Shawn Maxam attempts to explain the difference between how men and women see the world.
Men and women belong to different species and communications between them is still in its infancy.
-Bill Cosby
Women want to feel while Men want to think . A friend used this phrase with me yesterday. He didn’t expound on what he meant so I will try to extrapolate on his behalf.
I think he was referring to the way men and women process. This process can be emotional or rational. The way we communicate about and internalize the circumstances in our lives is completely different.
I like to think through my emotions while my wife likes to feel through her emotions. This difference in approach often leads to difficult discussions and passionate arguments.
Do I believe my interpertation of the world is better? To be completely honest…yes I do. But I don’t begrudge my wife or my mother or my sisters for the technique in which they explain the world. It is different but not inferior. Gender perspectives can contrast and even be oppositional at times but neither has to be considered better.
Once we can accept that then we will all be better for it.
Please share this with friends, enemies and temporary allies alike.
Thanks for reading, sharing and commenting!
R.I.P. SKH
About S. Maxam
Wow that’s so true…I know I see everything through emotion and all my male friends are emotionless robots, processing the world via rational thought. I have a difficult time getting over my emotions enough so that I can even function. /endsarcasm
Yeah sorry I’m being snarky to you…but it’s this sort of gender essentialist theory that is really a bee in my bonnet, so to speak. You quoted a comedian, so I’ll do the same: “Somewhere in the world there’s a woman in Rwanda with a machine gun in one hand and a baby in the other, mowing motherfuckers down with a steely momma-bear gaze in her eyes. And in an apartment in Upstate New York there’s a man trying to kill a spider with a rolled up newspaper without shitting himself.” – Hal Sparks (Yeah I probably paraphrased a bit).
It is certainly worth discussing the different ways women and men are socialized with regards to viewing the world, and in placing importance on emotions (or not). However, it’s important to understand a few things…1) it’s social. Men and women don’t inherently view the world differently; if there are broad differences they are socially constructed. And that brings us to 2) it’s not absolute or as starkly different and one might think.
Thanks, HeatherN! I, too, get my hackles up when I hear nonsense about women being inherently more emotional than men. Once we all get over our socialization perhaps we’ll see that we’re people who process thoughts and feelings in vastly different ways that are also exactly the same (hopefully that says to others what I mean it to say).
Given the vast differences in human beings from upbringing to cultures to birth order to genetics, I don’t find this generalization to be very rational.
I know many women on the MBPI who score a T rather than an F and quite a few men who have scored F rather than T.
I actually am quite fond of the idea that thoughts and feelings are actually all that different, or at least come from the same place. Here’s a fun article. People may lead with a feeling state or a thinking state but that doesn’t mean that the person who leads with feelings isn’t processing their thoughts about the impact of the event/book etc.
http://cnx.org/content/m14358/latest/
So too, the person approaching situations from a thinking perspective isn’t feelingless.
It’s comforting I think, to think that men are like this and women are like that and that genders always fit into boxes. It’s frightening (or can be) to face differences that fly in the face of our comfort zone.
I also think it’s our culture that defines for us which “mode” is superior, and inherent in the thinking being the right way (and men do it) is a loaded situation for gender negotiation which does often lead to the “women are just too fragile to deal with politics, academics etc and are irrational what with all their feelings.” and also leads to “men are emotionless robots that never need support” at their worst polemic.
Humans are all more nuanced than that.
Yes I agree there is nuance and men and women are complex and layered and so on but I find it troubling that when a male friend of mine says something to me and I try to explain what he meant it is assumed that I don’t know what I am talking about it.
I said neither perspective is superior. Each is just different and not universal. I was trying to be honest in saying that I prefer the thinking way and of course men feel. Hence why I linked to a post saying Black men cry too.
Either you want to have an honest conversation with how men really view the world or you want the sexy answers.
We can agree to disagree.
“Either you want to have an honest conversation with how men really view the world or you want the sexy answers.”
That, right there, is part of the problem though. There is no way that “men really view the world,” just like there’s no way that “women really view the world.” There is no male perspective. Ask a dozen men a question and you’ll end up with at least a few different answers, because people are individuals. How we view the world is influenced by gender, but equally by ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, relationship orientation, education…and a whole host of other factors.
So there’s no overlap with you and other women?
Well for me there is a shorthand with men. Not with every man. But with a lot of men we have certain things in common. Yes partially by how the world has shaped us and how we have been conditioned but irregardless of how we got there when I have conversations with a lot of my male friends it isn’t like I have to explain my experience from the ground-up.
Did I say there was no overlap? No. But I have as much overlap with straight men as I do straight women, just about different things. I probably have more overlap with queer men than I do straight-anyone when it comes to the way I view the world…and that’s also totally culturally constructed. When talking to different groups of people I have different short-hands depending on the group. With archaeologists and anthropologists, for example, there is a whole lot of short-hand that I use. That doesn’t mean that my perspective is primarily influenced by my education as an archaeologist, just that being an archaeologist is part of my perspective.
You’re treating gender here as if all other social identities are second to it…as if gender informs how people think first, and everything else comes after. That’s not the way it works, at least not for everyone. Some people’s perspectives are more heavily influenced by their ethnicity, education, whatever than their gender. And some people their gender influences their perspectives.
I relate to this comment. It’s not all gender lines for me. Also, if I Expected sexy answers instead of real dialogue I’d have left gmp a long time ago. I can want real dialogue and actually disagree and stick around to listen. If I wanted easy answers I’d not have commented and engaged or argued. There are other sites for echo chambering.
If that is how you interpreted the post then that’s fine. You noticed I started off with men and women and then used my wife and the women in MY life to explain.
So I am basing it on my experiences. I didn’t say I was the spokesperson for the whole world. I even said ” It is different but not inferior. Gender perspectives can contrast and even be oppositional at times but neither has to be considered better.”
I am fine with the way you go through the world and the variety of relationships you have.
Just like I am fine with the way I move through the world.
P.S. You assume from one post that my identity is defined by my gender. Read my other blog posts. I move through the world as Black Caribbean man living with Bipolar Disorder who is also a Secular Humanist studying Social Work. But in the moment I spoke to men we were talking about manhood and masculinity.
Oh dear….Shawn your title says “Men want,” and “women want.” Those are some pretty big generalizations. Your article makes a lot of generalizations in the way it uses language. If you were only talking about men and women in your own life, and not trying to draw larger conclusions based on that, then fine…but you didn’t frame it that way in your article. You make a general statement, then use specific examples…implying that your specific examples stand as proof of the general statement.
“Women want to feel while Men want to think . A friend used this phrase with me yesterday.” – I specifically said a friend used this with me yesterday and I said I was gonna try and explain what he meant. I could be misguided and wrong. Which why I said “I think”.
Again you can interpret the article your way. I can’t argue with your perspective. It is valid and true for you. Maybe it is unclear and maybe it is clear. It is for the reader to decide.
Thank your for your comments and for the discussion.
Is this ridiculous gender-stereotyping article supposed to be serious or have I ended up on The Onion by mistake?
So does this mean I can’t refer to this site as feminine? It’s all about feelings and vulnerabilities so how is that best described?
I’m an ENFP on the Myers-Briggs. I’ve dated a few T women. In one notable realtionship a few years ago, we used to joke about how I did all the emotional “work.”
This is pretty insulting to women in my opinion.