I’m sure you have heard the phrase “The Weaker Sex” when it comes to referring to women. Well today I wanted to exam why this just is not the case. Just the other day I was looking at a very old picture of my family. The photo had a my dad when he was 10 years old, standing beside my Great Grandfather, Great Grandmother and their three daughters. My Great Grandparents had five children in total, three girls and two boys. Both boys past away as baby’s from childhood diseases.
This is a very common occurrence in families. More female children tend to survive childhood then male children in developing countries. The large majority of times when a woman has a miscarriage, they find that the fetus is usually male. Genetically men are the weaker sex, it seems nature puts all her backing behind women to survive. This in part might have to do with the fact that a woman has to perform the extremely difficult task of growing a child in her body, go through the life threatening experience of child birth and lastly survive so that the woman can take care of that child. Men just have to watch and most of us have a difficult time at that.
It would appear that nature understands how difficult surviving in the wild can be and to have a child on top of that, women would need extra strength to survive such endeavors. In essence for the human species to survive, women are the stronger sex.
This is not the only strength that women have. One of my favorite books by Steven Pressfield “Gates Of Fire” is about the Spartan Civilization right before the invasion of the Persian Empire at the battle of Thermopylae. I’m sure you have seen the movie “300” which is a very inaccurate account of a very true event. Three hundred Spartans were chosen to hold the pass of Thermopylae. Each man knew he was marching to his death. There was no way 300 men would be able to hold off 1 million Persians. The point was to hold off the army long enough to give Greece a chance to form an army that might be able to defeat the Persians.
Now I tell you this because it is important to know how they chose the three hundred men who would die. It was always said that Leonidas the King of Sparta chose the men to die because they all had male children who could carry on their line. I have posted an excerpt from the Book “Gates Of Fire” that explains why each man was chosen. You might find the reason shocking.’
Leonidas is speaking to a woman who is about to lose both a Husband and a son in the coming war.
“I chose them not for their own valor, lady, but for that of their women…Greece stands now upon her most perilous hour. If she saves herself, it will not be at the Gates (death alone awaits us and our allies there) but later, in battles yet to come by land and sea. Then Greece, if the gods will it, will preserve herself. Do you understand this, lady? Well. Now listen.
When the battle is over, when the Three Hundred have gone down to death, then will all Greece look to the Spartans, to see how they bear it.
But who, lady, who will the Spartans look to? To you. To you and the other wives and mothers, sisters and daughters of the fallen.
If they behold your hearts riven and broken with grief they, too, will break. And Greece will break with them. But if you bear up, dry-eyed, not alone enduring your loss but seizing it with contempt for its agony and embracing it as the honor that it is in truth, then Sparta will stand. And all Hellas (Greece) will stand behind her.
Why have I nominated you, lady, to bear up beneath this most terrible of trials, you and your sisters of the Three Hundred? Because you can.”
Women carry the hopes and dreams of a family, of a country, of a world on their shoulders. I know in my family my dad maybe the head of the family, but my mom is what keeps everybody together. She is our strength.
I think it was a very insecure man that started calling women “the weaker sex.” Women have a strength and a resolve that men will never be able to understand. Don’t waste your time with a man, that can not see or appreciate your strength. At the same time, it is important for you as a woman to appreciate your strength as a woman. Understand that women and men are not weaker or stronger then each other, we just have different strengths and weaknesses. That is what makes a relationship work so well, because our partner’s strengths can complement our weaknesses. This why two people within a loving partnership are stronger together.
Sincerely,
Paul Wright
paulwright@decodingmen.com
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Very interesting, and as a woman, I find this very satisfying. I like your final point that two people together, as a relationship, are stronger than any one person, man or woman.