What Men Need From Women

Have you noticed? Men and women aren't as different as they used to be. And the majority of women seem to like the prospect of a unisex world – except for one nagging problem: many of today's men, mysteriously, lack a special vibrancy, vitality, gusto, pride that we once recognized as distinctively masculine. “Much is being said among women today about the dearth of vitalo men,'' wrote American feminist Betty Friedan. “I go to a town to lecture, and I hear about all the wonderful, dunamic women who have emerged in every field in that town. But frequently, whatever the age of the woman, she says, 'The men seem so dull and grey now. They're drearym they're flat'''

As reluctant as feminists might be to admit it, there is compelling evidence that men need a clearly defined difference between the sexes. Every human culture, until the late 20th century has provided such a diffference, creating an elaborate and often arbitrary contrast between men's and women's activities, dress and behaviour. In her 1949 classic, Male and Female anthropologist Margaret Mead says there is only one biologically based constant: women's role in all societies includes the bearing, nursing and primary care of children. Otherwise, almost anything goes-as long as it goes one way for women and the other for men.

“In every known human society, the male's need for achievement can be recognized.'' Mead wrote. “Men may cook or weave, or dress dolls, or hunt hummingbirds, but if such activities are appropriate occupations of men, then the whole society votes them as important. When the same occupations are performed by women, they are regarded as less important. In a great number of societies men's sureness of their sex role is tied up with their right, or ability, to practise some activity that women are not allowed to practise. Their maleness, in fact has to be underwritten by preventing women from entering some field or performing some fear'' It is this kind of exclusion of women that modern society no longer accepts.

We recognize the injustice-to- society and women- or barring women's talents from any field of endeavour. But we have not recognized the genuine needs of men that lay behind that exclusion. Men's need to have a role clearly distinguished from women's can be traced to three fundamental differences between boys and girls:

1 A baby boy is different from his mother :- As an infant boy begins to be aware that he is a separate individual from his mother, he must also learn that he is not like her. In Margaret Mead's words, “he must begin to learn to differentiate himself from this person closet to him ... he must find out ... that he is male ... not female.'' The boy must turn away from his mother to find himself. And in doing so, he needs to turn towards images of maleness that are powerful and attracvtive enough to compensate for his mother's enormous power over him.

The boy's need to differentiate himself from his mother has consequences for adult relationships. Men need to get away, into the world of work or the company of other men, to replenish their sense of being men. The trouble is, almost everywhere men go now there are women. According to Richard Robertiello, a New York psychoanalyst, this may be one of the reasons for male depression today. Men have to spend time with other men as companions'' says Robertiello. “That strengthens their masculinity''

2. Men Can't have babies :- To a small boy as to a primitive tribesman, child-bearing is a supremely awesome achievement. He can't do it and girls can, and he needs to know that when he grows up he will be able to do something just as important that women can't do. Since this will have to be cultural, not biological, it is something he will have to do, rather than something he must merely wait for, as a girl waits to grow up and become a mother. Hence, the importance of achievement to men: it is, in a sense, all they have for self-definition. When women, who have something so important and fulfilling to fall back on, complete for achievement with men, it can seem unfair.

If a woman can do everything a man can do and have babies, what use is a man? Fatherhood at its most involved is not the same as motherhood. Women need to allow men something equivalent, something uniquely theirs-if not an activity, then at least a quality, a style, a way of being that the culture honours as specifically masculine and that women admire, but refrain from emulating.

3. Most males are more muscular and aggressive tha most females :_ This is a bilogical difference that most cultures have used as the raw material for a unique male role. It is a difference that shows up early in childhood. Boys engage in more rough-and-tumble play than their sisters, while the verbal and social skills of girls are more highly developed at an early age. Many researcherrs believe that these differences are programmed into a boy baby by the male hormone testosterone. Most boys grow up with an interest in competitive physical activities and tests of their courage and strength that markedly exceeds that of most girls. “It is probable that the young male has a biologically given need to prove himself as a physical individual'' Margaret Mead wrote in Male and Female, “and that in the past the hunt and warfare have provided the most common means of such violation''

Since hunting and war served the survival of earlier societies, these activities were honoured, and provided a basis for men to feel pride in themselves as men. But today “hunting'' broadly understood as the exploitation of nature, and war.'' the nuclear arms race, now threaten survival. Women can help men get in touch with their masculine roots by accepting men's need to be alone together at times and by respecting the father-son bond.

Says Robertiello : “A man needs a woman who will affirm his maculine power, enjoy it, enhance it and get something from it, rather than envy it and try to destroy it'' Some of the classic expressions of male power can be integrated into the compassionate man of the 1980s. For example:- Fighting :- Every man needs to know that he has the courage to defend his wife, his children, his home, his integrity and ideals. This deep knowledge is different from the insecurity that drives some men to look for a fight. But to acquire that knowledge, most males need to find out that they can win a fist-fight or climb a mountain.

Once that confidence is established, it takes the form of a fearless relish in the thought of fighting to defend what is dear. Sports :- Athletics are ritual enactments of territorial defence through physical prowess. As cush, they are harmless celebrations of masculine capacities that helped our species survive. They make men feel good about being men.

Gallantry :- When a man opens a door for a woman, he is making a symbolic statement that his superior physical strength will be used to assist and protect, not harm. Apart from their sexual anatomy, greater muscular strength is men's unique human possession. They should be allowed to use it in a particularly masculine form of support. To these classic expressions of masculinity we need to add two new qualitie that men have learnt in the past decade: the capacity to be friends and collegues with women-and to have truly open, loving friendships with other men. There is an enormous overlap between the sexes. Intelligence, talent, courage, ambition, compassion, emotional vulnerability-all are human qualities that we share. If each sex brings to these qualities a different style and a special flavour, it can only make all of us richer.