Are Women Crazy?

I hear it from men and, surprisingly, from women as well: “Women are crazy.”  Why is this idea so pervasive and is there any truth to it?

Our historically patriarchal society has, unsurprisingly, put men in an easier position than women when it comes to modern relationship dynamics (through no one has it easy). And this male privilege contributes to the perception that women are crazy.

How so? Well first, let’s take a look at one definition of crazy: Seemingly irrational behavior caused by a strong incongruence between biological desires and intellectual desires.

Or, more simply, it looks or feels crazy when you say or believe that you want to do one thing but you do the opposite instead. For example, you are diagnosed with lung cancer, are on oxygen, and yet you still want a cigarette. Maybe you even keep smoking. Crazy? Yes and no.

Pardon the brain science for a moment, but it helps to know that we have biologically-driven desires that come from the temporal lobe of the brain and reason-driven desires that come from the frontal lobe of the brain. These two parts of us are often at cross-purposes with each other. You might reason that you should eat less and lose weight, but the biologically-driven part of your brain pushes you toward eating more food, not less.

In culturally-programed social dynamics, men are given more license to follow their biological drives. “He’s a man, what do you expect?” Men generally feel less conflicted between what they want intellectually and what they want biologically. Men are generally less aware of internal incongruence. And even when a man says one thing and does another, he is usually let off easier by society because people in general think that men are more driven by their biology and less able to control those drives.

However when a woman intellectually believes one thing and does another, she has a harder time. Not only is a woman generally more aware of the conflict between her biological and intellectual self, but she is also painfully aware of societies’ expectations of how she should behave.

For example, a woman might express that she wants a kind, stable, caring, and responsible man, yet is irresistibly drawn toward a selfish, un-invested rogue that follows his own heart and rejects convention. If she gets into a relationship with the rogue and leaves a stable milksop in the process, people think she’s crazy. She might think she’s crazy herself. But she isn’t. She is drawn to the rogue’s alpha qualities (leadership, drive, independence, passion), not his “badness.” There are powerful instinctual drives and triggers at work here, and our puny intellect is seriously outgunned when it comes to a fight with our basic drives.

If a man leaves his wife for a younger woman, we doubt his character, and rightly so. If a woman leaves a “good” beta male for a “bad” alpha male, however we question her character and her intellect. “She’s nuts !” But she’s not. It may not have been wise, but she’s gone with old and powerful instincts that are similar to a man’s, but because of a double-standard, she is judged a bad person and “crazy.”