How male or female are you?

Pretty stupid question eh? Male is male, female is female. Even in the mind. Gender differences in the brain are pretty well documented, and while not always true, provide a pretty good basis on which we can make assumptions. But then guys can have female brains, and girls can have male ones. (Oh, I've seen them. Makes very good thought fodder).

So, I was mucking about on BBC when I saw this test to tell you just how male or female you are. I normally don't do these tests, and even if I did do them, I'd be too embarrassed to admit that I did them. But this is BBC. It had to be somewhat credible.

The test itself took something like 20 mins to complete. And I learned that I have a very much male oriented brain. Slightly above average spatial ability, full marks for rotating 3D objects in space, but hopeless with finding words (a bit of a surprise there) and utterly useless when it comes to empathy (fit right into the stereotype).

But the one big surprise was the eye emotion matching test. I scored 9 out of 10. Thats a good deal further away from the average female (who is supposed to be good at this). I can tell what a person is feeling just by reading the eyes.

Seeing these results makes me think that I have the faculties to show empathy. I just don't do it. All this while, I thought I was just mentally handicapped in that area. I wasn't particularly ashamed about being cold and uninvolved. It was just who I was. Sometimes I got to thinking about whether or not caring for others is part of humanity but with examples of perfectly respectable people being just as cold (my own paternal grandmother and Kimi Raikkonen to name two), that problem didn't bother me all that much. I've sometimes wondered if having the principal of one of the most successful private schools in the country as a role model has turned me into what I am. It probably has, but to what extent, I don't know.

As things stand, life seems to be screaming to me that whatever I am right now just will not do. Its telling me "Sure, you'll survive, but you're not going to be happy with mere survival now are you?". Its a raging debate, one that status quo is having a fairly comfortable time with. The only problem now is, there is no end to this, and it doesn't look like the reformists are letting the case go that easily.