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David's Venus Disarming Mars: No conflict here
It feels like a hoary cliché, surely one of the hoariest of all time about male and female relations: men are from Mars and women are from Venus. And yet the line derives from the title of a book by John Gray published only seventeen years ago. I confess to never reading the book, nor any of its many offspring. Nor will I, at least in this lifetime. But Gray had the rare good fortune, financially speaking, of coining a phrase that entered the language. To this day we hear men and women knowingly dismiss their differences as arising from their respective planetary origins.
What a tidy concept. Mars is cold, hard, and lonely. Venus is seething with heat and mysteriously shrouded in cloud. It sounds like a fantasy come true. Except that a quick glance at Wikipedia's entry on the subject reveals that Gray's thesis, such as it is, had less to do with the second and fourth planets from the sun than with the Roman god of war, Mars, and his adulterous kin, the goddess of love, Venus. Not that the fantasy changes much. Mars is always depicted as brooding, dark, muscular, and heavily-armed. Venus by tradition is scantily clad and languorous. It could be the set-up for an "adult" entertainment and in fact mythology tells us that Mars and Venus were lovers, despite the latter's wedded state. To complete the triangle, husband Vulcan, the lame god of the forge, was also Mars' armourer. Would you trust in armor made by a man who knew perfectly well you were sleeping with his wife? Mars was not the brightest resident of Mt. Olympus.
Without delving into the actual details of the Gray theory, because life is too short, let us simply dismiss his entire notion in summary fashion. For one thing the Roman gods, although they had human traits, were not human. Hence the term "gods." From a practical point of view, while it's completely acceptable for a goddess to be in a permanent state of melting dishabille, for a real woman the likeliest outcome of such behavior would be arrest on a charge of disorderly behavior. Nor would your average man, striding down the street in helmet and breastplate, carrying a spear in his hand and a sword at his side, be likely to stay out of jail for long.
Even metaphorically the concept doesn't hold water, as revealed by a simple thought experiment. Reflect on the male dentists, accountants, and so on of your acquaintance and consider how many of them are fiercely aggressive warrior types. Even modern gladiators, our professional athletes, aren't exactly martial; Barry Zito and Tiger Woods, anyone? Ditto for the modern professional woman, who barely has time to grab a meal, much less devote herself to Eros 24/7. Besides which apparently Gray never heard of the Amazons, those ferocious female fighters, or the bards, itinerant men who earned a peaceful living strumming lyres and telling stories.
Again according to Wikipedia, Gray spent considerable time as a celibate monk. This is not to say he isn't entitled to his opinions. Still, in the words of the late Earl Butz, "if you no play-a da game, you no make-a da rules."
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