[U.S.]Deborah Tannen: *You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation*, translated by Wu Xingyi, Nanfang Publishing House, 2008——★
During my period of seclusion, I didn’t read very many books, and I don’t want to go through them one by one. This one book, however, I am willing to spend some time excerpting, since it also has a direct bearing on what I am going to write next.
Of course, this book is by no means the only one that talks about the differences between men and women. Before it, there had already been highly publicized books such as *Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus*, and books of this sort are still worth reading.
I looked up the electronic version of *Men Are from Mars* online. It should be said that it is not bad either, and it covers many key points. Still, in my personal view, it seems not quite as good as this book. Compared with it, *You Just Don’t Understand* is not dressed up in such flamboyant ways for the sake of hype. The author, as a linguist, writes in a light and accessible manner, but after all still brings with her a certain scholar’s plainness and rigor, which suits my taste better.
This book not only reveals the differences between men and women in the use of thought and language, but also attempts to trace the source of these differences—“Men need independence; women seek intimacy”—which can be said to have hit the crux of the matter.
第7页
If the meaning of intimacy is “we are close and alike,” then independence lies in the claim that “we are separate and different.” Obviously, intimacy is bound up with solidarity of feeling, whereas independence goes with status. The element of feeling lies in equality: everyone is equal, and each person has an equal regard for every other person. The element of status lies in inequality: people are not the same; they stand in different social strata. ////—Indeed, hierarchical society is inseparable from patriarchy; but on the other hand, the tensions and conflicts between men and women in modern society arise precisely from the rise of “equality” as an idea. “Equality” has broken the superior position of men, yet it has also plunged relations between men and women into a new tension. Easing this conflict requires effort from both men and women: men should adopt plural rather than hierarchical modes of evaluation, and acknowledge that it is not necessary to rank all different people as superior or inferior; women, meanwhile, should accept those who are different. In short, we should learn to say: “We are close, and we are different.” And that is the true meaning of ancient雴version pluralism.
第18页
Women are not indifferent to freedom, nor are men oblivious to human feeling. It is just that in relations between people, men place more emphasis on the pursuit of independence and freedom, while women place more emphasis on mutual dependence and affection. The difference between men and women lies in differences of focus and degree.
第19页
*The Chronicle of Higher Education* once conducted a study in which six university professors were interviewed and asked why they had chosen the profession of teaching. Two of the six were women. In answering this question, one said, “I have always longed to become a teacher.” The other replied, “When I was in college, I wanted to join an academic community—I knew clearly that teaching was exactly what I wanted to do.” The other four male professors gave rather similar answers, and they were clearly different from the women’s. All four men thought that independence was the main motivation for their choice of this profession. Here are excerpts from their remarks: (abridged… greater independence… the freedom to set my own research goals… to act according to my own wishes rather than taking orders… to engage in research at will….) Each of the men mentioned that being able to choose their own field of research freely was the chief reason they became professors, yet neither of the two women mentioned this point. This does not mean that women are not interested in research; rather, they care less about considerations such as independence and freedom, which men value highly. In describing the pleasures of teaching… the women focused on their relationships with students, whereas the men focused on the freedom not to be under someone else’s control. ////—The sample in this case is very small, so its power of proof may be limited. Still, this issue is indeed universal, and in a certain sense it can also explain this phenomenon: why is it that even in some departments where girls are in an absolute majority, male professors still dominate? In fact, whether one pursues it or not, the profession of scholarship is an undertaking that requires more passion for independence and freedom in order to perform well; men, who are naturally more inclined toward independence, of course adapt more easily to this kind of undertaking and enjoy its freedom to the fullest, whereas women are somewhat less passionate about this most crucial driving force.
第25页
If we view communication between men and women as cross-cultural communication, then we can explain why dissatisfaction and arguments between the sexes may still occur even when no one has made any mistake. ////—This is exactly why I say that mutual understanding between men and women is a shortcut into “cultural pluralism.” If one can accommodate the ways of thinking and value systems of different cultures, then it will also be easier to accommodate the ways of thinking of different genders, and vice versa.
第27页
The gift that Eileen longs for is understanding, but what Mike gives her is advice. He plays the role of problem-solver, whereas what she wants is simply empathy with and acknowledgment of her feelings. ////—This is also emphasized in *Men Are from Mars*: men always give “advice,” or rather, give solutions to troubles, and this is precisely what hurts women, because women do not at all want to “solve” the trouble; they simply hope that the other person will participate in the trouble together with them. Yet men easily “negate” the other person’s trouble, and that is often the fuse that sets off conflict between the sexes.
第27页
If women are disappointed because men do not respond to their troubles with a trouble of equal weight and measure, men are exactly the opposite. When the other person also voices his or her own troubles in response, many men do not feel comforted by this; they may even feel angry. For example, one woman told me that when her partner complained about some personal worries, she responded sympathetically, “I know how you feel; I feel that way too.” To her surprise, he actually became angry. He thought she was trying to deny his uniqueness and to take something from him.
第30页
As age increases, the differences between men and women become increasingly pronounced. A sixteen-year-old girl told me that she liked being with boys more than with girls. To check my own idea, I asked her whether both boys and girls would talk with others about some of their troubles. She said yes, definitely. So I then asked her whether boys and girls talked about troubles in the same way. She answered: “Oh! No! Girls are always going on and on. Boys raise questions, and when someone comes up with a solution, they stop the discussion.”
第38页 Men are oriented toward going straight to the root of the problem in order to calm uncomfortable feelings; women, however, expect their feelings to receive support. The crisscrossing result is that women feel they are being attacked by men.
第39页
Why do men always refuse to ask for directions or to inquire about other information? Why don’t women refuse? Because of the contradictory relation between independence and intimacy, two very different meanings can coexist in the process of asking questions: men’s focus is on one side, women’s focus on the other. ////—This makes me think that in studying as well, women are more likely to seek help from others, whereas what men ask others are often challenging questions, and they are absolutely unwilling to seek help from others in the image of the weak. For example, I served as a forum moderator for several years in the Future Peking University community, and I found that those who privately contacted me with questions and requests for help were often mostly girls, while men, even when they asked questions, were often asking knowledge-based, technical, or even provocative questions (such as: how are the employment prospects for philosophy majors?), whereas those who spoke to me of their troubles (for instance, failing the gaokao and wanting to repeat a year while their parents refused to allow it) were all girls, without exception. In elementary and middle school, too, we can observe that it is usually girls who ask teachers and classmates for help more often. This may explain why the students who are best at math and those who are worst at math are often both boys. Because boys would rather work things out independently than admit they cannot do it and show weakness to others, and to do well in math one precisely needs this spirit of independence. Women, on the other hand, not only do not have such a strong aversion to seeking help; they may even consciously or unconsciously feel that seeking help can strengthen intimacy with others. In that case, their will to struggle alone against difficult problems is much weaker, and the sense of accomplishment after solving a problem by themselves is not as intense as that of boys who are eager to outperform others. Thus, comparatively speaking, they lack the most crucial passion and drive that help one learn math well.
第49页
There is a common phenomenon: in private settings, women talk a lot and men are silent; in public settings, men talk a lot and women are silent; when it comes to small talk and trivial matters, women go into exhaustive detail while men are cursory… women use conversation to create human bonds; men use conversation to engage in opposition and competition.
第53页
For most men, verbal exchange is like a battle for territory; they use language to maintain their personal independence and to secure their position in the social hierarchy. They display their superior knowledge and talents. They push themselves to the center of the stage through storytelling, jokes, and the offering of information. ////—Why has traditional philosophy been a man’s stage? Because maintaining independence through language, and displaying excellence and defeating one’s opponent through sharp argument—these elements of philosophical activity are precisely what men are enthusiastic about, and women are not interested in.
第57页 For men, embedding “nothing much” at the beginning of a conversation is almost like a ritualized response. ////—It really is. Understatement has become a habit.
第62页
For people, home is comfortable and at ease, like a backstage area. But the meaning of this comfort at home may be completely opposite and incompatible for men and women. For men, this comfort means being free from having to prove their abilities through language, and free from using language to individualize other people’s impressions of them. At the very least, they are in a mood where they need not speak; they can freely remain silent. But for women, home is a place where they can speak freely, and especially a place where they feel the need to talk with those close to them. For them, the meaning of comfort is that they can talk to their hearts’ content, without worrying about how others judge what they say. ////—This can explain why daughters always prefer to talk with family members, whereas boys at home may be even more taciturn than they are outside.
第67~68页
According to a study by Roberts and Japp of the staff at a middle school, women’s arguments could not stand up to their male colleagues, because they always tended to use private experience as evidence, or to speak generally about what effect a certain policy would have on individual students. The men’s argumentative angle, by contrast, was entirely different: they clearly formed judgments of right and wrong. ………… The logic adopted by this wife was a more private attempt to explain the world: observing and integrating personal experience, then binding it together with the experiences of others. The logic her husband took for granted, by contrast, was a more public attempt: gathering information, carrying out an investigation, or, like doing research, deriving arguments through rules and abstract logic. There was also a man who, together with his friends, complained that women discuss problems like “floating sand.” These men felt that whenever they wanted to examine a problem logically and step by step, women would always digress in the middle. He cited a passage from *American Divorce* as an example. He thought that when Debbie says in the film, “I can’t argue with you right now, I have to take the kids’ bread out of the oven,” she is avoiding continuing the argument with the other person, because earlier she had blurted out an accusation in the conversation: “All you know how to do is criticize me!” And when the other party pursued this line based on those words, she had no evidence to back herself up, so she changed the subject midway. ////—Although I haven’t had many arguments with girls, I do indeed have a similarly clear feeling. Even when my own arguments become sharp, boys will evade too, but their degree of avoidance can absolutely not be compared with that of girls. In particular, sometimes it is girls who level “accusations” at me, but when I take them seriously and rebut them in detail, they instead talk around the issue or fight back with non-intellectual means: “I can’t argue with you right now; I’m in a bad mood today / I haven’t thought it through yet / you’re too young / you don’t have enough experience / anyway, you just can’t understand me…”. And when the opponent is a boy, if I initiated the “accusation,” he may still ignore it, but if he initiated the accusation, he will generally never lightly change the subject, nor evade by being slippery, but is more willing to supplement the argument with even strained logic. Here, too, there is an implied reason why women have historically been at a disadvantage in logical speculation: this may not be due to any great inferiority in intelligence, but rather because women often have never valued objective abstraction—that is, the importance of abstract logic and coherence, which require stripping away subjective and individual feelings—and since men’s conversational style from the outset leans toward the public rather than the private, they are more enthusiastic about using and honing the logic of language.
第69~70页
When men monopolize all the speaking in meetings, many women (including researchers) believe they are taking control of the whole situation, trying to shut women out so they can publicly display their skills and status. But in fact, men speaking a lot does not mean they want to prevent women from speaking; those who stand up to speak assume that everyone else is like him, able to express opinions freely and without restraint. From this perspective, men’s freedom in talking is precisely the evidence that they regard women as equal in status: “We are all equal.” The meaning behind their behavior may be: “Let’s compete together for the chance to speak.” ////—Why is it that when men and women have roughly equal opportunities for education, men still occupy the power of speech in the academic world? Indeed, men often do not deliberately try to exclude women, but objectively women are indeed excluded by invisible means. This is because the academic world always requires free debate, and requires that one establish one’s status in the scholarly circle through competitive speech. Yet men are always more suited than women to a fierce battlefield environment, and this causes women to remain at a disadvantage in the struggle for status and influence within the circle.
第73页
Reporting the events of one’s life to friends is not only a privilege; for many women, it is also a duty. One woman complained that she did not want to keep telling her friends again and again about her breakup with her boyfriend, but she felt she had to. Therefore, if she did not tell her close friends about such a major event, when they found out on their own they would feel hurt. They would take her keeping it secret as a sign of indifference to their friendship. Yet this woman was surprised to discover that her boyfriend had not mentioned the breakup to any of his friends. He continued as usual to work, go to the gym, and play ball with his friends, as if nothing had happened at all. ////—This man is exactly like me…
第76页
As mentioned earlier, women’s fondness for talking about troubles confuses men greatly, because men regard complaints as requests to provide advice. However, we can now view trouble-talk as one part of the kind of intimate conversation exemplified by talking about trivial matters. Providing solutions to troubles is not only not the point; more importantly, it interrupts the topic. Therefore, when one trouble is solved, another is then dug up, and troubles keep being found to talk about, so that intimate conversation can be sustained without interruption. ////—As for me, perhaps my only trouble is that I really cannot find any trouble worth mentioning. Of course I do have moments of pain, but I have never truly experienced indecision; when I am in pain, it is as if I merely fell down and felt hurt. Although I cannot immediately eliminate my pain, I can quickly figure it out: this little bit of pain is no big deal, and it will be gone soon enough. Thus, up to now, the vast majority of the pain I have encountered has never become a trouble for me. The things that can be said to be insoluble perplexities are probably only “big questions” such as the problem of life and death.
第83页
The women of these Greek villages have the same dilemma as the American female students in the study by Ed and Eckert: they need friends to talk to, but they also know that revealing secrets is a risk. Women are more willing than men to take this risk, because the focus of their gaze is on interpersonal affinity, while the consequences of a vulnerable appearance and loss of independence occupy only a small corner of their minds. Men are less willing to take this risk, because they always avoid giving others an impression of vulnerability and are committed to maintaining personal independence; as for interpersonal intimacy, it may not matter so much.
第89页
Noticing details is a form of care, and it can build a relationship between people. However, men are still often irritated by women’s attention to detail, because women have always cared first and foremost about establishing intimacy between people, and they place great importance on speaking about details. ////—We can understand why women are often particularly sensitive to the details of everyday life, yet are not as good as men at detecting subtle flaws in a line of reasoning or in an academic debate. This is because women attend to details in order to foster intimacy, whereas men attend to details in an attempt to find a point of entry for attack. And when these two styles are somehow inverted, both become extremely bad. When someone is aggressively attentive to details in everyday life, she becomes a nitpicking, hard-to-please perfectionist; and when someone attends to the details of an academic debate in order to seek intimacy, he becomes an indecisive compromise-seeker, a “let’s all get along” sort of eclecticist.
Page 92
There is a married couple who hold different views about the relationship between their son and his best friend. The mother found it strange that they spent so much time together playing soccer, baseball, and the like, while her son actually learned from an address book which university his best friend was attending. … All this struck the mother as quite odd. She simply could not imagine how they could be called best friends if they did not even know about one another’s recent life situation. But in the father’s eyes, none of this was at all surprising.
Pages 97–98
… In these examples, the men possessed information they could pass on to others, and they indeed did so. On the surface, there seems to be nothing strange about this; and yet what is strange is that in many cases, men will have information that requires a lengthy narrative in order to convey it to women, whereas women rarely have information of comparable transmissibility to pass on to men.
As times change, the relationship between men and women has undergone many-sided transformations. Nowadays, very few men would say, “I am better than you because I am a man and you are a woman.” But the absence of this statement does not guarantee that women, in dealing with men, will no longer feel frustrated. One thing that makes women dissatisfied is that a conversation so often magically turns into a lecture: the man gives a speech, while the woman becomes a listener with “the capacity for appreciation.”
Men and women once again discover that their relationship is unequal. The speaker is plainly a more authoritative expert, playing the role of teacher, while the listener’s role is that of student. If women and men could take turns playing the roles of speaker and listener, then everything would be fine. But that is not how it is. Because women and men have different habits in interacting with others, this unequal pattern of conversation is produced. Since women seek to build interpersonal harmony, they tend to restrain their abilities rather than display them. Men, however, tend to fight for the center of the stage and value the feeling of being more learned than others, so they seek opportunities to acquire and disseminate knowledge.
Page 100
(In discussions between experts and non-experts) Lytle-Pellegrini expected that people without specialized knowledge would take only a short time to express agreement and support what the expert said. That is indeed what happened, except when the expert was female and the non-expert opponent was male. In such cases, the frequency with which the female expert expressed support (“yes,” “that’s right,” etc.) was far greater than that of the non-expert men speaking with them. According to the ratings of the experimental observers, the non-expert men were more dogmatic than the female experts. In other words, the women in this experiment not only failed to use the specialized knowledge they possessed as their strength, they actually tried to suppress it and to conceal their talents through overt acts of agreement. In their behavior, specialized knowledge seemed like something that had to be hidden. ////——This case shows that the reason women are so often in a weak position in the sphere of thought is by no means simply a matter of educational conditions. Here we see that even a female expert who has received more education in specialized knowledge still inevitably tends to be at a disadvantage in front of men. This is a matter of nature.
Page 101
Men always tend to seize status and challenge others’ authority, and this is true even when facing men. From this, it can be seen that when a man challenges a woman’s authority, just as he would challenge another man, what he displays is an attitude of respect and equality, not discrimination. Therefore, the emergence of unfair treatment is not simply due to men’s attitudes; its real cause lies in the difference between men’s and women’s behavioral patterns. Most women lack experience in facing challenges and defending themselves, so when confronted, they mistake it for an attack on their personal credibility. ////——Although the author is a woman, she shows full understanding of male traits.
Page 101
Lytle-Pellegrini believes that the men in this study were playing a game of “Did I win?” while the women were playing a game of “Was I helpful to him?” My own view is that the women’s game is “Do you like me?” whereas the men’s game is “Do you respect me?” If, in the process of seeking respect, men lose some women’s liking, that is merely an unintended side effect—just as women who seek to be liked may also lose some of the other party’s respect. ////——Indeed. What I have always cared about first is respect, whether it is the respect I hope others will grant me or the respect I myself am willing to give others. Even when my respect is understood by the other party as a disruption of intimacy, I will not abandon my respect, and would rather let the other person move away from me,
Page 103
Calling Ms. M’s self-consciousness “dependence” implies a negative judgment of her, whereas I think this is actually just a typical male way of seeing things. The assumption reflected here is that the opposite of independence must be dependence. If this assumption really is men’s view, then no wonder so many men carefully avoid having too close a relationship with others; they must insist on independence in order to avoid the humiliation of depending on others. But they overlook another option: mutual dependence. ////——Very well said. My pluralism is going to show that “mutual independence” and “mutual dependence” are also mutually supportive.
Page 121 When the behavioral patterns of men and women fall into conflict, if one can understand that some behaviors that appear unfair and unreasonable may simply be the result of different behavioral patterns, without any absolute right or wrong in themselves, this will help alleviate frustration.
Pages 121–122
At first glance, conflict seems to be the opposite of harmony and intimacy. Many articles about male and female behavioral patterns say as much: men are purely competitive and tend to conflict with one another; women are cooperative and tend to ally with one another. Yet even conflict implies mutual engagement with others. Although many women are indeed accustomed to the language of closeness, and men are accustomed to self-display, things are by no means so simple, because in a situation of mutual competition, self-display is also a form of connection with others. Moreover, competition can also be seen as a way of creating relationships with others.
For most women, conflict is a threat to interpersonal relations and must be avoided at all costs; all kinds of disputes are best settled without ever meeting head-on. But for men, conflict is an unavoidable path in the process of competing for status. Thus men can accept the existence of conflict, and may even seek it out, embrace it, and enjoy it.
The cultural linguist Ong argues in his work Fighting for Survival that “competition” (the opposition of people’s needs, desires, and skills) is an inseparable part of being human, but the place it has occupied in men’s lives has always far exceeded its weight in women’s lives. He points out that typical male behavior includes all kinds of competition, including war, fighting, conflict, contests, and arguments. Male behavior is full of ritualized battles, with rough games and sports as typical examples. Women, on the other hand, are good at using intermediaries or mediation to solve problems. In addition, they fight for substantive things rather than for goals with merely formal significance. Friendships among men usually contain a benignly aggressive component, whereas women tend to take such aggression seriously.
Ong points to the close relationship between oral expression and “confrontation.” Verbal argument—from formal debate to the study of formal logic—is in essence a kind of confrontation and competition. From this perspective, we will find that many men, in everyday conversation, are always hoping to stage a logical debate, and the reason lies in that male tradition of expecting competition. In fact, verbal self-display (what I call reportive talk) is part of a larger framework in which men view life as an arena of contest.
Because women’s imagination has not been captured by ritualized combat, they tend to misunderstand or be perplexed by the stubbornness in men’s ways of speaking, and to overlook the ritualized nature of benign aggression, for aggression is only a ritual action. By the same token, women’s group alliances may also be ritualized just like men’s fights; the outward appearance of women’s groups can conceal struggles over interests, and an appearance of similarity among them can hide deeper differences at the level of ideas. Men are confused by women’s ritualized language, just as women are confused by men. ////——Indeed. Although I am usually rather reserved in my daily life, from my enthusiasm for blogging and my sharpness in online discussions you can see that I accept, seek, embrace, and enjoy ritualized competition and confrontation—more specifically, verbal confrontation. Recently I happened to let friends such as Yali and Mist experience a bit of my aggressiveness; I hope you can understand (and you seem already to have understood—many thanks!) the following fact: my unreserved display of aggressiveness is by no means due to disregard or contempt for friendship, but precisely due to valuing friendship. Through sharp criticism (whether or not it is accepted), my connection with you is strengthened rather than broken; that is at least how I see it. As for other friends who, for various reasons, are temporarily unable to understand that my verbal aggression is actually friendly, then I have no choice but to remain silent. But the result of doing so can only be a growing distance and a weakening of trust. However, as long as one does not deliberately provoke me or even lecture me, and instead acknowledges my independence, then even if I restrain my aggressiveness, I can still build a good relationship with that person. In addition, as I will soon discuss, the spirit of ancient Greece was precisely the most typical and concentrated eruption of masculinity. This ritualized, competitive, self-display-based combat and play was most fully expressed in the ancient Greek Olympic Games. And the ancient Greek tradition of debate, the rise of philosophy and logic, the heightening of heroism, and so on, were all typical products of masculine traits. That is why contemporary feminism’s treatment of male-ism as the core of the entire Western intellectual tradition is entirely reasonable, because the source of the whole Western tradition is precisely that extremely, almost pathologically, masculine cultural style. Therefore, the statement that “women studying philosophy harms both philosophy and women” is also reasonable (a similar remark, besides Zhou Guoping, was probably made by Schopenhauer or Nietzsche). The point is that philosophy must necessarily begin from a masculine mode of thinking, because philosophy cannot be separated from the history of philosophy, and the history of philosophy is the product of masculine thought. So if a woman cannot grasp masculine modes of thought, she cannot truly enter the gate of philosophy; whereas a man, even if he cannot grasp feminine modes of thought, can still enter philosophy quite well (though if he could grasp another mode of thought, he might do even better). Thus, simply entering philosophy itself requires women to pay an extra price (for many people this is indeed a kind of injury). Conversely, if women truly enter the center stage of philosophy, they will inevitably change the masculine intellectual traits that have characterized the philosophical tradition all along; that is to say, their entry will necessarily bring about a fundamental transformation in the direction of philosophy, which can be said to be an “injury” to philosophy. In this sense, women entering philosophy is still something worth encouraging and looking forward to, though it would be best to be fully aware of the impact it has on both sides.
Page 127
The differences between men and women in facing conflict are reflected in many ways of speaking. Sachs, in her study of preschool children, found that when little boys played doctor-and-patient, in 79 percent of cases they fought over who would be the doctor, and it always took a long time of arguing to determine who could play this higher-status role. Other researchers found similar results. The linguist Elaine Andersen had preschool children perform doctor-and-patient stories with puppets. She likewise found that boys wanted to compete for the role of doctor, and usually rejected the roles of patient or baby. Only one-third of the girls wanted to play doctor. They usually were happy to be a patient, a baby, or a mother. ////——The differences between men and women are so obvious in preschool children’s play that this seems to mean that those differences are not entirely shaped by society and culture. Although cultural tradition undoubtedly plays an important role, nature probably accounts for a fairly large share as well.
Page 134
For boys and men, aggressive behavior is not an obstacle to friendship; quite the contrary, it is a good way to provoke interaction and create friendship.
Pages 139–140
… (the author’s own work is being questioned) Among the students who asked these twelve questions, ten were women and two were men. All ten of the women’s questions were supportive or exploratory, asking for explanation, clarification, or personal information. … However, the two questions from the men were quite challenging. One asked, “Your book is closely involved with psychology; why do you refuse the way a psychologist questioned you at your lecture?” Another asked, “Should most of the topics in your book belong more properly to rhetoric or interpersonal communication rather than linguistics?” … So what is the “meaning” of challenge? In my view, the questions the men asked seem to have been attempts to diminish my authority. … I do not like that; I prefer the women’s questions and feel that my authority has been encouraged. I would not even mind one question that offended me about my marital privacy. But in fact, challenge may be a form of respect. A male colleague pointed out that when a serious issue is involved, “softball” questions are not at all to the point. Likewise, another male colleague, when referring to a book review he had written, said, “Express your respect for the other person by wrestling with him.” Clearly, in academic interaction, challenge is a constructive act. ////——Indeed, from my own experience, in questions asked at all kinds of lectures and forums, those sharp criticisms with strong aggressiveness, even those that put the speaker on the spot, are rarely uttered by women. Those who, under the name of “asking questions,” go on at length expounding their own views are also necessarily men. At the same time, after fierce mutual dismantling and even ridicule and sarcasm, the discussants then happily go drinking and dining together, with harmonious relations. Indeed, this is the constructive way for academic exchange.
Page 147
Every year, the students in my class have to record some everyday conversations they happened to take part in, and extract passages in which people recount personal experiences. One year, two students analyzed all the stories transcribed by the students and compared the similarities and differences between stories told by men and women. They found that the differences matched exactly the pattern I had described.
The fourteen stories told by men were all accounts of their own deeds. Among the twelve stories told by women, only six were about themselves; the others were events that happened to other people. In men’s stories, the self always played the role of protagonist or adversary. Most of the time, the stories they told had a somewhat boastful color. For example, two of the men described their outstanding performance in successfully helping their team win a victory. However, many of the stories told by women made themselves look a bit foolish. For example, one woman said that she had no idea her nose had been broken until, years later, a doctor told her so, and only then did she realize things were bad.
My students’ informal study yielded results similar to those of another scholar, Johnstone. Johnstone found that:
Women’s stories are about groups, while men’s stories are about competition. Men talk about human competition, such as physical competition like fighting, and social competition, in which they use verbal or intellectual abilities to preserve personal honor. … By contrast, women’s stories revolve around group norms and tend to talk about group action.
Page 148
In Johnstone’s study, not only did men more often narrate deeds done on their own, but the outcomes of such solitary actions differed greatly in men’s and women’s accounts as well. The outcomes in men’s stories were usually good, whereas women depicted themselves as being in pitiable circumstances.
Page 154
For many women, openly opposing another person’s wishes (or what they take to be another person’s wishes) is an idea they have never even thought of. Ironically, for some women, the thought of breaking up with the other person seems to be an easier thing. (The author then gives an example: the wife wanted to buy a certain used car, but no matter what she could not persuade her husband to agree that this car was better than another one. Their marriage had already fallen into crisis, and she felt she had little to lose, so she decided to lay her cards on the table and went to buy the car on her own. When she was ready to face her husband’s anger, she found that he had no objections at all. Later, when she told him what she had originally expected—his anger—he laughed at her: “From the very beginning, when she had some strong desire, she should have done what she wanted to do.” He could not understand why she had to wait until she had his blessing before doing something she was certain was right.) ////——This example is very interesting. Indeed, when I myself am stating my position to friends, if the other party does not accept my view, I generally do not feel offended by it, because I am simply honestly stating that I do not like doing this. As for you liking to do it, then go ahead and do it—that is your freedom; when did that offend me? Therefore, I hope that even when my friends see me expressing contempt for something, they can still go ahead and do it without worrying about my feelings. Of course, if someone is going to force onto me something I despise, or deliberately show it off in front of me, then I will be furious. As long as you do not provoke me, and simply do the things you yourself deem right, I certainly will not object.
Page 156
George explained: “When I get angry about something and launch an attack, I hope to encounter resistance. If there is no resistance at all, I feel frustrated, and then I’ll really be angry.” ////——Heh heh, although it is not always like this, occasionally I really am this way too: when I launch a sharp criticism at someone, and the other party has absolutely no reaction, I get so frustrated. You ought to resist my criticism; that would be the right thing to do.
Page 207 Gender differences are not something that can be changed; being able to understand the meanings behind one another’s personalities and ways of speaking is the key to improving relations between men and women.
When she angrily says to you, “You don’t understand me,” or “You’re being unreasonable,” if you are willing to reply like this: “It’s not that I don’t understand you; it’s that we express care in different ways…” then many needless, drawn-out disputes can be dispelled in a gentle adjustment.
It is not easy to lay a solid foundation for love. Understanding the other person’s patterns of speech and accepting each other’s expressions with an open mind can bridge the gulf and establish a more mature relationship between the sexes.
Page 209
One of the inspirations for writing this book came from a research project I participated in, which was about how students from second grade of elementary school up through college talk with friends. At first we did not try to examine gender differences, but when I watched the videotapes, I had to notice the huge differences between men and women. Astonishing similarities link women together, and link men together at the other end. And these similarities transcend the gulf of age. In many respects, a twenty-five-year-old woman is more similar to a second-grade boy than to a second-grade girl. ////——Several of the dialogue cases here are quite interesting, but they’re too long, so I’m too lazy to excerpt them.
Page 243
Complementary heterogeneity usually occurs when a woman and a man have differing sensitivities and hypersensitivities. For example, a man who fears losing his freedom will put distance between them at the first signal he interprets as the other person trying to control him. But putting distance between them is only an alarm signal for a woman who fears losing intimacy. If one tries to get closer, it will intensify his fear and his response (putting even more distance between them), and also intensify her feeling and her response, thus interacting in a continuous spiral of expansion. Understanding the patterns each person has and the motives buried behind them is the first step in breaking through this destructive cycle.
Page 253
People of either sex will, in certain respects, prefer someone of the other sex; this is a natural phenomenon. The development of everyone’s patterns of behavior is based on countless influences, such as where one grew up, racial background, religious or cultural baptism, class, as well as personal experience and the characteristics of sex. In particular, sex will make a person’s life and personality unique. But when we see another pattern reflecting individual differences, it provides a starting point not only for self-understanding, but even more for creating flexibility. Flexibility means that when the original spontaneous way can no longer achieve the goal, one still has the freedom to choose other options. ////——If I were to put “flexibility” in my own words here, it could be “tension” or “possibility,” and this is precisely one of the great interests of pluralism.
Page 253
Both women and men can benefit greatly from learning from each other. Women can learn from men how to accept conflict and difference without regarding them as threats to intimacy; men can learn from women how to depend on each other without regarding it as a threat to freedom. ////——Well said.
Page 256
The greatest mistake lies in believing that there is only one correct way to speak in this world, only one correct way to listen, or only one correct kind of partnership. ////——See, after a deep investigation of relations between men and women, one naturally moves toward “pluralism”; this is an excellent shortcut, isn’t it?
May 23, 2008
· Chu Jing
2008-05-24 00:09:07 Anonymous 59.66.219.104
Passing by~~
· Soul Pilgrimage
2008-05-24 15:29:21 Anonymous 124.133.158.148
I really didn’t expect that, when gender differences are analyzed carefully, they could be this subtle.
If women are truly to enter the sphere of thought, it seems that in the course of research they will have to overcome many factors of nature and learn more from men. Of course, “overcome” can only be within a certain range; otherwise, as you say, women would also become difficult-to-please, picky perfectionists in life, and their admirable and lovable qualities would no longer exist.
It’s rather difficult, but once you have begun to realize it, you can consciously practice it. In fact, I personally feel that I am still very competitive and unwilling to lose; at least I used to be. How is it that, somehow, I seem to have become “softer” and “weaker” in subtle, perhaps unintentional ways as well? Could it really be that this is nature at work? After all, I am ultimately still just a woman.
· Gu Cu
2008-05-24 18:45:34
Any analysis of gender differences is talking about some overall tendency; when it comes down to specific individuals, there will be all sorts of variations, so there is no need to match everything one by one. Still, understanding some general tendencies is obviously enlightening for reflecting on one’s own personality and for getting along harmoniously with others.
A typical man is suited to being a philosopher, but there is no need to remain stubbornly attached to masculinity. The “entry point” into philosophy must involve understanding “freedom,” “independence,” as well as the pursuit of the self and competition with respect—things that men find easier to accept. That is why men probably find philosophy easier to enter. But as the history of Western thought has developed to this day, the stubbornness and crisis caused by the tradition of male-ism can no longer be ignored, especially as they are brought into relief through scientism, the ecological crisis, and so on. This requires philosophy to carry out a certain self-transcendence and rise above the stubbornness of male-ism. This is precisely why feminist thought is so important. This turn, of course, requires the participation of women, and even more requires male scholars to open their minds.
As for me personally, the thinking I am currently engaged in still begins from a male, or rather a “boyish,” perspective, because that is the starting point. But in the end I will establish a connection with feminism; only then, from man to woman, will my philosophy be complete.
Since I am, after all, male, it is hard for me to understand women’s way of thinking, and even more so to claim that I understand women’s feelings. But I think that if one is a woman and wants to make a mark in the realm of thought, there is absolutely no need to deliberately change one’s personality. Throughout history there have also been female powerhouses, female scientists, and so on, but in many cases they have in fact compromised to suit male styles, and thus they have been unable to give the history of thought a truly feminine shock. Women can fully bring their own nature into fullest play in order to enter the intellectual world; of course this requires that those who think of themselves as men no longer monopolize power in the intellectual world, and that they be prepared to receive women’s influence. Women do not need to make their personalities lean toward men, but they do need to understand men’s way of thinking and understand the basic character of the traditional history of Western thought. Understanding itself is an effective kind of learning. Compared with deliberately going against one’s feelings and changing oneself, changing through “understanding” leaves no trace; this is true whether one is striving to understand others or to understand oneself. “Knowing” itself is a kind of practice; knowing the world itself is changing the world.
2008-05-25 20:27:19
What the commenter above says has quite a flavor of new feminism. After feminism developed to its fullest in the 1970s, it began to move toward a postmodern feminist path. Women obtaining rights absolutely does not mean replacing men as the new center; rather, it means relying on their own distinctive aesthetic consciousness and social function, living together on this planet with men, and seeking reconciliation!
· Soul Pilgrimage
2008-05-25 22:23:47 Anonymous 124.133.154.63
Brilliant!!!!
· Yi Wu
2008-06-01 15:44:08
Especially sometimes it is precisely girls who bring me “accusations,” and when I take them seriously and argue the matter out in detail, they instead start dodging the issue or striking back by non-intellectual means: “I can’t debate this with you right now; I’m in a bad mood today / I haven’t thought it through yet / you’re too young / you don’t have enough experience / anyway, you just can’t understand me…”
Have you ever thought that perhaps these moods and so on simply do not matter at all to men, but really do matter a great deal to women? Maybe if she is not in a good mood, she truly doesn’t want to talk? Could it be that she really isn’t lying to you?
· Gu Cu
2008-06-01 15:55:30
I didn’t mean to accuse women. I was precisely saying that this really is a characteristic of women, and therefore I can fully accept it.
· Yi Wu
2008-06-01 16:00:30
Accepting—what a word worth savoring
· Yi Wu
2008-06-01 16:07:25
The former emphasizes speaking on a public platform, and therefore necessarily excludes private emotions and experiential grounds, placing more weight on public reason and logical evidence; whereas emotional conversation takes place between intimate private persons, and therefore focuses on talking about shared feelings and experiences, yet it is hard for it to arrive at universal conclusions.
I simply lean more toward the latter, and that can’t be changed anyway; if I were to change, I might as well die. And then you come along saying, yes, women should persist in themselves and find new paths. Thanks a lot. But I’m tired of your previous conversation, and you deny the possibility of our latter one, so that’s fine, isn’t it? Isn’t that the end of it, hehe.
· Gu Cu
2008-06-01 21:38:54
The significance of this book lies precisely in guiding readers to accept difference and to acknowledge that there is not only one way of thinking and speaking.
What I have always emphasized is that my viewpoint is valid, and that my path is possible. I have never denied the possibility of different paths. As for some absolutists, when they see me emphasizing a certain position different from theirs, they assume that I want those who differ to change; there is nothing I can do about that. I have repeatedly emphasized that I do not require her to change, and when she had once been there denying herself, I also always said that she should find herself, hold fast to herself, and not change lightly. I have also repeatedly said that my criticism is only meant to spur her to discover herself and move toward independence; I am not preaching, and I am not asking her to change. What I precisely hope is that she will not keep changing back and forth, saying one reason one moment and then another the next, with no stable position whatsoever, merely resisting for the sake of resisting—do not change, but hold fast. Yet in the end she still says, “I simply lean more toward the latter, and that can’t be changed,” which shows that in the end she still has not understood my original intention.
There is a faction of feminists that is frightening: although they have discovered women’s characteristics, they thereby hate men, denigrate men, and exalt lesbianism. The thinking of this group is also understandable.
Correction: “acknowledge that there is not only one way of thinking and speaking” should be “acknowledge that there is not only one correct way of thinking and speaking.”
Some people, though they acknowledge that there are different ways of thinking and speaking, still think only their own is correct, and they either are hostile to or despise those who are different. Traditional male-ism can acknowledge that women’s way of thinking is different, but it will proclaim that it is lower. A certain modern school of feminism also acknowledges difference, but turns around and becomes hostile to men.
So it is that love between men and women is the key to entering pluralism. Because as long as you are not homosexual, as long as you have found an opposite-sex partner and communicate fully with them, you are bound to discover difference. And if you can persist in equality while also persisting in love, then you can accept difference and accept the essence of pluralism, “difference and equality.” This is different from the traditional hierarchical “different and unequal”; nor is it the modern “same and equal.” “Different and equal” is precisely the most distinctive claim of pluralism.
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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