READ & LEARN

This column is designed for readers who are not omniscient
A Remarkable and Marvelous Sex’
BY ESTELLE RAMEY

Dear God! What does a woman want?
Dr. Sigmund Freud
Every girl wants to be like her mother.
Dr. Benjamin Spock’
What would have happened at the Bay of Pigs if a woman had been in control?
Dr. Edgar Berman
1. When I first read the headline “Doctor Asserts Women Are Unfit for Top Jobs,” I thought there must be some mistake. People just don’t say things like that in public any more. But I was wrong. Dr. Edgar F. Ber-man, a former surgeon, a friend and adviser to Hubert Humphrey, and a onetime State Department consultant on Latin American health problems, had indeed said to fellow Democrats, to the press, and for all the world to hear that women, with their monthly “raging hormonal imbalances,” turn into unstable creatures, too irrational to be trusted with the highest positions of responsibility.
2. Whenever men argue that women after all are biologically different, they really don’t mean different; they mean inferior-in terms of stamina, stability, and cerebration. The term “biologically different” has the neat effect of taking the whole subject out of the realm of personal masculine prejudice and landing it squarely in the lap of impartial sci-ence: it’s not a man’s fault that women are relegated to less important, less interesting occupations; it’s just the way the evolutionary cookie crumbled. And, as Freud exclaimed, “Dear God! What does a woman want?” Why should some women get upset by this natural stacking of the deck when they have so many other attractive biologic attributes? Besides, they make such great wives and mothers.
3 As a child of my culture, I don’t mind getting involved occasionally in the fun and games of being treated like a fragile flower. But as a physiologist working with the unromantic scientific facts of life, I find it hard to delude myself about feminine frailty.
4. I know that when it comes to survival, it should have been a French. woman rather than a Frenchman who cried: “Vive la différence!” Men have big muscles; but in the game of durability their “delicate” wives hold the protoplasmic aces. Any insurance actuary knows that men collapse faster under the psychic and physical stresses of living. Men are a dear and wonderful tribe, and they often make great husbands and fathers; but we all must face the fact that genetically they are the weaker sex. That well-advertised Y chromosome of theirs is, literally, almost a blank.
5. Contrary to current fashionable nonsense about the inborn defects of female physiology, women are, in fact, a remarkable and marvelous sex. Dear Dr. Berman: I think it’s time to restate a plain old scientific truth: The female of the species, any species, is sturdier than the male from the moment of conception to the last hurrah.
6. Evidence collected by a well-known endocrinologist,” Dr. James B. Hamilton, shows that, from worms to humans, the male is less able to tolerate life’s everyday stresses. Dr. Hamilton also notes: “There can be little doubt that the male has a higher mortality rate in almost all forms of animal life studied thus far.”
7. In my work with Dr. Maurice S. Goldstein, of McGill University, we found that in such traumas as haemorrhage and neurological shock male rats and rabbits suffered more than their female counterparts. I have no idea how male rats and rabbits feel about sharing responsibilities with female rats and rabbits; but whatever their attitudes, I doubt that it had much effect on the kind of data we obtained.
8. When I reviewed the available literature on how stress and disease affect males and females, I was struck by the fact that there has been astonishingly little basic research on the dismal survival record of the male even though the phenomenon was noted at least as early as 1786. You might expect the subject to rate top priority, because, after all, it is a matter of life and death. But perhaps men, who constitute the vast majority of research scientists and physicians, would rather not think about the implications of such research. How disconcerting it would be to discover that evolution had reserved some of its choicest genetic gifts for the female!
9. Surprisingly, many more boys than girls are conceived, but about 12 percent more male than female fetuses die before delivery. Yet even with this early male attrition, 105 boys are born for every 100 girls. During the first week of life, the death rate is 32 percent greater for males than for females. Significantly, the sex difference in survival shows up long before society has a chance to impose its special stresses on boys and men. With every year, the dreary disparity” be-tween male and female durability inexorably” increases. No wonder those retirement paradises have many more beauty salons than bar barbershops. And no wonder lonely widows find their genetic bonus a Pyrrhic victory.”
10. There are few scientific explanations for male fragility. The cardiovascular disorders, like coronary disease, have a much higher incidence in men even in early youth. Part of the problem may be the environmental stresses imposed on men by society to compete, to produce, to succeed. Part of the problem may be hormonal. Dr. Hamil-ton’s findings suggest that the male hormone testosterone induces a slightly higher metabolic rate in most tissues and that the male thus “burns out” faster. Other research indicates that the female’s estrogen hormones may help retard the aging of blood vessels something testosterone does not do. To be sure, testosterone is a delightful hormone, as hormones go, but I must say the estrogens seem to be much more helpful physiologically.
11. That is why I was startled to read Dr. Berman’s attempt to give the ancient concept of woman’s predestined inferiority a firm scientific basis. He suggested that if women, with their raging hormones, were allowed to make really important decisions, our perfect male-run society would be plunged into a female morass” of racial strife, air pollution, inflation, student riots, wars, famine, hijackings, and midi skirts. The mind boggles. What would have happened at the Bay of Pigs,” asked Dr. Berman, if a woman had been in control? All I can ask is what did happen? And who was in control?
12. Dr. Berman went on to suggest that most honest physicians secretly agree with him but are too chicken to speak out and antagonize the harridans of the Women’s Liberation Movement or their own rich women patients. One must admire Dr. Berman’s self-sacrifice: he gladly suffered political martyrdom in order to protect society from women and women from society.
13. All this would be a teapot tempest” except that it strikes at the heart of human relations. If women are inevitably doomed to defective brain function because of their normal hormonal secretions, then they are indeed biologic seconds, and every roadblock should be placed in their way as they try to join men in making the vital decisions of the world. “Anatomy is destiny.” Sigmund Freud once said, as he consigned women to the nursery. “Women are made to be concerned first and foremost with child care, husband care, and home care,” Dr. Benjamin Spock said, fully concurring with Dr. Freud. “Genes are our fate and hormones our masters,” Dr. Berman said, as he firmly closed the door of the White House executive suite to all people who have ovaries.”
14. I rather like the phrase “anatomy is destiny.” It has a certain ring. and it happens to be true. It means that if you have ovaries, you’ll never be a father. If you have testes,” you’ll never be a mother. If you are a cocker spaniel, you might as well forget about becoming head of General Motors. And if my grandmother had wheels, she would have been a station wagon.
15. It does not mean that if you have ovaries instead of testes, you might as well forget about becoming a Senator, or a physicist, or a prime minister, or President of the United States. Or even a surgeon. TO BE CONTINUED.