<p>^^^</p>
<p>I agree. men and women are different.</p>
<p>Men are more visual, hence the girly mags, the ogling, etc.</p>
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<p>Let me, then. ;)</p>
<p>it is absolutely true that disempowered populations turn on themselves. I think the place we see this most prevalently is in the middle school mean girl culture, where girls turn on each other and attack one another as a way to gain power in an intensely objectified and disempowering culture for young women in the early stages of sexual awakening. </p>
<p>Since the girls are forced into cooperative stances when young, ie: when two boys fight in first grade, they are told to go sit at seperate tables until they can get along. When two girls fight in first grade, they are made to sit at the same table until they can “work it out.” Aggression is nullified, competition is villified, and it all goes underground. As girls enter middle school, they are highly disempowered and attempt to gain control by stigmatizing other, usually beautiful, smart, different, or powerful, girls and isolating her, because “who does she think she is?” Whereas, the strongest young man will simply be the “leader.”</p>
<p>Later in life, some women, who feel disempowered, or who have not yet accepted their own power, still do this.</p>
<p>My oldest think this joke sums this lack of sisterhood up quite well: warning: PG13.</p>
<p>The difference between men and women freinds: A woman told her boyfriend she was spending the night out with friends and would not be home until the next day. The next day the boyfriend called around to all the friends trying to find her. Every friend he called said, no they hadn’t seen her or heard from her the night before. Sorry.</p>
<p>A man told his girlfriend he was spending the night out with friends and would not be home until the next day. The next day the girlfriend called around to all his friends trying to find him. She found out that he had been out all night with three of them, had spent the night at five separate apartments and was still sound asleep on the couch at two.</p>
<p>Just for some levity. :p</p>
<p>poetgrl…</p>
<p>Boys bully as well. They fight like heck to be ranked high on the totem pole.</p>
<p>^^^^^^</p>
<p>Oh absolutely! No question.</p>
<p>*My oldest think this joke sums this lack of sisterhood up quite well: warning: PG13.</p>
<p>The difference between men and women freinds: A woman told her boyfriend she was spending the night out with friends and would not be home until the next day. The next day the boyfriend called around to all the friends trying to find her. Every friend he called said, no they hadn’t seen her or heard from her the night before. Sorry.</p>
<p>A man told his girlfriend he was spending the night out with friends and would not be home until the next day. The next day the girlfriend called around to all his friends trying to find him. She found out that he had been out all night with three of them, had spent the night at five separate apartments and was still sound asleep on the couch at two.*</p>
<p>While I know that this was all in fun, the “brotherhood” that is noted above is actually a negative.</p>
<p>We were all up in arms over the Penn State scandal. I still say that if as many women had known about Sandusky as men did, the whole thing wouldn’t have gone on like it did.</p>
<p>Oh, I agree. I actually don’t think it speaks well of either group. I just thought it summed something up, to some extent, in a crass way, humorous way.</p>
<p>I mean, the premise itself isn’t flattering, anyway, but it does tell a type of truth.</p>
<p>^^^</p>
<p>Yes, it does…men and women ARE different. lol And, men will protect other men in regards to their sexual dalliances with little concern to these men’s wives, children, etc. It’s almost a “pay it forward” kind of thing…Uh I may need you to lie for me someday. wink wink</p>
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<p>I have boy/girl twins. The world is their oyster equally. I have never suffered any “harm” or disadvantage in the working world for being a woman - thanks in part to the women who came before me and worked so hard for women to have a voice at the table in business, in graduate school, etc. I am delighted that my d chose a woman’s college, and I think it will be of benefit to her because of who she is, but I would have been totally fine if she had chosen a “typical” co-ed college.</p>
<p>They’re still young. Mine are college graduates.</p>
<p>A bright young woman I knows was almost in tears a while back because in her work at a start up, so much was being piled on her plate, that she didn’t know how to get through the mountain of tasks before her. She’s been exemplary in other jobs, and wanted to complete the tasks with her usual conscientious high standard. But she could not, and her stress level was through the roof. I asked her no nonsense husband how he’d have handled it. He said he’d tell them in no uncertain terms to lay off, and have a quick discussion of priorities, given time available. If the situation demanded, he’d get testy about it, because management was being unreasonable. </p>
<p>A few days later I had a conversation with a man who had worked in human resources and training for most of his career. He said this exact issue is one he spent a good bit of time on bringing women into the work force, especially in higher level positions. Women tend to take what is handed to them, feel guilty if unable to complete a task, internalize their stress over the situation, rather than stating the realistic facts of the situation. He taught them to set limits, ask for clarification of priorities, and be more personally assertive regarding their rights in the workplace. </p>
<p>Is this hormonal, genetic, cultural? Probably some mix of all three. But regardless, some general differences exist, and need to be acknowledged. Otherwise, people are hurting, and environments become dysfunctional, whether at home or in the workplace. </p>
<p>I love myth’s quote above-
“Generalizations and norms stay little about individuals at the edges of bell curves” It doesn’t mean we can’t talk about those norms, and learn from them. Maybe nudge them as needed.</p>
<p>greatlakesmom… I found that story really interesting. I am a female and in addition to my regular job responsibilities, I also end up doing various odds and ends tasks for management, which sometimes pile up-- and often they have different priorities and needs for each project which are not communicated to me-- not everything on my list is needed “RIGHT NOW” and sometimes they ask for data to be generated, which takes time, that they don’t REALLY need. We tend to frequently have a conversation that goes something like, “I can take route A or route B to finish this project and get the information you asked for either way, but route A is an enormous amount of work and will take me X number of days/hours to finish, while route B achieves the results you asked for but in a different way. If route A is what you want/need I can do that, but realistically there then won’t be time for XYZ project in that same time frame. What would you like me to do?” I am willing to work late, from home, on weekends, on and on forever and always do whatever I am asked without complaining even when what I am being asked to do is a RIDICULOUSLY inefficient use of time and energy, but these conversations always feel ceaselessly awkward to me and my managers seem like they think I am complaining about the workload when I am trying to assess their priorities and needs when they’ve given me an unrealistic amount of work for a given time period. They admit they have NO IDEA what is involved in doing my job or how long it takes me to do these things, I don’t know how else to have this sometimes necessary conversation without coming across like I am complaining. I wonder if I am coming across too apologetic about the amount of work I can complete in a given time.</p>
<p>We should be careful about the role assigned to hormones. A case in point:</p>
<p>In a psych experiment female rats were given high doses of the androgen, testosterone, and lo and behold, they started acting like male rats: humping other female rats and fighting with male (and female) rats. This was reported in a psych textbook to indicate that MALE HORMONES PROMOTE AGGRESSION AND SEXUALITY.</p>
<p>Here’s the problem: the textbook left out the other half of the experiment the same rats were also given the gynogen, estrogen in the same high doses as the testosterone and the female rats behaved the same way: humped female rats and fought with everyone. Therefore all the experiment could really conclude is that sex hormones makes rats (and maybe people, but no indication from this experiment) sexy (specifically pursuing female rats) and aggressive.</p>
<p>The most frightening aspect of this is that the text misrepresented the experiment. I can’t tell you how many times this happens.</p>
<p>Kohlberg, the author of a scale of ethics and morality that claims men reach higher levels of ethical purity than women, eventually repudiated his 70’s schema, and sadly, killed himself. However, many textbooks still report his early findings and students still regurgitate them on psych tests.</p>
<p>I found that a study and analysis of the biases of experiments, reports and articles was the most useful part of teaching women’s studies and useful for almost all social science disciplines. Sometimes the attitudes were very subtly expressed. Male researchers reported that a female chimpanzee “solicited” sex as if she was a prostitute. Statements like that go unchallenged but subtly influence our understanding of gendered behavior.</p>
<p>I don’t think the researchers were being consciously sexist, but they were influenced by unconscious reactions to females pursuing males for sex. Ah, sixties where are you when we need you?</p>
<p>Well, I’m an INTJ and my best male friend (outside of my husband) is an INFP, so we break all the stereotypes of women=feeling and men=thinking!</p>
<p>Men value achievement and tasks. Women value relationships and feelings.*</p>
<p>Neither is the only “right” way to be or think or act. But any sphere which has been traditionally dominated by men – business, government, academia, church – will tend to be skewed toward achieving and competing, and will tend to devalue the emotional/relational side of the human experience. To me, “fighting for the female point of view” means striving for balance and wholeness.</p>
<p>*Bell curve/overlap disclaimer.</p>
<p>Several years ago, while I was working at a small company, a major snowstorm hit our area. In anticipation of an unusually large amount of snow falling, the authorities advised in advance that people should plan to stay off the roads during the storm and for several hours afterward. When the storm hit, it was just as big as anticipated, and our part of the state basically shut down for a day, in the middle of the week.</p>
<p>Immediately after the warnings were issued, the vice president of the company where I worked sent an e-mail to all employees, pointing out that anyone who didn’t come in because of snow would have the missed time charged against their vacation time. Working from home was forbidden. Opportunities to make up missed time later would not be offered. If you didn’t come in, you would lose your vacation time. Period. Despite the warnings, five people came to the office and worked that day. All of them drove to get there.</p>
<p>What’s the surprise in this story? The surprise is that the vice president was a woman. You don’t expect this sort of inflexibility from women. If the vice president had been a man, this story would be routine.</p>
<p>And I think we don’t know by just seeing behaviors. There may be very different motivations for behavior. The woman mentioned just above may be afraid of what her bosses will say and be operating out of people pleasing and not inflexibility.</p>
<p>As for women thinking/vs feeling – I am certainly a thinking person as a college professor. But I agree with the poster who mentioned wholeness and integration. There are even differences in the brain structure of women and men that make compartmentalization a more frequent fall back position for men then women and integration an easier goal for women.</p>
<p>Again, these generalizations say nothing about individuals. And there are different cultural norms that do come into play that also influence these behaviors.</p>
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<p>It would never have occurred to me that the story would be surprising if the VP had been female but not-surprising if the VP had been male. Jerks are jerks, sometimes.</p>
<p>*What’s the surprise in this story? The surprise is that the vice president was a woman. You don’t expect this sort of inflexibility from women. If the vice president had been a man, this story would be routine. *</p>
<p>This reminds me of a story that one of my sorority sisters told us at a reunion. She confessed that before she had children she was very unempathetic to her pregnant employees or new parents. After her first pregnancy and baby’s birth, she had reality hit her in the face and she became much more flexible with her staff.</p>
<p>Sure, but that also happens with a guy whose wife has a baby and now “get it.”</p>
<p>I agree that both sexes occupy all ends of whatever spectrum we measure, nowadays, although more of one sex may cluster more toward one side or the other. In my corporate life, it has seemed to me that more women tend to obey the rules, while men don’t. Play behing a foursome of women on the golf course, and you will frequently see them counting every stroke. Men more often allow the “foot nudge” stroke, without assessing the penalty. I see the same meticulous behavior in the office setting.</p>
<p>I remember back when Ronald Reagan was president, he had a meeting with Breshnev. Breshnev showed up in a big winter coat and hat, while Reagan showed up with no hat and no coat. All the newscasters fell over themselves talking about how Reagan had bested Bresnev, and it was a huge win for Reagan. I commented to my H that I thought the whole thing was stupid - who cared if someone wore a coat or didn’t wear a coat. He just said, It’s a guy thing. I wonder if this would have been such a big deal if it happened now, and we have so many more female newscasters.</p>