You Just Don't Understand - Deborah Tannen - ***

When a woman asks, "What do you think?", chances are good that she wants a discussion, not a decision.

Women nag because they don't know if the man is taking them seriously; men delay because they want to feel like they're acting of their own volition.

-- if you genuinely want to help someone, ask them to let you know what you can do. If they're calling the shots, they won't feel like allowing you to assist them is an indication that they can't handle things.

Men look for evidence of dominance and status, women look for evidence of connection
Divorced men and women both cited increased freedom as a benefit, but the freedom meant different things. To men, the freedom meant reduced obligations. To women, the freedom meant they didn't have to worry about the men!

Again, when a woman says something to a man, she's probably not looking for a solution.
When a man offers unsolicited advice to a woman, he's telling her they're not the same - she has the problems, he has the answers.

When a man says something to a woman, she shouldn't pounce on it as an opportunity to improve their connection.

Women have a tendency to deflect attention from themselves.

Troubles for men: tell them they've got it
Troubles for women: ask them about it and let them share their feelings

"In order to help the highest-status member of the party to dominate the conversation, others are expected to ask him questions that they know he can answer with authority."
-- I'll have to try this sometime, people will love it

[talking about a guy trying to fix the author's camera]
"He declared the lid hopelessly stuck. He explained the reason, then explained in detail how I could take pictures without a light meter. . . Even though I knew there wasn't a chance in the world I would adopt his system, I listened politely, feigning interest, and assiduously wrote down his examples. . ."
-- How do you counter this?
-- Maybe he could have explained enough of it to give her the gist of its complexity, then asked her, "How is this sounding so far?" - that would give her a nice opportunity to tell him she doesn't want to do it or ask questions

"It's just that I'm so used to listening to men go on about things I don't care about, I didn't even realize how bored I was until you made me think about it."
- they will do it and they will hate you for it without knowing why

"There is a kind of social contract operating here. Many women not only feel comfortable seeking help, but feel honor-bound to seek it, accept it, and display gratitude. For their part, many men feel honor-bound to fulfill requests for help whether or not it's convenient for them to do so."

Women are more comfortable learning from other women, who don't seperate themselves from their students as strongly
-- when teaching a woman, have them do things - women like a shared growth experience vs. men's enjoyment of proving competence by obeying orders

Men get annoyed when people don't accept their judgement, because they think their competency is being questioned
-- what to remember here is that the point at which further assessment is "unnecessary" is reached sooner by men than women, who like to improve things

Men are public speakers, women private speakers.
For women, talk is interaction. For men, talk is information.
-- never spend more than a couple sentences on an unsolicited explanation

Men's silence at home is a disappointment to women.

Men tend to disregard women's arguments, which draw more strongly from anecdote than men's.
-- for a woman, the anecdote is a prelude to the point, not the evidence for it

Women are as likely as men to have opinions during meetings; however, they aren't as suited to competing for floor time.
- During a presentation, a woman's key drive is that people understand her. A man's drive is that his competency can stand up to any attack.


"Keeping friends up to date about the events in one's life is not only a privilege; for many women it is an obligation. One woman explained that she didn't enjoy telling the story of her breakup with her boyfriend over and over, but she had to, because if she failed to inform her friends about such an important development, they would have been deeply hurt when they found out. . . The woman, furthermore, was incredulous when she learned that her boyfriend had not told anyone at all about their breakup."

"Carol had several women friends she talked to every few days, exchanging stories about dates with men. They would share their excitement before a new date, then report in detail what had been said and done. When Carol fell in love and formed a lasting relationship with a man, she ran out of material for talks with her friends. . .This put a strain on her friendships."
-- Sex and the City?

A few girls told a researcher (Eckert) that they prefer to have boys as friends because boys don't try to get juicy details and are less likely to spread them around. The girls may think that this demonstrates the moral superiority of boys. But the researcher points out that the reason a boy is less likely to scavenge for gossip and distribute his findings is because he has much less to gain by it. Boys' access to status is less a matter of who they are close to. . .

"scapegoat": a way to address an imbalance of power within a conversation

A psychologist (Leet-Pellegrini) set out to discover whether gender or expertise determined who would behave dominantly in a conversation. She set up pairs of people and asked them to discuss the effects of television violence on children. In some cases, she made one of the partners an expert by providing relevant information ahead of time. On average, experts did talk more, but men experts talked more than women experts.
Expertise also had a different effect on women and men with regard to supportive behavior. Leet-Pellegrini hypothesized that the person being supportive would be the non-expert: this was true everywhere except when the expert was a woman and her non-expert partner was a man. In this situation, the women experts showed support - saying things like "Yeah" or "That's right" far MORE than the non-expert men they were talking to. The women in this experience didn't wield their expertise as power, instead playing it down and making up for it through extra assenting behavior. They acted as if their expertise were something to hide. . . and perhaps it was. . . evidence of the woman's superior knowledge sparked resentment, not respect.
-- WHOA
When a woman has knowledge but won't speak up, it's not because she's afraid of being wrong. It's because she's afraid of being offensive.

When an expert man talked to an uninformed woman, he controlled the conversation from start to finish. When an expert man talked to an uninformed man, he controlled the conversation at the start, but didn't always have it at the end. Apparently, when the women surmised that the men they were talking to were more informed, they accepted that. But the men, despite their lack of information, would try to give their expert fellows a run for their money, possibly gaining the upper hand by the end.
-- the author goes on to say that she automatically assumes that her expertise gives her authority, which women agree with, but men often challenge her. She also states that most women lack experience in defending themselves against argumentative challenges, which they misinterpret as personal attacks on their credibility.

Women play "group wins" while men play "I win"
Women ask, "Do you like me?", vs. men asking, "Do you respect me?"

Sociologist Mirra Komarovsky found that the more middle class a couple was, the more the husband and wife considered each other friends.

Men and women listen in different ways. Women want feedback and support; men want quiet attention.
Some men don't like to listen at length because they feel it frames them as subordinate. Many women do want to listen, but expect it to be reciprocal - and are frustrated when their turn never comes.

Women want a balance in conversation; men assume that conversations are automatically balanced by each person's need to speak.

Two sociologists found that lesbians have sex less often than heterosexuals or gay men. They believe this happens because the women don't feel comfortable taking the role of initiator, a position in which they could be potentially perceived as making demands.
-- I bet couples with a "butch" would have more sex than couples without

Men's focus on dominance trains them to recognize and rebel against orders coming from equals.
Women use "Let's do this" as a way of offering their opinions to the group without telling them what to do. Men translate "Let's do this" into "I want you to do this" and resist it as if it were a stealthy manipulation.
-- the only time "Let's do this" is appropriate in guy language is when a man is improving on a previous proposal
-- Women, if you have good ideas, the man-group needs you to submit them in the form of a question [as men do] and be willing to defend them from inferior ideas
-- if a woman is using "Let's" on you, you should be happy: you're in her group

"It is not that women do not want to get their way, but that they do not wish to purchase it at the cost of conflict."
Women engage in creative solutions to preserve a balance in status.

Women are used to hearing explanations for preferences, but guys aren't used to giving them.

Boys boast, but girls who boast get criticized by the group for showing off.
Boys typically air complaints about other boys in the offenders' presences. Girls' complaints typically air in the absence of the accused, as to avoid conflict [and the ostracism that comes from going too far].

Girls fighting shatters their potential for friendship and makes them enemies; guys fighting gives them an opportunity to hash out their differences and become friends.

A woman's stories tend to be about community: a man's stories tend to be about contests.
-- she can hear all your stories of contests when you're not talking to her

Women will talk as much as men when everyone has a chance to speak, but don't like to be solo speakers as much as men.

Because women don't struggle to be seen as one-up, they're often seen as one-down.
Women having lower status than men subjects everything they do to that bias, which is difficult to overcome because it's subconscious.

When a woman asks for something indirectly, it's because she wants to get it without subordinating the other party with a direct request -- not because she's trying to trick them.

A woman saying "I'm sorry" means she feels bad, not that she needs to apologize.
Women don't want their apologies "accepted" and ignored - they want you to apologize, too, which strengthens the connection.

When women and men get together, they act according to men's norms.

Women don't like to let people know what they're doing wrong unless this can be done in an egalitarian way.

To a woman, intimacy means telling her what's on your mind - including what hurts.

Understanding gender differences in conversational style may not prevent disagreements from arising, but it gives you a better chance of preventing them from spiraling out of control.