Within these large groups, boys compete with each other in order to not feel of a lower position in the groups. Intimate conversation is a form of weakness for boys and men, just like how children feel looked down upon when their parents are talking to them. Men and women have different ways of listening and communicating. Some women feel like men sometimes do not listen to what they are saying. In fact, they are listening.
Men are more dominate in a conservation, while women hold back what they want to say. From my understanding, Professor Tannen describes that men are critical about the stance they hold while women like giving supportive criticism. For me professor Tannen reveals some facts about the behaviors of men and women in classrooms. However, in many ways men and women behave differently. Since men want to show their dominance they are louder discussions in classrooms or in any public places.
“…boys are expected to use language to seize center stage: by exhibiting their skill, displaying their knowledge, and challenging and resisting challenges” (Tannen 315). By picking and choosing their words through verbal sparring with each other they begin to gain status. As everyone knows, men are aggressive and rough with each other, but there’s a reason for that we know now. Women are less aggressive and forthcoming towards each other than men are. They would rather sit and talk and be quiet, versus loud and obnoxious.
Since we don’t realize that others’ styles are different, we miscommunicate with each other causing problems and conflicts in conversation. Conflicts are influenced by our gender and experienced everyday in the workplace, public, and private settings. Men and women both have many different conversational ways. The common ways among us men often involve “using things such as joking, teasing, and playful put-downs.” We can sometimes come across as hostile and arrogant when we aren’t trying to be. The conversational rituals common among women are often ways of “maintaining an appearance of equality, taking into account the effort of the exchange on the other person, using up effort to downplay the speaker’s authority so they can get the job done without flexing their muscles in an obvious way.” Women use conversational strategies to avoid appearing conceited and take another person’s feelings into account.
Kasey Beebe Essay 3 3/14/2012 In his article “A Rant about Women” Clay Shirky talks about how men are better at promoting themselves, how women are more concerned about what people think, and that more men than women lie to get ahead. I agree with Shirky’s ideas because I have life experiences which support them. I agree women find it harder to promote themselves; as Shirky says “Not enough women have what it takes to behave like arrogant self-aggrandizing jerks.” Although my boyfriend Kirk is not a jerk, he is very good at talking himself up, along with all his possessions. For example, when he described his house in Jericho, Vermont, I pictured a two story colonial with a large barn. Instead Kirk and I live in one half of a modest ranch style home.
A modern example of direct guarding is ‘vigilance’ which is coming home unexpectedly to see what the female partner is up too. Wilson et al found that women who agreed with questionnaire items such as ‘he is jealous and doesn’t want you to talk to other men’ were twice as likely to have experienced serous violence from their partners. Men can also guard against their partners infidelity either by conferring benefits or by inflicting costs, including violence. As not all men possess resources that might be used to provide benefits, some men are especially prone to using violence or the threat of violence (Shackleford et al). According to Daly and Wilson, death of a partner from physical violence may be an unintended outcome if an evolutionary adaptation that was designed for control rather than death.
Women are likely to expect much more than just help in house chores or career development from men. They consider small discussions with their partners as signs of intimacy, care and responsiveness. However, men have different mechanics of conversation and due to the hierarchical system in which they work; they do not like listening as that makes them feel like an inferior. Therefore, they consider this demand of females unreasonable. Most of the conversation patterns of men and women differ because of their social interaction as children.
In most cases, media continues to present both women and men in stereotyped ways that limit our perceptions of human capabilities. Typically men are portrayed as active, smart, adventurous, powerful, sexually aggressive and largely uninvolved in human relationships. Women are depicted as sex objects who are usually young, thin, beautiful, passive, dependent, and all too often incompetent and dumb. Female characters spend most of their time improving their appearances and taking care of their homes and family or struggling to find the “perfect” relationship. The way media presents men and women may distort how we see ourselves and what we perceive as normal and desirable.
The men also are controllers in their family. When the men and women have some problems, the women are different from the men because the women want to keep their home happy and the women don’t like to meet same problem again in their relationship. When the arguing starts between the women and the men, the men speak loudly with the women because the men don’t care if the women give advice or say trust things to them. And then the women can’t reply to the men ideas. The women must sit, be quite, and listen to the men, because the women know how the women control the men minds, and the women also know how the men get angry in arguing.
They want to know more about tools so that they are able to use them when needed. But women are so intimated by men, and scared to become independent because of the laughs and rude comments that the men snicker amongst other men. So this party scene is designed for women who want to become independent; it’s a comfortable place for them to learn more about ‘man jobs’. Another interviewee from Nelsen commented, “When they realize that the women next to them at the party also don’t know what a Robertson head is they don’t feel so bad [or] intimidated by wanting to express themselves in their homes.” (Nelsen 39) Women are so intimidated by men that they base their whole life around how the men will judge them. Women consider themselves lower than men, because they are not treated as equals.