Women and Men ARE Different. Who'd a Thunk It?

Men (right) tend to be more discreetly wired according to
hemisphere while women tend to be more cross-wired
across the brain's hemispheres. Men are more able to isolate
feelings from logic and action. Women tend to always
be responding to emotional input even when thinking "logically".

Dr. John Yeoman gets a little heat this time out from the PC crowd for asserting in his column on the craft of writing that (prepare to register shock here) MEN AND WOMEN ARE WIRED UP DIFFERENTLY. Of course comedians, Democrats and romance novelists have made whole careers based on that theory, but that doesn't stop the vive le' difference deniers from speaking out.  There is new medical evidence out now that supports what we've known all along. There's a reason we're different in how we think.  Men and women either learn something from this that helps us understand each other better or we shove our collective heads firmly in the sand and go with political ideology over good sense and go on failing to understand each other.

The ability of a woman to write as a man or a man to write women speaks more to the writer's powers of observation, honesty and skill than to to any flaw in your logic, John - no matter how the defenders of political correctitude might wish it. Were there not profound differences between how the sexes are wired up, writing across the great gender divide wouldn't be such a remarkable feat. The most inauthentic fiction you'll ever read is by writers who are either not aware that men and women tend to be wired up rather differently or those who are beating the old "men are no different from women" dead horse for political purposes. A psychological study once tried altering traditional gender attitudes of small children by switching the boys' and girls' stereotypical toys. What they found is that Legos and Army men make lovely doll houses, that soldiers need love too and that, if you bend Barbie at the waist and grab her legs, she makes a passable six-shooter! As you say there are variations along the spectrum, but as with most generalities, the exception simply proves the rule by the mere fact that the exception stands out so sharply against the background generalization.

*  Link to original column:  http://www.writers-village.org/writing-award-blog/why-men-don%E2%80%99t-like-women-authors-and-vice-versahttp://www.writers-village.org/writing-award-blog/why-men-don%E2%80%99t-like-women-authors-and-vice-versa