Man, Woman, and Biology

By You-Sheng Li 11/2/2000, and edited 23/10/2010

A few months ago I attended a discussion at the central

library of the city I live in. The topic was, “Live Alone,
and Enjoy it.” About 10 people participated, and men and
women were about equal in number. As you can imagine, all
participants were middle-aged, and had lived alone for
quite a while. What struck me was that all women talked
about the hardship and loneliness of their spinster life
even with tears and sobs, and their eyes fixed on the
ground as if they were preparing to go to hell while all
men described their life as enjoyable with an even tone,
and their eyes were gloating at the ceiling as if their
souls were already in heaven.

But the reality is just the opposite. Women do much better

than men when they live alone. Some years ago a survey of
more than forty thousand people in the United States was
published, using the frequencies of certain disorders,
namely stroke, heart attack, cancer, and psychosis to
determine if the life under this study was a happy one. The
results suggested that women were happier when they were
single and men were happier when they were married. Women
managed single life much better than men. But on such an
occasion as the discussion at the central library, women
were expressive while men were reserved.

When I was a child, the science at that time told me that

the difference in behaviour between men and women was
entirely caused by culture, since our society treats boys
and girls differently with different expectation since the
day they are born. Now we have realized hormones influence
the development of our brains.

Some years ago I read a novel in Chinese titled The Siege

of a City. The novel’s title suggests that marriage is like
a besieged city: Those inside want to get out and those
outside want to get in. The author thinks the relationship
of a man and a woman can divide into three levels and it is
impossible to combine the three into one. The three levels
are: psychological - sharing the same spiritual experience;
social - forming a functioning family, and biological - sex
and have children. Therefore the hero of this novel finds a
girl friend to share spiritual interest, a wife to form a
family, and a sex partner to have sex. It illustrates well
the stress our modern civilization has put on marriage is
so much that it is about to tear it into pieces.

The first two levels, psychological and social levels are

subjected to cultural and social influence, like trees
bending over wind and attracting sunlight. But the roots,
the biological level, though covered by earth, is the basis
the first two levels are built on.

We receive equal amount of genetic material from our both

parents, which warrants the roughly equal numbers of men
and women in our society. But a man can produce much more
children than a woman. From a biological view, men are
abundant and subjected to the selection by women in
primitive society to ensure human evolution. Our society
has most developed and civilized but we still see its trace
in our behaviour today.

In today’s patriarchal society, men still dominated in many

areas. But when it comes to the nuptial ceremony, the
woman, not the man, is the central figure. Most people are
right-handed, and the right was considered to superior to
the left in Chinese culture. On occasions such as wedding,
funeral, and other family rituals, Chinese women always
take the right side seats. I heard that ancient Greek had
the same tradition: women on the right and men on the left.
Those traditions are inherited from thousands of years ago
when all people were equal.

Infant girls remember human faces better than infant boys.

If you let girls and boys of three to five years old to sit
in a room for five minutes, and ask them what they have
seen in the room. The girls describe the people in the room
and boys describe the environment, the furniture, the
walls, and the ceiling, and so on. Up to today, our ritual
of marriage still remains that men propose to a woman who
selects and makes the final decision.

Does a woman see all the men the same or she divides them
into different ranks? In a primitive society, a woman
divided men into different ranks and then exercised her
selection. As a result, in a primitive society, men at low
ranks were to be wasted because no women would choose them.
A recent study by some British scientists indicates that we
can still see some evidence to suggest what happened
millions of years ago.
They found if husbands are older than wives, they tend to
give birth to more boys; if wives are older than husbands,
they tend to have more baby girls.