The Mentality of the Sexes is Equal

“The Mentality of the Sexes is Equal” was the name of the last formal debate I ever took part in. That was back in the spring of 1982 and I still remember it because the result proved our debate coach wrong. He explained to us that no matter what the subject was, we could find an argument for or against it. And if we argued skilfully enough we’d win.

We were an all-boys school and had spent two years preparing our attack on the national debating finals in the only sport my school took seriously. We came up against an all-girls school in the regional finals, which we expected to be a small pit stop on our way to national glory.

I know I’m not an objective reporter on this issue, but I’m convinced that we smashed them that night. Unfortunately, we were arguing in favour of the motion and the debate was being judged by an all-male journey. They awarded victory to the girls and their explanation proved that not all arguments are winnable. Middle aged men can’t see beyond the prettiness of seventeen year old girls and the mentality of the sexes is certainly not equal.

But recent events would suggest that my old debating coach may have been right. Take Brexit, Trump or Corona Virus policy. You can take either side of these arguments with righteous passion. I joined Twitter recently because I got really annoyed by something I heard on a podcast and realised that the only way I could tell the guy how wrong he was, was to register for Twitter and tell him what I thought.

We ended up arguing about whether a certain body of water was a fjord or a drowned glaciated valley. That’s the sort of thing that becomes important to you when you’ve been stuck at home for 49 days, like I have been.

Both of us could find Wikipedia articles to back up our claim. And you can do that for pretty much every argument. At the moment twitter is all about Covid 19. It’s hard to find any comment that doesn’t reference it. Everyone now seems to be an expert on epidemiology and virology, words that people couldn’t pronounce, never mind spell three months ago.

You can see this most in comparing death rates or case numbers by country. New Zealand is generally held up as best in class when it comes to dealing with this disease. We went into lockdown earlier in the cycle than other countries, focussed on contact tracing and effectively closed our borders. But you’ll find lots of comment on line that put this down to New Zealand’s remoteness and lack of density. These people don’t seem to realise how many flights a day come into Auckland from China (or used to at least) and how densely packed many parts of Auckland are.

But I don’t engage in these arguments, because what’s the point? Very little in these virus times can be proven to be 100% right or wrong. Every country seems to have a different approach to dealing with Covid. I can have an opinion on which is best but it’s only an opinion. I can’t prove that the New Zealand approach is better than Australia for example. New Zealand has tighter controls, but maybe Australians are more compliant and more relaxed controls would come up with the same result.

But one thing that can be said with certainty is that none of these opinions have arisen in a vacuum. You talk about Covid 19 restrictions based on your personal likes, dislikes and biases. Many Trump fans in American are Libertarians who can think of nothing worse than a centralised government forcing them to stay at home. Brexit fans in the UK didn’t like being told what to do by an unseen and unaccountable government. In both these countries, you’ll see the greatest protests against the lockdowns and I reckon that if you drilled down far enough, you’ll find that Trump voters and Brexit voters make up most of these protests. I also think that climate change deniers make up a large part of this group too. The Venn Diagram between climate change deniers and Brexit and Trump fans is single circle.

I think this comes down to individualism versus collectivism. Some of us believe that we are part of a community; that we can only improve in life if we all improve. We are the ones who are happy to stay at home, to take the government’s advice on social distancing and to be good little compliant citizens. Unfortunately, we’re are also the ones who look snootily down our nose at our less compliant neighbours and write letters to the paper to inform on sun bathers and other people who looked like they were having too much fun.

Those who consider themselves as primarily individuals are less compliant. They see the shadow of totalitarianism over them. They seek out conspiracy at every turn. And if they are healthy they can’t see the sense in a full lockdown. We all know these people, the ones who will make no effort to swerve when they approach you on your daily walk. The ones who sneer at others wearing masks.

The easiest place to spot this is on Twitter. Collectivists will have similar people following them and get mostly positive responses. But the individualists are always waiting to pounce on a slip and bring up half researched facts to back up their case. The place you see this most is when people compare one countries approach to the virus to another’s. No two countries are the same, not just in terms of population, but also demographics and culture.

That doesn’t stop people having an opinion. I’m no different. I have my view on which country is doing better than others. But it’s only an opinion. But despite what I might think, I’ll keep giving it, because what else can we do when we’re all locked in our house with a laptop and nothing to do.