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By Mina Xavier, January 31, 2009 12:18 am

Many thanks to Britt for sending me this article! David Hochman has made an astute observation in his online article this week for Women’s Health Magazine: men and women are different. For the uninformed, this is a major news break! For the rest of us it is simply the obvious presented on an unpolished spoon.

What’s my gripe, you ask? I do not suggest that men are disqualified to report gender observations, but I would prefer that they not do so in such a careless manner.  Contrary to any good writer’s better judgement, Hochman uses his own wife as an example of negative interaction.

At breakfast the other day, I made the mistake of opening my laptop when my wife felt like talking. I was happily trolling YouTube, but Ruth wanted to dish about how her friend’s nanny is becoming a total hoochie mama. “You’re fun this morning,” Ruth sniffed when she realized I wasn’t listening.

To attempt a recovery from this faux pas, he then takes a shot at himself as an unworthy mate who is trapped in the caveman biology of his gender and therefore a helpless hack.

As a female human, Ruth has a meatier frontal cortex than this grunting, monosyllabic husband of hers. That part of the brain is associated with complex functions–like language and decision making. Ruth also packs more power in parts of her limbic cortex, which stokes her feelings and her need to “share.” Finally, because guys tend to process nonverbal expressions less efficiently than women do, I was too slow to read Ruth’s facial cues telling me, “Laptop down and listen up, buddy boy.”

Ruth’s frontal cortex has nothing to do with her embittered response to his internet musings, nor does David’s gender handicap him to the point that he is incapable of simply pardoning his distraction and rejoining the table for a recap of what he missed. The episode itself illustrates something that both David and his editors seem to have missed: women assume that they are being ignored, get angry about it, and immediately punish the other side of the breakfast table for a lack of psychic talent. Men are less fixated on chatter and therefore forget its importance as a form of maintenance between mates.

By extension, we could be on the verge of solving such imponderables as why men leave the toilet seat up and women dig Josh Groban.

One study quoted in this article was that of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. MRI scans were used to discern the differences between how the sexes cope with stress. Feelings of anxiety trigger a “tend and befriend” response in the female limbic system. We negotiate, bargain, argue and even manipulate to resolve danger. In male test subjects, however, the prefrontal cortex flared dramatically in the classic “fight or flight” response. Men, reportedly, are more likely to react to threatening situations with defensive violence to protect themselves and their kin.

To take these differences and pit them against one another in a mutually uncomfortable confrontation is essentially what we saw acted out in the anecdote at the start of his article. But to observe that men and women are wired differently is like pointing out that dogs bark. Gender analysis like Hochman’s, based on legitimate research but drawing some rather simplistic conclusions about some very complicated issues, is part of the reason why we still have the Mars/Venus theory keeping us gridlocked in a DNA blame game. We are still ducking the responsibility to compromise in relating to the mysterious other sex.

Another equally valid point to be considered (one completely avoided by Hochman) with regards to this topic is the documented neurological differences between heterosexual and homosexual males and females. A clear example of responsible reporting on the subject came last year in an issue of Time Magazine, in which science correspondent Alice Park explored the question: are the brains of heterosexuals different from those of homosexual men and women?

“The big question has always been, if the brains of gay men are different, or feminized, as earlier research suggests,” says Dr. Eric Vilain, professor of human genetics at University of California Los Angeles, “then is it just limited to sexual preference or are there other regions that are gender atypical in gay males?”

The evidence surveyed in the studies was irrefutable. Researchers at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden provided valuable data in the study of human sexuality, even if it was narrowed to a study of the physical properties of the brain as an organ.

In heterosexual women, the two halves of the brain are more or less the same size. In heterosexual men, the right hemisphere is slightly larger. Scans of the brains of gay men in the study, however, showed that their hemispheres were relatively symmetrical, like those of straight women, while the brains of homosexual women were asymmetrical like those of straight men. The number of nerves connecting the two sides of the brains of gay men were also more like the number in heterosexual women than in straight men.

Additionally, I might have suggested that Hochman examine a separate factor altogether: social programming. In ignoring the nature-versus-nurture argument we miss the benefit of this dichotomy for its compelling challenge. We are neither permitted to write ourselves off for our biological makeup nor are we permitted to be careless in our assessments of social influence. The article only barely touches on this concept.

In historical and even modern societies, women are limited to a primarily verbal and social existence while men are limited to a mostly athletic and vocational existence, each defining themselves through their achievements and status therein. Occasionally these diverse tracks intersect rudely and result in a microcosm of culture shock — like any marital dispute — which will either break a relationship or strengthen it.

Less sophisticated minds might use it to make demeaning observations about their partners as fodder for writing internet articles that make them feel smart. For Ruth’s sake I hope that her husband’s preparation for this piece gave him insights into how he can bridge these gaps… and that she never reads it.

Throwing Josh Groban under the bus is not likely to bode well for future breakfast conversation.