The Differences Between Men and Women

I met a really nice man a couple of weeks ago. We had an interesting chat about all sorts of things including trains. He observed that men tend to obsess about things and women tend to obsess about people. That made a lot of sense to me because Robbie notices things such as minor changes if product packaging, bus numbers, car numbers, the design of post poxes and lamp posts, that sort of thing. I hardly ever notice those things, but I notice if someone is wearing odd socks, looks sad, or seems worried, things that Robbie  would probably not notice. 


Yesterday I received further confirmation that men and women have a different way of looking at things. My son announced to me that his English homework had been to consider gender stereotypes and to analyse the way that Robbie and I use language, then to present his observations to the class. Apparently is caused his teacher considerable amusement when he told the class that I'd told him that men almost always consider their cars (and trains) to be female, but I know for sure that my car is male because it is unreliable and expensive to maintain! He went on to tell the class that our use of language indicated that Robbie is submissive and I am dominant because I use imperatives and Robbie uses tactics such as hedging, fillers and hesitation in response. I have to admit that it feels a bit creepy to think that our use of language gives away so much about us (assuming his observations are accurate) we will have to be more cautious in future!