Time for "Ask the Author" -- so let's ask Dr. John Gray

Heh. Fixed-gender traits always seemed more like tendencies to me too, but I grew up with a military vet, action movie loving, flower-growing mom, a sister who loved flirty shoes and muscle cars and could lift grown men and furniture with ease, and surrounded by artsy and/or geeky guys who hated sports and loved romance.

People are just more complicated than that. I'm glad to see you stumping on that issue lately.

[Thanks, Sabrina. To paraphrase William Gibson, "gender equality is a reality, it's just not evenly distributed yet." Dr. Gray isn't helping distribute anything but more stereotypes. --fl]

Nope. Bestiality implies different species, not different local morality. I've always thought that it doesn't matter where you born ;)

[Yep. It's more like we're from different ends of the same street. So why's he making millions suggesting we're from whole different planets? I mean, he's making millions, right, so he's not going to stop no matter how much damage he's causing. Thanks, DN. --fl]

John Gray stumbled on a marketable tool. Personally I don't see him as an authority on relationships, he's become an authority due to clever marketing. In reality he's experienced multiple marriages, he's just like any other mortal and at the core of the matter men and women have the same issues, they just express them differently perhaps due to social setups and cultural setups. What John Gray did, was generalise male and female behaviour and this is something that can't be done. In Japan women behave a certain way, and men behave a certain way. This isn't biological, genetic or otherwise, it's based on culture and tradition.

As you've mentioned Figleaf, women and men have been overlapping in their roles and this is due to priorities within relationships. I think as economies continue to change around the globe, the roles will evolve and the John Gray type of generalisations by authors that are fundamentally based on gender differences (they wish to create) relating to 'thought' and 'need', how these two things are supposed to differ due to gender, will diminish.

[I think it's generally true that we're in a better position to recognize the similarities as well as the differences between genders... *unless* we're persuaded to keep overlooking them. My concern is that people like Gray (or more accurately the people who find his ideas appealing) can perpetuate the distinctions for as long as, well, as long as they think they're true. I don't buy the old hormone-treatment-based theory that gender is entirely socially constructed, but pretty much by definition our *stereotypes* are. My big problem with the Mars/Venus approach is that it codifies the stereotypes with two results: 1) they reinforce even minor distinctions and 2) they make people feel weird or wrong when they don't fit the constructions with the result that all these generally round people are going to worry about failing to fit in one or two very square holes. Thanks, Anastasia. --fl]

Years ago, I was working in a bookstore when Gray's book first came out. After having to sell the umpteenth copy to someone, I decided to check out the book on my lunch break--because I was fairly certain it wasn't going to be something worth paying for.

I was right. You could barely turn a page without some ridiculous stereotype staring out at you. The only one that still sticks in my mind was some comment about how men like to be the leaders/drivers, and they don't like criticism, so if you're in a car with a man and he's getting lost, and you KNOW the right way to go, you should NOT tell him because this would hurt his ego. Just let him drive until he figures it out, apparently, even if you end up 2 hours out of your way.

This is kind of what I was talking about earlier in the week with the monogamy post, too. I think there's so much invested in this "never the twain shall meet" thinking related two the two genders that we may simply be actualizing it as our reality, when in fact it doesn't have to be our reality at all, if we don't want it to be. Why do we WANT to think we're so different from each other? Is it a fear we'll lose our individual sexualities? Is it a fear gender will become irrelevant, hence creating a fear of homo-, bi-, or pansexuality? Why don't we tell ourselves we're more alike than different? If we did that, would we all behave differently than we do now?

[I think you hit the crucial question when you ask "Why do we WANT to think we're so different from each other?" There's a benefit in there -- possibly because stereotypes really do reduce the need to make individual distinctions -- but since the cost in terms of alienation tend to *reinforce* the stereotypes the benefits seem bigger. Thanks, Syl. --fl]

okay, intimate question for you fl, if someone hits my blog because they searched for "MILF" on Dogpile, does that make me one? Just wondering.

Love the photos, of course. Words on paper, baby. xoxoxo

[My post-HNT experience suggests that with five billion individual humans in the world *everybody* is an [abbreviation]ILF for somebody. So yes, guaranteed, you're an MILF, a B[logger]ILF, or an [your astrological symbol here]ILF or at the very least a [gender-appropriate-designee]ILF for a surprising number of people you've never even met. :-) Words on disk, Blue Gal. Thanks for keeping me on task. --fl]

Oops. One other thing. Deborah Tannen totally thinks that John Gray stole her thunder on the whole Mars/Venus thing. Her downfall is that she is not willing to write in her books (or say on morning news shows) that "MEN SAY THINGS THIS WAY" and "WOMEN THINK THAT WAY." As a social scientist, she wants to talk about tendencies of gender without making broad generalizations. John Gray has no such scruples to clog up his engine on the way to the bank.

[Funny you should mention that. I was surprised that Tannen wasn't the author since I thought she coined the phrase. Funny that. Thanks, Blue Gal. --fl]

According to my textbook, men are actually a lot more romantic than women - esp early on in a relationship.

[Also true -- I don't have have links to the sources but men evidently are somewhat more likely to fall in love faster and stay in love longer than are comparable women. Not enough to be Mars/Venus different, but I've never said there were *no* differences. Just way fewer than we imagine. Thanks Shay. --fl]

Ugh! I hate the Men:Mars, Women:Venus thing. Just like I hate "The Rules." I think they underestimate people and their golorious differences. Maybe life would be easier if there was a "how to" book, but it would be nearly as fucking fun! Sorry I've been absent! I can't check you at work and at home I have a puppy to play with. Hopefully I will be by regularly soon.

[Sorry more people can't read me from work but with a URL like mine I'm not surprised at all! Also, it's not so much that men and women are different -- of course they are! It's that individual men are so different from each other, as individual women are, that the distinctions are sort of meaningless. To take a trivial example, yes, women are generally shorter than men, but that's *very* different from saying all women are shorter than all men. Same with... practically everything else. (My favorite example is relative strength. Yeah, on average men are stronger than women, but Lisa Lyons was able to military press all 250 pounds of pre-movie-star Arnold Schwartzeneger -- while standing in a very graceful pose, no less -- and *very, very* few men could do the same.) Nice to see you back even for just a visit, Julie. Thanks. --fl]