OCTOBER 2026 SULLYGRAM: I guess I was attracted to it relatively early in life, even though I couldn’t put the pieces together. Couldn’t put a name to it. Not that there weren’t plenty of names and phrases that spelled it out. Words like equilibrium, the Golden Rule, the Happy Medium, Aristotle’s Golden Mean, parity, and all the preachy wisdom that what you give is what you get, were all so loudly screaming the keystone word “balance” that I was lost in that middle without looking at either end. If the words come at you before you’ve lived long enough to put them into some kind of context, you just file them away or blow them off. What did those ideas balance? Opposites? It wasn’t until I ran across the Chinese Tai Jitu – the Yin and Yang red and black circle like a snake eating its tail – that I began thinking of opposites in terms of gender.  

The Yin and Yang portray human genders side by side as purely female and purely male. Bingo, thinks the child, it’s sex! It’s either-or! Opposites! Except it’s not just what’s between your knees and your belt. Rather it connects with psychological archetypes of provider-protector vs nurturer, and the emotions and perspectives that serve each. Before I go further, permit me a necessary digression to set aside the whole men-in-women-sports controversy.

The catch-22 that allows strictly male biology to invade sports meant for strictly female biology rests on trying to sneak physical differences in with those distinctions I just made about psychological archetypes. If differences in gender emotions and perspectives are viable from the neck up, differences in gender strength are viable from the neck down. Simply put, bodies growing from XY chromosomes and SRY genes provide strength advantages over bodies growing from XX chromosomes. Like the Yin and Yang, the biologics exist side by side, not as one over the other. Of course, there are instances of ambiguous body biology (now called intersex). That is what governing sports authorities are trying to parse. Quite literally, it is not possible to have it both ways. To treat gender ID strictly as a matter of personal choice might work in most contexts, but not in physical performance based strictly on unambiguous biology such as female sports.

Unlike physically, a different picture emerges psychologically. Those emotions and perspectives that go with the separate roles of provider-protector and nurturer do mix and match. They exist simultaneously to one degree or another in each of us. The synergistic balance reflects in our ways of thinking, our reflexes, and in our perceptions, strategies, motivations and interpretations. The Yin and Yang coil them into a perfect circle to reflect co-dependency, completeness. “Inner woman” we impart to males; “thinks like a man” we say of females. Women are characterized by networking (in union there is strength); in men, individuality favors competitiveness, defending and dominance. To score points, we are prone to turn gender into caricatures. We call men sissies or crybabies for showing emotion; insult women as illogical for emoting. Stereotype adages disparage both genders: “women feel, men think”; “women talk, men do”; “toxic masculinity”; “misogynist”; “male chauvinist pig”; “girly man,”; “the feminization of boys”; “sexist”; “dumb blonde.”

Now the fun begins. Because if those roles fit evolution’s boot camp where killing saber-toothed tigers and raising children were #1 and #2 on the daily to-do list, thousands of millennia since have rewritten the script. Hence, the mix and match of the Yin and Yang. Standing armies and the rule of law made Superman Samson obsolete; it-takes-a-village broadened child-rearing. If you stand back far enough, it gets funny. Man tames Man, then Woman tries to tame the winner. A man marries thinking she won’t change, but she does; a woman marries thinking she can change him, but she can’t.

Were there ever any purebreds in the human comedy? Those archetypes of the Yin and Yang never existed full strength in any of us. We all think, we all feel. And as civilizations grew more complex, that happy symbiosis expanded across the spectrum. The arts, politics, spiritual culture, psychological culture, socialization, nurturing, warrior mentality, logic, emotions all reflect it, even as maleness still favors black-and-white problem-solving into which femininity leans toward empathy, grace and Technicolor. We couldn’t navigate civilization if archetypal roles did not temper each other on the yellow brick road of life. Expressed as one-dimensional extremes, the heartless Tin Man couldn’t fall in love and the brainless Scarecrow couldn’t multiply 2 X 2.

Irrespective of biology, there is a psychological dominance in each of us toward one gender trait or the other. It is marginal mostly and somewhat unpredictable – subject to social influence, rationalization, indoctrination, mass hysteria, and even flip-flopping.

So, to get to the nitty-gritty, just how marginal are the gender differences in anxiety-prone hairless apes who reboot at night by lying down? Puh. You think I don’t know? Okay…okay, I don’t know. But my guess is it’s a few percentage points? In fact, how about the 45-55 phenomenon of election results? Gender differences are never more statistically clear than in Presidential voting. With little variance going back to the 70s, voter splits by gender have been amazingly close to women voting 55% Democrat, 45% Republican, and men voting 55% Republican, 45% Democrat. The last time men went solidly for a Democrat Presidential candidate was for JFK. The last time women voted solidly Republican was for Eisenhower in the 50s.

I like to think this is all quite consistence with Natural Selection in evolution’s picture of survival, depending on how you view the role of a President. Should the leader of a nation be first-off a guardian-provider, ever strong on defense? Or should he/she prioritize social agendas, a compassionate nurturer? Which is better suited to the perils of our times? Simplistically put in pure archetypal terms, should a president be a father or a mother? Remember, the gender vote is not biology alone – 45% men tip toward “feelings,” 45% of women prioritize “logic.” My litmus test asks it this way: regardless of your biology, do your emotions inform your logic (liberal, socialist, progressive, Democrat), or does your logic inform your emotions (conservative, libertarian, Republican)?

The leanings are marginal, fluid, and not mutually exclusive: men who prioritize feelings; women who prioritize thoughts. Which demographic will move the needle on the 55-45 split?

It’s a lot to ask those whose reflexes prioritize emotions to forego their quality of life and social justice issues. Feelings are fuzzy. Intuition fed by herd emotions is safety, hope, consensus and connection.  

Likewise, it’s a lot to ask others to become what they consider irrational when all their instincts and skill sets to defend and provide rest on rational analysis and pragmatic strategies.

Would you call some nations male or female? How about France – the cultural repository of arts and compassion (female), but noted for being over-run, surrendering, collapsing internally and lacking effective defense despite its Napoleonic past (male) when its empire thrived globally? Addressing the UN recently, France’s President was dubbed “Macron the Moron” for saying that Hamas never had a presence in Gaza. Tempting to call France an example of lost balance. Is that where we are?

Perhaps survival rests upon calling up the Yin and Yang gender roles in the right sequence for survival in these perilous times. Head or heart? Father or mother? If your first impulse is to dance with the wolves at the door, you’d better learn the quick-step before the music stops.       

Photo of me with two Yin and Yang symbol kickboards. I custom drew them with color india ink for dozens of swimmers, always with that symbol. I guess these two were supposed to be the 10 commandments on tablets of stone (King Tut understudying for Moses). And that “shark’s” tooth around my neck was gifted me by another swimmer who carved it from a steak round-bone.

Thomas "Sully" Sullivan