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Old Jun 20, 2015, 12:48 PM
JustShakey's Avatar
JustShakey JustShakey is offline
WON'T!!!
 
Member Since: May 2014
Location: Arizona
Posts: 4,576
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mastodon View Post
I have stayed out of this, but will say only this thing and then hold my peace: I'm afraid there is no such gender difference. It is a nice theory but unfortunately it's not supported by any studies (even if you take into account all the normal caveats: every single piece of research on language use is culture dependent and age dependent, and always says things about populations and never about individuals.)

It is never possible to state "A woman would say this" or "A man would not say that". The only thing that is sometimes possible to say is "It is more likely that a woman in this country would say this", and that's frankly not very interesting (compared to "a man would never say that!" at any rate ) And it is only possible to state "The reason he said that is because he is a man" when it refers to one of those rare languages where the vocabulary or grammar is different depending on the gender of the speaker...

Yeah, this. I hate that men are from Mars, women are from Venus nonsense. It's just a highly marketable excuse for not being open to different communication styles. So instead of I don't understand my spouse because I don't want to make the effort to listen, it becomes I don't understand my spouse because he's speaking Man/ she's speaking Woman.
And FWIW my male T understands me a lot better than my previous, female T, because he listens to me and she didn't, for the most part.
__________________
'...
At poor peace I sing
To you strangers (though song
Is a burning and crested act,
The fire of birds in
The world's turning wood,
For my sawn, splay sounds,)
...'
Dylan Thomas, Author's Prologue
Thanks for this!
Ellahmae