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Editorial
Male gender studies course long overdue
Monday, February 20, 2012
When you're a man, your last name stays put.
Wedding plans take care of themselves.
You get extra credit for the slightest act of thoughtfulness.
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It doesn't take long to find a list of differences between men and women when doing an Internet search, but we're sure a new University of Nebraska-Lincoln class will have plenty to cover.
Jan Deeds says she's heard all the wisecracks about offering a new "Introduction to Men's Studies" class at the senior and graduate level, but it's a natural outgrowth of her work as director of UNL's Women's Center.
"In the 1960s and '70s, when women's lives began changing, well, guess what? Men's lives changed, too," she said. Notions of what makes us feminine or masculine, or a bit of each, create a continuum of genders, Deeds added.
When you're a man, there's no need to ask what you are thinking about. It's always sex, cars or football. If women ask, you have to make something up, so they shouldn't ask.
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Current thinking about how society defines masculinity has settled on four overarching pillars, Deeds said, or hegemonic masculinity. It was first described by Robert Brannon in 1976 as: "no sissy stuff," the "sturdy oak" or tightly controlled emotions, "give 'em hell" or being the tough guy, and the "big wheel" or dominant man in charge.
"That creates a very narrow box for men," she said. "There are many ways to be masculine beyond these four."
When you are a man, phone conversations are over in 30 seconds flat.
You know stuff about tanks.
Your underwear is $8.95 for a three pack.
Chocolate is just another snack.
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The differences are not just anecdotal, of course.
Researchers have learned that women tend to communicate more effectively than men, responding to non-verbal cues such as tone, emotion and empathy and working to reach a consensus that works for a group. Men are more task-oriented, less talkative and more isolated.
That can partly be explained because men process better with the left hemisphere of the brain, while women tend to think equally well with both hemispheres.
Men tend to have a "fight or flight" response to stress situations, while women "tend and befriend" to deal with problems. It may actually stem from the way estrogen and testosterone react with oxytocin, the stress hormone released in both sexes.
Men tend to have a larger inferior-parietal lobule in their brain, the section thought to control mental mathematical ability, while two sections of the brain responsible for language were found to be larger in women than men.
Men's brains are typically 11-12 percent larger than women's, but that has nothing to do with intelligence; rather the number of neurons needed to control greater muscle mass and larger body size.
It's clear any gender studies program is incomplete without a close look at the gender that comprises half the population. It's also clear there should be no shortage of material.