Men can be obnoxious, insists Salonaz Sami, but can we live without them? Ever since I was small, I have been told that boys are different. I never paid attention. Boys have shorter hair; they don't wear dresses. So? But growing up, it was increasingly obvious that there was more to it than that. When a mean male colleague gave me a hard time at school and I went home crying, screaming that I hated boys -- and myself for being unable to defend myself against them -- it was on my grandmother's lap, ironically, that I was informed of "a hormone called testosterone" that gives little boys a physical edge over little girls, and makes them more energetic. Much later, passing through adolescence to womanhood, this started to make better sense -- acquiring more convincing dimensions in the light of the insights of John Gray. That little bully, giving his female partner a hard time, seemed to live on in the bodies of my girlfriends' boyfriends and husbands. I took to keeping their complaints at the back of my mind, filing them away for a closer look later -- until the impulse behind this article: to ask friends, both male and female, what they thought. The answers left me even more baffled. Sarah Hanser, an administrator of a website, says Middle Eastern men tend to belittle women and their role in society -- a consequence, she suggests, of their upbringing. "They were raised to think they were superior, that their opinions should always come first. So they grow up looking down on women and thinking they were only created to serve and obey them." The typical view is that a woman's role is to get married and become a housewife. Despite claims of open-mindedness on the part of many men, "when push comes to shove, the old, traditional way of thinking continues to control perceptions and attitudes. This is why when confronted by a woman who is well- educated, financially and emotionally independent, they freak out." But according to Youssef Khatab, writer, such attitudes are not entirely men's fault: "yes, this way of thinking still exists in certain segments of society and in communities all over the world, but women are equally responsible for it." The tendency, he goes on, is as much about self as male perception. "To this day many women expect to be provided for financially, for example, but they'll use your argument to not stay at home. They are fighting for traditional rights but will not accept traditional obligations. If the idea is to free oneself of traditions, surely both men and women should be freed." Hanser agreed with Khatab that much depends on communication. Kamelia Toson, fashion designer, believes that men are not as verbally expressive as women. "You never know what is on a man's mind until he comes out and says it. Women," she says, "are the complete opposite." Transparency, she went on, is key: "they must be able to communicate how they feel to each other without pretence or secretiveness. Secrets are those little enemies that can tear a relationship apart." Not only are men inexpressive, Toson adds, but they also tend to confuse sexual attraction with love, something Haia Hussein, a doctor, confirms: "men do that. When chemicals and hormones are rushing around, they can preclude thinking, so a man will get the feeling that he is in love when in fact he isn't. And this is why it takes more time for a woman to say the L word than a man." It is also why men fall out of love with ease. As Hussein says, "I've heard many of my friends complain of partners waking up one day to decide they were no longer in love with them. The question is: were they really in love in the first place?" Still, it is "the caveman mentality" that constitutes the biggest problem, "the need to hunt," as Hussein puts it. "Women are always expected to be passive and play hard to get. Why? Because in order for a man to be interested in a woman, he must feel the need to pursue and capture her; otherwise, he will not feel sufficiently masculine -- or driven to conquer, then protect." This, she adds, is the kind of man who, once the marriage vows are taken, will tend to cheat on his wife: "what does the hunter do once he has captured one prey? That's right -- he will start seeking another."
