A man’s ego generally sticks out more than a woman’s.

Both can get in your face, both can go toe-to-toe with whatever offends them, both can take up a lot of room, but in most cases a woman’s ego just does not stick out like a man’s.

Thus protruding more, a man’s ego is usually more of a front than is a woman’s.

A woman’s ego tends to be less cut off from the rest of her than is a man’s.

The depth existing behind -- a behind that is really a beyond -- ego is generally more obscured in men than in women. In a woman, this depth typically gets more openly mixed in with personality, giving her self-expression more fullness, more richness and flow. This is why conversing with a woman is, for most women and plenty of men, preferable to conversing with a man.

A man’s ego is usually more frail, because it is more cut off from depth, and so has to be more self-sustaining. This gives having independence an exaggerated importance.

Thus is a man’s ego generally at once more exposed and more guarded.

The more it sticks out, the harder it gets, taking on protective coatings.

And the harder it gets, the more easily it does damage, and not just externally. This is where anger has stiffened into aggression, a much more common metamorphosis in men than in women.

None of this, however, is to extol women’s egoity.

Men’s or women’s, ego is a mechanical “I”-making undertaking born to usurp the throne of self. It’s just a habit that, unchecked, refers to itself as us. Even so, it needs not eradication, but right positioning and a corresponding transparency. It has its place and function, regardless of how it is demonized by spiritually ambitious programs. It’s just that when egoity gets calcified, rigid, inflated, isolated from depth -- as is more common in men than in women -- it makes for a deluded and mediocre life.

In general, a woman’s ego is in danger of being underdeveloped, a man’s of being overdeveloped.

The fact that a man’s ego tends to stick out more than a woman’s has the advantage that it is more obvious, and therefore can be more readily given the thwack of clear seeing. A woman’s ego may be harder work to fully get at, being more intertwined with her depths, and thus less easily flushed out into the open. At the same time, however, a man’s ego is generally less receptive to such exposure, and so tends to remain more shielded.

The fact that a man’s ego usually sticks out more than a woman’s is not bad news. It’s a given. What’s not a given is whether or not we explore and cease identifying with our egoic anatomy.