SEPTEMBER 2023 SULLYGRAM  Beckoning stars spangle the firmament like glitter in the spectacular photos from the WEB telescope. We have one foot in infinity at the very moment our eternity seems so in jeopardy. Here on Earth, calamities shriek in our ears, impending dooms press upon us, and perhaps aliens are about to show themselves for unknown purposes. Daunting stuff. So, I am blindsided by the voluminous off-channel response to last month’s Sullygram about “Barbie” (and Ken). 

I thought that cultural minutiae might be a momentary distraction, but clearly the topic here that sparks the most eager response is relationships between the sexes. Won’t mention “Barbie” again, but I will weigh into the gender dynamics you’ve been so candid about. Like you, I have perspectives that have grown with life experiences. Yours may be better informed than mine, but the following are some fundamentals that make sense in my papier mâché brain…

Social values change by the decade while stodgy evolution needs much more time to reprogram our emotions and instincts. No surprise then that we are each a mix of morphing values and emotional foundations. Simplistically put, the negotiation between binary humans goes on, as it always has, swinging like a pendulum between males seeking sex and supremacy and females seeking provider-protectors for themselves and their children. Guess you could say nature calls the shots under the broader species rubric of survive and thrive. That’s been the recipe that works for most procreating life forms: the pure archetypal male provides and protects while the pure archetypal female rewards with sex and nurtures. In humans, of course, pure archetypes are rare if they exist at all. So, physical adaptations aside, I don’t see gender assignments as iron-clad or as moral issues for men and women, rather they are expediencies – conditions on the ground, or in the nest, so to speak.

Modern humans are nothing if not innovative over time. Enter standing armies, the rule of law, and a shift to a less physically demanding world after the industrial revolution that made what individual men had to offer increasingly obsolete in practical terms. Providing and protecting became vestigial in binary bargaining, farmed out to society as a whole. Women, on the other hand have been slow to grasp their upper hand in the Western world. Logic may seize a generational upgrade, but evolutionary instincts and emotions don’t read generational memos. 

So there we were in the 20^th Century, both men and women changing horses in the middle of the stream. Women no longer needed to go from their father’s house to their husband’s house in order to be safe and secure; and men just sort of milled around trying to figure out what they were supposed to do to satisfy their natures. The sexual revolution came to the rescue of men to a degree but perhaps began to take a toll on the byproducts of sex like romance, love, emotional support, and caring for a family. In some ways the sexes started to resemble each other. Remember the 60s unisex? However you view that, I saw it as the beginning of an existential crisis in a world that needs to keep practical logic and nurturing emotions in balance.

To be sure, male-female have thankfully always tempered each other, and in our less rigidly prescribed society, we’ve become increasingly aware of our dual natures: inner woman; inner man. Call it the 45-55 ratio. You see it in the great social divide regardless of biological assignment. Basically put, do your emotions inform your logic, or does your logic inform your emotions? What is your automatic first reflex? Which – logic or emotions – is the 45%, which the 55%?

As with any delicate balance, the contrast can be weaponized or made threatening (just brand someone illogical, hysterical, greedy or unfeeling). Elsewhere it can be a rallying cliche: male logic for task-solving and practical outcomes vs female emotions for nurturing and sensitivities. Of course, Mother Nature deals in bell curves, and so there has to be a mid-range distribution of logic vs emotions wherein a sizable number of biological males are more female in some ways, and a sizable number of biological females are more male in some ways. That’s the 45-55 ratio.

I didn’t pick the 45-55 arbitrarily. It is remarkably apparent in voting. With little variation, women vote 55% liberal and 45% conservative, men vote the other way around, 55% conservative, 45% liberal – election after election. Countless articles have been written about that without exploring the gender inference, though one-issue voters and similar factors can skew the trend. Data from the 2020 presidential election shows an outcome decided by suburban moms turning out for personable Joe Biden and hating crude Donald Trump (55-44%, Pew Research). Liberal-Democrat estrogen vs Conservative-Republican testosterone. Testosterone has been on precipitous decline for decades now, and it’s interesting to index that to political and cultural trends like the liberal focus on social empathies vs the conservatives focus on economy, crime and defense. Negative caricatures abound: heartless, greedy conservatives; hysterical, short-sighted liberals.

Not surprisingly, emotive types migrate to our expanding entertainment culture from Hollywood to news networks, leading to liberal dominance of our medias. But whether your 45-55 lens sees America as toxically masculine or radically feminized, it leaves moderates and independents (swing voters) of both sexes disenfranchised. 

Interesting recent poll shows high school girls shifting liberal at the same time high school boys are shifting sharply conservative. The decades-long demonizing of white males seems to be having an “awoke from woke” moment. I think this is separate from what I wrote years ago about American culture generally enshrining women’s nature, needs and wants as moral and just, while systematically damning men’s nature as immoral, self-centered and often criminal. The down-with-toxic masculinity push may have hit a level of resistance. Insanely politically incorrect for me to say that, but hey, I’m a heretic, adding only that I don’t consider it a moral issue, or right or wrong, just a neutral snapshot of where the negotiations between the binary sexes have gone. Litmus test: did what I just write affirm your logic or enflame your emotions?

Coming full circle about sexual dynamics, FB is loaded with posting people who can’t reconcile their demands – or at least their ‘druthers – with the state of gender relationships. I’m sort of permanently in the ‘druthers camp, having surrendered early (in my teens) to the cynicism that my nature is out of sync with societal indoctrination. Once valued at the core of human attributes, romantic idealism now has the appearance of a wart on one’s soul. So be it. The world has its faint pulses floating in the night, and I’m just one of them.

C’mon, you can smile at that. Just being honest here, and I don’t seek recruits. My surrender was a long time ago. That’s part of why I moved to Minnesota. Speaking of which, brings me to the latest photos below: #1 Full Super Moon off the lake in my backyard; #2 my friend David all the way from Israel to visit; #3 The Golden Field; #4-14 in response to your last month’s comments, some final photos from the Dominican where I worked on a girls school a few years ago.

Thomas "Sully" Sullivan