PERSPECTIVE ON THE SEXES : Disarmament for the Gender Wars : We’re putting a new gloss on old stereotypes to define our differences when the reality is, we’re more alike than not.

The gender wars have been heating up again. The drumbeat of news stories about rape, harassment, the glass ceiling, the “gender gap” in politics and the “housework gap” at home have inflamed feelings on both sides. Beneath the anger and jokes, I detect real fear that the situation is getting out of hand; both sexes seem increasingly to feel that there is an unbridgeable chasm between them.

This is no wonder, because we are bombarded constantly with assertions of how different the sexes are. Robert Bly celebrates the archetypal differences between Woman and Man (Jungians like to write in capital letters). Newsweek, Science and that scholarly publication Elle report that men’s and women’s brains are specialized for different skills. Biomedical researchers worry about the legions of women who suffer various hormonal “syndromes”; men, apparently, lack hormones and moods. But men have lust: Sociobiologists assert that women are biologically programmed to be sexually passive, faithful and monogamous, whereas the male is designed for promiscuity. And a growing contingent of “cultural feminists” argues that women are naturally more nurturant, moral, peace-loving, and Earth-friendly than men. Women, they say, are psychologically wired to be the experts at love and intimacy, whereas men, poor souls, are emotionally repressed louts who fear attachment and wouldn’t know a nurturant feeling if it cuddled right up to them.

Oh, dear. If things are this bad, I guess women had better go on home, where they can cultivate their hormones, have several babies and stop annoying men by trying to be like them. As for help with the babies, forget it, since nurturance does not come natural to men. And never mind saving the planet, unless we can somehow confine men on special game preserves.

The way we think about women and men--how we construe our differences and similarities--is not just a fun topic for conversation or an academic exercise; it profoundly affects our visions of what is possible for society and for our private lives.

Our visions conflict so bitterly today because society is conflicted over woman’s place. This debate has been one of the most emotional and pressing issues of the 20th Century. It emerged in its modern form with the Industrial Revolution: Where once the spheres of men’s work and women’s work coexisted close to the home, now they moved in different orbits--the public world of work for him, the private world of the family for her. Accordingly, women became the love experts and men the experts on everything else.

Wherever the sexes live in separate economic spheres, we can expect scientific efforts to legitimize the idea that men and women are fundamentally opposite because of their hormones, brains, natures or innermost psyches, and so any expectation of change is hopeless. This idea routinely erupts with renewed vigor every time women take a significant step outside the private sphere. When women tried to enter universities a century ago, “science” was quick to assert that education would overheat their brains, destroy their ovaries and make them infertile.

In fact, the weight of the evidence about the “natures” and capabilities of the sexes falls on the side of how similar they are. When I looked into the research on brains, hormones, mental abilities, skills, moods, sexual desires, feelings of love and connection, grief, moral reasoning, empathy, belligerence, and other traits pertaining to the strengths and foibles of the human condition, what I found overwhelmingly was this: There is far more variation within each sex than between them. Examples:

--Are men’s and women’s brains differently wired? One eminent researcher in this field summarized her findings this way: “One must not overlook perhaps the most obvious conclusion, which is that basic patterns of male and female brain asymmetry seems to be more similar than they are different.” Of course, everyone overlooked it. The few small studies that find sex differences in the brains of rats and humans make the news, but not the studies that find trivial differences or none at all.

--Is male and female sexuality differently programmed? Sociobiologists say yes, pointing to the “promiscuous” behavior of the males of many species. But the research of women scientists has established that in many species, including birds, fish and mammals, females are as “promiscuous” as males--many will have multiple copulations even after they’ve been impregnated. Just as Darwin’s description of the “natural” “coy female” and “lustful male” gave a scientific gloss to Victorian courting customs, sociobiological theory about modern sexual relationships serves more to justify social rules than to illuminate their origins.

--Are women inherently pacifistic, nature-loving and empathic? It is true that, universally, men are far more likely than women to behave aggressively; both sexes fear male violence. Yet it does not follow that women are invariably less likely than men to support war, depersonalize the enemy or despoil the environment, or that men are less likely than women to live in harmony with their neighbors. The archetypes of Man the Noble Warrior and Woman the Saintly Pacifist compliment both sexes, but history serves up ample evidence of female bellicosity and male pacifism.

Indeed, that is what is wrong with all visions that posit an essential opposition of the sexes: They rest on archetype, not reality. Thinking in opposites leads to what philosophers call “the law of the excluded middle,” which is where most men and women fall in terms of their qualities, beliefs, values and capabilities. The very term “opposite sex” implies an underlying antagonism, the pitting of one side against the other, one way (which is right and healthy) versus the other’s way (which is wrong and unhealthy).

Framing an issue in polarities, regardless of which pole is valued, sets up false choices: Is it better to be logical or intuitive? Emotional or reasonable? Dependent or autonomous? In truth, we are, and should be, all of the above.

I am hopeful that we can find new pathways through these thickets. There is nothing in our nature or intellect that creates the battle of the sexes; the differences that most trouble us are created by the differing conditions and experiences of our lives. By understanding the real forces that separate women and men--and that unite us--we can find better ways to work together, live together and develop the society that would benefit us all.

Next: The sexes may not be “opposite,” but they are also not the same. How can we envision differences without turning them into deficiencies?