For a host of very bad reasons, we spent a very long time denying that women are equally capable of doing math as men. Some very smart people would justify this: after all, women are the emotional ones who can’t fathom the rational workings of a male mind. They would even present empirical proofs: Behold this fine specimen of a female sex. Now, ask her to do most basic multiplication. See? She can’t do it! Q.E.D.
They might have conveniently omitted the part in which that woman was never taught any math. She was told from an early age that this isn’t something she can do. She grew up in a society in which even if she would show any natural mathematical propensity, it would have been beaten out of her long time ago. So maybe, just maybe, it was no great wonder that, statistically, men were more capable of doing math than women.
Thankfully, we have finally started correcting this error. And guess what? As soon as we admitted that genitals have little impact on people’s capacity to add and multiply, as soon as we allowed women to study math-based subjects, it turned out that they can do just fine. So what were we doing for all those years? What a complete waste of human potential! Imagine how much further science and technology could have progressed if we didn’t pointlessly insist on only using half of our collective brainpower!
But even now, girls still suffer from those entrenched stereotypes, they still find it harder to prove their skill, they are less likely to be encouraged to pursue careers in science and technology, and if they do, they need to face being treated as ‘unfeminine’. In consequence, women are still under-represented in STEM subjects at universities and in workplaces. Even after all those years, even though there are no real relevant gender differences, statistically, still more men are capable of doing math than women.
For a host of very bad reasons, we spent a very long time denying that men are equally capable of being emotionally intelligent as women. Some very smart people would justify this — after all, men are the rational ones who can’t fathom the emotional workings of a female mind. And do we even need to present empirical proofs? It is obvious that none of us understand what those hysterical women are about, and a female heart is a mystery not even poets comprehend!
They might have conveniently omitted the part in which men were never taught to recognise, express, and deal with emotions. They were told from an early age that the only emotion a real man can have, is anger, and sympathy is a weakness. They grew up in a society in which being in tune with your emotions was treated as a vice and expressing them would have led to ridicule, ostracism and social exclusion. So maybe, just maybe, it was no great wonder that, statistically, women were more emotionally mature than men.
Thankfully, we have finally started correcting this error. And guess what? As soon as we admitted that genitals have little impact on people’s capacity for emotional maturity, as soon as we have allowed men to express their emotion without ridicule and threat of emasculation, it turned out that…
Oh.
Wait.
Have we?
Some moves have been made but I don’t think it would be very controversial to say that the daft ‘women can’t do math’ myth is far, far closer to gone than the ‘men can’t do emotions’ myth. Girls might still not be encouraged to pursue math and technology as much, but they learn it at school all the same and they face little resistance if they want to develop in this direction.
But boys? There is no such thing as formal emotional education, and the emotional upbringing boys receive at home is still pretty much non-existent. In fact, boys and men are actively discouraged expressing any emotion other than anger, taught to feel ashamed of and bottle up what they feel, and above all, they still live amidst pervasive narratives which tell them that emotions are just not something men do.
So are men emotionally immature?
Yes!
Why is anyone surprised?
Of course, this doesn’t mean that we should cut the poor emotionally uneducated guys some slack. It means that we desperately need to educate them — young and old alike.
Right now, by and large, the men who are emotionally mature, are self-taught, just as women learned in math were a century ago. We need to change this. We talked a lot about needing to teach our girls as well as we teach our boys — we also need to teach our boys as well as we teach our girls. And as frustrating as it might be to deal with an emotionally immature man-child, we need to acknowledge that this will never change until we do something to correct the glaring gaps in his upbringing.
Wait. We?
Who is ‘we’?
It is all of us who see this problem and want to correct it. It is all who are sick of dealing with emotional immaturity. It is all who would rather spend less energy on complaining how crap things are, and more on making them better.
This ‘we’ has no gender. It’s just people who want to make the world better, for everyone.
PS. I cheated a bit with my comparison, those stories are not really alike. The difference is power. It was men who stopped women from doing math, but it’s not like women are stopping men from gaining emotional maturity. However, what difference does this make in the daily life of an average man? No particular immature man holds the reigns of The Patriarchy.
The average man is just a little cog in a machine, often wishing he could not play the role he was dealt. And yes, some are very comfortable with their roles and will resist change at all cost. Forget them. Take all the energy you could have spent on complaining about things you can’t change, and focus it on changing the things you can.
