A friend of mine once said, "Women's hearts are delicate, like vases: you have to handle them with care. Men's hearts are like Nalgenes: you can punt them off a mountainside and they'll be fine." While I appreciate her faith in Nalgenes and the tough-guy image of the male psyche we work so hard to project, I question her conclusions about the difference between how men and women feel.
She is far from alone in her assessment. In fact, it's a popular view. Men are always portrayed (and we tend to portray ourselves) as tough, self-sufficient, and romantically-disinclined. Women accordingly may be portrayed as sensitive, loving, caring, and romantically absorbed. Post sexual revolution, women are increasingly free to violate the stereotypes about them, to the extent that the tough, romantically-disinterested girl who enjoys violent shooter games has become a stereotype in its own right. Men, however, remain mostly bound by the stereotypes about them. As a man, I avoid admitting that I'm a avid fan of Robin Jones Gunn and the Christian romance genre, which I read in private for fear someone will find out and think me less of a man. I hesitate to disclose that I read gender relations and gender psychology books as a hobby, and only then if I can get away with saying it is because I am fascinated by gender differences and see them as a reflection of the relationship between God and man--which is true, but completely omits the fact that an even bigger factor in this reading interest is the fact that I am a hopeless romantic who dreams of someday putting all the information I've accumulated to work in a real relationship that will (God willing) blow my partner's mind. Again, I fear to reveal that I don't fit the stereotypes because it might bring my masculinity into question. In this post-sexual revolution world, the stereotypes seem to be the only measure of manliness we have left...but that doesn't mean they're true, or that adhering to them is doing us any favors.
According to the stereotypes, women feel more deeply and freely than men, especially in the romantic arena, and therefore their hearts need to be treated with greater care. But if anything, the facts tell the opposite story. Studies of young couples have repeatedly found that men reported falling in love much faster than women, some even reporting the fabled "love at first sight." As a measure of how deeply each gender falls, one could look at who is more likely to call it quits. There the answer is overwhelming women. Statistics say that women initiate 2 out of every 3 divorces. After the breakup, studies have shown that men may be more deeply hurt than their exes, as men more likely to suffer mental health problems as a result of a breakup. I am not saying that women are cold with Nalgene-like hearts, but perhaps in the light of this evidence, we need to re-evaluate our stereotypes about men and how we treat them as a result.
There is, to be sure, nothing wrong with encouraging men to be gentle with the hearts of the women in their lives. That's what I appreciate about the stereotypes. But too often, I see them used in more negative ways. They are used to prioritize needs by gender. If we see a man and a woman have both emotionally wounded each other, we are likely to comfort the woman and confront the man with a charge that he "man up" and a rebuke for him daring to hurt a woman. This is a double-standard, plain and simple. Worse yet, sometimes we seem to take the stereotype's assertion that men's hearts can be safely punted off mountains as justification for doing just that. After all, he's a man, he can take it, right? At this point, we are using someone's gender as a justification for what amounts to relational and/or emotional abuse, which takes us beyond the immoral and edges us toward the criminal. Seriously, "boys are stupid, throw rocks at them" is a slogan that appears on t-shirts and magnets all over (one actually hangs behind me at my workplace, apparently for sale). We men don't complain, lest we appear to violate our tough image, but if a similar slogan were displayed about women, someone would complain about hate speech.
But there is another troubling thing about these stereotypes. According to Ephesians 5:25-32 the dynamics between a man and a woman reflect the dynamics between believers and Christ. What we say about one reflects what we believe about the other (at least to an extent). If we believe that men are insensitive and less capable of love and feeling than women, do we believe the same about God? Do we see Him as a distant, disinterested, emotionless god-in-the-clouds? If so, we have bought into a heresy. The Bible tells us that God loved us first by an incalculable margin (before we were even born) that He loved us so deeply that He died for us when we hated Him, and that He is so faithful in His love that to leave us would be to deny Himself, which He cannot do. He is sensitive, loving, emotional, romantic, and near. While men are not perfect reflections of Him, they are meant to be the images of His character. Perhaps it is time we re-evaluated our stereotypes about men (and the ways that we, as men, stereotype ourselves) in the light of this fact and the truth about who Christ is.
She is far from alone in her assessment. In fact, it's a popular view. Men are always portrayed (and we tend to portray ourselves) as tough, self-sufficient, and romantically-disinclined. Women accordingly may be portrayed as sensitive, loving, caring, and romantically absorbed. Post sexual revolution, women are increasingly free to violate the stereotypes about them, to the extent that the tough, romantically-disinterested girl who enjoys violent shooter games has become a stereotype in its own right. Men, however, remain mostly bound by the stereotypes about them. As a man, I avoid admitting that I'm a avid fan of Robin Jones Gunn and the Christian romance genre, which I read in private for fear someone will find out and think me less of a man. I hesitate to disclose that I read gender relations and gender psychology books as a hobby, and only then if I can get away with saying it is because I am fascinated by gender differences and see them as a reflection of the relationship between God and man--which is true, but completely omits the fact that an even bigger factor in this reading interest is the fact that I am a hopeless romantic who dreams of someday putting all the information I've accumulated to work in a real relationship that will (God willing) blow my partner's mind. Again, I fear to reveal that I don't fit the stereotypes because it might bring my masculinity into question. In this post-sexual revolution world, the stereotypes seem to be the only measure of manliness we have left...but that doesn't mean they're true, or that adhering to them is doing us any favors.
According to the stereotypes, women feel more deeply and freely than men, especially in the romantic arena, and therefore their hearts need to be treated with greater care. But if anything, the facts tell the opposite story. Studies of young couples have repeatedly found that men reported falling in love much faster than women, some even reporting the fabled "love at first sight." As a measure of how deeply each gender falls, one could look at who is more likely to call it quits. There the answer is overwhelming women. Statistics say that women initiate 2 out of every 3 divorces. After the breakup, studies have shown that men may be more deeply hurt than their exes, as men more likely to suffer mental health problems as a result of a breakup. I am not saying that women are cold with Nalgene-like hearts, but perhaps in the light of this evidence, we need to re-evaluate our stereotypes about men and how we treat them as a result.
There is, to be sure, nothing wrong with encouraging men to be gentle with the hearts of the women in their lives. That's what I appreciate about the stereotypes. But too often, I see them used in more negative ways. They are used to prioritize needs by gender. If we see a man and a woman have both emotionally wounded each other, we are likely to comfort the woman and confront the man with a charge that he "man up" and a rebuke for him daring to hurt a woman. This is a double-standard, plain and simple. Worse yet, sometimes we seem to take the stereotype's assertion that men's hearts can be safely punted off mountains as justification for doing just that. After all, he's a man, he can take it, right? At this point, we are using someone's gender as a justification for what amounts to relational and/or emotional abuse, which takes us beyond the immoral and edges us toward the criminal. Seriously, "boys are stupid, throw rocks at them" is a slogan that appears on t-shirts and magnets all over (one actually hangs behind me at my workplace, apparently for sale). We men don't complain, lest we appear to violate our tough image, but if a similar slogan were displayed about women, someone would complain about hate speech.
But there is another troubling thing about these stereotypes. According to Ephesians 5:25-32 the dynamics between a man and a woman reflect the dynamics between believers and Christ. What we say about one reflects what we believe about the other (at least to an extent). If we believe that men are insensitive and less capable of love and feeling than women, do we believe the same about God? Do we see Him as a distant, disinterested, emotionless god-in-the-clouds? If so, we have bought into a heresy. The Bible tells us that God loved us first by an incalculable margin (before we were even born) that He loved us so deeply that He died for us when we hated Him, and that He is so faithful in His love that to leave us would be to deny Himself, which He cannot do. He is sensitive, loving, emotional, romantic, and near. While men are not perfect reflections of Him, they are meant to be the images of His character. Perhaps it is time we re-evaluated our stereotypes about men (and the ways that we, as men, stereotype ourselves) in the light of this fact and the truth about who Christ is.
