We hear it all the time: Women are more emotional and more
“complex” than men. Men will often fall back on this
excuse when they claim not to understand their female partners, and
women too will concede men are incapable of truly understanding
them.
Just because this rationale for miscommunication between the
sexes is everywhere, it isn’t necessarily true. But according
to Laura Schlessinger (who is known on the talk radio airwaves as
“Dr. Laura” because she holds a doctorate in
physiology, not psychology or a related field) it is.
When I found out Dr. Laura was coming to UCLA for the Los
Angeles Times Festival of Books last weekend, I was very excited. I
rushed to get tickets and to find friends to come hear her speak. I
got extra tickets to give away to others because I assumed many
would want to go.
I even got in touch with Dr. Laura’s publicist to try and
set up an interview on which to base last week’s column.
If you’ve read this far and think I agree with Dr. Laura,
let me calm your fears. I’m one of the many who listens and
goes to see her because I disagree so much with her backward,
black-and-white, 1950s picture of how women and men should relate
to each other.
So when Dr. Laura agreed to do an e-mail interview with me, I
dashed off some questions expecting, and receiving, generic answers
about college relationships, divorce and hook-ups.
Dr. Laura responded that women believe they can be attentive
mothers and have careers “because (they) have been threatened
by the feminist movement/liberal establishment to believe that they
are nothing if they are wives and mothers and sacrifice for those
ideals.”
She also thinks oral sex as an alternative to sexual intercourse
is, predictably, “sad and pathetic.”
In her talk Sunday, the following was Dr. Laura’s response
to misunderstandings between men and women.
“Men are simple and women are complex,” she
reasoned, and it seemed simple enough.
While I fundamentally disagree with Dr. Laura on almost
everything she stands for, many of her statements promoting
civility, kindness, and treating others how you would like to be
treated, are hard to argue against. And those are the ones I agree
with.
But it’s not as simple as saying women are complex and men
are not ““ people are complex, and Dr. Laura embodies this, as
she holds a simplistic, right and wrong mind-set that makes her
appear, superficially, to have all the answers.
But the hypocrisy is the most interesting part of Dr.
Laura’s message, evident in the way her callers’ lives
are exposed and harshly critiqued like an open book, while any
questions about her personal life are dismissed as
inappropriate.
During her talk Sunday, an audience member asked for her opinion
on the war in Iraq, and she pointed to her book, “The Proper
Care and Feeding of Husbands,” as the discussion’s
limit, refusing to comment.
In response to a question I asked about the infamous posting of
nude photos of Dr. Laura on the Internet, Dr. Laura wrote to me,
“I regret helping you. Never contact me again.” I
immediately understood how her callers must feel when she
denigrates them for committing a number of her
“no-nos”: having sex before marriage, being gay,
getting divorced, etc.
While Dr. Laura’s “specialty” is love and
relationships, refusing to say anything on any of her personal
views or history displays a double standard, used to make herself
look good and others shameful.
In an attempt to solve this emotional conundrum, I sought a
second opinion from the opposite of a self-promoting pop cultural
icon ““ a UCLA anthropology professor.
According to Professor Daniel Fessler, who taught
“Evolution of Human Sexual Behavior” winter quarter,
scientific evidence supports the fact that women and men do act
differently, but this doesn’t mean one sex is more complex
than the other.
Fessler points to anger as an example of an emotion that elicits
different responses from the sexes, with men being “more
likely to confront the target of their anger than are women, and
women are more likely to recruit social support against the target
of their anger.”
These varied emotional responses in no way point to men as
“simple” and women as “complex.” Such a
baseless definition makes me think of modern-day man as someone out
of the Stone Age. And yet, being progressive is not something Dr.
Laura professes to esteem, so perhaps this image really does
illustrate the backward world in which she lives.
My advice to modern daters out there: Approach the emotions of
your partner (of any sex) as complex, valid and worthy of
comprehension, if you only take a moment to try and listen.
Bonos is the 2003-2004 copy chief. E-mail her at
lbonos@media.ucla.edu if reading this column elicits an emotional
response.