[lit-ideas] Re: The Feminine Technique?
- From: Judy Evans <judithevans001@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2005 20:05:58 +0000
Wednesday, March 16, 2005, 7:50:18 PM, Paul Stone wrote:
PS> Judith Evans wrote:
>>Deborah Tannen is one of the very best of the "difference" writers,
>>perhaps because she's such a very good linguist anyway (a social
>>psychologist told me her academic work is amazingly good).
PS> This type of phrase almost begs you to add the pejorative 'for a woman'.
PS> You know like the silliness of "Colin Powell is an amazingly good speaker"
PS> [for a Black man].
Except that I'm a woman and so (mirabile dictu) is the social
psyhcologist who said it.
>>She's the only one of them who (almost) makes me think such substantial
>>differences
>>exist (socialization apart). But I think it wise to draw a distinction between
PS> Does anything ELSE make you think that? I mean other than Tannen's writing?
PS> Like maybe LIFE?
Didn't you see "(socialization apart)"?
>>A. there's a male style and a female style
PS> I think this should be re-written: A. there are feminine and masculine
PS> styles, each of which can be used by either sex.
I tend to agree but that isn't Tannen's contention. Of course that's a
problem with her writing (and almost all such writing).
>>B. there's a normally unquestioned notion that there's one way to do
>>science, the adversarial way
PS> Or maybe: the right way for the circumstances.
you think?
PS> MEN definitely play less competitively against women too;
that didn't show up in these studies but then they are studies of game
theory games.
PS> but I acknowledge
PS> that we are actually TAUGHT to. What's the point? Women more [naturally]
PS> 'sporting' than men?
That women conceal their competitiveness in the presence of men. (If
women were "naturally sporting" or even "fully socialized to be
sporting" then their behaviour wouldn't change according to whether
they were playing women or men.)
>>I must though end by saying that I am torn on this kind of difference
>>issue. I think there is something in the difference argument. I find
>>it difficult to write about, sometimes, because I am as it were not of
>>one mind here.
PS> Who the heck is? It's a continuum.
Many are of one mind in that they believe there are such differences,
somewhat fewer are of one mind in that they believe there are none, it
is a point (and an issue) on which I am torn.
--
mailto:judithevans001@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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