Such a White Kettle!
There’s an idea that pervades society that men act like wimps when they get sick. Naturally, this has been advanced and perpetuated by the female lobby, but I think many men generally accept it, as well.
Usually, ideas that are so universal have at least some basis in fact. After all, if only a handful of women thought men were crybabies, that myth wouldn’t engender the universal credence that it does today.
So there’s probably some truth behind the statement that men react more strongly to, say, the common cold than women do.
The question then becomes: why?
Most women would answer by re-stating the presumably obvious fact: because they’re wimps! But is that really the most likely explanation? Is it really plausible that it all boils down to one personality flaw that is shared among all men on the planet, but not a single woman?
Consider an alternative hypothesis. Is it possible that men actually experience cold symptoms differently than women? After all, there are precedents for gender-specific diseases and variations in diseases. Unfortunately, I don’t think anyone has done a study of differences in how the genders experience common illnesses.
Frustratingly, when I mentioned this idea to one of my female friends, the answer was categorical: “No, men are just wimps”. Even in the absence of any data, she refused to admit that it was a possibility that men and women experience colds differently.
That kind of categorical dismissal reminds me of other gender-based physiological issues that were scoffed at for centuries: pre-menstrual syndrome and menopause. After having spent decades trying to get men to recognize and accept the reality of PMS and menopause rather than dismissing them, one would think that women might be more open to the idea that men, too, might have physiological symptoms that differ from their own.
Never mind the fact that calling men wimps also perpetuates the whole “men must be macho and never vulnerable” stereotype that women usually rail against.
But no, women seem perfectly willing to treat men’s symptoms as fiction, just as nineteenth century men did with women’s ailments that today are accepted as medical realities.
Of course, I’m not asserting that men actually *do* experience illnesses more intensely than women. I’m merely saying that since that is such a universal observation, perhaps there’s some physiological basis for the idea that men experience more suffering from colds than women.
My position is that we just don’t know, because no one has done the research. And if you’re not even willing to admit the possibility, then I think you should carefully examine why you feel so strongly about it, in the absence of any objective data to back it up.
So I say to today’s women the same thing I would have said to men who derogated women for PMS and menopause: before you cause harm by mocking your significant other’s symptoms, keep an open mind and consider offering them some compassion and understanding, rather than using their malady as an opportunity to take your “loved” one down a peg.
Because no one has proven that men’s apparent suffering is a purely mental fabrication.