What is your experience with this?

[ElboRuum]

I, occasionally, am flabbergasted by some of the "theoretical underpinnings" that women (some, not all of course) have of male behaviors that differ from their own. Some of these theories are so far afield of anything resembling common sense and reason that I wonder if they've every actually sated their obvious curiosity with something as simple and as revealing as an actual direct question to a male.

Or if they have, did the conversation go like this:

Woman: "Why do men do/like/need to XYZ?"

Man: "Well, I can't speak for all men, but I'd say most men do/like/need to XYZ because PDQ or LSMFT, while the rest possibly do/like/need to because of OMGWTFBBQ."

Woman: "Hmm. No, that can't be it. Thanks anyway, I'll keep looking."

Now, before you ask, let me give you what the specific inspiration for this is. I was reading a post which I generally agreed with (and do still), but the poster offered up a psychosocial mini-treatise on some male behavioral phenomenon that left me kind of shaking my head in just how far off the mark it was. I can, and do, routinely, try not to let this kind of riffing bother me when the point is otherwise solid, but the remark left me wondering: "Where are you getting this tripe from? Did you actually ask anyone male before you decided to offer it up this way to see if it held any water at all?"

I just find it simultaneously amusing and disheartening.

[rrneck]

1. How much do any of the culture war ideologies

depend on an interpretation of how somebody else feels about something?

This is the country that gave us the pet rock. Projection is profitable.

[ElboRuum]

2. Well, the way that such things get spread around...

...as though they were common knowledge that's interesting.

Apparently it is easier to believe an interesting lie than the boring truth.

[rrneck]

3. If it feels good, buy it. nt

[4th law of robotics]

4. A man telling a woman why women act/think a certain way

is mansplaining and is proof that he is a wrong and needs to change.

A woman telling a man why men act/think a certain way is a brilliant observation and is proof that . . . men are wrong and need to change.

There are what, 3.5 billion women on earth? It'd be insane to think anyone could speak for all of them.

And yet speaking for all 3.5 billion men on earth is how a not inconsequential number of women make a living.

[lumberjack_jeff]

5. Pfft. You're a guy! What can you be expected to know about guy behavior?

The question wasn't really a question. It is a conversation starter used within her circle of friends to demean/diminish the guys in her life so that the actual topic of conversation (which she'll soon get to) doesn't look so trivial and superficial.

e.g. ... "and he was totally looking at her butt as she walked away, and I was like... uh 'hello!'. How rude, right? So anyway, have you seen the new purses at ...."

You made the faux pas of misunderstanding the actual nature of the conversation. You mansplained the actual reasons that he was looking at her butt, and interrupted the conversation as it was intended to progress.

Bah! If you don't understand, then I can't explain it to you.

[Warren DeMontague]

6. Have you and I already had a conversation about Korzybski and general semantics? I think we have.

Anyway, I tend to approach all assertions that contain statements resembling "X are Y"

(Where X = "Men", "Women", "Dogs", "Bald People", etc)

are (begone, demon!)

Y (Where Y="such and such","those and that", etc)

as if they were a feral cat, howling and incoherent, sick and potentially rabid- hiding in my garage. With a broom and a combination of sympathetic kindness and firm subtle menace in my voice.

Labels and categories can be useful tools, but like the bass drop in dubstep, tools often cease to be useful when they are mis or overused.