that establishes a set of rules and applies them to everybody “equally” is not necessarily a fair system, because people are not equal and the rules, as it’s true in many cases, can be customized for a certain group. That’s the source of our problem and Captain Janeway, with her usual wisdom, was pointing to that source.
As a society with patriarchal origins, we have developed a system that fits men. We can’t take our children to work. If we want to be significantly above average in our careers, we probably have to sacrifice our families and relationships. Our whole socio-economic system is tainted with (if not based on) commercial objectification and aggressive competition. Now, this applies to both men and women, and some of you (just like myself in some past cases) might think that at least it is fair because it applies to all. But it’s not, because women think and feel differently, and men have taken advantage of that different thinking and feeling for thousands of years.
Theory of Evolution is probably one of our greatest scientific achievements, all the way on top with Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle (which shouldn’t be seen as part of quantum mechanics only). The survival of the fittest dictates certain behaviours and enforces them through natural selection. Simply put it means that if a gene is not helping the species to survive, it’ll start to disappear because members of the species who have that gene as dominant will not survive to pass it on. Those genes that do help the whole survival process (basically taking care of yourself, having children, and taking care of them), on the other hand, will be passed on to the next generation and so become widespread and dominant. Of course, other genes may continue to exist, but not as much as the dominant ones and they will be responsible for “less common” behaviours.
For whatever curse or gift, half of the population (women) are in charge of carrying the children for 9 months. Maybe that will change sometime but not yet! Theoretically, everything else can be shared, but that 9-month period already has its significant effects. Women have to take care of their babies. Based on at least some theories which I find acceptable, that need, within its evolutionary context, is the cause of many behavioural and emotional differences between men and women. The need to protect the babies, means that particular genes will become dominant in women, and make them more caring and less aggressive, more interested in communication and peaceful solutions, more interested in working close to home (i.e. close to family), more interested in having children, etc etc. Obviously, men need to complete the family package, so they end up being more out-going and risk-taking so they can go farther and find food, more aggressive so they can hunt (and fight for resources).
Regardless of accepting the above theory or not, we have to admit those differences and the fact that leading a patriarchal society, and over thousands of years, men created a system that suited them. While women are staying home to take care of children, we men can go out and fight. And since aggression is part of our genetic code, our system is based on a fight to the death, sometimes literally, as long as we have time to go and impregnate some women so our genes can pass on to the next generation. It is not difficult to imagine that if women were in charge, the system might have been built differently: maybe we would have mandatory nurseries at all workplaces, maybe all employees would have to take vacations and spend time with their families (If you think these are not financially viable, consider this: corporations can make less profit! And if everybody does it then there is no risk of competitors having an advantage), maybe we would solve our international problems with talking instead of going to war and getting our children killed. Or maybe not. We don’t know. Because this is a man’s world!
I am a teacher. I do my best to educate my students and prepare them for what they call the “real world”. I am a man and so damn proud of my female students because they have the strength to show they can be as good as or even better than their male classmates and have the courage to go out and work in a system that is designed to be unfair to them.
I hope we can change that system!
Notes:
A while ago, I attended the graduation ceremony of my Interactive Multimedia students. I never miss that. It always makes me a little sad to see them leave (that’s another topic on its own) but it is really an exciting, joyful, and proud day. While sitting up on the faculty platform watching all the students coming and receiving their degrees and medals, I noticed that a large percentage of medalists were female. Even though I’m a man, that made me feel twice as proud. Asking why? Well, hold that thought. I’ll get back to it.
I’m a big Star Trek fan. Have watched and read them since I was a little kid. Like many sci-fi and fantasy stories, Star Trek is the brain-child of people imagining a better world when the human race has reached a state of peace and friendship among themselves and “boldly goes where no one has gone before”. So it was a pleasure when I went home after the convocation and found a documentary on TV titled The Captains, made by who else but William Shatner, the original and legendary Captain James T. Kirk. The film included him interviewing other Star Trek captains. Interesting as they all were, one, in particular, caught my attention. All captains talked about the joys and hardships of playing the role and being involved in the production, from happy moments with fans to frequently failed relationships, but Kate Mulgrew (Captain Kathryn Janeway of starship Voyager, the only female captain to be the lead character in Star Trek) brought up a new perspective. She talked about how she and others had to stay at work till late and be far from family, and added that when you go home all tired to get 2 hours of sleep before next day’s production and your kids come to you in bed, if you are a man you feel you have the right to tell them to go and play with their mom, but if you are a woman, and especially a single mom like her, you have no choice but to get up.
We live in a society that claims to have no discrimination based on sex, race, religion, etc. As a man, I always thought men and women should have equal opportunities, that women have to be treated fairly, etc, etc. But deep down and in many cases, I did feel that well they are finally being treated fairly, they get similar salaries, all jobs are open to them, in fact, there are services for women not available for men, so mission accomplished! If you think the same, I’m sorry to burst your bubble. That’s not true. I’m not talking about illegal behaviours and obvious cases of discrimination that still happen. One can argue that they are anomalies, not the system, and I don’t even want to get into that. What I do want to bring up are the problems with the system itself.
Men and women are not equal. In fact, no two human beings are really equal. They are different physiologically, psychologically, socially, emotionally, and in many other aspects. This by no means implies any sort of superiority but it may mean that each has its own strengths and characteristics. A system that establishes a set of rules and applies them to everybody “equally” is not necessarily a fair system, because people are not equal and the rules, as it’s true in many cases, can be customized for a certain group. That’s the source of our problem and Captain Janeway, with her usual wisdom, was pointing to that source.
As a society with patriarchal origins, we have developed a system that fits men. We can’t take our children to work. If we want to be significantly above average in our careers, we probably have to sacrifice our families and relationships. Our whole socio-economic system is tainted with (if not based on) commercial objectification and aggressive competition. Now, this applies to both men and women, and some of you (just like myself in some past cases) might think that at least it is fair because it applies to all. But it’s not, because women think and feel differently, and men have taken advantage of that different thinking and feeling for thousands of years.
Theory of Evolution is probably one of our greatest scientific achievements, all the way on top with Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle (which shouldn’t be seen as part of quantum mechanics only). The survival of the fittest dictates certain behaviours and enforces them through natural selection. Simply put it means that if a gene is not helping the species to survive, it’ll start to disappear because members of the species who have that gene as dominant will not survive to pass it on. Those genes that do help the whole survival process (basically taking care of yourself, having children, and taking care of them), on the other hand, will be passed on to the next generation and so become widespread and dominant. Of course, other genes may continue to exist, but not as much as the dominant ones and they will be responsible for “less common” behaviours.
For whatever curse or gift, half of the population (women) are in charge of carrying the children for 9 months. Maybe that will change sometime but not yet! Theoretically, everything else can be shared, but that 9-month period already has its significant effects. Women have to take care of their babies. Based on at least some theories which I find acceptable, that need, within its evolutionary context, is the cause of many behavioural and emotional differences between men and women. The need to protect the babies, means that particular genes will become dominant in women, and make them more caring and less aggressive, more interested in communication and peaceful solutions, more interested in working close to home (i.e. close to family), more interested in having children, etc etc. Obviously, men need to complete the family package, so they end up being more out-going and risk-taking so they can go farther and find food, more aggressive so they can hunt (and fight for resources).
Regardless of accepting the above theory or not, we have to admit those differences and the fact that leading a patriarchal society, and over thousands of years, men created a system that suited them. While women are staying home to take care of children, we men can go out and fight. And since aggression is part of our genetic code, our system is based on a fight to the death, sometimes literally, as long as we have time to go and impregnate some women so our genes can pass on to the next generation. It is not difficult to imagine that if women were in charge, the system might have been built differently: maybe we would have mandatory nurseries at all workplaces, maybe all employees would have to take vacations and spend time with their families (If you think these are not financially viable, consider this: corporations can make less profit! And if everybody does it then there is no risk of competitors having an advantage), maybe we would solve our international problems with talking instead of going to war and getting our children killed. Or maybe not. We don’t know. Because this is a man’s world!
I am a teacher. I do my best to educate my students and prepare them for what they call the “real world”. I am a man and so damn proud of my female students because they have the strength to show they can be as good as or even better than their male classmates and have the courage to go out and work in a system that is designed to be unfair to them.
I hope we can change that system!
Notes:
- I’m proud of my male students too ;-)
- See this link for a woman’s perspective on this subject: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/07/why-women-still-cant-have-it-all/309020