You’re ignoring the opening question I posed, which was whether this imbalance was specific to sports or was about “partner’s activities” in general.
I like this question. ISTM that a BF would likely be expected to watch the GF act in a play, or perform in the orchestra, where he might not be expected to watch a field hockey game.
I would put this down to the tendency to dismiss women’s sports as irrelevant.
That’s not my experience. It might be more likely a boy would go, especially if it was a whole school sort of thing, like a play where half the class was in it. But not a choir concert, or a dance team performance. Boyfriend might go, but doesn’t have to. But a girl would go to boyfriend’s choir concert.
Did you know some schools still “assign” each cheerleader to a football player? On game day, she makes him a motivational poster and packs him snacks. Maybe a small gift. To help him play his best. It’s a practice that is dying out, thank God, but it’s still around to some degree.
And these are the little things. They are the least painful times and places where it’s made clear that boys are interesting, and girls just aren’t, or are a special case of interest only to other girls.
and as I clarified, the arrogance would be in an assumption that the silence should be about what you just said.
I still think you are misunderstanding what I said. It would be arrogant of me to think that any pondering they do should be about what I just said. What I said may not be of interest to them, they may have more important things on their mind, they might be formulating their own thoughts.
Then ISTM that the people involved are not actually having a conversation.
There’s nothing wrong with that, of course. Consenting adults can interact however they want. If friends or spouses or whoever have a mutually agreed pattern of just sort of “half talking” to each other in the way you describe, where either of them is free to disregard whatever the other one says at any time and just mentally switch to something they find more interesting, it’s nobody else’s business.
But usually, when two people are alone and one of them asks the other a direct question, as the woman in that Dave Barry story does:
then if the other person just goes into a long silence instead of responding to the question, it’s not unreasonable or “arrogant” for the questioner to assume that the question is what they’re thinking about.
I mean, in the ordinary practice of conversation people don’t usually just ignore one another’s direct questions.
I agree with this, as my wife has often expressed similar sentiments to me. I don’t know if it’s necessarily naive for men to think that they are unable to understand the superior complexity of women, though - many men (including myself) are woefully underequipped to do so, through said socialization. To me an analogy would be like learning a new language - many women were taught (perhaps unconsciously) to be emotionally observant from a young age, while many men weren’t. Anyone who has tried to learn a language as an adult recognizes how much more difficult it is to do as an adult, and the vast majority of people can never speak without an accent in a second language that they learned as an adult (some talented individuals may be able to, but most won’t be able to). Similarly, I believe that men would need to hone their emotional skills at an early age to achieve similar levels of proficiency to women in adulthood.
I think it’s personally very reasonable for men to take on more emotional labour than they had historically, but I think we should recognize that it is harder for a lot of us than it is for most women. It’s possible that there are also biological reasons for this (though I have not looked into whether there is any evidence for it), but I think even if there are no biological pressures, societal norms have resulted in most men being relatively emotionally unskilled compared to women. Expecting adult men to take on an equal amount of emotional labour without raising them to be prepared for that is about as reasonable as expecting someone who moved to the United States as an adult to be perfectly fluent in English. Yes, many people are able to do it, but I don’t fault them if they struggle with it.
Yup. In addition, women as well as men get indoctrinated with the idea that men are supposed to be clueless about these things, and women help reinforce the gender norms about male-female interations. (Even to the extent, as previous posters noted, of taking it for granted that men invariably want sports and sex, and not understanding that they may just not be interested.)
There’s also the toxic-masculinity aspect of severe social restrictions on what men are “allowed” to be interested in, or to prioritize, while still being regarded as “manly”.
For example, it’s a well-entrenched gender norm that (straight) men aren’t supposed to be interested in, say, watching women’s sports, or ballet, or fashion design. So if a man wants to be supportive to his girlfriend by attending her field hockey match, or ballet recital, or fashion show, is the conventional response to praise him for being an intrepid explorer of new realms of interest and an admirable partner?
Nope, it’s to mock him as “pussywhipped” or “emasculated” or maybe just plain “gay”. “Real men” are supposed to focus on stereotypically masculine interests, rather than stooping to the level of that intrinsically inferior trivial “girly” stuff for the sake of pleasing a woman.
If women had those kinds of social barriers to overcome whenever we wanted to supply support and attention to traditionally male-coded activities, we might not be so willing to go to the guys’ baseball games either.
Does she?
In Wolfpup’s post (which is the story I’m referring to) it is reported thus…
she happens to mention that as of this date they had been seeing each other for six months
That isn’t a direct question, that’s an observation.
Yup, as per commasense’s two links to the story in posts #39 and #43, which wolfpup encouraged everybody to read in posts #41 and #44, and which I previously quoted from in post #48.
I was only responding to the summary that Wolfpup wrote and my position is relevant to the situation given in that post.
I’m not sure there’s an objective, correct answer to the OP’s question; or how you’d find one if there was. Women may think they understand men better, but who’s to say whether their understanding is actually correct?
As you describe it, I would say that neither of you is understanding the other. You’re not getting the messages your wife wants you to, but she’s not getting that your method of communicating differs from hers. I don’t see why one side is more at fault than the other.
Having read the Dave Barry column, Roger at least realizes that something is happening beyond his initial interpretation of the conversation. Elaine is drawing a lot of conclusions about Roger, and they’re all wrong. Which one of them is closer to understanding the situation?
Do you really think that’s a direct question, though? If Roger replied “no, I hadn’t realized that”, would that have satisfied Elaine’s curiosity?
…Dave Barry?
Listening to a movie podcast, it struck me that over the past 30 years we have seen a vast expansion of ‘traditional’ male-culture items (Star Wars, gaming, superheroes, etc) being accepted by females, but the opposite (dolls, rom-coms, romance novels, etc, being accepted by males) has not been the case.
That’s certainly the cliché, but does it really happen all the time? I’ve been discovering a talent for baking and I sometimes take some homemade cookies or a pie when someone invites me to dinner. I’ve even taken cookies to the woman who cuts my hair, and to the site where I got my COVID vaccine, and no one has ever given me any grief for it.
Maybe not traditional dolls, but I assume some guys are buying all those action figures and Funko Pops. Guys are sewing their own costumes for sci-fi and comic conventions. Dancing with the Stars has run for 29 seasons; there’s probably a few guys tuning in.
That’s just reinforcing JohnT’s point, though. Guys may show interest in a traditionally “female”-coded thing (e.g., dolls, garment sewing), but it has to be in a traditionally “male”-coded form (so-called “action figures” instead of dolls, sci-fi/comic-con costumes instead of ordinary clothing).
That’s not exactly male “acceptance” of traditional female culture; in fact, as with the names “action figure” or “figurine” for what is essentially a doll, there’s a deliberate avoidance of terms or contexts that would suggest traditional female culture.
I have to intervene here as I think you’re being entirely silly.
A question of the form “Do you realize …” is technically a rhetorical question, exactly equivalent to an observation. That it is, it’s not really a query about whether or not someone is literally aware of something, but an observation about a notable and presumably important fact. So my description of it was accurate. So is this a “direct question”? Perhaps not if you’re a robot, but in human terms, in terms of the way actual humans communicate, it is absolutely a direct question in the sense that it raises a sensitive and emotional issue that absolutely demands a response.
To believe, as you seem to assert, that it’s “arrogant” to assume that Roger’s subsequent long silence is about Elaine and their relationship is just a ridiculous assertion. The fact that it’s such an obvious assumption to make, and yet Roger is cluelessly ruminating about oil changes and transmission repair, is precisely the comedic disconnect that makes this anecdote by a master humourist so hilariously funny.
Right, I don’t think that story is at all supporting the idea that women necessarily understand men better than vice versa.
What the story does support IMO is the idea that men aren’t “simpler” than women, or incapable of understanding the mysterious superior complexity of women, or stuff like that. On the contrary, while the story depicts the familiar stereotype of a man’s failing to understand his girlfriend’s thoughts and feelings, the cause is merely that he’s not bothering to pay attention to them.
For Roger, understanding Elaine’s state of mind is prioritized way lower than his own emotional investment in the state of his car’s transmission or the outcome of a tennis match between two random players on TV. Even when Roger does get an involuntary twinge of awareness that the abortive discussion was something that might have been important to Elaine, he deliberately shuts it down and chooses not to think about it.
Because men are strongly socialized to feel that it’s not appropriately “manly” to be interested in or empathetic to what a woman is thinking or feeling. Even if she’s his own girlfriend and there’s strong evidence that she’s deeply upset, as in the story, his goal is supposed to be getting out of the situation by giving the “right answers” while managing NOT to understand what she’s thinking or feeling.
A man wanting or trying to understand a woman’s interior life is traditionally coded as sissy or weak or servile or too deferential or feminine.
Pop culture changes. Dolls became action figures, and the Mad Max franchise went from Mel Gibson to Charlize Theron. @JohnT said that men haven’t been accepting some traditional female culture; I pointed out some cases where they are.
What about Dancing with the Stars; does ballroom dancing lose its “female”-coding because Emmitt Smith and Jerry Rice are the ones who are dancing?
I don’t think couples ballroom dancing has ever been specifically “female culture”. I mean, couples ballroom dancing has always been something men and women do together, by definition.
I’d believe that watching ballroom dancing on TV might be a much more popular activity with women than with men. But I don’t think football stars like Smith and Rice are breaking any gender barriers by partnering sexy young women in skimpy clothing in a couples dance. Being a sexy young woman’s dance partner is not transgressing against any traditional male behavior norms.
(The fact that Rice partners a white woman, on the other hand, is arguably challenging traditional racial norms in our society.)
Except that dolls didn’t “become” action figures: there still are dolls that are called dolls, and they are still very much coded female, and it is still considered very transgressive against traditional gender norms for men or boys to play with them.
“Action figures” and Funko Pops and other “figurines” are pitched the way they are, with careful avoidance of the term “doll” and its connotations, precisely so men and boys can have humanoid-figure toys to play with that aren’t “tainted” by association with traditional female culture. That’s the very reverse of men “accepting” traditional female culture, ISTM.
In your post where you summarise the story you did not pose it in the form of a question, rhetorical or otherwise.
It was that form that I responded to and I stand by what I said.
Not what I said and I’m now clarifying for the third time.
In response to a mere observation (which is how it was stated in your post and it is your post that provides the context for my response) it would be arrogant to assume that any following silence should be about the observation just made.
I agree that a question asked (whether direct or rhetorical) can reasonably expect an answer or response of some kind. A bland, factual observation (as stated in your post) does not.
Do you now see the difference and do you understand why I made the original point that I did?