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Women’s Equality Day.

Since 1971, the 26^th August has been designated women’s equality day. It’s a day when women, and some men, reflect on the sexism that is still faced by women around the world.

Perhaps in the West we have made progress towards female equality, some would say not enough. But for great swathes of humanity women continue to be oppressed by men in the most horrific ways. Women are denied an education. The right to vote. To manage their own affairs. To get justice. Even their right to life is brutally repressed in some cultures that ‘honour’ female murder. In countries that prize boys over girls, birth rates show that many female foetuses are electively aborted.

Why am I writing about women’s equality on a men’s well-being blog? Well I suppose the main reason is to set the record straight about a few things.

The first thing is I’m not a ‘male supremacist’. I am interested in men’s experience, but it doesn’t follow that I think men’s experience is somehow ‘better’ or more ‘valid’ than women’s experience. It is not my intention to be sexist when I talk about men and the issues they face.

Second, although I work with men, I always receive supervision from women. All therapists turn to a fellow professional to discuss and receive support for the work they do with clients. Supervision acts as a kind of quality control. It is really important to me that I get a women’s input into my work with men. This helps to counteract any sense of collusion in a ‘boys club’. It also brings a women’s perspective into the room when I work with a man. This is invaluable and many men have benefited from their input.

Third, although I think that men and women are equal, I think this is a political equality. What then becomes difficult to talk about is the real differences that exist in men and women’s psychology. For too long science has been scared off by the feminist critique into reporting gender differences in brains and behaviour. Political equality does not mean that men and women are the same. We are only at the beginning of understanding how and why this is the case.

Finally, I am motivated by the failure of feminism itself. Feminism lets women down by failing to offer a credible model of gender relations. Feminism all too often becomes simply an interest group. What we really need is a political ideology of gender relations that transcends the interest of any one group. My point is that we can’t do that until we really understand men in their own terms. It is this which forms my motivation to working with men.

So on this day which celebrates the ideal of women's equality, I want to extend my support, and encourage other men to do the same.  Why?  Because it is in supporting the oppressed that we dignify our own humanity.

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Dr Phil Tyson is a Men's Psychotherapist based in Manchester in the UK.  He offers:

• Group therapy weekends for men in London and Manchester
• Beginners meditation weekend retreats for men in London and Manchester
• Counselling for men in Manchester
• Psychotherapy for men in Manchester
• Cognitive behavioural therapy for men in Manchester
• Telephone and online counselling for men wherever you live
• Mediation for conflict resolution at work in London
• Mediation for conflict resolution at work in Manchester and the North West
• Supervision and consulative support for therapists in Manchester

Dr Tyson is also regularly quoted in the printed media and as a guest on local and national broadcast media.

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Who is Male?

The athlete Caster Semenya has recently caused headlines the world over since her gold medal in the Berlin World Athletic Championships caused the IAAF to order tests to ascertain her gender. I personally find it outrageous that the tests could not have been arranged discreetly rather than in the centre of the world media frenzy. The last person this happened to was Santhi Soundarajan who attempted suicide in 2007 after failing a gender test. I hope Caster is able to bear the pressure, and humiliation, that has been put upon her.

But the case does raise interesting questions about who is a man or a woman. I guess the first thing to note is the difference between gender and sex. Gender is a social category bestowed on a child at birth. It is a moral matter. There are great social obstacles for people who want to negotiate a different gender to the one allocated at birth.

Sex, on the other hand, is a biological concept, and surprisingly in human beings, for many individuals it is far from clear cut. The standard line in class room biology is that there are 46 chromosomes including two that determine sex. 46XX and you are a girl, 46XY and you are a boy. But human biology throws up much more variability than this. For example, some men are born with an extra Y chromosome, 47XYY. Such ‘hyper masculine’ men are overrepresented in the prison population due to their extreme aggression. Other variations include 47XXX, 47XXY, 49XXXYY to name but a few. The presentation of people with such genetic makeup can be complicated.

Genetic and biological factors can also interact. For example in one presentation, complete androgen insensitivity syndrome, a biological boy (46XY) is insensitive to the male hormones that trigger the development of male sexual characteristics (foetuses are by default, female). As a result the biological boy develops female sexual characteristics and lives out a life as a woman.

My favourite condition, however, is 5 alpha reductase enzyme deficiency syndrome. In this genetic condition the child has the sexual characteristics of a girl and is brought up as a girl. At puberty, however, male secondary sexual characteristics develop including descended testes and an enlarged phallus. Some individuals even produce serviceable sperm. What is so interesting about this condition is that it is highly prevalent in the Dominical Republic where it affects about 1 in 90 children. The culture is therefore so used to the condition that the children can often very successfully negotiate the transition at puberty from girl to boy.

As you can see, whether you are a boy or a girl is sometimes far from straightforward. In our culture, however, as gender is such a morally layered experience, such inter-sexed children and their families often experience great psychological suffering. My sense is that it is still a matter of ridicule and social ostracism if someone, for whatever reason, tries to realign their gender identity.

Indeed there is a great deal of pressure to be either a man or a women. This in itself is damaging to such inter-sexed persons as, very often, they cannot function convincingly in either role. I can envisage a time in the future where inter-sexed persons are simply allowed to live out their humanity in a way that makes sense for them, rather than in a way that makes sense to us.

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Dr Phil Tyson is a Men's Psychotherapist based in Manchester in the UK.  He offers:

• Group therapy weekends for men in London and Manchester
• Beginners meditation weekend retreats for men in London and Manchester
• Counselling for men in Manchester
• Psychotherapy for men in Manchester
• Cognitive behavioural therapy for men in Manchester
• Telephone and online counselling for men wherever you live
• Mediation for conflict resolution at work in London
• Mediation for conflict resolution at work in Manchester and the North West
• Supervision and consulative support for therapists in Manchester

Dr Tyson is also regularly quoted in the printed media and as a guest on local and national broadcast media.

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Ban on People with HIV Entering the USA to be lifted.

Since 1987 there has been a ban on HIV+ people entering the United States.  The US is one of a minority of countries that took the view that people with HIV posed a public health risk to its citizens. This is in contrast to the vast majority of countries who treat HIV as being neutral regarding whether admission was granted.

It is perhaps worth reflecting on the implications for HIV+ people of this ban. 

1.        HIV+ people had to leave their medicines at home when travelling to the United States or face deportation.  Interruptions to treatment will have caused many people long term health consequences including AIDS.

2.       HIV+ people were refused the right to stay in the USA leading to forced deportations which separated families including mothers from their children.

3.       International conferences on HIV/AIDS have been forced to be held outside the USA, a crazy situation since most of the HIV research the world relies upon is US driven.

Its high time this ban, initiated at the height of the AIDS hysteria and moral panic of the 1980’s is removed, and the new Obama administration should be congratulated on moving on this issue.  But it’s also a reminder that it’s easy to legislate unwisely in the eye of a storm, and then the legislation sits causing untold misery, until someone can find the moral fibre necessary to reverse it.

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Dr Phil Tyson is a Men's Psychotherapist based in Manchester in the UK.  He offers:

• Group therapy weekends for men in London and Manchester
• Beginners meditation weekend retreats for men in London and Manchester
• Counselling for men in Manchester
• Psychotherapy for men in Manchester
• Cognitive behavioural therapy for men in Manchester
• Telephone and online counselling for men wherever you live
• Mediation for conflict resolution at work in London
• Mediation for conflict resolution at work in Manchester and the North West
• Supervision and consulative support for therapists in Manchester

Dr Tyson is also regularly quoted in the printed media and as a guest on local and national broadcast media.

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Can We Choose Who We are Attracted to?

I recently posted an article about research on what women find attractive about men (Women Go for Smart and Generous Guys), and it received quite a lot of attention, so I thought I would add a post that delves a bit deeper into what men and women find attractive in each other.

The branch of science that has explored human attraction most thoroughly in recent years is known as socio- biology. It is perhaps worth pondering on the socio-biology project a moment before delving in. Socio-biology is the are of science that uses evolutionary theory to explain social behaviour in animals. As sex is perhaps the most important of social behaviours, it stands to reason that socio-biologists spend a lot of their time researching sexual behaviour in animal species and human beings.

From a socio-biological perspective, we find others sexually attractive who are most likely to maximise our genetic success. That is to say, give us healthy and fertile children.

This brings us to the first observation in socio-biology in that women invest 9 months of pregnancy and then years of nurturing into their children, whereas the male investment in creating a child is potentially much less. According to this view, men are ‘salesmen’ and women are ‘sales resistant’ and this is important as it forms the context for what men and women find attractive in each other.

For men the case is simpler than for women in that all men are concerned about is that the women is healthy and fertile and capable of bearing and rearing his child. What are the cues for this?

Well according to researchers at the University of St. Andrews, men are attracted to women with higher levels of estrogen as they are more fertile. The effect of this hormone on the body is:

• Smoother skin

• Bigger eyes

• Fuller lips

• Smaller nose

• Larger breasts

The researchers also found that women who wear makeup are subtly altering their appearance in the direction of demonstrating greater levels of estrogen.

Interestingly women tend to be rated by men as more attractive at their most fertile time in their menstrual cycle.

Estrogen is not the only factor that determines male attraction to women. Clues that give a hint of a women’s capacity to lactate are also thought to be important. What is important to lactation is that women are not too thin or too heavy. As a consequence, women ‘advertise’ their body weight in certain highly visible areas (men’s body weight tends to be more evenly distributed). These tend to focus on the right amount of visible body fat in the following areas:

• Breasts

• Hips

• Buttocks.

But what do women find attractive in men? Well this is a slightly more complicated question because it appears that women’s biology encourages a duel strategy.

Going back to first principles, women need men who will advance the prospects of her genes being reproduced into the next generation. This means she needs a man who will stick around, contribute to childcare, and invest in her offspring. She also needs a man with good genes who will contribute to the fitness of her offspring. The important point here is that it does not have to be the same man. Let me explain.

Most of the time women are attracted to men with more feminine features. These men are seen as kinder, and more co-operative, than men with more masculine features, meaning they are more likely to be good fathers to her offspring. In addition, women find generous and smart guys more attractive, again for similar kinds of reasons. Men also invest in what are referred to as ‘sexual ornaments’, that is to say behaviours that do not add to fitness directly, but that demonstrate an abundance of resources to the woman, indicating a good mating choice. A good example of a sexual ornament in men is wit and savoir fare. Perhaps this is the reason why most stand up comics are men.

Being a good father to her children is not the same as giving good genes to her children, and although most of the time women go for good fathers, at the time it really matters, when she is most fertile, women switch strategies, and fancy men with the following characteristics:

• Tall.

• Broad shoulders.

• More muscular.

• Square jaw.

In other words, more ‘masculine’ men.

Controversially the implication of this is that women’s best strategy is to settle down with a more ‘feminine’ man and be unfaithful to him to secure offspring. Perhaps this accounts for why 10% of men are unwittingly bringing up the child of another man.

So what should we make of this research? Well it has been argued that this socio-biological perspective lacks ecological validity. That is to say the effects that are found in the laboratory are too small to have any major impact on real people’s choice of sexual partner or mate. I can see the sense in this argument. After all for most of us, most of the time, our sexual partners are a compromise between what we desire, and what is available to us. However it is useful to have some perspective on those subconscious processes that impact on our decisions. How can we hope to transcend our animal heritage without it?

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Dr Phil Tyson is a Men's Psychotherapist based in Manchester in the UK.  He offers:

• Group therapy weekends for men in London and Manchester
• Beginners meditation weekend retreats for men in London and Manchester
• Counselling for men in Manchester
• Psychotherapy for men in Manchester
• Cognitive behavioural therapy for men in Manchester
• Telephone and online counselling for men wherever you live
• Mediation for conflict resolution at work in London
• Mediation for conflict resolution at work in Manchester and the North West
• Supervision and consulative support for therapists in Manchester

Dr Tyson is also regularly quoted in the printed media and as a guest on local and national broadcast media.

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