As you might imagine, there were many interesting and varied responses to this question, some of which elicited those "oooh!" reactions that you hear from the audience on "Everybody Loves Raymond" just after someone has insulted someone else. A few people took the high road and either chose not to respond or said that they wouldn't change anything.
So, who had the deepest insight into this highly controversial topic? The girls often agreed with the girls' answers, and the boys often agreed with the boys. Go figure.
People's answers, I think, mostly boiled down to one larger issue: communication.
I don't know if you've noticed this or not, but men and women communicate differently. It's true!
I actually took a few classes in college in which we discussed some of the myriad ways in which the genders communicate. For example - and this has been proven scientifically (somebody, somewhere got the grant money for this study) - men use an average of 15,000 words per day, while women use an average of 25,000 words. That's why, supposedly, men are so reluctant to "talk about their day" when they come home from work, because they've nearly used up their 15,000 words, while women still have 10,000 or so more to go.
Also, men are far more likely than women to misinterpret a member of the opposite sex being friendly to them as being interested in them romantically. (See, girls, it's not really our fault; it has something to do with that pesky Y chromosome.)
4 comments:
Sorry to break it to you, Jon, but the whole "Women use more words a day than men" theory is nothing but unsupported urban legand.
Where there have been actual studies, "[m]ost studies reported either that men talked more than women, either overall or in some circumstances, or that there was no difference between the genders in amount of talk."
See the following for details: http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2006/09/24/sex_on_the_brain/
Back to the drawing board, eh?
I don't know about urban legend; that's just what they taught me in my social communication classes at the U., and they seemed to have some support for the theory. Anyway, I guess I need a tuition refund now or something. Those communists!
I think I'm really glad I missed this particular ward prayer--sounds like it was uncomfortable to say the least!
Tom Lehrer, at his most acerbic, said once on an album, "I feel that if a person can't communicate the very least he can do is to shut up." That's a little cruel, but funny.
I feel not so much that men and women can't communicate, but that they don't. We work too much by assumption because we're afraid, or because outdated taboo interferes with honest communication.
A guy once told me that my talking was ruining the moment (several times, actually). I just gave him a look and said, "Whose moment?"
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