Women
and Men. Two Worlds. Two Ways of Speaking
I'm
sure in your
daily life you can appreciate the differences between men and women
in all aspects physical, psychological, ways of speaking, etc...
. I'll
like to focus on the speaking (and writing) aspect, for that I'll
need to focus on the psychological aspect on
(relating it with stereotypes) to explain some ideas, as you'll see
later.
As a starting point I'll tell you the
common topics men and women tend to talk and have a good
lexis in. For one part, men focus on sports, work, sex, politics,
among others. For the other, women focus on family, emotions,
clothes, between others. This topics are related to the way we speak
for two reasons, as I'll explain ahead.
The firs motive (as I said above) is
related to the lexis we use, because if you usually talk about a
topic and are interest in it you are going to learn and acquire
specific language about it; and, as a consequence, speak with it.
The second reason is that the words
you use and know related to certain topics are going to shape the way
you speak, how you express. Let me explain.
According to the topics I mention
before, women tend to talk about emotion, so they know specific words
about them and can easily express them. While men can't express
easily how they fell, they don't have a good lexis, so there way of
speaking is going to be disant of emotional aspects.
What I just said is my opinion, you
are in all the right to say “That is not right, your whole idea of
those topics is based on stereotypes”. Sadly I have to tell you
that you are wrong, but you mention the point I wanted to get to,
stereotypes. With that topic presented I want to ask the next
question:
“Is the way we speak related to
gender stereotypes?”
I'll give you sometime to think about
it. Before answering that question I want to explain, “in a factual
way”, why I said that you are wrong.
The reason why I said it is because at
brain structure man and women have differences. Men have more
neuronal connections in each hemisphere while women have them between
hemisphere. That makes that men focus more in a rational way while
women in an emotional one.
Now, focusing on the question (this
answer, also, can explain why I said wrong), is true that stereotypes
shape the way we speak, they influence us in a big way, as I'm going
to explain.
For understanding how stereotype
affect the way we speak, we have to see how they influence our
actions, how they shape gender.
I believe that it's very complicated
to explain how stereotypes are made and pass upon people with out
getting to a vicious circle or to another topic, like Stereotypes and
Mass Media (I wrote about this last week click HERE
for more information), that's why I'm going to define
two stereotypes about women and men, and with those I'm going to
explain how those beliefs are shaped on us.
The stereotypes:
Men: They are tough and independent.
Women: They are weak and dependant.
I want to be clear, I don't believe in
those ideas and (in my opinion) they are changing. With that said
let's begin.
First I'll focus on the tough and weak
aspect, this ones are the ones that shape the emotional topic for men
and women (you'll have to remember what I wrote at the start of this
post).
Those aspects and how they affect us
are specially seen in the phrase “Crying is for girls”, this is
usually said when a boy is crying, implying that since he is a male
he has to be strong and to do that he doesn’t have to show his
feelings because that is what girls do. Also, from what I've seen ,
there is some sort of disgust when you talk a little boy about a girl
(and maybe vice versa) with this the phrase become more powerful and,
in consequence, he doesn’t want to show his feelings and with that
the way we talk and act is form by this stereotype.
Now I'll focus on the other aspect,
independent and dependant (This stereotypes, in my opinion, are more
“old fashion” than the first two). This aspects are related wit
the roles that men and women do in relationships.
For one part, men are encourage to
study and work. For the other part, women are inculcated in domestic
things. This ideas are justified with the reason that women have to
raise children while the man has to work, because of this type of
relationship men are, more, independent while women aren't.
Even thought this is a old fashion
idea you can still appreciate (in a way) this independent –
dependant relationship. You can see it when in some cases the woman
has a degree but she doesn’t work or the man wins more money (I
wrote about inequality a year ago, you should look it to understand
my point. Click HERE).
The stereotype mention above modify
our way of speaking in relation of the topics that women and man
should know, talk and words that each gender can use. For example,
men can talk about politics and women can't or is not appropriate for
women to say sewer words but for a man is acceptable.
In conclusion, in this post, I tried
to explain that we are influenced in a big way, in all sense, by
stereotypes (for example, the way we speak). That's way I want YOU to
reflex for a minute, I want you to think how you can change the way
you act and speak in order to be yourself and help others be
themselves, to help eliminate those stereotypes.
Be free. Be yourself.
See you in the next post.
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