Men and women are from earth, fool pt. I

This ended up being a three part series. This one is a little different to the next two, which are more of a pair. You can read them here and here.

It’s pretty facile to argue that there are no differences between men and women. As sharp internet commentators are apt to point out, usually with unsolicited images sent to anyone brave enough to speak on the topic, you only have to look between the legs. But it’s also true that the differences aren’t, like, super obvious for the most part. Sure there’s some anatomical stuff, but it’s still very hotly debated how much of an influence this has on behaviour. Women certainly do muscle stuff less than men, but once you start moving away from the trivially evident, the ground gets much less firm.

What’s very easy do to, and fun to boot, is to demonstrate how common differences that people assume exist actually don’t exist. And I’m going to do that by shitting all over this ridiculous 30-year old pseudo-psychology book Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus that people keep trying to talk to me about now that gender essentialism is getting trendy again.

¶Please stop suggesting I read books by obvious charlatans

I should preface this whole piece by pointing out that, at 20, I was pretty impressed by this book. I had the notion that women and men had different communicative tendencies, and it sure felt like what was being written mapped onto that. So view this section here as the first piece of advice I’d give to my 20-year-old self: just do even the smallest amount of research on the author of a book before you start telling everyone about it.

We’ll start off with a little biography of our author, John Gray. This is just on Wikipedia, you know? The first search you might do to work out whether your book is worth wasting my time with.

He received a bachelor’s and master’s degree in the Science of Creative Intelligence, though sources vary on whether these degrees were received from either the non-accredited Maharishi European Research University (MERU) in Switzerland or the accredited Maharishi International University in Fairfield, Iowa

So, that’s a good start. A very curious subject, for an equally intangible set of ‘degrees’. However, we can be certain of two things. We do know that he definitely has a high-school diploma, and we also know that he definitely does not have a PhD:

Gray received an unaccredited PhD in 1982 from Columbia Pacific University (CPU), a now-defunct correspondence institution.

Not just defunct, mind you, but lazily fraudulent:

The council’s review of CPU listed numerous violations of academic standards, including:

• “One master’s-degree student was given credit for “a learning contract describing how he would continue taking dance lessons and watch dance demonstrations in order to improve his skills as a Country Western dancer.””
• “A Ph.D. dissertation written in Spanish was approved by four faculty who cannot speak the language.”
• “One dissertation “had no hypothesis, no data collection, and no statistical analysis. A member of the visiting committee characterized the work as more like a project paper at the college freshman level.” The dissertation, The Complete Guide to Glass Collecting, was 61 pages long.”
• “At least nine students who received the Ph.D. degree in 1994 had been enrolled less than 20 months, four of them less than 12.”

Auspicious beginnings, our illustrious Mr Gray. He does hold an honorary doctorate though, from the widely renowned Governers State University? They do give out actual doctorates too. Five of them. All very related to Gray’s expertise:

• Counselor Education and Supervision, Doctor of Education
• Interdisciplinary Leadership, Doctor of Education
• Nursing Practice, Doctor of Nursing
• Occupational Therapy, Doctor of Occupational Therapy
• Physical Therapy, Doctor of Physical Therapy

But, we don’t need to worry about the degrees they’re accredited to hand out, because an honorary doctorate has nothing to do with that. Any academic institution can give these out, any time, for any reason. Very much like Gray’s old, fraudulent alma mater.

Ok, ok. So he’s not a traditionally educated man. Perhaps he was just seeking legitimacy for his well intentioned visions for a better future? The Academy is notoriously elitist. Maybe he just wanted a bit more authority to be able to sell his supplements that were so egregious the FDA issued a cease-and-desist.¹ Or maybe he just really wanted to get the word out about how warm baths will ‘cure’ autism, and he suspected people may respond skeptically if he just relied on his existing background as the personal assistant of a highly controversial self-help guru? No doubt, along side his supplements, the treatment is foolproof.

A truly service oriented gentleman, is John Gray.

¶Stopping at the introduction would be wise

Now, I might tell my 20-year-old self, credentials are one thing, but really, we should investigate the meat of the book. Otherwise, this would be nothing but an ad hominem attack. And even though I have already read enough about Mr Gray to make my bets about how this is going to go, our mother always told us that anything worth doing is worth doing well.

Let us begin at the introduction:

A week after our daughter Lauren was born, my wife Bonnie and I were completely exhausted. Each night Lauren kept waking us. Bonnie had been torn in the delivery and was taking painkillers. She could barely walk. After five days of staying home to help, I went back to work … While I was away she ran out of pain pills … she spent the whole day in pain, taking care of a newborn … I had no idea that her day had been so awful. When I returned home she was very upset. I misinterpreted the cause of her distress and thought she was blaming me. She said, “I’ve been in pain all day…. I ran out of pills. I’ve been stranded in bed and nobody cares!” I said defensively, “Why didn’t you call me?” She said, “I asked your brother, but he forgot! I’ve’ been waiting for him to return all day. What am I supposed to do? I can barely walk. I feel so deserted!” At this point I exploded. My fuse was also very short that day. I was angry that she hadn’t called me. I was furious that she was blaming me when I didn’t even know she was in pain. After exchanging a few harsh words, I headed for the door. I was tired, irritable, and had heard enough. We had both reached our limits.

Indeed John, how dare Bonnie. A most unreasonable woman. She recovers well from her insubordination, however, by offering John the core insight this book is about:

She said, “John Gray, you’re a fair-weather friend! As long as I’m sweet, loving Bonnie you are here for me, but as soon as I’m not, you walk right out that door … Right now I’m in pain. I have nothing to give, this is when I need you the most. Please, come over here and hold me. You don’t have to say anything. I just need to feel your arms around me. Please don’t go.”

That day, for the first time, I didn’t leave her. I stayed, and it felt great. I succeeded in giving to her when she really needed me. This felt like real love … How had I missed this? She just needed me to go over and hold her.

Women really are from Venus, you see. It may come as a surprise, but getting angry at them for having the audacity to be bed-ridden and in pain is really quite antithetical to the feminine essence.

This isn’t entirely fair. My first serious girlfriend also had to teach me to hug her when she was upset, rather than gormlessly observe her crying while wondering what to do with my hands. I think it’s pretty reasonable to have some stumbles on the way to figuring out how to be with other people, rather than concentrating on how you feel. There are two main problems with the presentation in this book though.

Firstly, this little vignette illustrates the main critique I have of this book. It’s not that women get upset when people treat them like shit instead of showing them tenderness, it’s that all people do. A critique you will see quite frequently as we go through.

The second point is that that John is 40-something, with several kids while he’s engaging in this kind of behaviour. I was younger than the 20-year-old version of me that I’m pretending to talk to. My point is that both John and I were acting like assholes, but I’m about as excited to read a book by him as I would a book by that younger version of me. And the self-awareness John demonstrates after Bonnie’s explicit instructions on how to self-reflect tragically ends here in the introduction, as you might expect in a man who made it 40 years without learning that hugging the recently disabled mother of his children when she’s had a bad day is more appropriate than instantly flying off the handle.

¶Chapter 1: the less said the better.

Men and women are different, is the point of this chapter. It’s basically just more introduction. Let’s move on.

¶Chapter 2: Mr Fix-It and the Home Improvement Committee aren’t things

Young Dorian found this chapter the most illuminating. I would offer my advice to my partner, or female friends, only to find out they didn’t want my advice. John would have me believe that this is because men:

value power, competency, efficiency, and achievement. They are always doing things to prove themselves and develop their power and skills. Their sense of self is defined through their ability to achieve results. They experience fulfillment primarily through success and accomplishment.

So, they don’t read silly magazines like ‘Psychology Today’. They like “outdoor activities like hunting, fishing, and racing cars.” They care more about “objects and things” rather than “people and feelings”.

You see, unlike women, men don’t talk about things unless they want a solution. The man:

rarely talks about his problems unless he needs expert advice. He reasons: “Why involve someone else when I can do it by myself?” He keeps his problems to himself unless he requires help from another to find a solution. Asking for help when you can do it yourself is perceived as a sign of weakness.

So, when women are talking to him about some kind of problem, he’ll offer solutions. That’s the only reason talking should happen, right? And when those pesky women reject his finely honed solution, yet remain unaccountably upset:

it becomes increasingly difficult for him to listen because his solution is being rejected and he feels increasingly useless.

John Gray was singing to my heart. All these idiots, if they just listened to me, their problems would vanish, and I wouldn’t have to stomach their complaining any more.

I’ve presented the argument in its least flattering form, but it isn’t far from its true presentation in the book. And of course this is absurd. I would tell young Dorian “hey, look, sometimes people want to complain about shit, and sometimes they want your help. Sometimes you want to complain about shit, and sometimes you want help. Usually, when people want your help, they’ll ask for it. If they’re not asking for it, they probably don’t want your help. Not one iota of this is contingent upon your gender, or your penchant for fishing.”

Giving advice is very sexy, but as Phyllis McGinley put it:

This the gist of what I know:
Give advice and buy a foe.

There is an actual psychological model you could refer to to help you recognise when your advice would be welcome. The main thing it makes clear is that mostly people don’t want your advice. People hate advice, usually. There is only a very small window in which people are open to it at all. And this is true for men and for women. Indeed, in my stint as a crisis counsellor, the main thing I noticed was that my job chiefly consisted of asking the questions that helped the person who had come to me for help work the problem out for themselves. If I just told them what I thought they should do, they would reject it out of hand. Because why would they bother listening to a person who gave them advice without listening to them first?

Gray goes on to point out how women, “instead of being goal oriented, [they] are relationship oriented; they are more concerned with expressing their goodness, love, and caring.” And so, women often provide suggestions for improvement. And here we take a turn towards the darker motifs in this book with:

When a woman tries to improve a man. he feels she is trying to fix him. He receives the message that he is broken. She doesn’t realize her caring attempts to help him may humiliate him. She mistakenly thinks she is just helping him to grow.

And all of a sudden, we are made blindingly aware of John Gray’s crippling insecurity. Between this and the Bonnie incident, we are dealing with a troubled man. As I read back through Gray’s examples, I am rather sharply reminded of the classic presentation of rejection sensitivity, a clinical subtype of social anxiety disorders.

Do you think I’m overstating the case for comedic effect? John presents for us Tom and Mary:

Tom was driving. After about twenty minutes and going around the same block a few times, it was clear to Mary that Tom was lost. She finally suggested that he call for help. Tom became very silent. They eventually arrived at the party, but the tension from that moment persisted the whole evening Mary had no idea of why he was so upset … From her side she was saying “I love and care about you, so I am offering you this help … From his side, he was offended. What he heard was “I don’t trust you to get us there. You are incompetent!”

Tom, mate, you are incompetent. Mary obviously likes you enough to tolerate your nonsense, but she doesn’t want to fuck about in the car with you all night while you pretend to know what you’re doing. Mary wants to go to the party, Tom.

If someone is criticising your behaviour, then it may be because your behaviour is something worth criticising. It’s true that substantial criticism is one of the classic hallmarks of a failing relationship. But it’s also true that most people can recognise this as either constructive, or destructive and respond accordingly. If you can’t, then maybe the problem is you, and there are models that will help you develop this skill. Don’t be like Tom. Go see somebody. That’s not a joke. This really sounds like troubled behaviour and it’s something worth working on.

To take John’s summary of this chapter:

1. A man tries to change a woman’s feelings when she is upset by becoming Mr. Fix-It and offering solutions to her problems that invalidate her feelings.
2. A woman tries to change a man’s behavior when he makes mistakes by becoming the home-improvements committee and offering unsolicited advice or criticism.

And alter it slightly,

1. If someone is complaining, then let them complain. Don’t start spouting advice. Literally no one likes this. Also, you could do more than John suggests, and simply tolerate it. Perhaps you might think about engaging with the distress that’s causing the complaint, since that is, in fact, the point of complaining.
2. If someone is criticising you, and it seems unsolicited, and hurtful, then perhaps your relationship is failing. But this seems unlikely to be regularly the case, so perhaps you might just consider that you’re doing something that deserves criticism?

Most importantly, none of this has anything to do with whether you’re a man or a woman. In fact, it’s notable that most of the time it’s very hard to separate the unsolicited ‘solutions’ that Gray’s men are offering from the unsolicited ‘suggestions’ that Gray’s women are. This is a people thing, not a gender thing.

¶Outro, since this is taking longer than I expected

I mostly wanted to get to that first chapter, because I truly did remember finding it sage advice once upon a time. Since this is taking longer than I expected, I might break the rest across a couple articles.

But, to emphasise the absurdity of this book’s advice, I’d love to close off this chapter as John does, with some examples. This is his idea of “some brief examples of ways a man might mistakenly invalidate feelings and perceptions or offer unwanted solutions. See if you can recognize why she would resist.” Yes, young Dorian, please do bend your mind to how such helpful solutions as these:

• “It’s not such a big deal.”
• “OK, I’m sorry. Now can we just forget it.”
• “All right, I’ll clean up the backyard. Does that make you happy?”
• “If you’re not happy then we should just get a divorce.”
• “All right, then you can do it from now on.”

Might grate on your poor partner’s delicate feminine sensibilities. Of course, men would be perfectly happy to receive such fine feedback.

Or, here, “some brief examples of ways a woman might unknowingly annoy a man by offering advice or seemingly harmless criticism”:

• “Those dishes are still wet. They’ll dry with spots”
• “Don’t put that there. It will get lost.”
• “You should call a plumber. He’ll know what to do.”
• “You should spend more time with the kids. They miss you.”
• “You forgot to bring it home again. Maybe you could put it in a special place where you can remember it.”

Look. If you find yourself getting these criticisms, then I see absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t be getting these criticisms, delivered in exactly in this manner. This person is trying to help you not be an idiot. Clean the dishes properly, fool! Don’t lose shit, don’t toy around with the sewerage, play with your bloody kids, and bring the thing you’re supposed to bring home, home! Don’t be like Tom.

I cannot emphasise enough how disturbing the place from which this book is written. John is not here describing the disposition of any men I would like the pleasure of engaging with. It makes me troubled that I connected with this material when I was young, and it should cause you concern if it connects with you too.

Men and women are not different in this regard whatsoever. Both complain, and would like to have their feelings validated rather than dismissed. Both will critique things worth critiquing in an effort to make you run your life better, if they care enough about you to try to help, and especially if whatever you’re doing is making their life worse. These are regular features of people coming together, and both can be annoying or misunderstood under the wrong circumstances. But if you are finding that you are as fragile as the hypothetical men John is describing in these pages, then I guarantee you that it’s not your partner that’s the problem. Take some more unsolicited home-improvement advice, this time from a man: go find someone to help you get better. Please. You don’t need to live like this.

This ended up being a three part series. This one is a little different to the next two, which are more of a pair. You can read them here and here.