The cultural surround is such that I can almost hear the collective gasp when I make this statement, but in most cases, it’s just more natural for the man to lead.

Whose real interests does this observation actually offend, anyway?

Women’s?  Take a good look at what real women tend to choose for themselves.  Even women who are highly successful professionals and executives tend to marry men of higher status than themselves.  What explains this, other than being drawn to men they can't dominate--or better yet, men who they can actually look up to?

Or take a look at the popular culture.  How many of the male icons women go ga-ga over are timid or wishy-washy?

The differences between women’s and men’s sexual fantasies also tell us quite a bit.  One extensive study of sexual behaviors and interests, conducted jointly in 2014 by the University of Quebec and the Philippe-Pentel Institute, found that among the leading fantasies of women—held by as high as 60%, and certainly no lower than 30%—are being spanked, tied up, forced to have sex, or otherwise sexually dominated.   Among men in this study, playing a similarly submissive role was simply not a major fantasy.

Might the Quebec study have been just a geographically limited anomaly?  Possibly.  But it’s more difficult to say this about the runaway popularity of the sadomasochistic romance novel  50 Shades of Grey, in which Bowker Market Research found 80% of its readers to be female.

Does this mean that all women, everywhere, long to be controlled by men, in every aspect of their lives?  Ordinary experience and common sense would strongly suggest otherwise—especially when it comes to jobs and careers.  But it would also be unwise to deny this aspect of sexuality (or other forms of emotional satisfaction) in large numbers of women—especially if we’re trying to envision or design a kind of society in which more people can feel genuinely comfortable and thrive.

Accepting and valuing male power is in no way unnatural or unhealthy.  In fact, if it’s missing, people tend to be less vibrantly alive.  Consider the couples you know.  Do the ones where the woman “wears the pants” seem more sexually alive, or more cramped and pinched?

Today, however, it’s becoming less and less acceptable to forthrightly acknowledge this.  Enlightened contemporary opinion now lavishes so much attention on the wants and needs of people who don’t identify with the gender shown on their birth certificate, or the kinds of behavior associated with it throughout human history, that there’s little concern left over for the psychic well-being of the much larger segment of the population who enjoy their manliness or womanliness, but find themselves shoehorned into uncomfortable new roles.