Ritual Boasting vs I Put Me Down You Pull Me Up?

Male/Female communication differences.  I read a lot about them.  I write a lot about them.  I train a lot of people about them.  A lot of money has been made by a lot of people on this very topic.  Mars and Venus, Deborah Tannen (she's the biz by the way and I'd just like to say that if you're really interested in this stuff, go straight to her books.  You'll find them on my "great books" page).  Male/Female Communication.  Lovely. And I'm well up on it, right?  I surf those communication waters without ever coming off my board, right?

Well, not so fast compadres!  This morning I had the classic male/female communication clash happen inside my own head.  

The communication differences are essentially about ritual, not about fact-talk.  Men and women by-and-large have different rituals, dating back to childhood, where they learned to interact differently.  Little boys competed with each other, and that made them feel connected.  Little girls connected and that's how they competed.  No right or wrong, just different, and so the sexes end up with different rituals.  Men do ritual boasting and ritual fighting to protect their place and to feel connected to other men.  Women do ritual complimenting and a mutually agreed version of what I call: "I put me down you pull me up".  For example:

Sheila: "Lovely, dress (report/job/house/husband) Mary"

Mary: "What this old thing?  You're the one with the nice dress (report/job/house/husband) - and a matching handbag too, I see!"

Sheila: "Do they match?  I just grabbed it (the chapter/computer/him) on the way out of the house.  I'm not such a good forward planner as you are."

You get the idea.  Women just aren't that comfortable with the thought that the world might think that they might think that they are blowing their own trumpet.  Little girls punish other little girls for it, and let me tell you, in the hell that is the school yard, you learn fast.  It isn't that women think that they aren't good at what they do, or that they lack confidence, or that they wouldn't be offended if someone belittled their accomplishments, it's just that the woman herself isn't supposed to point those accomplishments out.  It isn't done.  We do it for other women, and they do it for us.

But surely if you teach this stuff you're beyond being influenced by it, right?  WRONG.  Look 3 blogg entries down.  What do I do?  To try to entertain you and win your web-based affection?  Uh huh.  "My BBC script commission - who me?  Oooo I feel all doubtful.....Oooo maybe I'll hide under this hors d'oeuvre rather than put pen to paper."  Did I really feel incompetant?  Heck no.  I worked hard for that commission, and I know I'm a quick and clever writer.  Was I going to say so publicly?  Not on your Nelly!  THEN I found out this morning that my agent had directed the BBC contracts people to my website so that they might have a better understanding of my experience as they determine my fee. Immediately the old communication bind kicks in: will they be charmed by my womanly ritual of putting myself down so they can pull me back up, or will they not realise that I am a perfectly competant and experienced writter and OH HORROR OF HORRORS take me at my word?  That's got to be the worst. It transcends even the great sex divide.  Writers everywhere exclaim as one:  "But don't you realise its was all for... (insert at will) effect/character/to-make-you-laugh/the-annoyance-of-mother/the rent?????! "

Comments

[Stephanie Young]

VERY interesting. Fantastic when we allow ourselves to let those rituals go. Very exciting. You ARE a clear and clever writer. AND HILARIOUS.

If you want to some extraordinary male/female communication, check out Byron Katie on youtube. She goes right to the heart of human motivation, bypassing ritual. She has a program of dialogue called 'the work': four questions to discover unconscious belief, then a turning around of that belief. Watch grown men cry. Amazing.

[Stephanie Young]

http://www.thework.com/video_cancer.asp

'The work' in action. Gutting and amazing.

[Anthony Toner]

I suspect you're coming up hard against that Irish thing where you never ever EVER blow your own trumpet, even when you're a trumpet player in a band. Even when you've been given a new trumpet by your dying grandmother and she is propped up wheezing on her pillows on Christmas morning, her rheumy eyes staring at you, staving off the moment of death to hear you squeeze out one barely audible C sharp. Even when other people press your trumpet to your lips, put the muzzzle of a gun in your ear and hiss: 'You're a genius. Now just purse your lips and blooooooowwww.' Your reaction is funny, even if it does lead you into one of those Russian Doll post-modernist Paul Auster narratives, where the writer was actually pretending to be a another writer, writing the thing that you are reading, but the book didn't actually exist and it's the reader who is constructing the narrative in a dream sequence while sitting in a nameless Metro Station in Paris, missing a train carrying a dozen writers following a map written in code on a newspaper carrying a date in the future. It's a terrific achievement and you deserve it. And I understand perfectly that you feel occasionally uncomfortable at saying it. That's why you have friends to tell us it repeatedly. So I repeat: It's a terrific achievement and you deserve it. It's a terrific achievement and you deserve it.