Opus 2024-038: Male Assumptions

I was contemplating the issues of marriage and the relationships between men and women.  This rabbit trail was formed while thinking about a physical problem my wife is having and how I would work out a solution if it were me.  The important condition here is “if it were me”.  It isn’t me.  She doesn’t want to hear my ideas.  She would rather suffer than have my two cents worth.

This made me think of a mantra that has gone around and reinforces this idea.  My first contact with it was a book called Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus.  I heard it repeated in other sources.  The idea is that women don’t want a man to solve her problems.  She just wants a man to listen.  To us men this is nonsense.  It is from Venus.  What do you expect?  It still seems to be an accurate summary.

Men problem solve by experiment.  We are rooted in what the scientific method was when it was genuine.  If something won’t turn left, try turning it right.  If your computer won’t start the first thing, you check is to see if it is plugged in.  You experiment and look at the results.  If that didn’t work, try something else.  Eventually you will get there.

Women problem solve by sharing their feelings.  I have no idea how this solves anything in the physical world but it seems to work in the pseudo-sciences like sociology.  Whether their solutions really work, men would question.  That does not matter because they don’t want our opinions.

Could this be another reason why there are more men than women in science?  Could the presence of more women in science be one of the reasons that science doesn’t seem to be working any more?  I would never ask these questions out loud.

At the risk of insulting your intelligence let me remind you that we are talking generalizations, not stereotypes.  We all know there are women who problem solve and men who talk about their feelings.  Feel free to problem solve without fear of losing your feminine mystique.  Men, feel away.  You can still be a man.  We are talking generalizations.  Learn the difference while I still have a head.

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