LOCKS AND KEYS – A MEDITATION ON MAN AND WOMAN

On the Folly of Superiority Between the Sexes

I have never quite understood the impulse—so persistent and yet so ill-founded—that leads men and women to speak of one sex as superior to the other. Such talk strikes me not only as a category error, but also as a profound failure of imagination. It is as though one were to declare the violin superior to the piano, or the sun to the moon—not recognising that their powers are not in competition but in concert.

The sexes are not identical; thank Heaven they are not. They are not even symmetrical, as though cast in the same mould with minor adjustments. They are complementary: each possesses what the other lacks, each is weak where the other is strong, and each reaches its fullness only in union with the other. It is a great pity that modern thought, so often enamoured with notions of equality, forgets that equality does not mean sameness. A lock and a key are equal in value, but their functions are not interchangeable.

To speak of superiority between man and woman is to miss the point entirely. It is a bit like asking whether the heart is more important than the lungs. The question betrays a deeper ignorance—not of biology, but of purpose. For the design is relational. One gives what the other receives; one begins where the other ends. They are halves of a whole, reflections that find their meaning only in relation to each other.

And is it not the height of folly—indeed, of arrogance—to compare where one ought to cooperate, to boast where one ought to bless, to dominate where one was meant to delight?

When each humbly acknowledges the glory in the other, when man and woman cease to be rivals and begin to be allies, then—and only then—do we catch a glimpse of the harmony intended from the beginning: not a sameness of roles, but a oneness of purpose; not uniformity, but unity.