A conversation on TED.com: Do women need men? Do men need women? Does one sex need the other more than the other does? Why?

Brittney Stewart
Houston, TX
United States

Special Education Aide, education

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Do women need men? Do men need women? Does one sex need the other more than the other does? Why?

With the American society and many countries around the world becoming more egalitarian in nature, does that equal a shift in the balance of whether we need the other more or less?

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Topics: Women empowerment men

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Craig Patterson
- +1
Oct 15 2011: A man and a woman are the yin and yang of human life. Both separate yet containing elements of the other. A relationship becomes whole when both serve one another in an never ending dance that celebrates the differences while remaining true to ones essence. It's magic when the dance is blessed by the spirit of Love.
- Karina Eisner 10+
  - 0
  Oct 15 2011: My sentiments exactly, Craig and Rafi!
  
  By the way, Brittney, you said "American society and many countries around the world are becoming more egalitarian in nature".
  I disagree. This is rather a case of misplaced nomenclature. See, homo sapiens (humans) have not changed at all since the first day they walked this earth. What made them human 2000 years ago is what still qualifies us as human today. It IS our nature what allows us to be what we are, that which we are born with.
  
  Nature: Latin nātūra, conditions of birth, natural order.
  
  If, as you suggest, society is changing its nature, then society is mutating into something non-human. Humans were men and women then, and still are to this day.
  
  Incidentally, "egalitarian" is a modern sociopolitical term. From French égalitaire +‎ -ian, it refers to social equality and equal rights.
  
  So, politically I agree, things have changed. We can now have a man or a woman as president, and we certainly need votes from both sides to win, although I don't think you were talking about that :-)
  
  But the nature of man and woman has not changed. They still need each other, and for that I am thankful!!!
  - Jaime Lubin 10+
    
    0
    Oct 16 2011: Karina change and transformation are very different things. The missuse of the lenguage is confussion and ignorance, Some things simply change others has the sublime seed of transformation and that seed is a natural gift for both women and men, and cant be planted just by one genre. I believe that the clue is equilibrium, not equality.
Rafi Amin 10+
- +1
Oct 15 2011: If men would have not needed women & and vice verse, then you & me would have not been here.
Amily shaw 10+
- 0
Oct 10 2011: what is not changed is that they need each other while what has changed is that they are more independent which may sounds they need each other less.
James Turner 10+
- 0
Oct 9 2011: People will always need people regardless of gender. If we look to the hermits in the desert in about 100 AD they met weekly with the other hermits in the area. In Ireland they have soul friends or Anamcara whom they can share with and be held accountable to. Several of the Irish Saints like Saint Ita were soul friends to both men and women. In fact the story goes that Ita was the director of and soul friend to another Saint Kevin of Glendalough. Kevin was known as the friend of all the wild and domestic animals in the valley of two lakes where he was a hermit and had established a religious home for people of the Christian Faith. Men need women to help balance their lives and women need men to balance their lives. Only a few people can live in a strictly one sex community and those people are usually devoted to a religious ideal. If we look at many nunneries and monasteries in Europe they were single sex. In the Celtic lands they were both single sex and mixed sex communities dedicated to prayer, work, spiritual development, and bible reading and copying.
In balance men also need men friends and women need women friends. If we get to the root of our being we are spirit and we need spirits to relate to unless we are severely wounded or we have mental issues that are severe. I am blessed by the women that I know and some I have met here on TED. I work at a school that is balanced between male teachers and female teachers and we work well together as a team. Yes, we do all have off days but those are over looked and treated with patience and tolerance.
I spent many years with out friends of either gender due to financial times and working multiple jobs, school etc. and those were lonely years. This all is of course only my opinion about life.
Debra Smith 100+
- +3
Oct 9 2011: The fact is that people need people.
Ed Schulte 30+
- 0
Oct 9 2011: If there are no

Good men around ...there will be no good woman around.

If there are no

Good women around...there will be no good men around.

Being of a particular nationality has nothing to do with this relationship.
Gisela McKay 30+
- +1
Oct 9 2011: Define "need".

(Not being flippant, curious to know what context you mean.)
- Brittney Stewart
  - 0
  Oct 9 2011: Need can be defined as what we need in order to survive in a personal fulfillment sense or have a productive life, a life that one would deem worth living. Are those relationships necessary?
Frans Kellner 50+
- 0
TED Translator

Oct 9 2011: If women need men I'm not sure but men certainly need women.
A man without a mother is a trick that even Jesus couldn't fix.
Yet a species of little fish is known somewhere in Brazil that has just one gender.
The females do mate but with males of another species.
This is necessary to activate the eggs but that's all there is to it.
So if you search for their secret a Gorilla would do the job as well.