(no subject)

[randomness]

Why is it that well-meaning people fail to understand when people have issues, even emotional landmines, about certain subjects, and still keep banging on about them.

Are they simply clueless? Do they not listen? Or is it that they say things so they can hear themselves talk? What?

Comments

[meepodeekin.livejournal.com]

I do think that most of the time either a) people think they are helping by letting you "talk something out" or b) people feel that they themselves are sufficiently invested in the issue and upset about it and still willing to talk about it, so you should be too. Two examples in my own recent past: my mother constantly bringing up my lack of reproduction and one of my senior colleagues bringing up changes in tenure policies. In both cases the people in question were upset about the issue and wanted to talk about it, not realizing that the issue was much more upsetting for me (although if they were clueful they would have).

I have to say, though, that you've succeeded in pushing one of my buttons in this thread: men are much better equipped by both nature and nurture to shut that conversation down. I would dispute the nature comment. Women are trained to be seen and not heard, to take others interests as more important than their own. I'm not convinced it's nature. We can never know until we meet girls raised in a non-sexist society. All most women need is some assertiveness training.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Sorry to push your buttons. I hope that you're reading in something I'm not meaning. So here's a bit of clarification.

The nature side is broadly speaking, as I see it, as follows:

--Men's voices are deeper, and (I admit this may be cultural; I've seen arguments which claim either) deeper voices tend to convey authority.
--Men are larger and can end conversations by physical force, if necessary. They can also more credibly threaten physical force, even if such threat is implicit and unspoken. (Though, in rough bars, or on the streets outside them, that threat is often explicit and loudly voiced.)

I make no value judgments on this. I do think the latter underpins a significant number of the advantages men have in conversations.

If I'm given a choice between a black eye and ending a conversation, nine times out of ten I choose to end the conversation.

I do await a non-sexist society. Having had more than my fair share of fists thrown in my direction, I certainly hope it means that men hit me less often, rather than women hitting me more often.

[digitalemur.livejournal.com]

All of a sudden I'm totally revisiting the reasons I _thought_ I liked being an alto. Huh. I _knew_ lower voices are good for conveying authority but still I seem to be capable of forgetting that fact. Even though I use it every day.

[meepodeekin.livejournal.com]

I think I was, because I wasn't imagining a scenario that might possibly lead to violence. I think, though, that nature is still at most a very minor player here. It seems to me that until our society becomes a lot more pugilistic, in these situations the willingness to threaten to punch someone and looking like you know it would hurt if you did is more important than actual physical stats in a fight. And those are things that women are trained not to have, not things that women are incapable of having. Of course, not having the size issue myself might make me biased on this one.

As for the voice thing, I give you that point. However I have a fairly high pitched voice and I find it's pretty easy to work around it once you acknowledge it.

I think the willingness to _walk away_ is probably the most important skill women are missing here. I exercised it at lunch today when the aforementioned colleague brought up the tenure crap again, and I thought of you while I did it. :)

It sounds like you've been present at a lot more fistfights than I, though, so we may just be talking in parallel here. I think a society where women were more often willing to hit you (and other people) would be an improvement, but hopefully it wouldn't end in you getting hit too much more often. :)

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

It sounds like you've been present at a lot more fistfights than I, though, so we may just be talking in parallel here.

That's certainly possible. My dive bar days are well behind me, though. My strategy was to look like I wasn't worth bothering with, and it generally worked fairly well, even if some of the guys I tended to go out drinking with appeared to *enjoy* getting into bar fights. Never did understand that attitude, myself, but they tended towards larger and louder-mouthed than me.

(Fortunately no one ever came up with anything more than a knife.)

hopefully it wouldn't end in you getting hit too much more often.

Well, the optimal outcome is me getting hit *less* often. But I grant that a society where women were more willing to stand up for themselves is a good one. Ideally, we get there by deciding random violence is less useful to anyone rather than encouraging women to hit people more.

[holmes-iv.livejournal.com]

Well, there's always the Heinlein theory, wherein the implied threat of violence all around you makes you generally less willing to initiate it. But when closely examined, some of Heinlein's brilliant ideas do end up, at the very least, being kind of easy to make fun of.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

At the very least.

As an aside, Larry Niven wrote a short story set in LA whose conclusion was that anarchy wasn't stable; it broke down into violent chaos too easily. I guess living there in the period between the 1965 Watts and the 1992 riots may have informed his thinking on the subject.