Men have a weaker immune system. They’ve fewer infection-fighting T-cells. The male fetus is prone to miscarriage and stillbirth. Newborn male deaths are frequent; sudden-infant-death syndrome is highly common. Boys are likely to be more autistic. They’re highly afflicted with mental retardation and dyslexia. Teenager boys die at twice the rate of girls. Boys aged 15-19 are five times as likely to die in a homicide, almost 11 times as likely to die by drowning, nearly twice as likely to die from a car accident.
Men have shorter life expectancies. By the age of 36, women outnumber them. Between ages 15 and 24 years, men die 4-5 times more than women. Men are twice as likely to die before 65. Among centenarians, women outnumber males by 9:1. Men, aged between 55-64, are twice as likely as women to die in car accidents. Men aged between 55-74 are twice as likely as women to die of heart disease. Men of all ages are highly susceptible to stroke, cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and accidents. They start to die from heart disease at the age of 35.
Men drive faster, smoke, and are more likely to eat an unhealthy diet. They choose more dangerous occupations, & quite frequently die in workplace accidents. Among testosterone-fuelled youngsters, accidents/violence is the chief cause of death. In later life, they’re carried off by heart disease. Doctor-avoidance, risk-taking behavior, and stress are typical male traits. Men hardly attend preventive-care visits. As a result, they don’t mostly get diagnosed & treated at the right time. Men were always in short supply because so many were killed while hunting or fighting. Men still do the vast majority of the fighting during military conflicts.
Language in men is located only in the left hemisphere as against 6-7 language centers in both hemispheres in women. Men are more likely to suffer speech losses/impediments and are much less likely to ever regain these skills. Boys tend to mumble and have sloppier pronunciations, using fillers like ‘um’, ‘uh’, and ‘like’ during the conversation. When men get together to watch a football match on TV the only conversation tends to be ‘pass the chips/popcorn’. Men can’t connect feelings and thoughts well. They don’t have the superhighways connecting feelings and thoughts to their speech. Men can’t, while they listen, also think, remember, feel, and plan at the same time. When they stop their cars to read a street directory men turn the radio down. When a telephone rings they tune down the TV. While reading newspapers men can’t hear their spouses saying something.
Males are burdened with natural genetic deficits. The second X-chromosome that women have, acts as an “override” for certain recessive genetic conditions. The male hormone testosterone is linked to elevations of LDL, and declines in HDL. Genetically and biologically fragile to start with, social, economic, behavioral, and public health policies contribute to the higher mortality of men. In absence of any dedicated support system, they’ve less well-developed social networks of supportive friends. Many husbands rely almost completely on their wives for emotional support, making them more vulnerable in the case of divorce or the death of a spouse. While widows successfully compensate for the role of a dead father, widowers, invariably fail and remarry.
Masculinity kills men. It renders men, the weaker sex. Despite handicaps males survive as if it were a litmus test of escaping predators, finding food, and resisting disease. Females prefer exaggerated ornaments though they’re in fact a burden to males. Conversely, males use their handicaps in advertisements that females are attracted to. The bigger the handicap the more rigorous the test they’ve passed. The many costly or dangerous human behaviors aimed at achieving status, in general, are proved when they try to seek the hand with costly gifts and other displays of wealth, saying, “I’ve heaps of money.” People who showboat expensive jewels, sports cars, etc. gain status because the signal can’t be faked; everyone else knows what those ostentatious objects cost. Surprisingly if the guys spent so much on growing the biggest whatsit around they couldn’t possibly have spent enough on something sensible like keeping their immune system well-tuned.
If tattooing was advertising men of their strength, resistance to disease plus a tolerance of pain, then bungee jumps were to advertise jumper’s courage, and careful calculation and smoking were to showcase them macho men, stronger and superior to get past the burning, choking sensation of my-first-puff on a cigarette. The males of birds of paradise, evolved, plumes growing out of their eyebrows, the habit of hanging upside down, and brilliant colors, and loud calls likely to call hawks. If it’s telling something about the genetic health of males means there’s some truth in advertising. All those features must impair male survival, yet they also serve as the advertisements by which male birds of paradise woo female birds of paradise.
Tails, plumes, antlers, songs, and the size of male animals are bred/shaped into males by consistent trends of passive or active female choice, generations after generation. While the quality of the male’s ornaments/appendages, color, size, songs, aggression all reflect their resistance to prevailing infections, women want good partners for them and good parents for their children. In order to sieve out the best males, females use ‘wooing’ and ‘winning’ techniques to select ‘dandies’ and ‘bruises’ respectively. Bull-elephant seals and red deer use deadly weapons. Peacocks and nightingales are aesthetic show-offs. Men ‘compete’ with other men or ‘woo’ them or ‘both’.
Physically the male body had to become increasingly muscular and athletic and had to sacrifice the precious fat deposits that gave females their added advantages. Menopause protects older women from the risks of bearing children late in life and lets them live long enough to take care of their children and grandchildren. Females in nearly every species are more likely to live longer than males. Longer life means survival of the fittest, and women, evolutionarily speaking, are fitter than men. Men have to admit that they’re stupid and too macho to properly utilize the institutions that they dominate and become as smart to live as long as women.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are the personal opinions of the author. The facts, analysis, assumptions and perspective appearing in the article do not reflect the views of GK.