Gender Generalizations

[Cerin]

I remain confused and somewhat disturbed by the ideas expressed here.

I believe it helps to understand the various reasons people react as they do. It allows us to take things less personally.

It would be nice if we were all genderless, but we're not. I think I'd have a lower opinion of most of the men I've known if the history of those interactions were stripped of their gender specificity and its associations. And if gender doesn't matter, why do people go through such ordeals changing their gender identity?

I'm going to try and forget about this now (as I don't like waking up with messageboard conversations on my mind).

[Alatar]

It would be nice if we were all genderless

I have to disagree

[Maria]

There aren't any valid gender generalizations of behavior! The only useful generalizations are those of personality type.

I had the worst time through the years getting my youngest daughter to even admit she'd done anything wrong, much less apologize for it. It was beyond lying. It was like she'd changed her internal memory of what happened until she believed she was not at fault, and then defended that position to the best of her ability. It was really weird. It took hard evidence to make her admit guilt, and even more persuasion to get her to apologize.

Nowadays, I can get her to deliver a sincere seeming apology for a unkind deed- but somehow, I think she's just acting. Yet another weird thing about her personality type. Short on compassion.

My husband, my son- when they do wrong they apologize. No biggy. I apologize at the drop of a hat. I even apologized to the guy who rear ended me one time. "I'm sorry! It's my fault! I shouldn't have stopped so suddenly!" Never mind that the law was on my side. Anyone who rear ends someone in Missouri is at fault. I had to apologize. It felt like my fault.

[axordil]

Anyone who rear ends someone in Missouri is at fault.

Unless they are propelled into someone's rear by another rear ender. In which case fault is commutative.

Maria--

Just to muddy the waters a bit, is it not possible that some personality types skew by gender? That there are (for random example) more ESTJs among men and INFPs among women?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

It would be nice if we were all genderless

I have to disagree

Oh boy, me too!

(Is glad to have his Beth back home.)

[Primula Baggins]

I read Deborah Tannen's book on men's and women's communication styles quite a long time ago, when the kids were tiny and money was tiight and there was a lot of stress on our (very good) marriage, and it helped. It helped me to understand what Mr. Prim did and didn't mean by some of his silences and by some of what he said; it helped me learn to react to his words and not to what I theorized lay behind them.

But not everything "typical" of male communication was typical of him, either. This is where generalizations and models can lead to to trouble if we're not careful. We have to be sure we're responding to what the other person says, not to our image of what he probably means or our expectation of what he's going to say next based on some model of the general tendency of men.

Models and trends and correlations are useful data we all carry around in the backs of our minds and add to, with experience. But people tend to recoil if they suspect these tools are being applied to interpret their own behavior.

I think this also goes for Myers-Briggs personality types, by the way. I've seen people object to being characterized that way.

[yovargas]

The MBTI is a nice rought guideline but I think it's easy to over-sell it's imporatnce. It's descriptions are rough, generic outlines and shouldn't be taken too specifically.

For what it's worth, MBTI estimated women were 75% F ('feelers')and men were 75% T ('thinkers'). The rest were distributed 50/50. I don't really buy that, btw.

[axordil]

And the MBTI was built by Westerners, for Westerners. That doesn't mean it would have NO applicability outside a Euro-American context, but it would, I suspect, be rather less useful as a tool.

[Maria]

I know the MBTI is a rough guideline... but when you are totally clueless about what makes someone tick, it's extremely valuable.

For instance, until I read up on my husband's type, I simply didn't understand why he'd keep working and working at a project until his back cramped up and I'd have to rescue him and help him get the muscles unclenched. For me, the finished product is the goal of any sort of physical labor- and I really actually dislike the actual procedure. After I read about his type- I learned that the doing is the goal, and enjoyable all on it's own. An alien concept, and one I'd have never, ever figured out on my own. That's why I never object to his myriad projects. He needs to be doing something physical.

And I was near frantic about my younger daughter. I just didn't understand her at all, and thought there was something terribly wrong with her. I could see that she was growing up into a beautiful and heartless woman at 7 years old, and there was nothing I could do to stop it! The more I tried to fit her into my mold of empathic quiet person- the quicker I was losing her. Finally, a temp assistant I had one summer happened to be going for her psychology Masters degree and told me about MBTI and recommended the "Please Understand Me" book. It made all the difference. I could finally see what motivated the two Artisans in my family. Without that help, and without the timely and very helpful advice from Watcher and Vison a few years later I could have really messed her up. Now I work with her type, instead of headbutting against it, and she's actually doing well now. I also now know that my type is really rather rare, and it's no wonder that I hardly ever find people *like* me in RL. It all makes sense.

One of our judo friends is a psychologist, and he's said that the types are too general for his purposes. But for my purposes- the system is exactly what I needed. For understanding the motivations of average people without major psychological problems- it is invaluable.

It's not perfect. My husband has a geeky side that just isn't explained by his MBTI type... but it's far, far better than nothing.

[axordil]

Maria--

I don't mean to sound as if it's not a useful tool under the right circumstances, which clearly it is. But like any other tool created in a particular place and time for a particular sample of humanity, it has cultural limitations. As it happens, you and your family are all from the same culture as the testmakers, so it's not a concern: if it's going to work for anyone, it will work for you--as you have discovered.

[truehobbit]

There have by now been scientific studies that do show that some aspects of the way people think and react, the way they process information and make decisions etc are based on gender, and I'm convinced that the likelihood to develop certain modes of behaviour is as much influenced by gender, in addition to upbringing and environment, as our eating preferences are influenced by gender-specific metabolism as much as by example and upbringing.

This, of course, does not mean that everybody always acts according to certain gender-specific behavioural modes. It just means that there are patterns that are common or marked enough to be noticeable.* Beyond that we are all individuals.

Personality types, by contrast, are an attempt to group individuals in a more manageable way. They are "stamps" that are given to people after watching their behaviour. You are not an "INFP" or whatever because you are male or female, but the fact that you are female, for example, has certain consequences on how you act and think, whether you like it or not.


And, what Prim said.


(The asterisked sentence is a paraphrase from an anthropology book I'm just reading, from the author explaining what she means when she says she's found a 'rule' - I thought this was shorter and clearer than anything I'd come up with. )

Edited to remove mix-up.

[axordil]

There have by now been scientific studies that do show that some aspects of the way people think and react, the way they process information and make decisions etc are based on gender

Well, there are studies, and there are studies. Some show gender-linked differences, others don't, and still others are inconclusive. There are certainly indications that within particular cultures, men and women as aggregates have differences in some cognitive tasks. But across cultures? Not demonstrated yet, and the task of showing or not is a daunting one.

This is all ongoing work, and won't be hashed out for some time; thus I think it premature to infer too much from what is out there, or to base too much on the state of the field as is.

[truehobbit]

ax, I think it's interesting that you'd expect there to be differences across cultures.
When you say "differences in some cognitive tasks" I guess you mean studies about brain chemistry and such? At least, that's what I was thinking of. Why should they be different across the globe?

But I agree that there is room for proof as much as for disproof.