For the last few weeks, my wife, Daisy, has been thinking a lot about questions borne from her ethics class. We’ve had some excellent discussions, many about things I’ve either taken for granted, or connections I simply never drew.

Among the topics we’ve both been most interested in is that of gender roles, and, perhaps more specifically, the different lens she and I see through when considering other ethical questions.

Men, she concluded (and I don’t disagree), tend to separate themselves from a situation in order to value its outcome, while women rely on their emotions to do the same. In other words, men often try to see the absolute truth, while women would instead accept that people cannot be unbiased, and thus embrace their position in the discussion and see the relative truth.

Neither of us has really figured out exactly what the case is, but the other night, when out on a date, she somewhat brilliantly called me out.

We were eating dinner and discussing our somewhat busy May schedule – busy, mostly, because I’m running in a few races, one of which requires travel. She admitted, in jest, that she doesn’t understand my need to go running, “to release testosterone or whatever it is you men need to do.” I retorted that it was the need “to release testosterone or whatever” that brought home food to eat so long ago, referring to the days of the hunt.

“Perhaps,” she conceded, “but now we live in a time when you come home from the hunt with a lunch bag of granola and beer.”

Touché, Daisy. Touché.