"What Women Want"

[rowyn]

"What women want" is one of those perenial topics that always make me cringe inside. So does "what men want", for that matter.

 

It's not that the answers to the questions tend to be particularly stupid, or that gender differences are nonexistant. Sometimes people write things on the topic that are insightful and reasonable, or at least, not ridiculous.

 

But the question itself seems so profoundly misguided. It's existance implies that you can make useful generalizations about three and a half billion people, generalizations that you can or should use to guide your behavior in interacting with them.  Worse than that, it sets women and men up as alien species, as if we had fundamentally different desires and that the gender differences -- the stereotypical gender differences -- were crucially important. "Women want respect" -- as if men don't! I don't think I've ever seen a "what (gender) wants" article that was both (a) reasonable and (b) not equally reasonable if applied to the other gender.

 

What people want is to be treated as individuals, and not the current representative of their gender. Does it really matter if 75% of women like chocolate as a Valentine's Day present, if your girlfriend doesn't? Does it matter that most men don't care about anniveraries, if your husband does? We are not cultivating a relationship with half the human race, but with particular individual members of it.  Just treat them like people. Whatever tendencies they share or don't share with their gender are things we need to determine on a person-by-person basis, just like everything else about them.

Comments

[the-gneech.livejournal.com]

*applauds*

-TG

[rowyn]

*takes a bow* Thank you, sir. :)

[okojosan.livejournal.com]

What people want is to be treated as individuals

Ugh, yes, this so much.

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

That's such an unfair generalization!

[rowyn]

OK, OK, admittedly, some people want to be treated as part of a gestalt. >:)

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

People like to find differences between categories of stuff. This includes people. It's not entirely useless even if you do need to know to stop trying to apply it to individuals if it doesn't work.

Personally I always found the 'what men want' articles funny even if they probably only ring true for the same reasons horoscopes and fortune tellers (and internet personality tests) can.

[rowyn]

Hee! I like that comparison with horoscopes and personality quizzes. n.n

I do feel like there's at least a dozen other categories I belong to -- gamer/furry/writer/sf fan etc. -- that are more informative about "what I want" than "woman". "Woman" is such a huge category.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Women and men are an alien species! Only neuters make any sense!

[ivorystardust.livejournal.com]

Well said!

[ladyperegrine.livejournal.com]

So in agreement here (but I'm sure you're not surprised). :-)