"If we truly desire intimacy, we must be very careful of simplistic generalizations which can generate stereotypical views and even greater distance between us."
—Elizabeth Aries

Although we are likely to perceive many differences between the behavior of men and women in our daily lives, gender may not account for the differences; they may result from differences in power and social roles held by men and women.

Our cultural stereotypes of men and women are based on White middle-to upper-middle class samples. Caution must be exercised in extending this portrayal to "men" and "women" in general.

The above is so true when you look at African-American roles in the family. I learned this lesson the hard way at my colloquium when an African-American women pointed out the flaws of my thinking in the black community.

Men are capable of sharing intimately and can do so when the situation demands it. When Harry Reis and his colleagues asked men and women to come to the laboratory and to have an intimate conversation with their same-sex best friend—to discuss something important and to reveal thought, feelings, and emotions—they found no gender differences in self-disclosure.

Remember, many of the stereotypes of men are socially arrived at (i.e. an excerpt from your book, "She is a feeler; he is a fixer. She wants to cooperate; he wants most of all to win. She wants to get as close to him as possible; he wants to keep a safe distance. She seeks permanent attachments; he wants to maintain some sense of independence. She desperately seeks connection with her mate, home, community and family; he seeks control and has a tendency to disconnect whenever he fears he is about to be controlled by some one or some thing. She wants to delve deeply into whatever matter is at hand, to analyze, discuss, debate and dream; he wants to get to the point, make a decision, then immediately move on to the next thing."). This is how men are taught to behave, not necessarily how they can or want to behave.

Gender stereotypes should concern us for several reasons. First, they may dictate what we notice and bias our perceptions in the direction of expectation (This is a concern I have about your findings and interviews with women). Secondly, is that gender stereotypes shape behavior. They not only describe it but prescribe it.

Try and think of the idea of the "self-fulfilling" prophesy. We become what people think of us.

When describing men and women, we must take into consideration: race, gender, economic status, societal place, geographic region, etc. Most importantly, personality. Personality is a better predictor of conversational interaction than gender ever could be.

"This fantasy (the great gender divide) is not only preposterous, but also downright dangerous because it cements the paranoid notion that the sexes can never understand each other," says Dr. Joy Browne.

She also talks about how this paranoid perception of the gender differences really started when Men began to realize women could do "men's work" during the war. Back when the World Wars were at full swing, women had to work in factories, and other completely male dominated work environments. They were not only capable of doing the work, they succeeded at it. When the men returned home, they suddenly found themselves side by side with women who could do the work. Now that this was dispelled, the perception went slowly into more subtle things like

For most of human history, women were perceived as a sexual, anatomical, and economic threat.
Sexual: Women were believed to have mystical powers and were thought to be able to enslave men's minds. This fear was wide-spread—from Eden to Egypt to Salem, Massachusetts.
Anatomical: Besides the obvious, Eve didn't have the extra rib that Adam was alleged to have donated.
Economic: The idea that there was "men's work" and "women's work" was dispelled when men and women worked alongside each other in factories.

So how did we get to "Mars and Venus". Describing people as completely foreign is usually an excuse to banish or belittle them.

© Copyright 2003 Smalley Relationship Center

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