Difficult People; a Guide to Handling Difficult Behaviour by Barry Winbolt

Author:Barry Winbolt [Winbolt, Barry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780954168636
Publisher: ISR Publishing
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Divided by a common language

Men deal with the raised emotion by diminishing its importance — they see it as incidental to the interaction - whereas women recognise emotional arousal as a sign that contact has been made, as a fundamental part of the interaction. Once again, this highlights the fact that the sexes are, to paraphrase George Bernard Shaw, ‘divided by a common language’.

In this brief summary I have not done justice to the huge amount of research that has been conducted by psychologists over the last two decades into the particularities and patterns of gender communication.

The key points I want to get across are that there really is a strong case for understanding the language of the sexes which Deborah Tannen calls ‘genderlect’. This places us in different cultures and, like any cultural differences, two-way respect is as important as understanding the language. If we cannot understand the language of the other culture at least we can know it exists.

The second point I would like to clarify is that I have not intended in any way to say that one is better than the other. We accept that men have, in general, more facial hair than women and that women, in general, are physically a little smaller than men. We must also accept that other differences exist without the matter turning into some sort of contest.

With regard to comments like ‘not all men/women are like that…’ that this sort of discussion usually provokes, of course they are not. These gender differences are tendencies and should not be taken as rigid or applying to all members of the sex in question. Garth Fletcher, Director of the International Society for the Study of Personal Relationships, says: ‘Differences within genders in relationships are almost always much greater than the differences between genders.’42 For any of the ‘typical’ gender responses there will be a significant proportion of that sex who are exceptions to the rule. While women (generally) tend to favour consensus, discussion and understanding in their communications there are, of course, many men who do too. In the same way there are plenty of women for whom status and winning or losing are powerful motivations in their lives.

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