V. Vemuri, Pleasanton, CA
In the box office hit, Missamma, the poet sings: "women mean it different." More often than not, men do not understand what "they" mean and why "they" do what "they" do. World's folklore is full of anecdotal tales about the misinterpretations men give to what women do. Take driving! We categorically dismiss them with one phrase, "women drivers!" Don't be too quick. If you ever get lost, with a map in your hand, chances are it is the woman in the passenger seat who will successfully navigate you out of the mess.
Many scientists (men and women) have been wondering why women are different. Finally we have a hypothesis from a woman scientist. Writing in the September 1992 issue of Scientific American, Doreen Kimura, (agreeing with psychology professor Christina Williams of Barnard College), says that women are different because they are built different. But, every man knows where and how they are built different; that is the reason for all this attraction bit. Then Prof. Williams might say, "I do not mean what you thought I meant."
To a psychologist, a person is the "mind stuff," not the body and its curves. The learned professor says that a woman's brain is built differently. She adds quickly that it is neither inferior nor superior to a man's brain; it is just different, that's all. Say, if one is like the IBM PC, the other is like the Apple Macintosh, if you understand what I mean by this computer metaphor. Then why are men's brains built so they are good at reading road maps? Prof. Williams says that men are good at reading maps simply because it was men who created the first maps in the first place. (It is like blaming the lefties for not being able to adapt themselves in a predominantly right-handed world.) Had a woman drawn the first road map, she would have used pictographic information such as landmarks rather than geometric information like East, West, latitude, longitude, and so on.