This comment by Claran on the post Dear Son, 5 Secrets I wish I knew Before Marriage
We men are so simple, so direct, so “what you see is what you get”. This is why we stink at reading between the lines and taking hints.
I think the notion that men are simple creatures should be banished forever from these discussions. It’s just not true. This stereotype of the straight shooting simple man is a cultural ideal of the male gender, and like any such ideal is more fiction than reality.
Men are complex emotional creatures, just as women are. The ideal of the “simple man” is a false front, behind which we can obscure our emotions from the world – and from ourselves. This helps us live up to cultural expectations of masculine toughness and stoicism, but it makes it very hard to be a self aware human.
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Question of the Day:
Are you tired of the false gender stereotype of men being simple beasts…? (Think Einstein, Mozart, Bach, Armstrong, Gandhi, Dickens, Picasso, Chaplin, da Vinci, Darwin, etc, etc.)
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Agree. Time to stop hiding behind useless stereotypes and realize that as humans men and women have more in common than not. The capacity to accomplish great things is equal as is the capacity to destroy. Celebrating and enjoying the differences is not the same as being identical and disengaging into superficial antiquated prejudices serves no productive purpose.
Desperately tired of it. But the problem is not so much women who think men are simple — that is simple prejudice and can be combatted like any prejudice, by familiarization, education and experience. And I have found that when you show women that you have complexities and intricacies, they readily accept it. No, the big problem is men who honestly believe themselves to be simple. It may not happen much on this website (although even here it does with respect to certain subjects, e.g. sex), but everywhere else it is virulent. Basically whenever you say “men are not primitive,… Read more »