Dear Men

Dear men, it's OK. It's not your fault.

All foetuses start out female, you see, so whilst we girls are spending a month or so refining brain and eye function, you are growing testicles and generally being rewired at the opposite end.

All colour blind persons are male, but even those of you who can distinguish colours perfectly well can't do it as well as us women. We have the spare time to develop an extra set of retinal cones. It explains why we are so picky, to your minds, about what does and doesn't match.

Autism has been described as belonging to the extreme male end of the gender spectrum. Other factors can cause it, obviously, but its a rare male who has even the average female ability to read faces and intonation. Heck, our communication skills are so refined in comparison that for aeons they simply called it women's intuition. I'm sorry you sometimes wail that we expect you to be psychic; thats not true, we just tend to treat you as equals and wave blatant flags and signals in your face forgetting they are the equivalent to drop-out-blue to your brains. You would actually have to be psychic (or female,) so, sorry.

Our brains are wired differently, too. Women have multiple small connections between the left and right hemisphere whereas male connections are cabled - one huge fat connection in the middle. Plug and Play. Women have a form of hard wired dyslexia and I mean that in a good way.

Dyslexics don't form the glue for the mental connections so easily, in the area of the brain relating to letter shapes etc. They learn best by using all five senses, by forming multiple possible routes to an answer and by using every sense at their disposal to reinforce a connection. They become brilliant multi taskers, chess players and tacticians because they train an area of their brain to consider all the possibilities. Find a dyslexic who was called stupid at school, who fought to declare their validity, and you will find one of the fastest thinkers you can meet.

Women are born with all these thin connections between the spatial and verbal sides of the brain. It is our nature to already have and use many possible ways of combining information to reach a conclusion. Whilst every connection in your brain goes the same route and makes you feel that getting from point A to point Z is straightforward, we see points B through Y as well. Man sees the top of the mountain. Woman sees the crevasse in the way, three possible paths and the incoming weather report. We see you as blind and bumbling, you see us as picky and fussy and slowing you up.

You know its not all bad; you know that with your gonads comes a lifetime supply of testosterone, making you taller, stronger, more aggressive and very handy when theres chasing or heavy lifting to do.

You know that this inspires you even in early childhood to explore the world of single answers; cars, engines, winners and losers, basic sports that don't need to be scored by judges because the result is defined by rules. You also know that little girls will find more satisfaction in exploring role play, interrelations, possible reactions and emotion-based consequences. We are the social theorists to your rule book fanatics, and you respond to this difference by ridiculing us. Of course you do; we involve ourselves in a plane of thought that is beyond your comprehension and therefore, from your perspective, unnecessary to life, outside of the factors involved in seeing point Z and heading straight for it.

Its OK. Its not your fault; only try to remember that our logic is valid, just different. Realise also that you have the superior physical strength and attendant aggressive streak for two reasons.

a) You are bumbling little boys, bless you, and you need it to survive.
b) Without it you would be the underclass, the 'special needs' segment of society and we would make your lives hell, patting you on the head and ignoring your silly misconceptions. Flip, you probably wouldn't even have got the vote until, ooh, about 100 years ago.

Bygones. Deal?