Respond
Recently, there was an article in the paper, or an item in the news, about a comparison study between men and women and the number of words they use a day. Unsurprisingly, women were found to use more words than men. Surprisingly, it was almost twice as many.
I'm too lazy to go look up the exact numbers, but it was a lot. Enough that our entire office, all six of us, got into a discussion about it. Of course, the women had more to say on the subject.
That was a joke, people.
I do find, in general, that women talk more than men. We use more words. We make an effort to make contact with people, find out how they are, check up on them, make sure they're okay. I just sent three emails to a guy to make certain that he wasn't about to throw himself off a cliff. Not that I thought he would, but I wanted to make sure. You know, for my own peace of mind.
I have a friend who corresponds, via email, with a bunch of different guy friends. They work in the same...industry...kind of. They all have families. They all have jobs. They all have responsibilities. However, she's always the one sending the first email, making the phone calls and, generally, trying to keep in touch. When they don't respond, what's their excuse?
"They say,'I'm busy.' What's with the 'I'm busy' shit?" she asks. "Like I'm not? I've got a life. I've got a kid and a husband who can't cook dinner and a dog and my son's girlfriend who I'm suspicious of so they have to sit in the living room instead of hiding in the basement and I have to be diligent and shit. I've got work at work and work at home and work-work to do at home and when the hell is my husband going to learn to type so he can do some of my work? So what's with the 'I'm busy' shit? That shit don't fly."
I feel her pain. There's the three-email guy. There's the guy who randomly texts me and then drops off the face of the earth and never, I repeat, never responds to my texts. Then there's the guy who, in response to my lengthy and, I might add, incredibly witty email sent a two word response. I didn't know whether or not to be offended. I eventually realized that, well, he's just one of those guys. You might never get him off the phone but put him in front of a keyboard and officialdom takes over.
The only two men I know who really revel in email? One is my friend's bizzaro husband who emails me incessently at work. The other? An old friend of mine in college with whom I discuss Big Ten basketball and our mutual hatred of the SEC. Along with old drinking debacles. We've been engaged in marathon email sessions lately, particularly in that dead week between Christmas and New Year's. But he's a rare, rare case and, in fact, one of the few men with whom I could, at one time, picture myself married to. Then I realized that he only wanted his girlfriend to visit him at college so she could do his laundry. I got over that toot-sweet.
So I've come to the conclusion that men really don't value communication in the same way that women do, for the most part. Women use language to nurture. To indicate a level of interest. To share knowledge while, at the same time, letting people know that they care. Men...really...are just imparting information on the most basic level. And, if they don't think they need to share any information, they don't. So they, in many cases, simply ignore what the women are asking, or saying, or trying to share through the non-verbal part of their verbal or written communication. Because, for us, it isn't just about what gets said. It is about when it is said, how it is said, how much is said, and how what actually gets said makes us feel.
The real reason women use twice as many words as men on a daily basis? Because the men are so busy ignoring what the women have to say that the women have to say everything twice.
And they wonder why we're pissed all the time.
I'm too lazy to go look up the exact numbers, but it was a lot. Enough that our entire office, all six of us, got into a discussion about it. Of course, the women had more to say on the subject.
That was a joke, people.
I do find, in general, that women talk more than men. We use more words. We make an effort to make contact with people, find out how they are, check up on them, make sure they're okay. I just sent three emails to a guy to make certain that he wasn't about to throw himself off a cliff. Not that I thought he would, but I wanted to make sure. You know, for my own peace of mind.
I have a friend who corresponds, via email, with a bunch of different guy friends. They work in the same...industry...kind of. They all have families. They all have jobs. They all have responsibilities. However, she's always the one sending the first email, making the phone calls and, generally, trying to keep in touch. When they don't respond, what's their excuse?
"They say,'I'm busy.' What's with the 'I'm busy' shit?" she asks. "Like I'm not? I've got a life. I've got a kid and a husband who can't cook dinner and a dog and my son's girlfriend who I'm suspicious of so they have to sit in the living room instead of hiding in the basement and I have to be diligent and shit. I've got work at work and work at home and work-work to do at home and when the hell is my husband going to learn to type so he can do some of my work? So what's with the 'I'm busy' shit? That shit don't fly."
I feel her pain. There's the three-email guy. There's the guy who randomly texts me and then drops off the face of the earth and never, I repeat, never responds to my texts. Then there's the guy who, in response to my lengthy and, I might add, incredibly witty email sent a two word response. I didn't know whether or not to be offended. I eventually realized that, well, he's just one of those guys. You might never get him off the phone but put him in front of a keyboard and officialdom takes over.
The only two men I know who really revel in email? One is my friend's bizzaro husband who emails me incessently at work. The other? An old friend of mine in college with whom I discuss Big Ten basketball and our mutual hatred of the SEC. Along with old drinking debacles. We've been engaged in marathon email sessions lately, particularly in that dead week between Christmas and New Year's. But he's a rare, rare case and, in fact, one of the few men with whom I could, at one time, picture myself married to. Then I realized that he only wanted his girlfriend to visit him at college so she could do his laundry. I got over that toot-sweet.
So I've come to the conclusion that men really don't value communication in the same way that women do, for the most part. Women use language to nurture. To indicate a level of interest. To share knowledge while, at the same time, letting people know that they care. Men...really...are just imparting information on the most basic level. And, if they don't think they need to share any information, they don't. So they, in many cases, simply ignore what the women are asking, or saying, or trying to share through the non-verbal part of their verbal or written communication. Because, for us, it isn't just about what gets said. It is about when it is said, how it is said, how much is said, and how what actually gets said makes us feel.
The real reason women use twice as many words as men on a daily basis? Because the men are so busy ignoring what the women have to say that the women have to say everything twice.
And they wonder why we're pissed all the time.
posted by Miss Head at
2:38 PM
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