We’ve all heard about the fight-or-flight response. Then, it was fight, flight, or freeze. Now it’s fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. Here’s what it means.

When people mention fight-or-flight as the way we react to stress or threats, essential factors are often ignored. Namely, the original fight-or-flight research was done by Walter Cannon in 1932 and earlier. His research subjects were men (and lab animals). That wasn’t uncommon—women were generally excluded from medical research until recently and sometimes still are due to the vagaries of reproductive cycling. But the fact remains that fight-or-flight left out women and how they may be different.

That doesn’t mean there is one stress response for men and a new one for women. Behavior—including fighting or fleeing…or freezing or fawning—is not binary, male or female (gender itself is not binary). Yet biological and........

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