Tag Archives: gender parity

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Oh, What Men Dare Do!

There seemed to be an inordinate amount of talk about polygamy last year –perhaps because of the long-awaited trial of two offenders from the town of Bountiful in British Columbia. In Canada, polygamy is a criminal offence under section 293 of the Criminal Code, but prosecutions have been rare. Polygamy must be differentiated from Bigamy, of course. With both of them, there are multiple partners (usually women) but with polygamy the marriage partners are presumably willing and knowledgeable about the other partners, whereas with bigamy, there is an attempt to deceive. Or, in a more legal framework, bigamy is the crime of marrying while one has a spouse still living, and from whom no valid divorce has been obtained.

I have to admit that I didn’t know that ‘polygamy’ was gender neutral –or, rather, it was nowhere near the apex of the pile of words I figured I’d look up some day. But, now that I mention it, I wonder if I’d stopped to think about the etymology, I would have known something was up –at least in our increasingly multi-gendered society… Although, in fairness to me, it’s roots are clear: gamos means something like ‘marry’ or ‘union’ in Greek. In fact, the term can be either ‘polygyny’ –many wives, or, I suppose, ‘polyandry’ –many husbands, but we don’t usually need to be so specific. As Claudio says in Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, ‘Oh, what men dare do! What men may do! What men daily do, not knowing what they do!’

The origins of polygyny –sorry, polygamy– are nested in the depths of time, but according to a 2010 article in the Independent, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/the-big-question-whats-the-history-of-polygamy-and-how-serious-a-problem-is-it-in-africa-1858858.html, ‘It is most common in places where pre-colonial economic activity centred around subsistence farming […]Africa being a prime example. High levels of infant mortality may be a factor; when many children do not survive past the age of five a family needs more than one child-bearer to be economically viable. Then there is war. When a lot of men die, having more than one wife boosts the population most swiftly.’

But of course, times change, and so do economic and political pressures. Interestingly ‘Some anthropologists believe that polygamy has been the norm through human history. In 2003, New Scientist magazine suggested that, until 10,000 years ago, most children had been sired by comparatively few men. Variations in DNA, it said, showed that the distribution of X chromosomes suggested that a few men seem to have had greater input into the gene pool than the rest. By contrast most women seemed to get to pass on their genes. Humans, like their primate forefathers, it said, were at least “mildly polygynous”.’

It’s certainly not the norm nowadays, and often illegal. And yet, remember that in 2010, the president of South Africa, Jacob Zuma, ‘married his fifth wife in a traditional ceremony at his remote homestead in KwaZulu-Natal. His first wife, whom he married in 1973, was there to see him wed a woman 30 years his junior. His second wife stayed home to prepare the reception. He had two other wives but he divorced one in 1998 and another committed suicide in 2000.’ And the article went on to suggest that ‘he has not finished yet. The other day he paid the traditional dowry for his sixth fiancée [the article was published in 2010].’

‘In 1998 the University of Wisconsin surveyed more than a thousand societies. Of these just 186 were monogamous. Some 453 had occasional polygyny and in 588 more it was quite common. Just four featured polyandry.’ The study is obviously an older one, and societies and their mores evolve. According to an article in Wikipedia (last edited in July 2017), ‘Polygamy is [now] legal in 58 out of nearly 200 sovereign states, the vast majority of them being Muslim-majority countries situated in Africa and Asia. In most of these states, polygyny is allowed and legally sanctioned. Polyandry is illegal in virtually every state in the world. In India, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, and Sri Lanka polygamy is only legal for Muslims. In Nigeria and South Africa, polygamous marriages under customary law and for Muslims are legally recognized.’ That said, however, it is relatively common still in many Arab nations; among the Bedouin population of Israel it stands at about 30 per cent, according to the Independent.

I’m not sure what to make of all this. At the very least, it’s confusing -and not only for me, I suspect. What about at the state level for those countries in whom polygamy is illegal, like Canada and the U.S.A.? What are they to do with immigrants with two or more wives who seek asylum from persecution or war in their home countries? Should they be refused entry under all circumstances even if their needs are compelling and otherwise would have been candidates for acceptance?

There have been attempts to work around this dilemma, of course. Until recently at least, the U.S. has denied immigration to polygynists (either the man or any of his wives) but under some circumstances, ‘a refugee who was practicing polygamy before he immigrated will be required by U.S. immigration law to designate one wife as his legal wife to accompany him to the United States. Years later, after becoming a U.S. citizen, he might divorce that wife, and marry the woman who was formerly his second wife, in order to petition for her to immigrate to the United States.’ (nolo.com -legal encyclopedia)

Okay, so there are ways around it, but in an already overcrowded world and especially in modern societies with safety nets for its more vulnerable citizens, it seems to me that whatever use polygamy once had –marrying widows to ensure orphans are taken care of, or maybe a way of quickly increasing a specific population, or even, of course, lessening the burden of work for a solo wife- is no longer necessary. One gets the distinct impression, however much disguised, that polygyny is merely an excuse for male sexual gratification dressed up as a tradition –another not so covert way of diminishing female authority and power.

I fail to see any way in which polygyny fosters gender equality, let alone female autonomy. And I would challenge any male who purports to believe that parity is possible under those circumstances, to argue as strenuously for polyandry. To accept that he would be as equal a partner as his wife and her other husbands… But of course, he could argue that polyandry is extremely uncommon and also illegal almost everywhere. That there must be a reason for that.

Gosh, I wonder what that would be…

 

 

 

 

 

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Gender and Stress

Even the most ardent proponents of gender parity will admit that equality of opportunity does not imply equality of physiology. ‘The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal,’ as Aristotle said. Homogeneous –likeness, if you will- is not necessarily homogenous (a biological term meaning structurally similar due to common ancestry). Admittedly a semantically fraught distinction, it nonetheless suggests that there may well be differences that do not transcend gender.

For example, there seems to be a sexual discrepancy in the acquisition of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)  http://www.bbc.com/news/health-37936514 -women tend to be more vulnerable to its development than men. A research team from Stanford University published a study in Depression and Anxiety (the official journal of the Anxiety and Depression Association of America) and it suggests that ‘[…] girls who develop PTSD may actually be suffering from a faster than normal ageing of one part of the insula – an area of the brain which processes feelings and pain. […]the insula, was found to be particularly small in girls who had suffered trauma. But in traumatized boys, the insula was larger than usual. This could explain why girls are more likely than boys to develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the researchers said. The insula, or insular cortex, is a diverse and complex area, located deep within the brain which has many connections. As well as processing emotions, it plays an important role in detecting cues from other parts of the body. […]This shows that the insula is changed by exposure to acute or long-term stress and plays a key role in the development of PTSD.’ And as I quoted, the changes seem to be different in the two sexes.

The point of all this somewhat detailed background, is to submit that, as the study suggests, ‘it is possible that boys and girls could exhibit different trauma symptoms and that they might benefit from different approaches to treatment.’ Perhaps a sensitive counsellor would recognize this as the sessions continued, but it’s helpful to have some corroboratory evidence to justify any proposed changes.

I have to say that I was woefully ignorant of any sex difference in the development of PTSD. I’m embarrassed to admit that, if anything, I thought of it as largely a male condition –perhaps because of its association with war, and combat -traditionally at least, arenas of male predominance. But of course that is naïve. PTSD is not something confined to combat; it can be equally prevalent in other situations of distress or upheaval. Trauma is trauma, and long term issues can result from such things as natural disasters, car crashes, and certainly sexual or physical assaults, to name only a few. Because the symptoms can be confusing or even disguised, the diagnosis is best left to qualified practitioners, and yet I can’t help but wonder if a greater and more sensitive awareness of the possibility of the condition might encourage more sufferers to seek professional help.

As a gynaecologist, I feel uncomfortable and indeed far out of my depth in discussing most issues pertaining to PTSD, and yet thinking back over my years in practice, it seems to me that I may have suspected something of the sort, but lacked both the vocabulary and training to assign it a label –especially in those women I saw for conditions they suspected may have been attributable to previous sexual abuse: fears that they occasionally admitted to re-experiencing in unrelated events; things about which they still had nightmares; situations that led to unprovoked irritability and anger.

PTSD, by whatever name, has no doubt afflicted humans from time immemorial. Male hubris dictated that it be disguised or denied no doubt –it was a sign of weakness- and therefore unlikely to be mentioned in contemporary accounts. But signs of its presence occasionally snuck into mainstream literature -Shakespeare’s Henry IV being a likely candidate, for example. Perhaps more germane to my specialty, however, was the recognition of the lasting effects of trauma on people other than those involved in traditional conflict: women. The US Department of Veteran’s Affairs in its National Center for PTSD pamphlet states: ‘Most early information on trauma and PTSD came from studies of male Veterans, mostly Vietnam Veterans. Researchers began to study the effects of sexual assault and found that women’s reactions were similar to male combat Veterans. Women’s experiences of trauma can also cause PTSD.’ In fact they maintain that ‘The most common trauma for women is sexual assault or child sexual abuse.’ http://www.ptsd.va.gov/public/PTSD-overview/women/women-trauma-and-ptsd.asp

For too long have the lasting effects of sexual assault been ignored, or at best, trivialized and examined through male eyes in a still-male world. I don’t mean to sound like an overzealous feminist who pins all problems on male dominance, but I think age and a career spent in women’s health grants me a unique –if still masculine- perspective. As with all things, specialists run the risk of deconstruction, overanalyzing the events often with the consequent subversion of their apparent significance -almost a form of historical revisionism, an unintentionally biased and often contextually barren interpretation. One bridge, when crossed by a thousand people, becomes a thousand bridges –we all see the world through our own experiences, our own expectations, our own prejudices.

I think the fact that we can now demonstrate that there are valid reasons to question those often unconscious assumptions is a cause for hope. Much as we have finally realized that the results of many studies carried out only using men cannot necessarily be mindlessly extrapolated to women, so it is becoming increasingly apparent that trauma and its effects may also be non-generalizable. Although not its prisoners, we are after all, creatures of a chromosomal lottery, divergent physiologies, and certainly of different past experiences, so why wouldn’t there be a spectrum of responses to stress?

So, is there a ‘man-cold’? Well, maybe… I know that’s the kind I get, anyway.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Folk wisdom sometimes gets it right: there is a man-cold… Well, maybe.