134

CHAPTER 5

Sex-Related Comparisons:

Theory

Now the opposite of the male is the female. ... In human beings the male is much hotter

in its nature than the female. On that account, male embryos tend to move about more

than female ones, and owing to their moving about they get broken more, since a young

creature can easily be destroyed owing to its weakness. And it is due to this self-same

cause that the perfecting of female embryos is inferior to that of male ones. ... We should

look upon the female state as being as it were a deformity, though one which occurs in

the ordinary course of nature. (Aristotle, 1963; pp. 391, 459, 461)

A

ristotle had one theory of sex differences. Somewhat later, John Gray (1992)

set forth another inMen Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus:

One day long ago the Martians, looking through their telescopes, discovered the Venusians.

Just glimpsing the Venusians awakened feelings they had never known. They fell in love

and quickly invented space travel and flew to Venus. The Venusians welcomed the Mar-

tians with open arms. ... The love between the Venusians and the Martians was magical.

They delighted in being together, doing things together, and sharing together. Though from

different worlds, they reveled in their differences. ... Then they decided to fly to Earth. In

the beginning everything was wonderful and beautiful. But the effects of Earth’s atmosphere

took hold, and one morning everyone woke up with a peculiar kind of amnesia. ... Both the

Martians and Venusians forgot that they were from different planets and were supposed to

be different. ... And since that day men and women have been in conflict. (pp. 9–10)

These two theories about the origin of sex differences are quite different and hardly

comparable. The first was developed by a famous world-renowned philosopher, the

second by a person with a questionable educational background. But both theories

share the idea: Men and women are opposites.

In Chapter 4, I reported a number of sex-related differences. In this chapter, I ad-

dress the explanation of those differences. These theories are applicable to the origin of

M05_HELG0185_04_SE_C05.indd 134 6/21/11 8:03 AM