TIME Magazine - TIME: The Science of Gender

THE SCIENCE OF GENDER

The Wide World of Men, Women and Beyond

For millennia, different sexes have meant specific norms. But the modern world has new answers to the gender puzzle

By Jeffrey Kluger

THERES A PERVERSE KIND OF PLEASURE TO BE had when an old truth dieswhen a confidently, even smugly held certitude is revealed as nonsense. The Earth was absolutely, positively the center of the universe, and only fools would believe otherwiseuntil we began to sort out the structure of the cosmos and the fools turned out to be the ones whod been peddling the old thinking. There were only four elementsair, earth, fire and waterand if you doubted that, well, try to name more. Flash forward 2,500 years, one periodic table and 118 elementsso farand we know that things are a good deal more complex then we thought.

Something similar is true in the matter of the sexes. It had seemed clear from the beginning that the human species comes in just two varieties: male and female. Their bodies look different, function differently and are designed to complement each other: men provide the gamete that fertilizes the femalethanks to a very distinctive piece of the male anatomy that corresponds perfectly to an equally distinctive part of the female anatomy. Men are generally physically larger and characterized as more aggressive, in keeping with their roles as hunters and protectors. Women are smaller on average, expected to be more nurturing and even capable of producing food for their young, in keeping with their roles as caregivers and babymakers.

The differences, the thinking has often followed, extend to the ways the minds of the two sexes work too. Men are more technically and mechanically inclinedas they must be if they are going to manipulate the materials of the natural world to fashion shelters and weapons and tools. Women are more intuitively and emotionally inclinedas they must be if they are going to manage the family and sustain the community. From this organizational concept came a massive body of laws and customs and social codes that both built on the sex differences andmore troublinglystrictly enforced them.

And now, some 300,000 years after the emergence of our sexually dimorphic species, were at last learning that a lot of what we thought we knew just aint so. Beyond the obvious, basic biological differences between men and women, there is vastly more that we have in common than not. And there are fewer generalizations that hold true. Some of this new awareness has been established by science, some by simple observation. Think men cant be nurturers? Then take a look at the rising blood levels of oxytocina bonding hormone known as the cuddle chemicaland the falling levels of testosterone in new fathers when they are in the presence of their babies. Women arent suited to be scientists and soldiers and global leaders? Then explain all those female engineers and military officers and senators and prime ministers.

Amid ongoing debate in the scientific community about neurobias, brain scans have turned up few or no substantive differences in the neural architecture of the two sexessuggesting that any behavioral and ostensible intellectual differences may not be rooted in the cognitive operating system but in the larger culture in which it exists. Hormonal chemistry does differ in men and womensometimes dramatically, especially in the womb and during puberty when it drives sexual development. But most of the time it does little more than toggle certain functions up or down depending on the circumstances, leading perhaps to transient behavioral differences but nothing more.

Then, too, there is our growing understanding of gender fluidity and the transgender communitynew insights that demolish the girl-boy, pink-blue, X-Y duality altogether. The physical anatomy you present to the world may be entirely different from the sense of self you carry insidesomething transgender people have long been saying, even if everyone else is only now beginning to listen.

Certainly not all sex and gender divides have been erased. Men and women do have uncounted differencesin terms of behavior, health, emotions, longevity, social mobility, parenting styles, approaches to romance and more. To say that the differences amount to nothing is to take just as absolutist (and misguided) a position as that of the people who said the differences were everything. The key is to understand those differenceswhat their roots are, where they lead us, how we can make the best use of both the things we have in common and the things we dont. The gender jigsaw is undeniably complex; but understood better, assembled properly, it can be undeniably beautiful too.

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The Science of Gender

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Editor Jeffrey Kluger

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