Once a friend asked me what my favorite quote was. After some thought, I decided on “It is He that hath made us and not we ourselves” (Psalm 100:3). I like it because we actually didn’t plan ourselves and might be excused for our faults and failings since we didn’t design ourselves. (Might not, too.)
Among our biggest puzzles is sex/gender. Robert May wrote a book in 1980 called “Sex and Fantasy”. A title like that naturally got me interested but I found the book is about the psychology of the two genders and not at all the heavy breathing I expected. May takes the legend of Phaethon to be emblematic of maleness, which he summarizes as based on pride, the need to stand out, to achieve, to surpass, to win. As the legend shows, that drive can result in poor thinking and poor obedience and losing control of your father's chariot in a fatal crash.
May takes the legend of Ceres, also called Demeter, to be emblematic the essence of femaleness, which he says is caring, as in caring for others. The god of the underworld, Hades, fell in love with her daughter Persephone and stole her. He kept her in the underworld but Ceres couldn’t stand to be parted from her beloved daughter. They came to an agreement that Persephone could be with her mother 8 months of the year but had to spend 4 with her husband.
I love the quiet but astute writing of Alexander McCall Smith in his Mma Ramotswe series set in Botswana and featured in some current HBO shows. The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency is perfectly poised to highlight some differences between women and men (on average, since there are usually some members of either group that can do or out-do members of the other group in anything). Looking at the maternal Jill Scott and her virile but out-for-himself competition in Gaborone, you get a good contrast between thought and action designed to minimize pain and danger and heartbreak and actions aimed at finishing a job quickly, proudly and with victory. It is difficult to know you have won unless you know what the goal is. So, to define a job and its goal often results in a somewhat limited, defined view.
The book by the surprising Catholic scholar Walter Ong called “Fighting for Life” is a review of maleness and attempts during the last couple of centuries to educate men. He reviews several cultures of both the east and the west and highlights their tendency to suppose that males relate to competition, killing and death while females relate to love, not sex but love, and life. Reading his description of the fundamental competitions in male life and recalling the grouchy male bison I saw in Yellowstone helps me to picture the process where males kill or maim each other or drive a rival (injured, bleeding, hurt, humiliated, and despondent) away from females, procreation and joy. The process can go on quite without awareness, even in humans.
