Why Can't a Man Be More Like a Woman?

I am sure you noticed that I performed a gender role reversal on a song title. I think that the world would be a better place if we limited such actions to the arts.

Be that as it may, the original title, from what was arguably the last great Broadway musical, My Fair Lady, read: "Why Can't a Woman Be More Like a Man?"

This plaintive tune, sung by chronic bachelor Prof. Henry Higgins, is a sign that his pupil, one Eliza Doolittle, is touching his cold, unfeeling heart.

Of course, My Fair Lady is about transformation, but it is not about role reversal. It dramatizes the metamorphosis of a flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, into a Lady, one who can pass in society as a Hungarian princess.

Given the British propensity to classify people by their accents, Eliza's story concerns social mobility in a society that is rather too class-bound. Under the aegis of Prof. Higgins, the eminent linguist turned speech coach, Eliza overcomes her Cockney accent and learns the intonations and diction that will allow her fit in at a higher level of British society.

However much Higgins would wish that a woman were more like a man, he does succeed in making a flower girl act more like a lady.

For his pains, he develops feelings for her. Not deeply passionate feelings, but feelings nonetheless.

To fast forward to the present, I was reminded yesterday of the existence of powerful forces in Western culture that want to make men more like women.

I have occasionally suggested that when teachers and therapists try to make men more sensitive, more empathic, and more deeply feeling beings, they are effectively refusing to accept boys and men for what they are. They are trying, through psychological and other means, to make men more like women.

They believe that they are striking a role for morality, offering a cure for various pathologies, and making the world a better place. Once men can get in touch with the depths of their feelings they will be less aggressive, less predatory, and less competitive.

Forget competing against the Chinese of the Japanese. Forget fighting terrorism or crime. Men are going to feel so deeply that they are going to surpass competitive striving.

All of which to say that I was shocked to read yesterday about experiments in Germany and the United Kingdom where men were treated with a nasal spray containing the hormone oxytocin. Link here.

What is oxytocin? It is a hormone that men and women possess, but that women possess in larger quantities. According to the article, it triggers labor pains, helps mothers to bond with their babies, and produces enhanced sensitivity and empathy.

The article fails to mention that when a woman has a sexual experience her body produces extra oxytocin, thereby drawing her closer to her lover. Researchers call oxytocin the "cuddle hormone."

Oxytocin is one of the primary reasons why women who make a habit of hooking up cannot detach their emotions from their sexual experience as easily as men can.

Anyway, the experiments demonstrated that when you give men oxytocin nasal spray they become more sensitive, more empathetic, more attuned to their emotions, more easily touched by the pain of others. They pick up social cues more easily, especially those that denote pain. Men taking oxytocin nasal spray have generally deeper feelings.

To my knowledge the researchers do not note that a football player, for example, who is more deeply touched by the pain of others will quickly lose his competitive edge.

I only know what I read in the papers, but it seems never to have crossed the minds of these scientists that there may be an adaptive reason why men are not quite as sensitive and empathetic as women.

It is telling that scientists are so thoroughly steeped in knee-jerk male bashing that they do not even ask whether there might be something positive about having less oxytocin. Why do they take it for granted that male biochemistry is intrinsically maladaptive? Why do they assume that masculine behavior is something like an illness, something to be compared with the kind of social withdrawal they see in autism and schizophrenia? Why do they consider it something that requires treatment?

[A special welcome to those of you who have arrived here via Dr. Helen or Instapundit. And, of course, my special thanks to Dr. Helen Smith and Prof. Glenn Reynolds for linking this post.]