Men Are Better at Judging Distances and Noticing Trajectories, Women are Better at Shoes

There is no female mind.  The brain is not an organ of sex.  As well speak of a female liver. – Charlotte Perkins Gilman, late 19th/early 20th century writer and feminist

I beg to differ.  Oh, I know what she means and I agree that women should be welcomed into intellectual fields with open arms.  They are half of the population of the human race, and an underused half – intellectually, that is.

Charlotte Gilman Perkins

To say the brain is not an organ of sex, though,  is a bit extreme.  It may not have been an organ of sex for Ms. Charlotte Gherkins Pillman but if the internet has proven anything at all with its massive data collection capabilities (and it has) it’s that people are thinking about sex almost all the damned time.  They go through books about it faster than a big box of tissues.  They pretty much won’t go to a movie that doesn’t have at least a hint of it.  They make sly insinuations about it.  They let it guide the way they dress, the way they walk, the way they talk.

Women and men may not think about sex the same exact way, but we both think about sex a lot, so I maintain that the brain is indeed an organ of sex.

Even if our brains are physiologically identical, our minds are programmed very differently and, if it doesn’t go back to birth, I’ll bet it goes back to the 24 hours following birth.  That’s how different we are.

This morning, I had to take Sam to a football tournament (they didn’t do too well) and as I was putting on my shoes, I thought “Dang, these are too small” which is a bit strange since I’ve been wearing them for 3 months.  More important matters pressed, however, so I put on a different pair of shoes and forgot about the incident.

When my wife got home from skiing at about 6, the 1st thing she said when she came in the hall was “Oh, did we have a guest” and I said “Why?” and she said “Whose shoes are these?” and I said “Mine” and she said “No, they’re not” and I said “How can you be sure?” and she said “They don’t look anything alike” and I said “Yes, they do, they look exactly alike” and she said “No, they don’t, you are blind and you are stupid and you should shut up and tell me where you left your shoes.” (she didn’t actually say that, my wife is a very gentle woman, but she was clearly stunned by my inability to distinguish between two pairs of shoes that, I swear, look exactly alike.)

We’ve got it down to either the Children’s Center where I work on Friday’s or one of Sam’s slightly older and oversized friends who came over for a while yesterday.  Either way, there is some guy out there, just as clueless as me, flapping around in a pair of clown shoes, and totally unaware of it.  Because guys are like that.