GENDER SENSITIVITY

Note: GENDER SENSITIVITY was the title assigned by my publisher for the maiden contribution I submitted to the newspaper editor, as I did not know then about these things. I wrote this in answer/reaction to the study I mentioned above that they published entitled again, Love Beats Depression for Women, Not Men. My column bears the title: “A FRIEND FOR YOU”

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In my attempt to answer the study, I would like to quote a famous psychologist who did extensive researches on human behavior based on scientific facts. He found out and explained that in the anatomy of human brain men are left lobed and thus, value competency, achievement and efficiency; while women are left lobed and are therefore, caring, nurturing and supportive. In other words, maturity in men means feeling strong within themselves, which obviously is a very individual trait; while maturity in women is the ability to enjoy warm attachments, a definitely relational trait.

Our brokenness, as a free people of God, since Adam and Eve (M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled and Beyond) muddles this truth. So we go through life sicker and sicker, generation through generation. And we become more feeling people, forgetting to realize that feelings can be very deceptive. It is an urgency to put into order our “thinking disorder”.

The “pathology of love and loving” is mainly caused by the absence of security, or the lack of it, in our lives. One must have a healthy relationship with anybody. Until a person obtains androgyny, the balance of both the masculine and feminine characteristics in every individual, he/she will continue to live a wasted life consisting of mood changes, depression and misery.

We have so much to learn because “we are a people who are very nice to look at from a distance, until we get to know each other up close and personal” – this is one of my earliest reflections/realizations in midlife.

Information/education on gender sensitivity, which has been here for sometime already,

has affected in this powerful awareness of the great differences between men and women. Sadly though, because of the magnitude of our differences we somehow failed to follow closely and (ugh!) sensitively. Relationship failure is, by and large, the net effect of our total indifference to gender sensitivity issues.

God bless!