Lately, I've been hearing that I'm not a very good fiction writer because my stories don't seem to have any points. They don't. They are not fiction but stories from my childhood and other periods. When something interests me, I just write it. Please enjoy.

 

Can't We All Just Get Along?

In the last ten years I've spent a a good chunk of my intellectual resources trying to figure out what the hell was going on between men and women.I'd like to present some results of this meditation here. It is abundantly clear that people abuse each other when they think they can get away with it. We can consider the Crusades, Auschwitz, ethnic cleasning, and the Inquisition. However, when I discovered that Marilyn French had published several volumes documenting vicious treatment of women by men throughout history, my reaction was a kind of irritated ennui. Certainly, it is easy to see that women have had a hard time at the hands of men, witness the burka. However, I would like to point out that if we women had not been able to come to some kind of favorable terms with men, we would not be here at all.
The first and most obvious point is that we have two genders rather than none or three for the purpose of reproduction. We could reproduce through mitosis, like unicellular organisms or carry both genders in each individual, like some animals. We could make reproduction unnecessary by living forever. However, since humans still die, we have a drive to produce children, and evolution has determined that a combination of two gene pools is the most effective method of producing healthy human beings.
It is a truism that our brains have made us the most successful species on earth other than insects. We are so successful that we are ravaging our environment like some malign virus. Our large brains make a long period of development outside the womb necessary. In other words, babies are nearly absolutely helpless, and any women who has ever given birth will testify how hard it is to get up from labor and care for a being who wakes screaming every couple of hours. It takes roughly 25 years for a human being to mature. The brain does a good deal of its development outside the womb, so people need years of care to be able to live independently. A deer can stand and walk minutes after birth. A baby does not even stand unsteadily for most of its first year. Hence we have mothers.
A normal pregnancy lasts nine months, and the mother usually spends that time physically bonding with the being she is caryying. Her body manufactures homones like oxytocin to help her commit totally to the welfare of the baby, and she spends much of the next years caring for a being who slowlly develops independence. Without a lot of help, she is not free to do much but care for her children. Men, on the other hand, develop connections with their children after birth, if at all. An uncountable number of children grow up without their biological fathers or with fathers only peripherally involved in their affairs. That is not to say that many fathers are not committed to their offspring, but they are not as biologicallly driven to care for them. The idea that men "spread their seed" is common and probably has some validity. Men can create hundreds of children while a woman bears one or two children in nine months. A woman who devotes herself to nothing but having children will still never come near the capacity of a man and will most likely destroy her health.. Thus, a woman has a biological incentive to keep the father of her children at home providing necessities, while men have an incentive to roam. It is also true that many women have more than one partner, and many men devote their lives to their families, but that fact does not obviate the rule.
Men tend to be taller and more muscular than women, while women tend to have greater endurance. This leads to the male's ability to do heavier physical labor than women, such as providing meat and physical dwellings. Women can and always have gotten up every two hours to feed babies from their own bodies, maintain homes, and tolerate hardship in the name of protecting children. However, people do abuse power, and it is true that men have physically and emotionally abused women throughout our history, and women have been forced to tolerate abuse. This does not mean that men are biologically driven to abuse women or that women have a greater ability to put up with abuse. Men are physically more powerful, and women need to protect their offspring, and so humans do have a long, documentable history of male abuse of women. However, we also have a long documentable history of cooperation and mutual affection. I think maybe it is time to recognize that fact.
In the earliest societiess that we know of, men have hunted and provied shelter and meat. Women have done the daily, routine work of gathering necessities like roots, fruit, and nuts. Meat is wonderful, but seeds, fruit, honey, and roots are daily staples. For centuries after humans became farmers, women did the farming: sowing, caring for, and gathering crops while men hunted. Throughout human history, men have done the heavier labor and provided physical security for their families. Women have done the heavy, demanding, and valued work of providing a clean, warm home and regular, nourishing meals.
In the last fifty or so years, the business of keeping a home clean and comfortable has been heavily mechanized, and women for the first time in history have received the same kinds of education as men. At the same time, urban living emphasizes the value of work outside the home. Families no longer work as units to provide the needs of the family. Men and women have somewhat different orientations to sexual activity and its consequences, but both genders have a vested interest in finding a way to produce and provide for the next generation, and for the greatest part, they manage to live together in peace all over the world.