Same Difference: How Gender Myths Are Hurting Our Relationships, Our Children and Our Jobs.

Same Difference
How Gender Myths Are Hurting Our Relationships,
Our Children and Our Jobs.

Men want a much younger woman
Women want a rich man
Boys and girls learn differently
Men are just very different from women—it’s in their genes.

Right?
Wrong.

The women who pick up a copy of one of John Gray’s Mars and Venus books should know that the book ought to be stamped with a warning for female readers: Caution-- this book could be hazardous to your health.

Gray’s books, claiming that Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus, proclaim vast gender differences, but this is junk science, peddling myth and misinformation. Women who take his prescriptions seriously could wind up feeling powerless , angry and depressed.

It’s frightening to think how much impact Gray’s books have had when you examine who he is and what he has to say. At last count, he had sold 15 million books, outstripped in best-sellerdom only by the Bible. While Gray uses the title "doctor," he got his degree from Columbia Pacific University, a correspondence school which, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, has since been shut down by the California State Department of Consumer Affairs. Investigators charged that the faculty was virtually non-existent, the course work "laughable" and degree requirements routinely ignored.

Moreover, when University of Colorado researchers reviewed the best-selling advice books in 2001 to see how they dovetailed with the latest findings in the behavioral sciences, Gray's Mars and Venus was considered one of the worst. The author often wrongly attributes all behavior to gender and ignores many other factors—such as social class, education, religion, age—and , most important, who has power and who does not.

What does Gray have to say once he nabs us with those attention-grabbing titles? Men, he says, are naturally programmed to go into their "caves" and not communicate with other people. Women must never try to talk to men when they withdraw , but must honor their behavior. A woman must not offer help to a man, because it makes him feel weak and incompetent. A woman must never criticize a man or try to change his behavior. She should never be angry. If she does feel angry, she must wait until she is "more loving and centered" to talk to him. Only when she is loving and forgiving can she share her feelings. If a man pulls away from her, "he is just fulfilling a valid need to take care of himself for a while."

Gray cites the case of “Bill,” who asks his wife, “Mary,” to make a phone call for him while he is sitting on the couch watching TV. Mary “reacts with a frustrated and helpless tone of voice. She says, ‘I can’t right now, I already have too much to do, I have to change the baby’s diaper, I have to clean up this mess, balance the checkbook, finish the wash, and tonight we are going out to a movie. I have too much to do. I just can’t do it all!’’’

Bill goes back to watching TV and disconnects from her feelings. Bill, says Gray, is angry at her for making him feel like a failure. He retreats to his cave, “Just taking care of himself.” If Mary realized this, Gray suggests, she would smile at his request for still one more chore and say sweetly that she’s running behind. As for Bill, all he has to do, Gray suggests, is to say admiringly to Mary, “ I just don’t know how you do it!”

That line might just get Bill a damp diaper in the face. Gray does not suggest that Bill might A) change the baby’s diaper, B) help clean up the house, C) balance the checkbook or D) help with the wash. Who has the power in this marriage--and isn’t this really the issue? Gray’s scenario puts women in a tight bind, while requiring little from men.

. Why did women buy gray’s worldview ? Perhaps because it was simply easier than trying to change the power base at home. The millions of women working out of the house were going home to find another day of work ahead of them—the famous second-shift. No one else was volunteering to take on that shift, and why would they? Who wants to work all day and then go home to be the janitor? So women had--and still have--two choices. They can either fight it out—begging, screaming, pleading, to get husband and/or children to pick up their dirty laundry--or they can take the seemingly easier route of doing it all themselves. In this way women help to perpetuate traditional gender roles in the home, buying into the notion that gender roles are innate. It’s not that a guy’s willfully refusing to do the childcare, laundry, cooking and emoting; it’s that he’s not designed to do it. We are designed to do it. In the short term, such rationalizations may help us feel better, but as a long term strategy they leave us in an untenable position.

Gray's Rx for relationships is for the woman to leave the man alone while she supervises the kids' homework, cooks dinner and cleans up. That's advice that gets people into trouble, not out of it. A woman who takes Gray's advice at face value may be at serious risk for high stress. Unable to express her anger openly, to ask for what she really needs, always on edge because she must sense a man's every whim and need, she is likely to turn her anger inward. Repressed anger leads to depression and lack of sexual desire. An angry, depressed woman who's rarely in the mood for sex will hardly be the ideal mate for any man.

Dr. Rosalind C. Barnett and professor Caryl Rivers are nationally known experts on the lives of women and men. Their book She Works, He Works won the prestigious Book for a Better Life award in 1997. Roz Barnett has directed a number of large federal studies and published in the leading peer reviewed journals. The New York Times called her one of the researchers who is reshaping the map of the psychology of women. Caryl Rivers is a professor of Journalism at Boston university and the author of 13 books. Her articles and columns have appeared in The new York Times, The Nation, Ms. ,Los Angeles times, Boston Globe and WomensEnews.