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Sunday, February 12, 2006

Gender differences: A woman is always right and other rules

I've come across some evidence the other day (from our Japanese correspondent) of what I believe illustrates a classic female response pattern. What you are about to read occured in real life - the words are her own and have not been altered:

I whistled in class to get the students' attention, at a point when they were being particularly raucous after a game. The class went silent – great! Aim achieved. But one of the students tentatively did a tiny whistle in return and Sensei gave them all a bollocksing. After class some students came up to comfort me; I had no idea what they were on about, until Sanemasa explained that he had scolded the class for whistling after I whistled when I wasn't supposed to; he'd gone on to scold me, too.

Eh?

I apologised and explained that teachers in NZ often give a sharp whistle to quieten the students; he explained that it's not common in Japan. OK, fair enough. But goddamn it, he pushed the point, going on to say,
"It's not the Japanese custom, so please respect Japanese custom."
"I see. However, it's a common custom in New Zealand."
He said, "You are in Japan. Teachers and students are not accustomed to whistle."
I said, "It's lucky that it was an English and Internationalisation class – now they know a common New Zealand and Western tradition."
He said, "It's not so. It's not common to do such a thing in Japan."
I said, "It's considered more polite to whistle in New Zealand than to yell and shout."
He said, "It's the custom in Japan to talk loudly to the students. Not to whistle."
I said, "Okay. It doesn't seem so important. But I will remember."
Mostly I was pissed off that he'd told me off in Japanese, in front of the students, so they could understand it but I couldn't.


Now in this case the respondent is male; but that is unimportant in this case. The key exchange to note here is when she says "he pushed the point." From the account above it is quite clearly her that is "pushing the point" - not him. He has made a statement that is also an order or form of instruction to her and she insists on challenging and questioning it. The reason she does so is because Rule #1: a woman always believes that she is correct. She engages in an argument with him despite her lack of knowledge in this area. She finishes with a typical female qualification attempting to undermine and lessen the instruction by saying that "It doesn't seem so important" - all of which she interprets as him "pushing the point." Her anger at him about the circumstances is secondary to understanding the exhibition of female behaviour. The qualification is a normal consequence of Rule #1 and can be characterised as Rule #2: a woman must always have the last word.

This is why female feuds are seemingly endless - neither will accept they are wrong and both must have the last word.

I offer the extract as an example of gender differences. And in the same way I have noticed that often a woman in the role of being correct and telling someone not to do something will go on and on about it well after the point that the other person has accepted the position. Once again: because a woman is always right that is valueless to them unless they can articulate it verbally at length, because Rule #3 a woman views verbalisation as an ends rather than a means to an end. Having that view it means their understanding of a solution to a problem is restricted to more talking or writing and directed away from other action eg. non-verbal or physical action. Obsessive focus on the pedantic aspects of verbalsation usually manifests itself as well given it's high status and use for females. A speech to the school assembly is often seen in popular fiction as the epitome of female achievement.

Men's rules are quite different. Many problems arise here when men have to deal with females going about their natural following of their rules. Likewise women have problems when men are just following their rules too.

Seeing as how it's taken about 6 million years to work out the first three rules for females I'll post the male ones later on.

Disclaimer: There simply isn't one. As a man I demand respect (regardless of whether I actually command any), claim universal objectivity (despite that being patently impossible), and assert the capability of physical domination (although never seem to be around when it's needed).

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