Differences Mk.2

[dunkyb]

Edited to say: "Hi to all the people directed from Atreic, hope you like the place, pull up a chair. Would you like a beer? Glass of wine? Soft drink

Comments

[atreic]

When I read your first post, I got angry*, until I read the caveat "For each and every case of woman, women, or any female specific pronoun, please read "Some women and some men" or something similar that is actually gramatically correct. For each and every case of men, man or any male specific pronoun please do the same

[king_of_wrong]

There does seem to be a correlation of the types with the sexes. It's not perfect, and it's certainly not grounds for discrimination, but how is it offensive to recognise patterns in one's experience?

Sometimes I wonder if the ultra-feminists are most upset that they're not "unique and beautiful snowflakes" and actually have things in common with other people...

[dunkyb]

I'm not sure at all what's offensive about this. There are always going to be obvious exceptions and the caveat was required to stop people focusing on small pointless details, rather than the overall image. Men and women are different and all I'm merely trying to do here is suggest some ways that with a little thought everyone can get on better.

The sheer amount of vitriol on LJ and other places alarmed me as fundamentally I don't think people are instinctively nasty, unthinking, sure! but that's where I come in!

[atreic]

So are you saying what KoW seems to think you're saying, that up to a point the correlation with the sexes is true, and when you say "men" you mean "men" pretty much?

[dunkyb]

"Some men and some women". I never define the amounts of "some" in each case. I'll leave that as an exercise to the reader.

[atreic]

You can keep dodging the question, but it doesn't make me feel you're trying to engage in debate about what you think. I honestly can't tell if you are arguing

a) "the world can be divided into two different types of people, and they need to be careful how they interact, even if the divide isn't precisely on gender grounds"

b) "people are different to each other in a whole host of ways, and should be careful when interacting with other people"

c) "There really is a divide roughly on gender grouds about how people work"

Or perhaps it's something completely different.

[dunkyb]

As far as I can tell, I'm not trying to _argue_ anything!

Is there any part of these you disagree with, either as written, or taking the caveat into consideration? Or is the whole piece violently offensive?

[atreic]

Well, even if you don't think you're "arguing" you must be trying to "say" something, because you've written hundreds of words down

[dunkyb]

Lets run with C for a while i.e. assuming that the caveat was meant to imply most X and a few Y. I don't think I've said anything negative about women in either of these two posts. I did suggest that men were sex mad fiends who keep butting in with unwanted advice. Both genders give directional advice that is difficult to understand by the other. Is that a negative? Or merely a highlighting of a point of mutual misunderstanding?

[atreic]

Actually, I think my big problem is with the sentance "men and women are different". All your posts say "men and women are different, and here's some differences and how to cope with them". I used to think that, but really, the more I look at it, the more there are slight differences at a population level (which may well be due to social pressures caused by persistant stereotypes) that are fairly meaningless when presented with A Man or A Woman. So I don't think there _are_ situations where it's "most X and a few Y" - I think it's all about situations where there are "some X and slightly fewer Y" and even that is so twisted by the fact we live in a world where people are constantly saying "most X and a few Y" and pressurising the Y's off behaving like that

[dunkyb]

Still running with C: Is saying that two things are different actually offensive? If it's not offensive, why were you angry?

[atreic]

"offensive" is a weasle word that I don't think is helpful here, "angry" is probably an exaggeration of how I felt

[dunkyb]

Still running with C, I think you're saying that Men and Women are not different and therefore the rest of the post is meaningless. Or any differences they do have are merely the impact of society. I've not suggested any reason for these differences, merely that they do exist.

[atreic]

I think what I'm saying is that the differences between the populations of Men and Women are so small considering the differences between "a person chosen at random" and "another person chosen at random" that it's a bit dangerous to judge who people are or how they would like to be treated based on their apparent maleness or femaleness.

[dunkyb]

Dropping C from here, what if what I was saying wasn't "Always act in this particular manner around people of gender X" and was actually "Some people will have difficulty understanding you if you are unable to communicate in multiple ways"? Is that still making you angry?

[atreic]

I think "Some people will have difficulty understanding you if you are unable to communicate in multiple ways" is a laudable point, and people should say it more often. That would be roughly point B on my list. But I think trying to make point B by churning out a whole load of sexist crap and un-funny stereotypes, and making the whole discussion sound like "genders are different" rather than "people are different" means that your point will be lost as people try to wade through what you are saying.

(PS - learn to edit comments, not delete them!)