Below is a lightly edited transcript. For the articles that inspired this one, see part one, part two, and part three.
Welcome to the btrmt. Lectures. My name is Dr Dorian Minors, and if there’s one thing I’ve learnt as a brain scientist, it’s that there’s no instruction manual for this device in our head. But there are patterns. Patterns of thought, of feeling, and of action. That’s the brain’s job: creating the patterns that gracefully handle the predictable shapes of everyday life.
We call these things ideologies, rituals, biases. But there’s something else I’ve learnt teaching this stuff: we’re animals first. You can’t escape these patterns, but you can choose which ones to emphasise.
So let me teach you about them. One pattern, one podcast. And you choose if it works for you. That’s the idea, so let’s get into it.
Now, I’ve done a longer intro than I plan to do in the future because, as I said in the last podcast, I’m recording the first few and I want to set a sort of baseline for people coming for the first time. I’m also thinking about how to hook people in with the first series. The first podcast went down pretty well, so this “one pattern, one podcast” thing is definitely staying. I also managed to deliver the podcast after a day of teaching before going home, so the timeframe seems like it’s going to work—although it took more like four hours than two or three. Let’s see if we can get it lower this time, make sure that this length of podcast is going to be feasible for me.
But some feedback on the first podcast with regard to hooking you in is that maybe the lectures shouldn’t all be brain science. As a brain scientist, that’s what I love, obviously. But teaching here as associate professor at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, we cover way more stuff. And in my career as an academic and a clinician, I’ve also covered more stuff. So I’m going to try and demonstrate a bit more range and see if I can make it a bit more exciting. Let’s see. I’ll be interested to hear what you think.
Now, this one is more topical than anything else. I’m wondering if you’ve seen that Vogue article entitled “Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing Now?” I’ll drop a link in the show notes, but they covered a few reasons why it’s starting to be less trendy to show your partner on social media and that sort of thing.
And I want to zoom in on one particular reason. I’ll quote them: “Boyfriends are out of style. They won’t come back until they start acting right,” read another respondent to their survey with 10,000 likes.
Now, I have my own perspective on this. And whilst I say the words “perspective,” I should make very clear that this is not the perspective of my workplace, Sandhurst. This is just little old Dorian doing his podcast.
But I have this idea for an article I want to write that I think will cover this in more detail. The Vogue article talks to it—which is, I think there’s something very interesting about how we talk about what men and what women are supposed to be and supposed to do and how they’re supposed to act, I guess. And I think that in particular, these framings that we put together have this interesting side effect that can hide incompetence. In men certainly, probably in women too, but I’m more familiar with men obviously.
And in an increasingly feminised world, I think that this is confusing men and women—the former who want to do more but don’t know how, and the women who are now expecting more because the world is more accessible to them and they’re finding, as Vogue said, boyfriends embarrassing.
And to illustrate this, I want to use this book from the 90s that is also coming back into vogue—excuse the pun. My most popular article is on the book Men Are From Mars and Women Are From Venus. Now this article is a bit more irreverent than some of the others on my website, but it comes directly out of observations I had whilst working in more clinical environments. And it seems like it might make a pretty fun podcast. So let’s see.
Gender Essentialism’s Moment
All right, we’re going to start with some background. The article and the request to review the book, in fact, come at a time where there’s this huge spike in gender essentialism, exploring what it means to be a true man or a true woman. And the reasons for that are probably a little bigger than this little lecture.
But you do see a lot of it in the popularity of Joe Rogan or the spike in content about what being a man is supposed to be by people like Jordan Peterson or Andrew Huberman or, you know, even Andrew Tate.
And obviously as a man, this isn’t that surprising to me. Lots of people around me complain about the feminisation of the world and how it has made being a man seem more difficult.
And I think Sebastian Junger put this really nicely in his book Tribe. So Junger is the journo who did the doco Restrepo about a unit deployed on operations and the feelings of brotherhood and camaraderie and the struggle they had re-assimilating to the world. And he wrote this book Tribe as a result of that. And he mentions in this book that it’s one of the reasons young men join the military still. A lot of kids trying to find manhood in one of its last traditional bastions in a world where, you know, maybe a lot of aspects of manhood appear more toxic.
So that’s not surprising for me. I mean, that book is maybe like 10 years old now, but what’s more surprising is a similar spike in content around modern takes on traditional female roles. Like there’s a fantastic show, Mormon Wives, or where it came from, MomTok, which is a TikTok thing around this kind of trad wife aesthetic. Or, you know, any of the trad wife and stay-at-home mum communities online. And I don’t know if this is new or if I’ve only just started noticing it, but it does seem to be everywhere these days.
And the sad fact is that although there are trivially obvious differences in anatomy between males and females, there is a huge amount of disagreement about how that plays out in behaviour. I mean, sexual dimorphism is something that is well studied, and it’s a pretty confused literature. There’s not a lot of clear findings. And it’s very difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish this from the influence of social norms, right, the environment.
So it’s, you know, it’s like very cheap and easy to make up an evolutionary story about how men should be this way and women should be that way. But it’s not very easy to go back seven million years ago when we diverge from chimpanzees and run this experiment again, you know. So it’s just a very hard debate to resolve, this nature versus nurture thing.
And so there’s this growing appetite for gender essentialism, but there’s very little to ground it properly. And so there’s this resultant sort of glut of content that tells aspiring men and women what it is that they’re supposed to be.
And where better to turn than this book from the 90s, Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus by John Gray, PhD. And I’ll tell you something, I was a big fan of this book when I was 21, 22, something like this. My mum told me to read it because it influenced her and it certainly influenced me. It talks about how men and women have different needs and communication styles and how those can come into conflict. Seems transparently true.
So when people asked me to review the book, I was keen to get back into it. And in doing that, I realised that if you were the kind of person who wants to re-examine what it means to be a man or a woman, you’re excited by this new trend in gender essentialism, you know, it like speaks to you—my advice is to pick any book but this book because this one is just an embarrassment. It’s like 300 pages of some rando’s blinding insecurities.
But what it is a good example of is how the way we frame things can obscure incompetence. How really, men and women aren’t so different, but the way we talk about them makes it seem like they are. And that gives us little pockets to hide in, especially men. John Gray’s men are embarrassing. Check it out.
What Gray’s Actually Describing
First thing we should talk about is Gray himself. What’s notable is that his Wikipedia page has him coming off like a charlatan. And if Wikipedia—a site that anyone can edit—lists a bunch of shady stuff about you, you should be pretty sceptical of the fella.
I’m not that keen for a defamation lawsuit, so I’ll put links in to help you do your own research. But since I think the PhD part is a particular draw card, I will point out that he has a history of flirting with unaccredited institutions. As far as I can tell, his bachelor’s and master’s degrees aren’t clearly from an accredited institution. There’s some confusion about whether his degree in, to quote Wikipedia, “the Science of Creative Intelligence” is from the non-accredited Maharishi European Research University in Switzerland or the accredited Maharishi International University in Fairfield, Iowa.
Not a great start. We could put that aside though—it’s not always about where you came from, it’s where you went. And in this case, Gray went to an unaccredited PhD in 1982 with the now defunct correspondence institution that was lazily fraudulent, Columbia Pacific University.
The council’s review of CPU listed numerous violations of academic standards, including one master’s degree student being given credit for “a learning contract describing how he would continue taking dance lessons,” a PhD dissertation written in Spanish that was approved by four faculty who couldn’t speak the language, and one dissertation that had “no hypothesis, no data collection, and no statistical analysis.”
So not a super auspicious start. We’re also frankly concerned about his FDA cease-and-desist order for violating their laws about marketing drugs as supplements on his marsvenus.com website. Honestly, supplements are a huge red flag for me.
Also, he wrote a book about how warm baths will cure autism. So not, like, a traditionally academic guy.
But again, no ad hominem—let’s look at the content. I want to start with his Chapter 2 because it really demonstrates my point—how framing things can hide real issues.
In chapter 2, he says, “we will explore how men’s and women’s values are inherently different and try to understand the two biggest mistakes we make in relating to the opposite sex: men mistakenly offer solutions and invalidate feelings whilst women offer unsolicited advice and direction.”
So far, perhaps not that controversial. If we’re gender essentialists, maybe we suspect that men and women do have inherently different values for whatever reason—biological, social, whatever. It’s not a leap to assume this would lead to some miscommunications, and indeed, it’s the reason I read this book in a positive light a decade or so ago.
John would have me believe that this is because men “value power, competency, efficiency, and achievement. They are always doing things to prove themselves and develop their power and skills. Their sense of self is defined through their ability to achieve results. They experience fulfilment primarily through success and accomplishment.”
So, they don’t read silly magazines like Psychology Today. They like “outdoor activities like hunting, fishing, and racing cars.” They care more about “objects and things” rather than “people and feelings.”
You see, unlike women, men don’t talk about things unless they want a solution. The man “rarely talks about his problems unless he needs expert advice. He reasons: ‘Why involve someone else when I can do it by myself?’ He keeps his problems to himself unless he requires help from another to find a solution. Asking for help when you can do it yourself is perceived as a sign of weakness.”
So, when women are talking to him about some kind of problem, he’ll offer solutions. That’s the only reason talking should happen, right? And when those pesky women reject his finely honed solution, yet remain unaccountably upset, “it becomes increasingly difficult for him to listen because his solution is being rejected and he feels increasingly useless.”
Honestly, this sounds totally believable. John Gray was singing to my heart. All these idiots, if they just listened to me, their problems would vanish, and I wouldn’t have to stomach their complaining any more.
And of course this is absurd. I would tell young Dorian “hey, look, sometimes people want to complain about shit, and sometimes they want your help. Sometimes you want to complain about shit, and sometimes you want help. Usually, when people want your help, they’ll ask for it. If they’re not asking for it, they probably don’t want your help.”
Absolutely none of this is contingent upon my gender. But Gray hides it. I don’t think intentionally—I think we all do this. He hides it in this kind of intuitive idea about how men care more about “objects and things” rather than “people and feelings.”
The cracks start to show, and they usually always start to show, when he talks about women, who “instead of being goal-oriented, are relationship-oriented; they are more concerned with expressing their goodness, love, and caring.” And so, women often provide suggestions for improvement. And here we take a turn towards the darker motifs in this book with:
“When a woman tries to improve a man, he feels she is trying to fix him. He receives the message that he is broken. She doesn’t realise her caring attempts to help him may humiliate him. She mistakenly thinks she is just helping him to grow.”
And all of a sudden, we are made blindingly aware of John Gray’s crippling insecurities. This isn’t a guy being a guy! This is a guy who is showing really clear signals of what I’d call rejection sensitivity.
“He is broken”… “may humiliate him.” Either this woman is a banshee, or this guy is very delicate.
Do you think I’m overstating the case for comedic effect? John presents for us Tom and Mary:
“Tom was driving. After about twenty minutes and going around the same block a few times, it was clear to Mary that Tom was lost. She finally suggested that he call for help. Tom became very silent. They eventually arrived at the party, but the tension from that moment persisted the whole evening. Mary had no idea of why he was so upset… From her side she was saying ‘I love and care about you, so I am offering you this help’… From his side, he was offended. What he heard was ‘I don’t trust you to get us there. You are incompetent!’”
Tom, mate, you are incompetent. Mary obviously likes you enough to tolerate your nonsense, but she doesn’t want to fuck about in the car with you all night whilst you pretend to know what you’re doing. Mary wants to go to the party, Tom.
If someone is criticising your behaviour, then it may be because your behaviour is something worth criticising. It’s true that substantial criticism is one of the classic hallmarks of a failing relationship. But it’s also true that most people can recognise this as either constructive or destructive and respond accordingly. If you can’t, then maybe the problem is you, and there are models of behaviour that will help you develop this skill. Don’t be like Tom.
And in case you think I’m still being unfair, I want to show you what John thinks are a man “mistakenly invalidating feelings” by offering solutions: “It’s not such a big deal.” “OK, I’m sorry. Now can we just forget it.” “All right, I’ll clean up the backyard. Does that make you happy?” “If you’re not happy then we should just get a divorce.” “All right, then you can do it from now on.”
Yeah, right, John. What a helpful solution, John. I wonder why the delicate female sensibility would find that invalidating. I, on the other hand, would be very pleased with these suggestions.
And again, on the other side, we get a weird reaction from really quite normal stuff. Look at what he calls “some brief examples of ways a woman might unknowingly annoy a man by offering advice or seemingly harmless criticism”: “Those dishes are still wet. They’ll dry with spots.” “Don’t put that there. It will get lost.” “You should call a plumber. He’ll know what to do.” “You should spend more time with the kids. They miss you.” “You forgot to bring it home again. Maybe you could put it in a special place where you can remember it.”
Look, if you are getting criticisms like that, I see absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t be getting these criticisms delivered in exactly this manner. This person is gently trying to help you to not be an idiot. Clean the dishes properly and don’t lose shit. Don’t toy around with the sewage, play with your kids, and bring the stuff you’re supposed to bring home. Don’t be like Tom, you know.
I can’t emphasise how disturbing the place from which this book is written seems to come from. And again, I’m obviously cherry-picking, but this isn’t unreasonable. I assure you, you can read the book to check. This stuff is littered throughout it. It starts off truthy and then rapidly devolves into this kind of off-the-wall stuff.
And let me tell you something, nothing in this chapter has anything to do with men or women. John’s men are not reasonable men struggling to understand overly demanding, more people-oriented women. John’s men are troubled men reacting absurdly, sensitively to their partner’s attempts to help them to not be foolish.
But by framing it like Mr Fix-It versus the Home Improvement Committee kind of hides that fact. And it’s the reason why I was able to just skim through it 10, 15 years ago now.
Now, honestly, I’ve basically made the only point I’m going to, and I have three articles on this particular book online, so I don’t want to elaborate too much. But the book is darkly hilarious once you notice this pattern. So let me cherry-pick a couple more illustrative threads to wrap up.
From his introduction, he describes his chapters, and he goes like this. In chapter three, “we’ll discover the different ways men and women cope with stress. Men pull away. Women feel an instinctive need to talk.”
I like this one because it starts to show us a theme. So Gray thinks that women, seems to think that women are this kind of overfull cup spilling their feelings into the lives of their stoic male counterparts. So women talk about stress. They offer unsolicited advice. That’s chapter two because they value love and communication and relationships. You know, that’s a quote. Specifically, again I quote, “to share their personal feelings is more important than achieving goals and success.” Because remember, in contrast, and I quote again from chapter 2, men “value power, competency, efficiency and achievement.”
And in his description of chapter 4, he actually points out explicitly how easy this kind of framing can be used to hide masculine incompetence. So, to quote, “Men are motivated when they feel needed, whilst women are motivated when they feel cherished. When a man doesn’t feel needed in a relationship, he gradually becomes passive and less energised. When a woman does not feel cherished in a relationship, she gradually becomes compulsively responsible and exhausted from giving too much.”
So you see, all this busy feeling work women are doing is unwelcome because it makes men feel like they’re not useful, right? And as a result, they just quit, I suppose. Meanwhile, women, just because they’re women, right, no other reason, feel compulsively responsible and exhausted. Probably has nothing to do with all the men pulling away and becoming passive.
Now, look, John reckons this is—and he says about chapter five—men and women speak and even stop speaking for entirely different reasons. Women express feelings. Men express information.
And I want to pull out the truthiness here, right? Because there is probably something to this, you know. Gray, if we were being charitable, could be talking about the idea that women, you know, on average are socially trained to be more fluent in the language of interpersonal relationships. There’s literature that points in this direction and I’ll put a link in the show notes.
So maybe Gray’s pointing out that men aren’t as good at this and need support to do this? And you might think that because that feels true, but then you look at his examples and you realise it’s really not.
So, you know, he has this translation guide between men and women. So when women say “we never go out,” and men reply “that’s not true, we went out last week.” Or women say “everyone ignores me,” men reply “I’m sure some people notice you.” Or when women say “the house is always a mess,” and men reply “it’s not always a mess.”
You know, it seems plausible that Gray is talking about someone who’s interpersonally challenged. Because to Gray, it’s obvious to him that in these kinds of interactions, and I quote, “You can see how a literal translation of a woman’s words could easily mislead a man who is used to using speech as a means of conveying only facts and information.”
So, maybe that’s what Gray is talking to, but we should be a little bit suspicious because Gray goes on and it starts to seem a little less literal. So when women say “nothing is working,” his men will reply “are you saying it’s my fault?” Or “I want more romance,” he’ll respond with “are you saying I’m not romantic?”
You’ve got like pages and pages of this. And some of them are wild. So again, I quote, “Without this translation, when a woman says ‘everyone ignores me,’ the man may hear, ‘I am so unhappy. I just can’t get the attention I need. Everything is hopeless. Even you don’t notice me and you are the person who’s supposed to love me. You should be ashamed. You were so unloving. I would never ignore you this way.’”
Gray’s men are not missing the point because they’re hung up on some literal meaning, right? This guy isn’t interpreting anything literally. This guy’s linguistic analysis is even more complicated than the hypothetical women that Gray is trying to describe in this book.
Again—an initially sensible framing—men are, on average, less socially fluent, so maybe we’re not as good at dealing in the language of feelings. And then it’s used to hide some truly bizarre self-worth issues.
And here’s the last thread I wanted to do. So in chapter eight, he quotes, “Men primarily need a kind of love that is trusting, accepting and appreciative. Women primarily need a kind of love that is caring, understanding and respectful.”
And he goes on to describe what seems reasonable on the surface, but his advice to women is off the wall. So here’s the art of empowering a man. I quote: “The secret of empowering a man is never try to change him or improve him. Certainly you may want him to change. Just don’t act on that desire. Only if he directly and specifically asks for advice is he open to assistance in changing.”
Never. You might want to change this guy, but never do that. That’s the advice. And you think I’m taking this out of context. He goes on: “This doesn’t mean a woman has to squash her feelings. It’s okay for her to feel frustrated or even angry as long as she doesn’t try to change him. Any attempt to change him is unsupportive and counterproductive.”
Any attempt. I don’t think he could be clearer. He goes on, you know, if you’re not convinced with three pages of helpful list items like “Remember, don’t ask him too many questions when he’s upset or he’ll feel you’re trying to change him. Show some initial concern, but not too much.” Or “Remember, give up trying to improve him in any way. He needs your love, not rejection to grow. Trust him to grow on his own.” “Remember, if you make sacrifices hoping he’ll do the same for you, then he will feel pressured. Practise doing things for yourself and not depending on him to make you happy.” “Remember, if you give him directions and make decisions for him, he’ll feel corrected and controlled. Relax and surrender.”
Surrender to Tom in his car, who’s never going to make it to the party.
Look, I have to be the first to admit that I get defensive when people are telling me what to do. I have a really hard time accepting that this is a man thing, though. Right, I suspect no one likes being told they need to change, but I’m just gobsmacked that the advice here is for women to just give it up, especially with Gray’s men who obviously need to change.
There’s no healthy relationship in which one person must just unconditionally accept the other as they are. I mean, we get this impression from the media, and I will get into why this feels kind of truthy in a little bit, but it’s just not true. We compromise for each other in relationships. That’s a big part of relationships. You know it. Any serious self-help book will talk about it. But for Gray, no. It’s not men who have to change. It’s women who need to accept Gray’s men. Gray’s women need to just sort their shit out.
And look, I’m going to wrap this up with maybe my favourite part of the book. In chapter 12, he’s talking about the difference between “could you” and “would you.” And for him—to quote—“to women, there’s not much of a difference. In fact, ‘could you’ may even seem more polite than ‘would you,’ but to many men, it’s a big difference because this distinction is important. I’m including comments by 17 different men who attended my seminars.”
Let’s have a look at some of these comments. Here’s one of them: “When I’m asked, ‘could you clean up the backyard?’ I really take it literally. I say I could do it. I’m sure it’s possible. But I’m not saying I will do it. And I certainly don’t feel like I’m making a promise to do it. On the other hand, when I’m asked ‘would you clean up the backyard?’ I begin to make a decision and I’m willing to be supportive. If I say yes, the chances of me remembering to do it are much greater because I have made a promise.”
That’s one. Here’s another one: “When I’m asked ‘would you help me please?’ it gives me an opportunity to help and I’m more than willing to support her. But when I hear ‘could you help me please?’ I feel backed up against the wall as if I have no choice. If I have the ability to help, then I’m expected to help. I don’t feel appreciated.”
Here’s the last one that I’m going to pull out of this: “When I hear a ‘could you,’ I’ll immediately say yes. And then over the next 10 minutes, I will realise why I’m not going to do it and then ignore the question. But when I hear a ‘will you,’ a part of me comes up saying ‘yes, I want to be of service.’ And then even if objections come up later in my mind, I will still fulfil her request because I have given my word.”
John has gotten 17 of his mates to help him make a case for how even the most reasonable request that she makes will be agreed to and then consciously ignored over the next 10 minutes simply because she used “can you” instead of “will you”—like that annoying high school teacher who would always reply to you “can I go to the bathroom” with “I don’t know, can you?”
And to add insult to injury, this is the chapter that’s probably the most detailed of the book, describing how a woman should go about getting what she needs out of the relationship without stepping on any of the intricate interpersonal landmines John and the boys have laid out.
What This Means For You
All right. I think that’s enough from the book. I think I’ve made my point. I’ll leave you with a little bit of a wrap-up, some high-level thoughts on this framing, and then I’ll let you go.
I think, I hope I’ve illustrated it well enough. The framing is the thing here. It starts off and it sounds good. It sounds truthy, right? It’s picking up on real threads that exist in our social environment. The main one, you know, women do spend a lot more time interacting with feelings on average and men are often less fluent at expressing them and validating them. And for the same reason, men are resistant to interpersonal feedback, maybe more so than women, because again, on average, women probably do this thing more frequently. So they have the social infrastructure to handle it, right? We train women through their socialisation to do this stuff, regardless of what you think of their biology. It could be, you know, it could just be purely explained by social phenomena.
So some of this stuff does ring true because if we’re not thinking very hard, it’s easy to recognise this in the pages and move on. And then it quickly degenerates into something crazy. It’s just not good relationship advice. The framing is hiding really problematic behaviour.
You know, Vogue asked if having a boyfriend is embarrassing and Tom is embarrassing. John Gray’s men are embarrassing.
And more generally, what Gray is pushing here is a narrative that leans less into the ways that women and men are, but more into the way a lazy man might want his woman to be. A book that sort of takes all the social expectations we have about men and women and lays out a case for the worst men to improve a bit, with the implication that women should expect far less from the rest of men.
And I don’t think that this is Gray’s intent. You know, it could be an editor thing. There seems like there’s something biographical in there. There’s some oddly specific examples that, you know, it makes me wonder how much of this is sort of Gray’s travails with his long-suffering wife. So I don’t think that it’s malicious.
But what I think you should do is ignore whatever intent Gray has and view it as a piece of propaganda. Because if you view it as a piece of propaganda, you’d recognise more easily that John isn’t describing normal men and normal women. If you imagine that this was written by a lazy, emotionally incompetent man to justify his atrocious behaviour to a watching world, you would see that this isn’t a reflection of a relationship that anyone would want to be in.
So to close, you know, my advice is to people who might be into gender essentialism, if you find yourself connecting with this material, I think you need to ask some delicate questions of yourself. What is it in you that reminds you of the emotionally troubled men that Gray is describing? I connect a great deal, for example, to the defensiveness that he describes. What is it about your partner that makes you think that their reasonable requests are unreasonable?
And I think the answers to those questions are really the only valuable advice that this book could hold because it really is a very shit book.
That is my review of Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus. You asked for it, three articles on it and a podcast. Please, please stop asking me about this book.
Thanks, guys. I’m going to run and I’ll let you go too.
