See no evil, hear no evil

There is a school of thought that men are visual beasts while women are verbally oriented. There has been a raft of books written on the subject in recent times, quoting men's superiority at reading maps etc. and women's superiority at communicating. I must point out that there is also a school of thought that disregards this theory as hokum. But militant feminists/lesbians aside, I think that it's true in general. Now, of course there are women who have good spatial skills and men with good verbal skills, but as the graph above shows, they are in the minority. Men and women do not think the same; our brains are wired differently. I don't think anyone can argue with that. Then how could the sexes be equally good at everything if their brains are different? It is not a statement of superiority, simply an obvious statement of fact - men are better at some things while women are better at others.

I have already touched on the verbal discrepancy between the genders with the post on relative talking rates. From an evolutionary point of view, men had to go out and hunt, be aware of danger and find their way back to the cave. This would encourage good spatial skills to develop over time and to favour those men that had them. Women, on the other hand, had to bring up the sprogs and gossip with the other cavewives. These tasks would encourage communications skills!

In modern life, these skills manifest themselves in various ways. Men ask for directions only as a very last resort. It's a bit like getting overtaken in your car - some men think it makes them less of a man! Women's evolutionary advantage lends itself to nagging the man to stop the bloody car and just ask someone!! Men tend to be better at activities that require hand to eye co-ordination, like sports and driving. Women tend to excel at endeavours that require empathy, diplomacy or shopping!

Men are more liable to be stimulated by visual images while romantic or erotic stories are more likely to do it for women. After all, it is mostly men who buy porn magazines, and it's not for the articles! On the other hand, Mills & Boon sell millions of books a year (all with basically the same plot as far as I can tell!) and I don't think a single copy is bought by a straight man (except possibly as a present for his mother!).

When this principle is applied to dating, it's well known that men like to ogle and tend to judge women on their appearance. Indeed, most men have a favourite female body part that they like to focus their ogling on. Women instinctively know this and therefore dress to attract male attention. On the other hand, women being more verbally oriented, tend to judge men more by their personalities. While this is obviously a better strategy for picking a long term partner, the male approach has its merits for shorter term entanglements!