Last year, I suddenly struggled with lower back pain. When I complained to a friend who is a few years deeper into her forties, she empathized with the following: “You wake up one morning and realize that even though you don’t feel forty, your body is forty years old” and so I accepted my fate as I now apparently entered my midlife. However, one morning, as I yet again rolled out of bed in a rather peculiar way, my husband forced me to phone our friend, the orthopod. It was a week before our yearly ski trip, and he was worried my back pain would spoil our fun on the slopes.
That afternoon, I found myself lying in an MRI scanner with earplugs to help soften the machine’s noise. Trying to calm myself because I am slightly claustrophobic, I thought the clack-clack of the scanner sounded like the intro of the song Thunderstruck by ACDC – na-na-nana-na-na-thunder! Discussing my adventure in the MRI scanner over dinner, a friend at the table who also recently had an MRI countered that he enjoyed his time in the MRI scanner. He thought the noise sounded like a sexy girl breathing heavily in his ear. Marvelling at our different interpretations of what an MRI sounded like, I wondered if it is maybe true that men and women come from different planets.
Being a woman is a terribly difficult task since it consists principally in dealing with men – Joseph Conrad
It is not always easy for women to cohabitate this planet with men. Despite public women’s protests to be treated as equals, media coverage of women being treated differently in the workplace, and awareness campaigns against gender-based violence, gender discrimination is still very much alive today. In the medical profession, male-dominated specialities like cardiothoracic surgery still make it difficult for women to be successful. I had cardiologists blatantly admit that they would only refer to a male surgeon, and I had patients who refused my service because “I couldn’t possibly be a cardiothoracic surgeon“. I know of anesthesiology firms that do not employ females because they don’t share in the workload equally as women fall pregnant and need to take maternity leave or have the responsibility of taking care of their children. When did things start to go so horribly wrong for females? Why do men feel that this is their planet to rule? In ancient Egypt, women were independent. They had the right to buy and inherit property, they could serve as legal persons and worked in public. Cleopatra, Hatshepsut and Nefertiti were powerful pharos. At what point in history was it decided that a woman’s place was pregnant and barefoot in the kitchen?
I always get asked why I play strong women, and I always think, “That’s such a weird question” because I play women, and women are strong, and women don’t give up. Do you know why? Because we can’t. We have to do it – Sigourney Weaver
During an award acceptance speech, Reese Witherspoon explained why she had started producing her own movies. She said she was tired of playing in films solely written by men as she was always cast as the girl who looked at the leading man at some point in the movie and asked, “What do we do now?“. She said it was ridiculous to play these characters because she had never been in a situation where a woman did not know what to do when things got complicated. I can relate to this. Cardiothoracic surgeons are notorious for their A-type personalities and fast decision-making in life-and-death situations. Yet, as an insider, I sometimes look at the tantrums of the narcissistic male divas and can’t help but feel that I have more testosterone coursing through my veins than most of the male surgeons around me. In a crisis, I have learned to keep my voice down while solving the problem because if I had the same reaction as my male counterparts, I would’ve been labelled as hysterical. My calm and collected demeanour during a crisis has, however, not been advantageous to my career. I am now perceived as the surgeon operating on the easy cases because there is never drama in my theatre.
Women can be heroes – Kristin Hannah, The Women
The root cause of the disparity between males and females is that parents raise girls differently than boys. Caitlin O’Ryan asks in her poem At What Point, when do you tell a girl that a park is not just for play? When do you tell her that there is danger lurking around at night and it is unsafe to take a shortcut through the bushes to get home? She highlights the diabolical truth that a woman’s beauty is the reason she is at risk of violence and discrimination but also that she must spend money on beauty products to remain young and relevant. From a young age, women know, as if it’s inscribed in their DNA, that they need to have flat tummies, younger skin and shinier hair, wear nice underwear even though it is uncomfortable, and take responsibility for contraception. Women accept this as part of womanhood, as none of this is expected of a man. Sitting on a discussion panel for the Washington Post Meryl Streep described the issue of living on men’s planet. She said that women “have learned the language of men because they have lived in the house of men all their lives. When you learn a language, you learn French; you learn Spanish; it isn’t your language until you dream in it and the only way to dream in it is to speak it. Women speak Men, but men don’t speak Women; they don’t dream in it“. I see this in my own life. I speak the language of men and of my husband’s soul so fluently that I sometimes struggle to hear my own voice. Like Caitlin O’Ryan, I sometimes wonder who I’d be if I existed just for myself.
Female violinist. It’s so strange she thinks that Rossouw singled out her sex. If she is the most talented violinist let her be the most talented – The Instrumentalist, Harriet Constable
Men and women are also considered to be different in how they love. There is a misperception that women and men have different needs in a relationship. John Gray wrote the famous book Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, which talks about the role each gender plays in a relationship. Men are believed to focus more on physical attraction and sex, while women are believed to be more emotional and, therefore, have a deeper love for their partner. This book was widely criticized for stereotyping genders, but John Gray was not alone. As a teenager, my Mom gave me the book Love and Respect by Dr Emerson Eggerichs to read. She probably thought it would be good for me to understand relationships before I started dating someone. As an avid reader, I immediately began reading but couldn’t read past the first few pages. Even at the age of fifteen, I recoiled at the notion that men want respect and women need love, which they will receive once they first respect their partner. Women want to be respected just as much as men. Most arguments in my relationship start when I feel that my husband doesn’t respect my time and opinion. Men need to be loved just as much as women. After a hard day at work, my husband only wants a long hug and a cuddle in front of the TV.
I think women foolish to pretend they are equal to men. They are far superior. Whatever you give a woman, she will make greater. If you give her sperm, she will give you a baby. If you give her a house, she will give you a home. If you give her groceries, she will give you a meal. If you give her a smile, she will give you her heart. She multiplies and enlarges what is given to her – William Golding
Women are not the same as men, but we are not inferior, and we should embrace our differences. Women have so much to offer if they are given the opportunity. For a long time, researchers thought that females are morally less developed than males. They were thought to be ethically stunned because they allow their feelings to stand in the way of justice. Justice and how one reason around it is the basis of all moral theories. However, Carol Gilligan has shown that Kohlberg’s theory of moral development has been biased against females because he did not consider that women’s ethics develop from real-life situations, not hypothetical ones. In ethical reasoning, a woman focuses on her responsibility towards others and sees herself and others as interdependent. These qualities in women make them excellent leaders who negotiate agreements rather than start a war.
When women are depressed, they eat or go shopping. Men invade another country. It’s a whole different way of thinking – Elayne Boosler
I love men. And I love being a woman. I am not an angry female who shouts, “BURN THE BRA“. I like dressing up, doing my hair and getting a manicure. However, I don’t want to deny my femininity to fit into this world of men. I want to be accepted as an active contributor. I don’t want to feel like an invader, as someone who is too silly to understand the lay of the land, as someone who does not belong on this planet men appropriated for themselves. In My Year of Meats, Ruth Ozeki writes that when Japanese people started writing, they borrowed the characters they used to write from the Chinese written language. However, Chinese characters were bold, and so only men could use them. A Japanese woman was expected to use softer, less detailed characters if she wanted to write. Females like Sei Shonagun, a Japanese author and poet, broke the rules of Japanese writing and wrote in bold male Chinese characters. I long to live in a world in which all women are allowed to also write in bold.
