I think you mean complements.
My observation is not directly on OP but related. My problem is when women give directions to women. Holy Crap!
Man and woman need to travel from point A to point B; a location previously untraveled by the couple. The man asks the woman to call for directions while he loads the last of the stuff into the car. But, unbeknownst to him, a woman answers the phone on the other end. It is not until a hour-and-a-half into the 45 minute trip that he discovers, once again, that he has embarked on yet another trip based on woman-to-woman directions.
Geez, I swore I’d never do this again!
Stuff like “Yeah, go down the highway to the second or third street on the left and turn and we are on the right.” This without knowing which way up or down the highway we are traveling and all the turns are based on this. If you ask “Is that on the North side then?” you get dead air on the other end. Ms.Nic is a capable map reader with a good sense of direction but when working off the info of another woman, everything breaks down.
never again, never again, never again
Perfect example. Men suck at spelling/grammar. 
I’m female, and hetero, and have always been able to read maps from a young age, as they are printed. Also have always had an excellent sense of direction in situ. So much so that my parents, after realizing it, would always pass the map to me to navigate on family trips.
I love maps, collect them, and would spend a lot of time with the National Geographic maps as a kid, which illustrated their feature stories. Usually, I can look at a city map of a destination beforehand, and then have a good idea in my head of what to expect when there, and be able to have a good sense of direction, even if it’s a new place. This is probably due to looking at so many maps from a young age, and having a sense of the basics of city planning. But, I also have a visual recall mind, and can “pull up” maps in my head. That, with the sense of direction, works really well. If I fly, I always want a window seat, and spend the whole time glued to the view below, to see the Real map of the country.
Plus, I have the extra added feminine feature of not being at all afraid that my balls will fall off if I have to ever stop and ask for directions.
Chess, and other games; I’ve played them, but just have no interest at all. Games just leave my mind flat. I’m not sure if it’s a lack of the competitive thing, no interest, even as a kid, or just that my interest is piqued more by navigating in a real world sense: ie, love to travel.
Seeing Nic2004’s post in preview, I give very precise directions: again, it’s the photo recall mind. I can usually playback the whole ride there in detail, and give the salient landmarks.
To me, this seems like a “duh,” as well, but I don’t think it is. I know a married couple who absolutely believe that the brains of men and women are the same. They both have masters degrees from top universities, so they are not unintelligent or uneducated. Her degrees are in math, so she is a little bit knee-jerk defensive whenever anyone says that women “aren’t good at” one thing or another. Of course, a sampling that is too small can’t be applied to the entire population, so the fact that she is good at math doesn’t mean women in general are (you’d think as a math person, she would know that! )
I would say that in general, women are “differently-abled,” to borrow a PC term, in spatial skills. The book I read that I mentioned earlier (I can’t think of the name of it just now), asserted that it really is much more common for women to orient a map to their direction, for instance. Doesn’t mean you can’t read a map, just means you do it differently.
So this thread consists of men saying “I’m good at reading maps but so is my wife,” or “I suck at reading maps but my wife is a pro.” Then on the women’s side we have “I’m good at reading maps” or “I’m good at reading maps but my husband is a helpless boob when it comes to maps/feeding himself.” And pride is a male virtue? 
But seriously I have no problem with maps, and neither do any of the women I know.
I can fold them back up, too.
My wife does all the map reading. I have a terrible sense of direction and I’m terrible at reading maps. My wife acts as navigator, she hates to drive so it works out nicely.
Right. I remember a study some/many years ago. It showed that men mostly understood maps better and women mostly understood direction better. Not that there was any “black/white” bright line, just a tendency.
As for elelle’s comment about men and directions; you have to understand that if a man asks a dude at a service station or something for directions, there is a decent chance the dude will send his fellow male off on a deliberate wild goose chase. OTOH, males like to give the “womenfolk” 
good directions.
“As for elelle’s comment about men and directions; you have to understand that if a man asks a dude at a service station or something for directions, there is a decent chance the dude will send his fellow male off on a deliberate wild goose chase. OTOH, males like to give the “womenfolk” good directions.”
[/QUOTE]
Horsefeathers. A man will only jerk another man around if they are good friends. The basis for the “not asking for directions” syndrome is status. All men’s interactions with men they don’t know are based on status. To ask directions is tatamount to saying “You have knowledge that I don’t, so I’m prostrating myself before you and begging your assistance”. To most men - especially the Alpha-male wannabes - this is tatamount to rolling on the ground and exposing your throat.
No, not really. That is anecdotal information and easily cancelled by opposing information. What is needed for credibility would be the results of a peer reviewed scientific study that supports your theory. (I think there are credible studies on some aspects of differences.)
Cite?
I don’t like to see women get defensive in these threads, because I really admire how my wife’s mind works.
Does our “getting defensive” change your admiration for your wife’s mind?
You were corrected by a male.
That’s not being knee-jerk defensive, in my opinion. That’s being accurate about a subtle but important difference. Because I have been around you for a while now, I know that you know that studies in the differences in male and female brains describe mostly tendencies. and not hard and fast rules or “great truths to live by” in male and female relationships.
What you see as an overreaction (knee-jerk defense) to a poorly worded statement may actually be a person responding to the same inaccurate stereotyping for the 1, 483rd time in 35 years. Just because men’s and women’s brains tend to be different, that does not mean that any specific woman has a different intellectual capacity than any specific man or vice versa. And a generality such as “Women aren’t good at one thing or another” cannot accurately be drawn either because that doesn’t necessarily follow.
From the linked article:
That strikes me as very odd. I’m male and I “orientate the map” because that’s the proper way of doing it. If you’re in unfamilar country you want the map to represent what you can see so you orientate it so that north points north. What is “illogical” about that?
OK, if I’m navigating in the car I probably wouldn’t bother turning the road atlas upside down when driving south, but if I’m out hiking with a topo map, you bet I’ll be holding it sideways, upside down or whichever damn way I’m heading!
And I speak as a fairly major map fan. As a kid I used to spend ages tracing maps and even drawing imaginary maps…
Can you elaborate? Especially the “duh” part. Thanks.
Of course. I didn’t mean my comment to be an indictment of her, at all. But some people who have encountered such inaccurate stereotyping are a little less uptight about it, that’s all.
That’s exactly right. My profession is market research, and although I am not a sampling expert, I do understand the concept of it, and the meaning/interpretation of the bell curve. Certainly, there are some women who are brilliant at math, and some men who are terrible at it. That in itself doesn’t prove a thing about which sex is better at it overall.
I am actually reading a book right now called “The Female Brain,” in which the author talks about a tendency by women to avoid the maths and sciences because they don’t perceive those fields to be “social” enough…they want to work with people. She does not believe that women are better or worse at these types of professions, but merely that they have different psychological needs that draw them to other types of professions. Don’t know if she’s right or not, but it makes a certain amount of sense to me. In my experience, women and men are more different psychologically than they are in terms of intelligence.
Female here – I love reading maps, I tend to collect up old maps (in digital format) to study them better. But, referring back to the OP, while I know how to play chess, and have played games, I tend to lose or get bored. Games of strategy just don’t gel with me. They don’t hold my attention. I usually just go off and read maps. 
I come from a family that totally lacks the gene for direction. We all have problems with getting lost. Location is an ability that has been breed out of us.
However, I work in real estate and I have learned somehow to read a map and give directions. I am not the best at doing it, but somehow I have learned to compensation for my woefully inadequate DNA.
I’m of the female persuasion, and I have to do the same thing. North is at the top of the map, and I have no problem visualizing where I am. Turning the map to line north up does me no favors. Also, I do the navigatin’ on our roadtrips, and my hubby is very thankful for my mad map skillz.
I navigate both by landmarks and by road names/numbers, and I will often ask for both when asking for directions.
Oh, you silly goose, you know what I meant.
Look at my new shoes I just picked up! Aren’t they divine? Squee!
Seeing as how my GPS computer is a woman (or at least has a woman’s voice), I’d say women can read maps.
–FCOD