Vive la difference!(Taking Sex Differences Seriously)(Book Review)

Taking Sex Differences Seriously, by Steven E. Rhoads (Encounter, 374 pp., $27.95)

SHORTLY after the Lewinsky scandal broke, Time White House reporter Nina Burleigh confessed in Mirabella magazine that she, too, had once caught the president admiring her legs. The episode was "seductive" and "flattering," Burleigh later said, and she admitted that she would gladly have performed for him as Monica had done, if only asked. A chorus of other prominent female writers quickly volunteered their services, as well. This led New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd to fume about "feminist erotic journalism," a field in which presumably independent women "pant for power. They crave droit du seigneur. Take me! Take me!"

It's the way to attract beautiful women, Henry Kissinger is said to have replied when asked why he sought high public office. Indeed, "power [in men] is an aphrodisiac" for the female sex, reports Steven Rhoads in this new book. He points to other cases of feminist icons surrendering to powerful men: Jane Fonda submitting to the "strong, domineering" Ted Turner; Simone de Beauvoir, author of The Second Sex, serving as mistress, cook, manager, nurse, and--eventually--pimp for the insufferable Jean-Paul Sartre. So does human nature trump ideology. However, the phenomenon does not work the other way. As the author notes, "power does not increase the sex appeal of former attorney general Janet Reno or of Senator Dianne Feinstein."

Rhoads explores thousands of comparable examples of sex differences in this provocative, compelling, entertaining book. A professor of public policy at the University of Virginia, Rhoads weaves together the findings of hundreds of new research studies with personal anecdotes in a lively refutation of 40 years of feminist cant. While polite, even generous, toward his intellectual opponents, Rhoads still reveals "the androgynous project" to be nothing less than "misogynist." Relying heavily on the insights of social biology and evolutionary psychology, he shows the differences between men and women to be natural, "hard wired," and fundamental to the survival and progress of the human race.

"The culture wars," Rhoads notes with some justice, "are really about the role of women." He shows that while men are all about the same when it comes to the masculine traits of competitiveness, aggression, and dominance (even "computer nerds" enjoy the frenzied clashes of "BattleBots"), women are divided into two camps: a majority who are traditionally feminine with a yearning for nest-building and children; and a minority, exposed to higher levels of testosterone, who show more male attributes. The tension between these two kinds of women becomes a recurring theme in the book.

All the same, the profound differences between the two sexes are the author's primary story. For example, the human hormone, oxytocin, is "the kindest of natural opiates," but it operates differently on the sexes. Men experience it at the moment of sexual release. Women, though, feel the same euphoric exhilaration while breastfeeding. Indeed, some of the oxytocin reaches the child through the breast milk. This creates a special bond between mother and child in which they become "one continually interacting, merged organism" with "a pleasant fog descend[ing] upon the brain."

No "Mr. Mom" can replicate this experience. Indeed, Rhoads shows that despite the media hype, there are actually few such men around. In candid surveys, even the best-earning, highest-status women reject role reversal in favor of a partner who is superior in power, earnings, and status. So too among female academics. Homemaking men are simply not sexually attractive to women.