As I tended to my orchids the other day after work I heard the familiar sounds of Halo coming from the TV. "Slayer" it says in a synthetic haunting voice. Capture the flag. Kill. Something about the other team winning. Sounds of guns shooting, robots dying, vehicles flying pepper the air. I'm rather used to it but it did leave me thinking about the ways genders find to recharge, connect and decompress. As much as everyone hates stereotypes it sometimes just makes sense. We look for patterns in our world all the time. It keeps thing organized, predictable and manageable.
I was rather struck by the contrast of me feeding my orchids, carefully spinning the pot around to examine their roots and finger any spots of missing bark to make their environment just so. I was nourishing their space to encourage growth and living. Meanwhile, my husband was strategizing how to kill and destroy as many whatever-the-things-he-kills-are before his team loses as he could. I wouldn't call it violent but on the face of it — weapons and murder, albeit virtual — it's rather harsh. I asked him "do you feel recharged? When you get to play Halo I mean?", to which he replied in the affirmative only after he found a safe moment to break concentration from the game, probably while he was respawning.
I'm no professional about gender stereotypes, nor have I done even less than adequate research on the matter but is it possible that women are fulfilled by creating space around them that nourishes, encourages and uplifts? And men get recharged by allowed their primal instincts of fighting, winning and protecting get to run harmlessly rampant at the end of the day?
Some of you may take umbrage with the harmless part given all the research that shows the effects of long-term video game usage on developing brains. I don't know if I just know the exception to the rule or if the theory is wrong but my husband has in no way any struggle to disconnect what he does playing Halo with our real life. He is not fuming with unmitigated anger and rage that gets pent up only to come screaming out when he finally gets to release it on the blue team. Is it possible that after a long day of work and when we need to reboot we turn to things that are primal, instinctive and innate to allow us to be exactly what we are meant to be just for a moment while we are in the safety of our homes and not trying to fit into the public world around us? Which is to say, once we are fed up of working so hard to tamp down what's desperate to come out and exhausted from the day we come home to what is easy? Easy for women to nourish. Easy for men to kill. It feels good, doesn't it?
That's not to say that the "other" can't do exactly what we do. My dad, a physician, is incredibly gentle and caring, especially in his practice. But he likewise can be assertive, protective and bold - more often than not. We are all certainly capable of transition and change. I like to "kill things" every now and again too. We may blend into our surroundings and behave in the appropriate and safe way according to the circumstance. But there is no doubt that we have this kill-it-eat-it-or-rescue-it part in the back of our brain that exists where we have little effort to give.
To a larger point, one not made here, perhaps we ought to allow ourselves to be men and women in all the ways men are men and women are women without either cutting down the other or force adopting opposite traits to make us "better than"? Since when is it wrong to allow ourselves to embrace our sex as gender?
