Three thoughts about gender issues

1. If anyone still subscribes to that tired stereotype about Women outgabbing men, science is not on your side. An Associated Press article, quoting the journal Science http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/07/070705152953.htm

notes that in at least one study, men actually talk more. In other studies, the genders gab equally as much.

"The idea that women use nearly three times as many words a day as men has taken on the status of an urban legend," the article notes.

2. Other scientists, trying to understand the phenomena of Women smoking and Their lower quitting rates as compared to men, now hypothesize that smoking, for Women, may be a specific attempt to calm the frustrations and irritations of a Woman's daily life.

3. Lovely blogger Adena believes that a world of only Women would be one big catfight. But recent research has found that in the realm of humor at least, Women don't get Their kicks out of watching others suffer.

According to a Family Features article published in my local paper, "men [have been found to] like to laugh "at" others, while women are more comfortable laughing with others."

Continuing, "Women also tend to be more inclusive with their choice of humor so as not to offend anyone unnecessarily."

"Most men love physical comedy and simple Three Stooges-like gags ... while most women don't find that type of humor funny at all," according to Beth Murdoch, Director of Funny Cards for American Greetings.

Growing up so fast!

My niece was crying on a bed the other day – had fled there to escape rough words spoken in another room prior to my arrival. I tickled Her bare little brown toes and convinced Her to sit up and be read a story. Soon all was well again and She put those toes into sparkly sandals and we went out and sat on the front steps. She found ants to stomp on and butterflies to chase, and all was well in Her world again.

She is growing so fast. As She lay sprawled across that bed, I marveled that She is no longer a tiny pearl swallowed up in the soft shell of the quilt but a lengthening child who can touch the headboard with Her feet almost dangling off the back of the bed.

I remember when the odds and ends of Her childhood debris – Popsicle sticks, candy wrappers and such -- slipped innocently out of Her baby hands and drifted to the ground as She finished with them. Then came the “hand everything properly to the accompanying grown-up” stage. Yesterday, as we sat on the steps, She tossed Her ice cream sandwich wrapper playfully my direction and then tightly balled up Her gum wrapper and flicked it into the grass in the casual manner of Schoolgirls everywhere.
She is growing, so fast.

Delilah, a bit of poetry

“And it came to pass afterward, that he loved a woman in the valley of Sorek, whose name was Delilah.” – Judges 16:4

In the valley of Sorek
on the banks of the Sorek
she knelt to draw water
she gracefully knelt.

The waters flowed before her
the river cooled her toes, her small ankles
as she stepped,
as she left prints in the sand.

Philistia’s daughter
Caphtor’s grandchild
drawing water now in desert land
in the valley of Sorek

She grew to catch
a wild man’s eye
she grew to snare
Sampson of Manoah.

Delilah.

She must have been beautiful.
She must have been brilliant.
Lives now only in the book of her enemies
Lost soul, byword, beautiful detail

And the Sorek flows on
Through the valley of Sorek.

Women who write

Credit for the first novel to be written in North America goes to Frances Brooke, the wife of a British officer stationed in Quebec. “The History of Emily Montague” was published in 1769.

As with “The Tale of Genji,” by Japan’s Murasaki Shikibu, described as possibly the first true novel in the history of the world, it demonstrates the primacy of Women in the development of literature.

Why did I not learn about Shikibu in school? And why did I have to discover Brooke, just yesterday, in an obscure encyclopedia article about Canadian authors? (Yes, I read encyclopedias for my bedtime story. Deal with it.)

Screaming in silence

I feel as if I have been in a coma all day. Something's wrong with our office computer network. Every now and then it will let me online to read your comments, other times not, and I haven't been able to access any of your blogs. Not until now has it finally allowed me to respond.

I can't wait to get home where the phone guy tells me my DSL is FINALLY working.

Family nightmare

To you, little blog, I will turn with my sorrow. I cannot express it to anyone else.

What I thought would be a relaxing week with my family turned into a nightmare, and today the horror continues.

I have a sibling with long-established social llproblems, which we’ve always blamed on a certain emotional disorder which runs in our family, and in his case, a little bit more, which I cannot reveal here. During my visit home, he and his wife were at the epicenter of family quarrel after family quarrel – a scene of tears, tantrums and even cursing such as I have never seen there.

I was bewildered by his behavior, by his wife’s behavior, by my grandmother’s response, by my mother’s response.

Today, talking to another sibling, let’s call him X, a horrible possibility emerges.

My late paternal grandfather was a hard man and my father rarely speaks of him. We’ve long known of said grandfather’s alcoholism and suspected that he was abusive. We’ve been proud of my father for giving up the bottle early in his marriage and for striving mightily to break the cycle. Today, he is a sweet, lovable man with only rare bursts of temper that lead to nothing physical, so far as I know. But this afternoon, Sibling X, who has lived with, and closer to, the family for much longer than I have, made a suggestion: that my father’s effort to overcome his upbringing took longer than I believed, and that his rages over the years have been more terrible than I knew, that they crossed the line at least once into genuine physical and emotional abuse.

This would explain the strange behavior and apparent emotional instability of my mother. She has been abused – not ever to the point of black eyes or broken bones – not even at his angriest could I suspect my father of such – but by harsh names, by slaps, by hands around her throat at least once. These things I vaguely remember witnessing in childhood – only a few times but could there have been more?

Sibling X and I, I learned today, independently vowed never to hit a Woman and we have both kept our promise to ourselves. I have made the protection and uplift of Women one of my life concerns. But what of the other sibling? I hesitate to be more specific, I need to keep this blog anonymous, maybe I shouldn’t have written any of this. Let’s just say that this sibling is an instable, explosive person – and he is married, with a baby. Could he have inculcated lessons of anger learned in childhood, could he be continuing the cycle that my dad struggled so hard to break? Could this explain the nightmare of this week?

Could some of my own peculiarities – my difficulties in responding properly to authority figures, for example – be traced to a childhood that was rougher than I actually remember it?

My dad could be so tender and caring. There was a certain time when I probably deserved a whipping and he put me over his knee but couldn’t go through with it. There were other times when he rapped me on the head and called me names, or went into a rage because I didn’t agree with certain petty things, but I remember nothing worse than that. I don’t believe I have any of those infamous, so-called repressed memories. But could things have been different, worse, for my mother, my other siblings? The thought makes me sick.

And if my mother is a classic abuse victim, even if my dad has finally purged his own demons, is my grown sibling now manipulating her – and if so, what can I do? How can I help him, and her? From the thousands of miles away that I live from them?

It’s easy to simply and utterly hate a stranger who hurts a Woman, to wish him a slow, pitiless and painful death crushed in heavy machinery – but when the possibility rears up within your own family, with men whom you dearly love, it is not so black and white, it is not so cut-and-dried.