Neurodiplomats

by Lanascopic 

Can real femaleness and real maleness be defined and compared without perpetuating the attitudes of inequality and sexism? Are male and female brains different? Should our differences, whatever their cause, be overlooked, reconciled, or embraced? If women put the fear of belonging to a supposedly inferior sex aside, we can achieve a safe, new world. The male verses female division is sometimes too apparent, and it's made women calloused in their process of trying to gain the approval of judgmental or indifferent men in their lives. That many women have turned calloused is more than a personal tragedy for most of us: it is a global misfortune. In the recent past and even now, society has adamantly sought to abandon femaleness for various reasons. Femaleness is currently viewed as the outdated concept of a sexist world. I think that even women see it subconsciously as the weaker force which can't rise above its own poor reputation: It is this false reputation which has been popularized, not the real one. The anti-feminine attitudes of women are based on misconceptions about what it means to be female. That's because women have been made to feel inferior for being kinder, more patient, and more nurturing towards others than men have traditionally been. Among others, the men in control have imposed a false femaleness over the face of the real one. The result is a historical, sexist attitude which failed to identify real femaleness in favor of the exaggerated, false, or deviant image of femaleness. This false image of womanhood has been used to shame-away the powerfully healing influence of real femaleness in action. We are silenced, and what is left but a world full of exaggerated maleness and downplayed femaleness. The result of downplayed femaleness ranges from the unfeminine behavior of so-called Karens and of so-called fem-bots, and somewhere in the middle there are the less flamboyant females who quietly deny their own true, earthy potential. No matter where a woman falls within this manufactured spectrum, we are uncomfortable with ourselves and, being less than genuine in these ways results in others picking up on the shame women feel for being true women. Many women have become more than masked in society, becoming costume-women entirely, like the fuming Karen and the icy Fem-bot. The masks we wear to hide our irrational shame, unfairly, embolden the sexist who perpetuates our unequal treatment. Yet if we are real, the conquering male types in the world get disgusted by our empathy and humane concern for the well being of others. This is because they are always on the kind of mission that will always be threatened by real femaleness. Man has his superpower: to use whips and cause pain. That's not the female approach, scientifically speaking. Our superpower is to use understanding, mercy, and to console others. How the hell could our gentle approach ever stand up to theirs, one might ask. Despite male harshness, and feel free to laugh at how outrageous it may sound, but male minds are still human minds, so the dragon always has one vulnerable spot: his need to be loved and understood, to receive grace and compassion that other highly male minds can't provide him. He needs this from his spouse, sister, mother, aunt, boss, colleagues, teacher, friends, neighbors, and others. I believe men are not neurologically incapable of appreciating gentle, uncompetitive relationships with the nurturers and wise guides of the world, the vast majority of whom are females who freely embrace their neurological femaleness in the context of its real neurological meaning, not in the context of history. Even when you set aside sexual dimorphism and the social differences between masculine and feminine, neurological differences remain between maleness and femaleness. Before I back that statement up with a light spray of science, it's worth considering that in many people's personal experiences sex hormones appear to rule the world. Hormones appear to reduce a big chunk of the human drama to a matter of testosterone, progesterone, and estrogen. I do not disagree. I've dreamed of some solution to this aspect of our human drama. I have wondered what might happen if some super genius designed some type of structural algorithm capable of reflecting the precise patterns of all these hormonal distributions across the globe and within all eight billion male and female brains in real time. I don't know how that could ever be done but if it could then entire teams of smart people, trained in extracting future odds from such a program, could make accurate predictions and good suggestions after examining their real-time global hormone map on a massive screen. They could easily watch the global concentrations and distributions of every molecule of every identified hormone play out in all eight billion human brains and societies in real time. They could document correlations, gain some impressive, useful knowledge. Female neurohormones concentrated throughout an area could appear on this interactive, reactive, constantly shifting map color-coded in a nice, Friendly Earthy Green. Neurohormonal influences on male tendencies could appear there in Manly Officer Blue. I wonder if this technology could accurately predict stock market trends and political unrest, all in real time, and if so, whether some super-smart team could intervene somehow to stabilize the male female patterns of influence on that map then redistribute them to balance them out nicely. Could humankind then finally eradicate the economical invisible hand, social unrest, ethnocentrism, hunger, poverty, violence, and even war? If so, then in a move of historic proportions all kinds of human inequality would virtually turn to dust inside one out of every two ovaries and exactly half of all testicles. Imagine that kind of world. The remaining ovaries and testicles could all become best friends, like mature grown-ups in hormonally mutual, symbiotic relationships. Yet the adult boys and girls back here in the reality of Peter Pan land have yet to grow up. Why? Well, I think I have a clue, and it has everything to do with hormonal influences in preferences, the attitudes, in our neurohormonal driven agendas, which humans can’t easily escape. Yes, it is odd that we can board rockets to escape earth’s motherly hormone barrier— that blanket of chemicals in the atmosphere— but male or female we can’t escape our own hormonal differences. What went wrong, Major Tom? Neurologists recognize and agree that male and female brains differ chemically. They also adamantly agree that those differences don't account for any intellectual differences between males and females. Neurologists aren't being sexist when they point out that what makes male and female brains different is that some of the regions of those respective brains tend to contain especially high concentrations of sex-specific receptors for, you guessed it, neurohormones. These are responsible for a lot of innate differences, including how male babies prefer to tinker with toys that have wheels, girls prefer to squeeze and study the precise textural composure of soft, plush toys. The current neurological interpretation of these hormonal differences is that male brains are usually good at dealing with things requiring sharp spatial recognition— tangible things such as, well, things. As women, we, tend to be better with our nobler, gentler preferences. and careful social perspectives—you know the ones, where we see that it takes more than things to solve human problems. Once, very few men in charge even cared about human problems. If anything, they either caused or increased perhaps all of them. Men were pillagers, conquerors, takers of things and discarders of people— except to use as, yes, things. Oh, how uptight those men. You know, a guy ought to realize when his striving tendencies rob him of the ease of friendly exchanges. We, on the other hand, have surrounded ourselves not with globes and maps of power but with our favorite plush textures, have thoughtfully healed others like true doctors and natural diplomats, and have been more accurate than men about the ills of society since before being thoughtful and understanding arrived on the popular social scene. Back then, cruel and manly master bots pretended with wooden wheeled chariots and wrought iron balls to be defenders of the universe. Yet, despite all their imaginative pretending on the plays of world scenes, males could never be us. Today, that's changing, but what took so long for that change to begin sweeping the globe? Well, while my good mother always raved over my intelligent brains, lucky me, girls weren’t always told that they were just as smart as guys. In fact, for a long time, women were told to cook and to refrain from speaking of men’s concerns, and I’m not talking about their jock itch, either. I’m talking about plans to build societies, studies of the stars, and the makings of laws, I mean the whole direction of, and methods used toward, progress. You know that odd song that looks back in time to say that if the South would have won, we’d have had it made? Well, look back a moment longer and change two words in the lyrics: If women would have won the world would have had it made. And with our beautiful, powerful nobility at the forefront of our satisfying feminine identities, no average woman would feel compelled to match the male at his petty game of thingy-things and strange political rulership. That game would never have been initiated or at least not have been perpetuated, at least, not to the extent that it has. No, not if the women in charge had the wisdom to work with and develop their strongest female empathy towards the world's peoples. It's hard to imagine such a different history, though, isn't it? Why is our global strategy still based on the primitive ancient game, enacted by traditional subjugating man? Is that really necessary? What stops uncorrupted women from going the feminine route, solving problems by listening closely to their merciful female neurohormones. What stops women from imposing less aggression, offering more listening? I'm not suggesting that every last woman on earth and her hormones are perfect. In fact, in some cases the reverse is true, and hormones can wreak havoc on the female experience. I have great sympathy for such situations. What I am saying is that women do tend to have a greater neurohormonal leaning towards a condition of being thoughtful, observant, wise leaders. Admittedly, that condition sounds nothing like the female expressions all too common today, especially the ugly scenes in which in-your-face Karen-esque women boss their way through a freaking Big Mack here, or another innocent manager there. As with the male, when the female roars, people get outright dominated. So, are neurologists wrong? Then, what's happened to the female condition? Could it have been strained out of our brains by oppression? Is that even possible? I hope not. I doubt that the current counterintuitive female behavior is based on any widespread evolutionary impulses in most female brains. Yet, if women are in fact more naturally inclined to excel in solving misunderstandings with reason, patience, guidance, and compassion, then why do overstressed, overcompetitive lady-bullies appear everywhere anyone may look? Women don't tend to stay single and statistically we hook up with men more often. Maybe the lady-bullies have they've picked up some bad habits from living in close proximity to their bossy, old-gen, Ken-like spouses. How sad indeed that any woman should feel compelled to be a hardass to prove to herself that she's no female pushover and to prove to the world that she can be as badass as any old-gen male. When I consider this woman, I'm like, "No! Don't ruin your intricately beautiful, neurohormonal, condition over that guy. Don't let the zombies bite you and make you sick, my good sister." Poor, Karen-esque one. We get it: women can be great and dramatic actors who sometimes learn from the male masters of cruelty. Fine. But what is the value in that? Female parrots of testosterone can’t change the world. They just make men say of women, “Ha! Fellow tough guys we have the ladies imitating us, and it’s the best form of flattery. It is proof that even now, these dumb, meek women still worship our good old manly power, even despite their verbal denial of it. They are practically eradicating pesky empathy, eradicating femaleness as a whole for us, like Scrubbing Bubbles that blindly do all the work, so we don't have to!" I believe I speak for many women when I say that I'm neither the slave of any form of harsh maleness, nor the impersonator of it, and, I think mine is an enlightening, and fulfilling, position. I have somehow managed to preserve my high-quality female condition after all. There are still many of us out there: the manager-tippers and move-on happy-mealers. I mean, who doesn’t just want to pass up the overly logical, perfectionistic, analytical, hurtful nitpicking, and achieve greater things, things of real human substance. Admittedly, though, even I have worn the mean-girl blinders, trying to compete in that foolish game of male extremes. I saw that I could do what any man can do and just as well as he can do it. Yet isn't that problematic when it means morphing into a pushy jerk? What is the value in me mimicking a man, morphing myself into only more of the same, becoming part of the problem? I opened my eyes. Not that I ever was truly blind, to the fact that male brains have historically been the leaders of most of the world, most of the time. Or that man, under the most potent influence of his own superpower, didn’t care to consider specifically, how, our valuable brains are different from theirs, or that for ages before the South was even settled, nine outta ten guys thought women were just silly, needy things with no worthwhile perspectives on any, thing, worthwhile. So, we made cake, never daring to share our noble ideas with most of them. Even in my relatively recent Southern childhood us girls picked up on the idea that the men in charge somehow possess these God ordained rights to decide everything for everybody, and to eat the voices of their subjects with a side of onions. We thought we weren’t supposed to try to reason with these highly organized cannibals. No wonder we’ve felt these urges to fight, defend, and offend, to our dials to the bitter and stern setting then leave them there. If you tell me that I'm not allowed to reason with a cannibal, I won't accept the silence of the gentle lambs or any oppression that results from it. I’ll just concern myself with kicking asses instead. And tough luck to anybody: any manager, server, son, daughter, or other innocent caught in the middle, on the side, or in the path of my mangled spirit. Although that solves little during the current time, when our voices are unsilenced. The female verbal bite spreads the hurt of old-gen male competition. It unwittingly adds to the cannibalism, and emboldens to the uncivil, exaggerated males who live perpetuate miseries through impatience and competitiveness. If women downplay femaleness out of shame, then why do men exaggerate maleness— is it pride? Or shame? I think there is shame beneath all irrational pride. And I suspect that many males and females who feel shame associated with their sex feel more ashamed in the presence of men but less so in the presence of women, provided none of them are outright misogynistic. If they are then such men probably suffer a great anxiety in the presence of a woman, most likely the result of a mother-type-issue in my guess. Yet, even women pretend to use less reason, talk tough about others, and put themselves forward as being less empathetic just to appease other women. She feigns being a hard ass. It’s as if she is running around under the impression that revealing her true sensitivity and compassion would result in her rejection by other women, who she assumes are genuinely harsh. It does not occur to her that many of these women are out there playing this same game, trying to look tough. Could they, too, be suffering from mother-type issues? Sure. Yet father issues might be the better explanation, since both girls and boys suffer from a desire to gain approval from cruel fathers, even to the extent of emanating their cruelty to prove they are cut of the same cloth thus worthy of the father’s approval. Our society has spent too many centuries festering in low self-esteem resulting from parental indifference or rejection. Direct abuse isn’t necessary for someone to have deep scars that cause social and personal disfunctions. Indifference and rejection can easily hurt as much as direct abuse does, I have no doubt about that. What kind of parents do we make with all our imbalances in maleness and femaleness? What kind of son does a Fem-bot raise, what kind of daughter does an exaggerated male raise? Why are so many of our children feeling no choice but to experiment with same-sexuality and opting to distance themselves from the opposite sex? We, I included, have scared our children, who believe the exaggerated or deviant and thus false expressions of our maleness or femaleness constitute real masculinity or femininity. Sons and daughters don’t need pink and blue parents. They need earth-toned parents, if even they are dusted with natural flecks of pinks or blues. I’m just glad that many sophisticated or modern men regard women as equals. They’re learning to appreciate the plushness of mind that the wisest of us offer their damaged senses. Many modern men are making fine decisions to refrain from the centuries-old exaggerations of maleness which once permeated virtually all world societies, even when learned men were coarse as cavemen and ruled with a hairy fist. “Ugg,” went the thug honor, to the ground. No toilet paper required. Historically, it was such a clean-cut that freed them from their father’s shitty ways. With the manly blockage of yore passed, the new male generations roar less and purr more. It’s nice because now, progressively fewer men disregard women’s innate rights to be considered another worthy mind in the room. They don't overlook our gentle, elegant calculations. Such unconquering fine men are in our good graces. The world isn’t fixed yet, though. Personally, I’d like to take advantage of this unique, fine hour in history in which women may without indignity abandon our internal mans-world and summon the methodical, compassionate, voice of intelligent comfort to the round table of reason, seat her gingerly among the non-apes in the room, and allow her to reveal the female mind's balanced ideals of refinement of being. They will learn something from her. They will understand that we aren’t so different from one another. They will see that, male or female, we may keep one another in equilibrium by plucking the brain's hormonal thorns of extremes from each other’s sides. And the fruit of our differences, being now developed and civilized, will appear in their most useful context in our efforts to form a vividly humane world for all people. Everyone's superpower is useful when it is tempered by the realization that he or she is no self-contained person, no matter how high up the ladder of leaders they may sit: each human is connected to another in a network so delicate that when we destroy one village, we destroy the world, and when someone destroys one person, he frustrates all his own hopes for genuine happiness. Only when we address and understand the counterintuitive fact that sexism and nature each have very different influences on the world, or on the self, can any human being reclaim and refine what it means to identify with the neurohormonal conditions of maleness and femaleness. The idea that sexism and nature are one in the same is an old, clever deception that has robbed humanity of much potential. Sexism claims women make bad accountants and men make bad nurses. Yet nature says that men and women all make good accountants and nurses. Nature adds that the mixed team of accountants and nurses is most effective when its self-aware males and self-aware females tap into what makes each of them tick. When such teams tap into how their mild neurohormonal differences become most sophisticated when left unexaggerated, uncompetitive, and are co-related by a new design, sexism dissolves in the new model of dynamic between male and female nature. This is the height of sophistication in a world where neurohormones will always have the potential to determine many of our human superpowers based on sex, and it is this potential that males and females must recognize and temper to prevent the future rise of sexism. Outside of socially exaggerated maleness or femaleness, and outside of the current environment of man-hating or woman-hating, we are all diplomats. I am a diplomat. He, she, them, you, and everyone are diplomats, and we, by nature, have brains that are specialized to be unidentical yet fit together like a great puzzle of oneness. The result of putting our best hands forward in the context of repairing the planet, restoring each other's right to be what we are outside of competitive influences, and embracing, owning, our world together in a male-female cooperative effort is one that can be nothing short of awe inspiring as it spreads like a well-received light throughout our human universe. Look at the evils our world has recently come out of, injured, sick, but alive. Human civilization has survived thus far. Our current age is the open window of ease in opportunity, and such windows may not stay open for long. Right now, all diplomats can stop taking part in bashing someone born of a different sex, man-hating and woman-hating can dissolve without any resistance by any dark status quo. The haters are on the backburner of our collective consciousness at this moment, and not deemed important enough to stop us. This is the dawn of the ideal time in history for everybody to start agreeing to equally distribute resources throughout the world, to engage in contemplative, unguarded, honest discussions, to be kinder, more engaged parents, and to share all the planets, including Venus and Mars. To relentlessly select leaders defined by compassion. And to share our beautiful, injured Earth, healing its damaged hormonal atmosphere. In the process, we’ll embrace our own hormonal atmosphere, with our enflamed differences soothed, by the aloe vera of an egalitarian homeostasis that wards off fear, shame, and exaggeration. How empowering and fulfilling, to dismiss competition, slow the race down, and look inward. Then, look outward again, informed. It’s time to soothe away the preoccupation with gender competition that lies just beneath the skin of society, where it is easy to overlook. It’s a good time for all adults to search for meaning beyond the terrible anxieties and other complications caused by this relatively unnatural preoccupation. We would be doing ourselves a favor in consciously searching for the empathic guidance of the long-silenced genuinely female wisdom and learning to place a high value on those warm, diplomatic women who comfort the world.