Valid complaints

[differenceblog]

Robin Hanson in Overcoming Bias discusses gender differences in complaining: "the politically correct theory, that women have worse lives, seems both wrong and biased." Kowalski's 1996 review of complaining suggests that Hanson is correct in observing that women complain more. However, it is suggested both speaker's and listener's impression of

Comments

Robin Hanson's answer:

[differenceblog]

Hanson answers the question:
To answer your question, men suffer shorter lives, more violence, higher variance in genetic success, and getting little sympathy when they complain. Husbands may make more money, but their wives spend more. Sure women do more childcare, but looking at how eager women are to work with kids, they clearly enjoy it. Women do more housework, but see a bachelor's place to learn that men don't want clean homes at much.

Re: Robin Hanson's answer:

[astrogeek01]

because of course women *want* to clean homes...

Re: Robin Hanson's answer:

[differenceblog]

Hm, I thought I'd written about cleaning/cleanliness differences, but the only thing I can find is the 5 second rule article...

Re: Robin Hanson's answer:

[astrogeek01]

hm, I thought you had too. Maybe it wasn't here...

anyway. C is much neater than I am. It's pretty bad when he goes away for a week for work.... I have to do frantic cleaning the night before he comes back...

I've actually been pondering why that is, and I'm thinking it's a suppressed "I have to be neater than I am naturally all the time, so now I will respond by being messier than I am naturally this week"

[differenceblog]

Linguistic as opposed to sociological?

I couldn't find much on same-gender interactions, except that women were more verbal about it in general.