In this month's O: The Oprah Magazine, short story writer Jim Shepard attempts to explain exactly why "Men Do Crazy Things." "For all our gender stereotyping about the way men fetishize the rational," Shepard writes, "here's one of the more notable things about us as a group: We often seem to make bad choices. The kind of choices that make our loved ones cluster in little informal discussion groups afterward, trying to figure out what on earth their boy was thinking."

Jim describes his own jump out of a second story window, writing, "There was no 'What are you, crazy?' or "Why do we have to jump out of your window?'" the boys, safety be damned, just jumped. Later, Shephard says he believes that men are physically reckless because "it's a way of protesting, and subverting, a feeling of individual impotence, perhaps: I'm not helpless. Look I can shoot myself in the foot..

Which is not to say that men are the only ones who pull idiot daredevil stunts — they just do it in greater numbers. According to the National Center For Health Statistics, accidents (unintentional injuries are the third leading cause of death for men, and they don't crack the top three for women. In fact, of the 117,809 accidental deaths in 2005, 72,050 were male. For those of you computing at home, that's 61%.

So does Shepard's theory hold water? Are men more reckless than women because it's a way of making themselves feel powerful? Do they hold onto that teenage notion of invincibility for longer?

What Men Think [Oprah Magazine]
Men's Health [CDC]

And then goes on to basically say men are from Mars and women are from Venus. In brief:

Women are capable of thinking about more things at once and being more emotionally intelligent. Their screenplays are subtler, more ambiguous, and more complex. (Ever tried to get a guy to watch, say, Friends With Money? Yeah.) Years of having do deal with kids and chores and errands and cooking and sewing has evolved us into longer-term thinkers, better "multitaskers", better investors. They like to gather more data before making decisions, whereas men make all their choices as if they're going to die tomorrow.

Men are hunters, focusers, better in the short term, in the moment, more analytical; more direct, less complex, write more plot-driven screenplays.

So far so duh. And guess what? Testosterone is the culprit. How long is your ring finger compared to your index finger, Dr Fisher wants to know. If your ring finger's longer...you're less likely to care think about the long-term impact on the union symbolized by the ring on it before you fuck that cute intern because you've got more testosterone. And if your index finger is longer, the...better to wag it angrily in response?

Hey wait! But Tracie, and Anna and I all have longer ring fingers. Is evolution already working to combat these old stereotypes? (Bc I am the worst multitasker on the universe!)
Whatever. Speaking as a manly girl, I am sick of these studies that so confirm how inherently superior women are to men that you have to preface them by saying, "And I'm in no way telling you this just because I'm a feminist..." We already have to work for their dumb, overconfident, emotionally-stunted, all-trees-no-forest all-gut-no-intuition short term-obsessed "hunter" asses. Fuck spending any more time worrying about their motherfucking pride.

Is Your Ring Finger Long Enough For This Job? [Salon]

What's more, 1,300 males get breast cancer every year. 400 die. Sure, it's rare, but it happens. Then there's the story of Congressman Dean Gallo, who helped launch the Cancer Institute of New Jersey in the '90s. He had backaches, urination problems and later, decreased sex drive — and when he finally went to a doctor, it turned out he had prostate cancer that had metastasized to his bones. Gallo was given six months to live. (He fought the cancer with surgery, radiation, experimental chemotherapy, etc and lived two and a half more years before he died.) The problem? Men are strangers to their health. They're three times more likely than women to avoid doctors. We live in an world with pink-ribboned breast cancer awareness for women, magazines full of stories about women's health, commercials for HPV vaccines for women. "Health" ads for men tend to be about erectile dysfunction, which is not exactly lethal.

So why don't men drag themselves to the doctor? How could a congressman build a cancer center but ignore his symptoms? If you're a woman who loves a man — be it father, brother, husband or son — how can you make him care about his health?

A Man's Shelf Life, Mammograms for Men?, The Great Male Meltdown [Psychology Today]