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
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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
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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...
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!
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?
Always good to see new people around, this journal is normally very quiet!
I've also been rather unfair and added a link to my orginal post.
The critical line is "It has been well established that in route learning and other navigational tasks, males tend to employ a Euclidean, or orientation, strategy, featuring distances, vectors, and cardinal directions (e.g. north, northeast, 90 degrees). Females, on the other hand, are more inclined to use a topographical, or landmark strategy, comprised of landmarks and relative directions (e.g. right, left, in front of, behind) (e.g. Dabbs et al., 1997; Joshi, MacLean and Carter, 1999; Lawton, 1994; McBurney et al., 1997; Moffat et al., 1998)."
Whilst those are generalisations, I beleive that in this case, even without the caveats, I'm supported by the science.
there is a big difference from saying there is a slight bias towards men behaving one way and women another, to saying 'now dears this is how you should treat a woman to make her understand you' as sex differences are not black and white. There is not an 'in or out' of the box question, and you will find some men who perform 'as women' and vice versa.
If you really want them to get along and understand explain both ways as you go, don't jump to the conclusion that because it has a pair of tits it must 'think like a woman' or because it has bollcks it must 'think like a man'.
'There's lies, damn lies, and statistics!' as the saying goes. You simply CANNOT use a generalisation to apply to an individual. The distributions will overlap. You may be able to say there is a slightly higher chance of a woman doing it this way, but that doesn't correlate to being able to radically discriminate in daily life!! Making such assumptions is likely to really piss people off.
Of course, if you piss someone off becasue you're acting in a certain manner, perhaps it's wise to bear in mind that there are multiple ways of people understanding anything and maybe your approach should be changed. Often people don't even consider that there are any other ways beyond what they know / do.
You can certainly use generalisations to apply to an individual you have minimal information on and they're increasingly powerful the deeper you go into the generalisation (after all, eventually you'll have them pigeon-holed). If generalisations didn't work at all, Myers-Briggs, DISC and all of those would be utterly useless.
I swore I wasn't going to get drawn into this, dammit.
However.
Bell curves. It's all about bell curves. Most men are better than most women at some things, and vice versa.
Stereotypes are useful things. They help us get through life. Comunication helps us stop using stereotypes when they aren't needed. For instance, confronted with the landmark directions, I would try to ask "Could you give me some distances" or "Is that North?" and hope that the person giving me the directions could answer.
Sometimes this sucks. But sometimes being an atypical *human being* sucks. That said, I have occasionally managed to get a lot further at having something explained by saying "Please pretend I'm a man when you talk to me about this". Sad, but true.
Hmm, well I don't have a problem with what you've been saying (here via atreic's links), but then I divide the world into me, men, women, fuckwits and let the latter be as big and as angry a group as they please - somebody somewhere will always take offence because they've misread/misunderstood you.
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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...
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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!
Reply
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I've also been rather unfair and added a link to my orginal post.
The critical line is "It has been well established that in route learning and other navigational tasks, males tend to employ a Euclidean, or orientation, strategy, featuring distances, vectors, and cardinal directions (e.g. north, northeast, 90 degrees). Females, on the other hand, are more inclined to use a topographical, or landmark strategy, comprised of landmarks and relative directions (e.g. right, left, in front of, behind) (e.g. Dabbs et al., 1997; Joshi, MacLean and Carter, 1999; Lawton, 1994; McBurney et al., 1997; Moffat et al., 1998)."
Whilst those are generalisations, I beleive that in this case, even without the caveats, I'm supported by the science.
Reply
If you really want them to get along and understand explain both ways as you go, don't jump to the conclusion that because it has a pair of tits it must 'think like a woman' or because it has bollcks it must 'think like a man'.
'There's lies, damn lies, and statistics!' as the saying goes. You simply CANNOT use a generalisation to apply to an individual. The distributions will overlap. You may be able to say there is a slightly higher chance of a woman doing it this way, but that doesn't correlate to being able to radically discriminate in daily life!! Making such assumptions is likely to really piss people off.
Reply
You can certainly use generalisations to apply to an individual you have minimal information on and they're increasingly powerful the deeper you go into the generalisation (after all, eventually you'll have them pigeon-holed). If generalisations didn't work at all, Myers-Briggs, DISC and all of those would be utterly useless.
Reply
However.
Bell curves. It's all about bell curves. Most men are better than most women at some things, and vice versa.
Stereotypes are useful things. They help us get through life. Comunication helps us stop using stereotypes when they aren't needed. For instance, confronted with the landmark directions, I would try to ask "Could you give me some distances" or "Is that North?" and hope that the person giving me the directions could answer.
Sometimes this sucks. But sometimes being an atypical *human being* sucks. That said, I have occasionally managed to get a lot further at having something explained by saying "Please pretend I'm a man when you talk to me about this". Sad, but true.
Reply
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