The Hindu Business Line : Is there a meeting point in the mating space?

It may seem like a kindergarten question to ask why women are different from men, yet the poser tends to remain a puzzle for most of us. “Men are April when they woo, December when they wed: maids are May when they are maids, but the sky changes when they are wives,” educates Rosalind in As You Like It.

The real reason why men and women are different is all in biology, not astrology, says Joe Quirk in Sperm are from Men Eggs are from Women ( www.landmarkonthenet.com), debunking the popular Mars-Venus talk.

“Sperm are worthless. Men are free to waste them,” he writes. “Each man produces 100 to 300 million sperms per ejaculation, or roughly a thousand per heartbeat.” In contrast, a female is born with all the eggs she will ever have, and it takes an average 29.5 days to nurture one precious egg, he observes.

“An egg is 85,000 times larger than a sperm.”

Virtually everything that goes into making a baby is in the egg, while the sperm contributes nothing but genetic material, argues Quirk.

To him, the situation resembles an expensive fast-food delivery: Such as, “A submarine crashing into something the size of San Francisco in order to deliver one pizza.”

Another eternal question that the book explores is, ‘What is it that women want in men?’

The author finds important clues in ‘a monumental study of over 10,000 people’ by David M. Buss, whose team of researchers asked men and women of 37 cultures to rate 18 attractive qualities in a potential mate.

They found that ‘women rate prestige and earning power in a potential mate higher than men’. “Women agree there’s no romance without finance,” concludes Quirk.

Among further corroborating evidence quoted in the book, is this one, from a dating service owner: “Men look at the photos and women read the resumés. Twenty-something women were the choosiest of all.” And, “Female millionaires want male billionaires.”

The turn-ons are different, the author explains. “A man is attracted to a woman’s ability to grow a baby inside her. A woman is attracted to a man’s ability to grow a baby outside him. How does he do that? Resources.”

Don’t despair, though. There is a meeting point in the mating space, a common ground, despite the many sex differences, as Buss’ research discovered: ‘Kindness’, which was rated in the top three qualities by both genders in all cultures. All our most humane qualities we owe to the opposite sex, declares Quirk. “For your talents, you have to thank them.”

The book makes a case for ‘smart, compassionate Homo sapiens’, as our ‘duty to the species’. As, perhaps, Biron philosophises in Love’s Labour’s Lost: “For men’s sake, the authors of these women, or women’s sake, by whom we men are men…”

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