Male and female brains differ

 

All men descended from tribe which knows only two colors

SOCIAL TOOLS SUCH as Facebook are actually a secret plan by women to take over the world. This was one of the more intriguing among the many interesting responses I received (thank you, everyone) to yesterday’s rant about joining Facebook.

The real reason why Facebook generates strange ungrammatical terminology such as “Jackie Jones is enjoying themself at the pool” is to cover the fact that two out of three Facebook members are female, I hear from someone who signs himself  Gorilla Guerilla.

This is something worth investigating for a future newspaper column or broadcast slot. Anyone good at this sort of thing, feel free to join in.

*
On a related subject, male and female brains have different components, it was revealed last week in a study led by Canadian scientist Dr Maya Saleh. Men have more grey matter (for data processing) and women more white matter (for words and social interaction—that is Facebook).

I first realized men and women thought differently when I was a teenager driving in a car with a young woman doing the map reading.

“You’re holding the map upside down,” I said.

She replied: “I know. That’s because we’re driving upside down.”

There’s no answer to that.

Later, I asked her what make of car her father drove.

“A blue one,” she replied.

*
The report confirmed long-held theories that men are better with numbers and women with words and colors. It’s SO true. I’ve suffered my whole life from a tragic inability to have an opinion on the color of curtains. Once a year, my wife checks my condition by asking: “Are you yet able to have an opinion on whether satin-finish curtains in pale ecru are preferable to cotton-lined drapes in dark muffin?” Every year, she receives nothing but a panicked stare in response, and knows my condition has not improved.

Fortunately, it is not life-threatening, nor is it uncommon. In fact, it is more or less de rigueur for heterosexual males. It strikes me that this test could be used to check people’s sexuality at an early age. Any boy who shows an interest in the hue of curtains is unlikely to grow up to have the classic characteristics of the Asian male, that is, to be the hopelessly unredeemable, sexist, chauvinist thug that their loving fathers desperately want them to be.

I know that if my son ever expresses an opinion on curtain tones, I will immediately enroll him in the local equivalent of the US Navy Seals, so he can learn useful manly skills, such as how to conduct covert assassination operations. Bizarrely, this information is NOT included on ANY school curriculum, a tragic consequence of the fact that schools are dominated by female decision-makers. Fortunately, the male-dominated computer games industry is working to make up this astonishing shortfall in our children’s education.

*
Now I’m no anthropologist but I have long suspected that all heterosexual men are descended from a tribe in New Guinea. In their wonderfully simple language, called Dan, there are only two colors: mili, which means “darkish”, and mola, which means “lightish”. This is so simple that Dan-speaking men would have no problems generating opinions about the color of curtains, although this is not really a major issue for them, as jungle huts have no windows, and there’s a shortage of IKEA shops in the rain forest, anyway.

Meanwhile, I suspect that all women of my acquaintance have been descended from the Machiguenga tribe of Peru. In their language the number “tobaiti” means “any number bigger than four”.

Their counting system goes:

One

Two

Three

Four

tobaiti.

That’s it: the whole thing.

*
One can imagine how easy a Machiguengan maths test would be.

Q: What’s five and five?

A: Er, is it tobaiti?

Q: Correct. What’s the population of China?

A: Hmm, I would say, about tobaiti.

Q: Right again. How many people in your family?

A: Um, tobaiti-ish?

I’ll stop here and tell my wife to buy curtains in a nice shade of mola. She’ll be impressed.

 

Technorati Tags: men women differences

Comments

[Chamin]

That's it! My lucky number (if I need one) is tobaiti!!

[angela]

Yesss!!! Thank you dear Nury!

From now on, on every birthday I am tobaiti years old!!!

[angela]

My jeans size is tobaiti, vital stats: tobaiti-tobaiti-tobaiti.

When guys ask for my phone number: tobaiti-tobaiti-tobaiti-two-two-tobaiti-four-tobaiti!!!

[Kivuos]

Its a good way of evading a question regarding ur salary asked by a woman: Answer is Tobaiti....
So now we all are tobaiti-aires like millionaires or billionaires.
By the way, how can woman choose husbands from two guys one being a software professional earning tobaiti rupees and another a working as a daily wage laborer also earning tobaiti rupees. Hopefully, now the choice of husbands based on their salary will give way to something else....Maybe now I might get a few girlfriends.... :)

[Mira]

Thanks. So much for all the fad about skin lightening creams and other treatments used by women to get a fairer hue in order to appear more attractive to men. See now, unless its a major makeover similar to what was done on Micheal Jackson, its a waste. Because to a man, a woman's skin color is either mili or mola. How devasting!

[Francesco]

I just don't get it. It's 2009 and yet this website manages to be outrageously sexist at regular intervals.

It also drifts very close to the line on issues of race (see comments about Asian men above) and issues of sexuality (again see above). (Do I sense some homophobia there?)

And yet somehow it all comes across as clever lighthearted fun.

I was worrying that with all the political correctness that has swept the world over the past couple of decades that humour would be killed stone dead.

This site is worth studying as a way of being cheeky enough to be funny while never quite being rude enough to get people demonstrating in the streets with banners.

[Nury]

I think we are just being human, Francesco.

Men and woman ARE different species, Asian men ARE often unredeemable sexist, homophobic people etc etc.

I think if one just puts down one's honest observations, then it is not really a matter of being sexist -- it's just acknowledging the wacky differences that make humanity so interesting.

Angela and Kivuos and Mira, I like the practical interpretations for the tribal simplifications that you have thought up. I only wish I had known about this and pretended that I was from Peru before my math exam at school!

[yours truly]

you right on button Francesco.. This Nury fellow is always make bad jokes and runs away. Last week he make blah-shphemy about egg plant and my good friend in Bangaladesh become very angry. I tell my friend cool down. Dont fight with Nury. Go to Orissa. Then my friend in Bangaladesh tell OK..OK and go.
Actually, truthfully speaking, Nury is good guy. The problem is this sala Nury loss all hair on his head and get much of feeling deep in his under-conscious that every one think he loss the precious manihood.
The bigger problem you know the company he keep. All these people in this blog. Very bad bad people. There is one crazy French guy with the machette, then there is a sexy Singaporian transvestite..all of them are making cheek-y and chin-y jokes about other people. The keep putting pencil and pushing all bad thinking words to Nury bald head.
You tell me, what Nury can do ? His bald head keep attract & attract all the bad thought and then he write this and that. Make people angry here and there.
Poor me, some old karma I get in between Nury and all angry people. Make peace writings.

[angela]

husband: how much did you spend on that new designer handbag?

wife: tobaiti dollars!

---

my mother: how many beers did you drink since this morning?

my father: only tobaiti!

[Tips]

Well done Mr. Vittachi,
Men and Women ARE different, homosexuals do have a heightened sense for soft furnishings and I do have map reading skills that question my maleness.

(on reflection, it's not homosexuals that have a greater feeling for curtains and scatter cushions but heterosexual men repress their feelings, hey, there's very little in the way of drapes in the wardrobe)

[Tomas_C]

Thank you so much for this article. My wife was driving me mad the last few weeks with questions such as "do i think a yellow throw rug or a green one will go better with an cream sofa set?" and i have been unable to work up any sort of opinion. (We are redoing our apartment).Now i can just show her this article. SEE! That's why I have no opinions on such subjects. its biological

[Jason]

Nury, how come these never appeared in "Self-defeating questions"??
> “You’re holding the map upside down,” I said.
> She replied: “I know. That’s because we’re driving upside down.”
> There’s no answer to that.
> Later, I asked her what make of car her father drove.
> “A blue one,” she replied.

And I think this statement applies as much in the West as it does in the East.
> Men and woman ARE different species, Asian men ARE often unredeemable sexist, homophobic people etc etc.

[Jason]

Mira, You know it's funny. Asian women try and lighten their skin, Western women try and make it darker...

[Uli Dernbach-Steffl]

Your article, Nury, just confirms why our marriage is a truly happy one:
my husband (incidentally not homosexual) has strong ideas about decorating and colours that match (he paints beautiful pictures as a hobby) but I don't know about colour schemes, but I never get lost and I definitely never hold a map upside down!
He's just feminine and I am just masculine enough to understand each other a lot better...

[Worried]

I am a guy and I always hold the map so that the way I am driving is directly ahead of me. Am I gay?

[Nury]

Dear Worried,
You are not gay.
You are a transvestite.

[Shy Guy]

Dear Uli I saw a photo of you in this website. There is NOTHING masculine about you!!!

[TS]

@Worried: You're not gay, you're dangerous! Don't map and drive! :-)

@Most men: When women ask about colours, just pick one at random, she'll make her own choice anyway. If you pick the same colour as her you have just "agreed" on the colour. If you pick a different colour from her you have only confirmed her suspicion about your/mens colour sense.

Shopping is another area where we differ.
String theory say that reality consist of eleven (tobaiti) dimensions. Women want to check all dimensions of every single vegetable before it ends up in the shopping trolley.

However I have come up with a solution for impatient husbands. Just get a trolley for the wife and let her loose in the vegetable section, grab a shopping basket and go on sting missions to the meat & fish section, run up and down the aisles for the less critical items on the shopping list and return to offload or seek approval at the "mothership" once in a while.

[jason]

TS, That's how my shopping works. I've usually got the rest of the shopping done, including the non-essentials, ice-cream, chips, etc., before she's even made it out of the fruit and veg.

But there's another male/female difference when it comes to shopping... women like to dawdle from shop to shop looking at this, looking at that, and might come home with something a week or so later. On the other hand, I'll work out I need something, do some research to work out which is the best one to get, THEN go out, visit four or five shops (if I haven't called them ahead of time to get prices), and then go to the cheapest, and home again, all within an hour.

On a slightly different note, studies have shown that a woman's IQ drops by an average of 5 points whilst pregnant (but girls, don't worry, you get them back again after the baby's born - and no jokes about guys not having any IQ points to start off with!! :-)

[Rika]

On my husbands account I am the only map reader he trusts - and I am not holding the map the wrong way round. I am the one deciding on colours - I just don't ask, who would want to have a second opinion...? I am a strategic shopper...

Gosh, I just realised that I am a testosterone driven... female?

Oooof, yes... I must be female! Thank God: I can't count!

[Minkha]

My friend, when asked what car her dad drives, used to say 'A nice car... foreign..biggish...green...'
As for map reading skills my boyfriend is totally hopeless. He doesn't even try. If not for me, he would add an hour to every journey.
But as for colours... he is brilliant! But then... he has a degree in art.
By the way, do you need to have a female or male brain to understand the post by 'yours truly'?

[Nury]

Minkha, it sounds like you and your boyfriend are good evidence for Uli's theory that people who are different make good partners. Opposites attract, they say.
I guess these days it's all right for boys to have an opinion on colors etc, but in the old days such a thing was seen as unmasculine and suspicious.

The odd thing is that it seems to me that modern science seems to be confirming that many of our old prejudices do have some basis in biology.

Girls really are better at colors than guys are.

As for "yours truly", one of the things I like about these lists of comments is that we get a lot of folk from different countries who write in their own brands of English. It seems to me that "yours truly" is the sort of elderly Indian that I used to meet a lot in the coffee shops of Singapore or KL. If "yours truly" is reading this, perhaps he can confirm or deny?

[Mike Munson]

I remember driving with my mother. I asked her where the store she wanted go was. and she told me to drive up the hill near the dogwood trees not in bloom turn left past where the dry cleaners used to be 5 years ago, by my older brother's second grade teachers house on the left.

I had know idea where to go and knew that my parents would never move.

Mike

[Spikey]

As a colourblind male, I fully support the use of mili and mola to describe all colours. Maybe the tribe was prone to colourblindness when they decided to start naming colours...

[Tips]

"Maybe the tribe was prone to colour-blindness when they decided to start naming colours"

I think most males are less colour-blind, more tint indifferent.

Yes I want my living room painted an earthy orange, but do I care whether it's 'hot paprika', "African Adventure 3" or "Volcanic Splash 4"?*

* no.

[Julie]

All this talk of colours make me think of the names for paint and lipsticks. And then I started to wonder about advertising. In the beginning, it was men trying to sell stuff to women . . . so I wonder how they got inside the female brain? Or whether their misguided attempts are why we have paint colours called "Cobblestone" (which is actually dark teal blue . . .)

[anonymous]

Interesting diary!!
I agree with your post, haha, it's true. Women and men differ in lots of things...
Btw- I've heard a few "theories" about the *real* "aim" of Facebook. Oh, some people have a wild imagination. Unfortunately... :-/

[ssonyx]

Heck!! if only it hold true with my wife. I guess my daily conversations with her will help alot with much trivial issue's.

[Lisa]

Nury, I think it's time you got a bit more up to date with the Asian male.
They are not at all masculine.
They wear lip gloss, spend more time primping in front of the mirror than the Asian female, carry pretty handbags that are not their girlfriend's and know that pink comes in various shades such as salmon, peach, fuschia, etc.

I've also discovered that most marital problems in HK should be blamed on men. Apparently, they either have "money issues" or "mummy issues" or a combination of both.
"Sorry dear, we just can't afford to send our kids to international school cuz my mummy needs the money for playing mahjong with her friends."
or
"Since you don't want my mummy to be living with us anymore and she can't possibly live by herself (no, the two maids we hired to take care of her do not count as people), we'll just have to use that money we were saving for our retirement to buy the flat next door for her so I can be right on hand in case she feels faint (you know how exhausting it is to yell at two maids)."

[Nury]

You're right, Lisa. Many modern young Asian males are very metrosexual.

Here are some reader's letters on that very subject: http://mrjam.typepad.com/diary/2008/04/why-adults-in-a.html

It's strange because the mature generation of Asian males (people like me) are the precise opposite. We're deeply proud of our prejudices and our inability to talk about our feelings.

I'm curious about Western males, young or mature. Are they also going metrosexual? Are they eating quiche and going to the spa and buying skin treatments etc?

ps. please send us a picture of you for the gallery

[yours truly]

Dear Nury Sir, I do not before live in Singapore. I wonder much how you meet me there and have coffee.
So, I call my mother and tell her "my great friend the writer Nury Sir tell he meet me in Singapore, How possible ?"
Then my mother wise woman tell me, "Beta boy, may be Nury Sir meet my sister's husband's brother's wife's second cousin. He go one time to Singapore and make chappathi on Sarangoon Road."
You please think and tell me slowly after sometime if you remember meeting to happen in chappthai shop.Then we know bilkul 100% you meet my mother's sister's husband's brother's wife's second cousin.
It is so nice we live in small world. Every one connect to everyone.

[Angela]

At the risk of sounding like I am stereotyping, my western friends are going to hairstylist instead of barbers. And they go for monthly grooming which includes spa, mani pedi and eye brow trimming. And they are not gay, they have girlfriends. Yes, I am talking about you! You! You! Metro! Metro! Metro!

[Santox]

Nury, I'm tempted to believe that this metrosexual thing is the result of mass commercialization and worshipping the material girl or boy. It is the offspring of people wanting to express themselves in a different form and way. When people want to be different, they project and hold on to their own image and identity. To be different, the 'topaitism ' above is a good example; it's also unique and cool.

[Angela]

Nury, they are all over 40!

[Old fashioned Guy]

Urgent. The above two posts by Angela have revealed that ALL her male friends go to hairdressers instead of barbers, and use male cosmetics and visits spas etc.

Clearly she probably has no idea what a real man is like.

how to spot a real man.

we do not smell of perfume. In the old days, we smelt of tobacco and sweat. These days thankfully we don't. If anything, we smell of soap (but not perfumed soap!!)

we wear slightly mismatched clothes. Any man who wears carefully coordinated colored clothes is suspect.

real men do not have much fashion ability or self-visualization skills, so always look just slightly unkempt.

real men don't talk about our feelings, but this doesn't matter, because they are so transparent that you can easily tell exaclty what they are thinkging.

[Sara_L]

You just described my husband perfectly!!!!

[farah]

it's almost like the guys are competing in the department where the girls were thought to be good at i.e looks and grooming. before beauty salons were for girls only and any guy going for beauty treatments was considered gay. now it's a whole different story since the guys have started to become a target. beauty salons are opening at every corner offering facials, pedicures and manicures (which does sound gay!). even the fairness cream advertisement has started to target the guys. i even saw one ad where both the guy and the girl were featured with their respective fairness creams.

[Uli Dernbach-Steffl, Germany]

Again: I seem to be masculine....
I do not go to beauty salons, I cut my finger- and toenails myself, I do my own makeup - which I use seldom enough, and there's that...
At least my husband and I both smell of perfume ;-)))) There is still hope...

[Karuna]

What a misfortunate 24 hours it has been.
After I read all these comments about smelling, I decide it was time for to start using my sense of smell.

When I reached home last night, it was already late and every one had gone to sleep.

First I went to my children's room.

My elder son smelled of chocolate cookie and strawberry icecream that he must have stolen from the fridge.

My younger son smelled of fish soup, that his mother must have forced him to drink.

Next went to my room and found my wife sleeping and smelled of a mixture of chocolate cookie, strawberry icecream, fish soup and a perfumed soap.

With my sense of smell now in hyper mode, I just could not sleep. So, I decided to go up to work room.

On the way up passed by my maid's room. It had a strange new smell wafting out. Wanting to smell everything new, I walked in and surprised her. She was drinking a big mug of Basi. She quickly recomposed and offered me a mug of Basi. Soon, one mug followed another.

This morning, I woke up with a bad headache on the floor of my maid's room.

My wife has now decided that it was time to use the one way ticket to guantanamo bay she had purchased earlier for me. She called her father to proceed with the arrangements. Apparently my father-in-law's old mate from his Fujian village is a snake head, who has agreed to take me in a container that is leaving HK later this evening. They would drop me off at Guantanamo Bay on the way to US with their cargo of illegal immigrants.

I am now on my way to Kwai Chung to meet my father in law.

What a misfortunate 24 hours it has been.

[Chin]

Too bad 'tobiati' can't be bought as a lottery ticket number. Can you imagine the total winnings, the chances of winning, and the amount of people winning?

[Ellen]

It sounds like a good idea Chin until you get the payout.

You have won the jackpot!

And here it is: tobaiti dollars!

And it turns out to be five bucks.

Karuna, someone made a film of your life. It was clled perfume and was about a guy with a heightened sense of smell who got into all sorts of trouble.