Living With Trauma,:The Healers, 26

Have you noticed that most of the healers tend to be women? Why not the men? There was a time when almost all doctors were men, all nurses were women. Doctors, of course, made more money. They still do. Now we have more women than men graduating from medical school. There are more male nurses, but it's still a female-dominant profession. I have also noticed that in my own profession, peer support, the women appear to outnumber the men by around seven to three. We have a gender problem. In sciences, technology, and in most positions of labour (excluding childbirth!) it's still a man's world. Women are still dominant in many of the social sciences, health care, social work. I am going to guess that there is more of a gender parity in education and in the law profession. It is also noteworthy that most of the people in jail are going to be men. Men do not tend to be compassionate or empathetic. They are less likely to volunteer to help the homeless or to work in caring professions. If the medical profession wasn't so generously remunerative it probably would never have been male-dominant. Men make and fight wars. Women clean up the mess. Even with some of our twisted interpretations of feminism, we have women assuming that equality with men means killing foreign combatants in the military, side by side with the men, or breaking the glass ceiling and becoming CEO's of transnational corporations, every bit as greedy, rapacious and ethically bankrupt as their male counterparts. I will not say that all women are generous, kind and caring. I remember some very loud female voices campaigning against homeless shelters and low-cost housing being built in their neighbourhoods as well as working with very compassionate and gentle male colleagues in the mental health field. Little girls grow up playing with dolls and learn how to be moms. Little boys grow up playing violent computer games and learn how to be dysfunctional jerks. Not all little girls, of course. And not all little boys. At puberty, little boys get erections and their behaviour becomes increasingly sexualized. At puberty, little girls begin to menstruate and must learn how to live with this monthly loss of blood till they are at least fifty. I think this is why in many traditional and hunter-gatherer cultures boys, at puberty, have to go through grueling rites of initiation. Unlike girls this isn't already imposed on them by nature, and if they are going to be any good to their communities then they are going to have to begin learning humility, and the sooner the better. I suppose that this has often been the reasoning behind expecting boys to render two years of compulsory military service. It kicks the selfish jerk out of them, but by the same token they are taught to kill the enemy and mindlessly obey orders. I do see some changes that I like. Despite the still overwhelmingly male statistics in juvenile and young adult dysfunctional behaviour, crime, incarceration, and general douchebaggery, children and boys in particular are being taught to be kinder, more caring and more compassionate, or so it seems. Young fathers are also more involved in their children's care and upbringing than ever before. I think we are on a learning curve, but I am cautiously optimistic.