Disconnected

Date: 01-10-2025

Can men and women ever really connect?

We live very different lives and experiences. Can men understand ours? Do they think about ours? Do they even really want to?

Why does it matter?

Plenty of men and women are friends. Plenty of heterosexual couples continue to find some way of living together and making families, whether they can find any actual companionship and humanity in each other or not. So, why bother?

This underlying disconnect seems built into the very fabric of our current reality. Not just human history. Have you noticed?

Let us look at some examples of how this plays out.

If men were thinking for both of us, would we share life and its reponsibilities? Although women are working and earning more than ever before, men continue to do significantly less care-giving and household work and spend comparatively more time on leisure activities, even in families where women are the main breadwinners US-based 2023 report. While, married men report higher earnings compared to married women, unmarried men and unmarried women! US-based 2019 report.

If men were thinking for both of us, would the technological advancement look different? For example, generative AI products which are now being used to create fake pornographic content of female colleagues/friends/celebrities would have gone through more scrutiny. Or AI robot girlfriends where men can custom-select the size, shape and color of each body part of this dystopian caricature of the female body would not be gaining popularity. Most AI researchers I meet on a daily basis are men. If more women were in the room, I think a lot of the AI research progress and currently-available AI products would have looked very different.

If men were thinking for both of us, would there be better understanding of women’s health? Would the policies and debates around it be politicized? Women’s health continues to be an afterthought in the medical community. For example, it may seem that everything around pregnancy gets a lot of attention and services in most countries. However, these services are mostly focused on child birth and child health. Most mothers, after they give birth, report extremely grim experiences regarding the care given to them by both their medical doctors and their male partners.

If men were thinking for both of us, would we co-exist online? Roughly 51% of the women worldwide have experienced some form of online harassment and abuse! UN Women 2024 report.

If men were thinking for both of us, would girls have normal healthy childhoods; where fear does not replace wonder? 650 million women alive today (one in five women) experienced sexual violence of some form BEFORE they turned 18! And 736 million women alive today (one in three women) have experienced some form of physical and/or sexual violence at least once in their lives! Unicef 2023 report.

If men were thinking for both of us, would sexual assault and rape be effectively legal worldwide? For example, by estimate only 5-6% of these crimes are reported to the police in Canada and only a fraction of these reported crimes are persecuted! See this post for references.

If men were thinking for both of us, would we co-exist at home? 51,100 out of 85000 women that were intentionally killed by men in 2023 were killed by their male partners. That is 140 women a day! 1 woman every 10 minutes! UN 2023 report.

If men were thinking for both of us, would men in so many cultures and religions around the world be okay to treat women as their honor and property and reducing them down to their personal toy and life-accessory?

Are these all not symptoms of a disconnect? Does it all not take an overwhleming disregard of someone’s humanity…?

What does it take for a man to look past the pain his wife or mother or sister or female friend could be in…? What does it take for a man to want to control what “their woman” can do or say or wear…? What does it take for a man to decide to hit a woman…? What does it take for a man to rape a child and destroy their sense of self and safety forever only to satisfy his own very fleeting and momentary sense of power and/or pleasure…?

From how showing violence against women is so normal in media…to how even the idea of an “independent woman” is defined through the lens of men….the examples of how this disconnect shapes our world go on and on….

Why is this so?

Is this built too deeply into the gender roles by now?

Is this biological; just plain human nature?

Is this about empathy (or lack thereof)? It seems that even men with empathy do not seem to be able to make themselves uncomfortable long enough to want to listen to our voices or care enough to hold other men accountable.

Is this about the existing power imbalance? The ones in power can either keep their eyes closed to the suffering or they can actively participate to mantain the status quo, right? Are there any other options? Just by cost-benefit analysis, they have to invalidate and disconnect from the “other” in some way to keep their previlige, right? Even if one of them can pacify their conscience and believe they are not “the bad one”, they silently but actively rely on the rest of their group to not only keep the benefits rolling but to even mantain their personal sense of “goodness”.

Or maybe it is a mix of all these factors?

At the end of the day, the question is: if men only gain in every way by keeping the power imbalance, can they ever sincerely join the women in fixing it?