Brandon Jones believes both sides lose when we laugh at the implication that men and women just can’t understand each other.
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I was poking around Twitter yesterday, in my usual, tentative way, trying to get comfortable with the notion that public “tweeting” is a perfectly normal and sanitary activity for a grown man of forty, when I encountered this version of an old joke: “Trying to understand women is like trying to smell the color eight.” It’s certainly a clever quip and obviously intended to be funny, but to me it was an affront: I felt profoundly sad for the needless misunderstanding it highlights in our culture, as well as for the damage such statements inflict to the expectations men and women have of each other. I was recently interviewed by the author Caroline Leavitt (Is This Tomorrow and Pictures of You), and she asked what I was obsessing about lately. I responded, “I’m… focused on challenging our culture’s collective beliefs about men’s incapacity to understand women… By assuming that men can’t understand women, we end up excusing, and even sanctioning their ignorance of women, and thereby excusing and sanctioning their actions against them.” The above joke is a prime example of how we actively reinforce those beliefs; and something sinister, even dangerous, lurks at the heart of it.
Out of curiosity, I typed “trying to understand women” into Twitter’s search field and found these similar results: “Don’t bother trying to understand women…Women understand women and they hate each other.” “I’m trying to understand quantum physics. Because trying to understand women is too damned hard.” “When trying to understand women, the problem with using logic is that you’re using logic.” These “battle of the sexes” jokes, which get retold in countless different forms, become culture-affirming aphorisms. Men are supposed to bond over them with a nudge and a wink —Don’t we all know how true that is! I would even say that men are pressured to agree, because admitting the opposite could be emasculating in the eyes of other men. And women are supposed to bond over how misunderstood they are by men, as well as to participate in a tacit agreement that they themselves are an unknowable mystery. Accepting this, women are conditioned to being misunderstood, and therefore enter relationships expecting it, not realizing that it is even possible to hold men to a higher standard. Sadly, the bonding that expressly cannot happen within the context of these jokes is between men and women.
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The mechanism that makes this type of joke funny is the grain of truth that is supposed to be in them. To laugh at them is essentially to accept, at a fundamental level, that true intimacy between men and women, as defined by a deeply shared empathy and basic mutual understanding, is impossible. I know from my own experience that isn’t true: Not only is intimacy possible, it’s also an easy, natural state. In nine years of marriage, and twelve together, the very few times my wife and I haven’t understood each other have had less to do with gender and more to do with individual quirkiness—spend enough time with any other person, male or female, and you’re bound to encounter some behavior or motivation you don’t easily comprehend.
Telling these jokes over and over again sets up and reinforces the expectation of misunderstanding. At their root is the stereotype that women are fraught with complexities and dark secrets and men are little more than binary lunkheads. They actually give permission for men to dismiss women; after all, We can’t understand them, so why try? This permission is what allows men to justify marginalizing, condescending to, and ultimately (for some confused men) raping them. Women still have to try much harder than men to be taken seriously in many fields, and the agreement we’ve made that there is an unbridgeable gulf of understanding, and even logic, compounds the problem.
It’s time to look at these jokes for the yoke to antiquity that they are, and see why they really aren’t funny, just as we’ve learned why blackface isn’t funny, and why slapping an “hysterical” woman to calm her down isn’t funny. They’re destructive by nature. Wouldn’t it be more funny, more evolved, more original and more in step with the times to joke instead about the process, and even missteps, of men and women coming to understand each other, rather than harping on the anachronism of inborn misunderstanding?
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photo: jakeliefer / flickr
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I’ve long dreamed of writing a women’s magazine article called “Men are as unique and individual as women, your errors in communication have nothing to do with gender”
Which is more insulting, assuming you will never understand the other gender or assuming you understand them better than they do themselves?
But of course, your article completely fails to mention that side of things.
I don’t get the joke. The number eight smells like lemons.
I searched “trying to understand men” for the flip side, and mostly got the same results. There were a number saying men should have 0 say in reproductive rights, as if we don’t have a part in it before or after a child is born. This was the best one I found: “Just spent five minutes in the dark trying to cram my iPhone charger in the right spot on my phone and suddenly I understand men a lot more.” Although other results include: “Stop trying to understand mind of men. It’s a 1 way street 2 a deadend littered… Read more »
A) To presume that you (mostly) don’t understand the reasons for another person behaviour, and probably never will.
B) To presume that you (mostly) understand perfectly the reasons for another person behaviour, even better than that person self does.
Is one intrinsicly better than the other?
I guess this article is more in line with men who are looking for a women and building a relationship. Well I’m here to tell ya, after 39 years of marriage, I am still working on understanding my wife. It’s made things interesting. What she’s thinking and why she does what she does is a constant question. Although I have learned a lot through the years, things and people change with time but in her case, she’s remained constant in some areas.
I have completely eliminated the question “what were you thinking?”
I think this line says a lot to the whole issue facing both males and females, and gender queer people -[understanding…] “ha(s) less to do with gender and more to do with individual quirkiness—spend enough time with any other person, male or female, and you’re bound to encounter some behavior or motivation you don’t easily comprehend.”
Sure women may not understand men enough either. But this article is pointing out the “women cannot be understood” assumption that is rampant in our society, and it is an outdated assumption.
Bravo to you Brandon W. Jones!
Let’s just stop it with all jokes, in general, except perhaps for those about grammar and mathematics. After all, almost all humor is somewhat subjective, based on an incomplete explanation of the circumstances and because it often involves someone else’s misfortune, is bound to cause hurt feelings. Laughing just isn’t worth the pain.
I wish it were that simple Funny…..mathematic equations can also lead to rape.
Sandra Harding – the American feminist philosopher, contended that Newton’s Principia and its mathematic metaphors, the stuff of humour, is part and parcel of rape culture.
We will need to discover another entity more socially detached than mathematics….I’m afraid
Math is the ultimate abstraction from human attachment, it represents the harmony of the universe. If you don’t get that, you don’t understand mathematical reasoning.
I was being completely sarcastic. I hope your intent was similar. I can’t take anyone seriously who gets her panties in a bunch over Isaac Newton.
Thank you Brandon.
You give me hope!
The other side of the coin is that women seem to think they understand men. And they don’t. Different attitude with the same result. So maybe both sides can commit to a better understanding some day. Right now the gender war is still raging hot and heavy. Real progress will require some peace, and that’s not yet on the horizon.
Agreed. A part of the reason I engage in the “women are so hard to understand” bit is precisely because of constantly hearing women claim they understand men to a T when they really didn’t and were just trying to force men to fit what they believe about men. A sort of retaliation. I saw a tweet last week that said something like, “Men, women aren’t hard to understand. Its just that you aren’t used to someone who doesn’t think like you.” While men and women may think differently I find this to be be a bit dismissive because it… Read more »
Too often men use this to excuse women’s bad behaviour. Call her out on her bad behaviour, don’t put up with it. And of course not all women or men are the same so trying to understand them all as the same is fraught with error!
Still only saying that men should do all the work and women should be doing nothing.
Not deliberate, I can tell, but the distinction needs to be made.
Thank you so much for writing this! Right ON! I hope all men will make an effort to be so empathic and interested in knowing women instead of assuming that they can’t.