4 ms·

> can in part be explained by the different conversational rules by which men and women play Does the same kind of conversation happen in gay relationships as

by WA 6y ago

> can in part be explained by the different conversational rules by which men and women play Does the same kind of conversation happen in gay relationships as well? Because I think the 'men are like this and women like that' thing is kinda contrived and I bet that it has less to do with gender, but with some kind of power dynamic and the closeness of romantic relationships. Edit: As a small experiment: Whenever you read some article about advice for men or women specifically, try to substitute it with a power relationship: the person with more power or the person with less power. I think this makes a lot more sense in many ways. Note though that power can change in an instant depending on the circumstances.

throwanem 6y ago
> Does the same kind of conversation happen in gay relationships as well? Oh, certainly.
SamBam 6y ago
I don't think the paragraph quoted was implying that all men and all women converse in this way, merely that in the author's experience they tend to. Probably if you divided the data further, by sexual orientation and upbringing, cultural background, and power-relationships you could find more nuanced distinctions, although probably recognizing such conversational styles is already so subjective that trying to divide the groups finely would lead to their being no more observable differences. I think that there are some average conversational differences based on gender, although the bell curves are probably so overlapping that it's almost meaningless to try and apply it to any individual case.
whatshisface 6y ago
>the person with more power or the person with less power. Or more accurately, the hardtalking pushy one full of bravado and the sensitive one that communicates in implications and minute expressions. If you're full enough of bravado, everyone you meet will be comparatively sensitive irrespective of gender. If you're sensitive enough everyone you meet will seem bossy. Just look at those Meyers-Briggs subreddits for the, uhh, I forget which ones correspond to this, but they're full of people complaining about how virtually everyone they meet is trying to steamroll them.
- statstutor 6y ago
  This is also known as 'ask culture' and 'guess culture'
jfengel 6y ago
It's about culture, and this kind of miscommunication occurs in any cross-cultural talk. Even within a culture, men and women speak differently, as do old/young, rich/poor, and other discriminators. So yes, it does happen in gay relationships. Perhaps not quite as frequently in straight ones, because one dimension of difference has been removed, but there are lots of others. The book cited above is far more scholarly and insightful than the usual run of "Men are like X/Women are like Y" pop-culture books. Dr. Tannen is a linguist at Georgetown specializing in cross-cultural communication. This particular one is targeted at a general audience rather than an academic one, but it avoids a lot of the chauvinist pitfalls that similar books run into. So it doesn't make sweeping generalizations along the lines of "Women are like that". It does point out that in many white American cultures women are taught to speak more indirectly, as in the example cited above, but it's not trying to impart the lesson that all women speak that way. Rather, it's about recognizing that everybody has different conventions and you need to be looking out for them, because what seems obvious to you will be very different from what seems obvious to them. Gender lines are just one dimension of that. Dr. Tannen has written a number of books on various cultural speech differences, though this one about men and women in the US was particularly helpful to me.
leetcrew 6y ago
> Whenever you read some article about advice for men or women specifically, try to substitute it with a power relationship: the person with more power or the person with less power. I don't think this particular example is about the power dynamic. if I ask my boss "do you want...?" I really am just asking what their preference is. if I'm asking for something I want, I will ask "could we ...?" or "do you mind if I...?". from my perspective, it takes a lot of inference to interpret "do you want...?" as a request rather than a literal query.

by WA 6y ago

throwanem 6y ago

> Does the same kind of conversation happen in gay relationships as well? Oh, certainly.

SamBam 6y ago

I don't think the paragraph quoted was implying that all men and all women converse in this way, merely that in the author's experience they tend to. Probably if you divided the data further, by sexual orientation and upbringing, cultural background, and power-relationships you could find more nuanced distinctions, although probably recognizing such conversational styles is already so subjective that trying to divide the groups finely would lead to their being no more observable differences. I think that there are some average conversational differences based on gender, although the bell curves are probably so overlapping that it's almost meaningless to try and apply it to any individual case.

whatshisface 6y ago

>the person with more power or the person with less power. Or more accurately, the hardtalking pushy one full of bravado and the sensitive one that communicates in implications and minute expressions. If you're full enough of bravado, everyone you meet will be comparatively sensitive irrespective of gender. If you're sensitive enough everyone you meet will seem bossy. Just look at those Meyers-Briggs subreddits for the, uhh, I forget which ones correspond to this, but they're full of people complaining about how virtually everyone they meet is trying to steamroll them.

statstutor 6y ago
This is also known as 'ask culture' and 'guess culture'

jfengel 6y ago

It's about culture, and this kind of miscommunication occurs in any cross-cultural talk. Even within a culture, men and women speak differently, as do old/young, rich/poor, and other discriminators. So yes, it does happen in gay relationships. Perhaps not quite as frequently in straight ones, because one dimension of difference has been removed, but there are lots of others. The book cited above is far more scholarly and insightful than the usual run of "Men are like X/Women are like Y" pop-culture books. Dr. Tannen is a linguist at Georgetown specializing in cross-cultural communication. This particular one is targeted at a general audience rather than an academic one, but it avoids a lot of the chauvinist pitfalls that similar books run into. So it doesn't make sweeping generalizations along the lines of "Women are like that". It does point out that in many white American cultures women are taught to speak more indirectly, as in the example cited above, but it's not trying to impart the lesson that all women speak that way. Rather, it's about recognizing that everybody has different conventions and you need to be looking out for them, because what seems obvious to you will be very different from what seems obvious to them. Gender lines are just one dimension of that. Dr. Tannen has written a number of books on various cultural speech differences, though this one about men and women in the US was particularly helpful to me.

leetcrew 6y ago

> Whenever you read some article about advice for men or women specifically, try to substitute it with a power relationship: the person with more power or the person with less power. I don't think this particular example is about the power dynamic. if I ask my boss "do you want...?" I really am just asking what their preference is. if I'm asking for something I want, I will ask "could we ...?" or "do you mind if I...?". from my perspective, it takes a lot of inference to interpret "do you want...?" as a request rather than a literal query.