(no subject)

[dreamer_easy]

Following up the references in Bury, snagged a couple more books on how men and women communicate, and almost immediately discovered my problem and its solution:

"It is also worth noting that aggressively negative questioning often leads people to take up entrenched positions - especially in a public debate - and little cognitive progress is made when this happens. Defensiveness is not an attitude which encourages creative thinking. Supportive elicitations and modified criticisms are much more likely to facilitate good quality open-ended discussion or productive exploratory talk."
- Janet Holmes, Women, Men, and Politeness

Well, dur, you may remark. My problem has been - is - that I sometimes provoke that defensiveness with my bluntness, my "bald disagreement", then get annoyed by all the defensive talk and only become even more blunt. What I have to accept is that, if I want a good discussion, I need to try to avoid provoking defensive responses in the first place, regardless of what I may think of that kind of reaction. (Intriguingly, as ChiTARDIS showed, I'm seldom so blunt in face-to-face communication - not only is this a "male" way of speaking, it's also an Internet way of speaking, terse and to the point. Or, to put it another way: tl;dr.)

More on this shortly.

Comments

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

We're taught to suppress our anger, so it leaks out in passive aggressive bullshit, like slagging people off behind a flock, or scribbling on fandom's toilet walls (fandom_wank, the anon Who meme, etc). Of course, dick measuring contests aren't much better, but at least boys and men are expected to get their aggression out into the open and resolve it.