Mr. and Miss-Communication

I can still remember and am likely never to forget the imaginary line across the playground of my elementary school: this line separated the boys from the girls.  From kindergarten all the way through eighth grade, I spent my afternoon recess time solely with friends of the same sex.  The girls typically did “girlish” activities such as jumping rope or just talking, while the boys had an entire side of the playground to themselves to engage in “rugged” games of tag or touch football.  As a result of this arrangement, I grew up believing that having boys as friends was abnormal and that playing with boys was unacceptable. If we were separated at daily recess, then it must be for good reason. We simply must not have any of the same interests, or so I thought.  I genuinely believed these falsehoods until I reached junior high when the thought of being separated from the boys finally occurred to me as ludicrous. Nevertheless, my conservative parochial elementary school strictly enforced this imaginary division, thereby instilling in us a realization of an actual division that little boys and girls should not even be aware of.  I became mindful of not just our differences but also the idea that our differences must be so distinct that we could not even communicate adequately enough to play together on the playground.

Unfortunately, gender differences are highlighted for young children from a very young age—whether it’s the pink/blue distinction or the ballet/sports contrast.  Young children should embrace the opposite gender as a source of friendship before their lives become complicated by the impending world of dating and relationships.  They should not be constantly reminded of our supposed differences.  Even at a time when one could reasonably argue men and women are most alike, a distinction is made apparent. It is perhaps because of our awareness of this contrast made so obvious to us as children that we grow up readily accepting certain stereotypes concerning our role as men or women.

Perhaps the most cited difference between the genders is the distinction in the way men and women communicate.  Linguistic theories as recent as the early eighties asserted the concept that women were unable to communicate fully and adequately—to either men or women—as a result of a male-dominated language system created and regulated by men.  Past hypotheses viewed women’s speech as more docile and submissive to that of men’s in response to the subordination they felt by the power of the opposite sex as demonstrated through male supremacy; on the other hand, men’s speech was regarded as more confrontational, illustrating a competitive nature of the sex. Thankfully, the topic of gender and language has progressed immensely since these outrageously broad categorizations; nevertheless, differences continue to be featured. 

It seems that there are real speech differences between men and women, yet this is most likely because of the distinct environments we experience as children, interacting mainly with other children of the same sex.  The issue arises, though, when these speech differences are used as a way to perpetuate gender stereotypes, such as the dominance of males in society. 

“Girls talk so much more than guys.”

“Men never listen to women.”

These generalizations seem to have become fixtures of our collective beliefs as a society. However, is there any truth to these statements and if so, what is their cause?  This distinction may be partially related to a linguistic phenomenon known as “verbal reinforcement.” Studies have shown that typically the female’s use of positive reinforcement demonstrated in expressions such as “mm-hmm” or “yeah” interjected throughout a conversation are attempts at signaling that the woman is listening to the male. Men tend not to utilize the verbal reinforcement as often as women; men usually interpret women’s usage of this phenomenon as a cue to continue talking and further accept it as the women’s way of suggesting her agreement. If the man later finds the woman does not actually agree, then he is often left confounded.  Misinterpretation of these verbal cues can result in the males’ belief that women are difficult to understand and the women’s belief that the men do not listen to them.

Though there clearly are distinctions in the way men and women communicate, do these two groups of individuals really struggle that much to understand one another? Are they truly that different?  It seems that this cycle which society has become trapped in sustains the idea of incompatibility between the communication of men and women.  Acknowledging the differences before young girls and boys can even realize them on their own seems to force the continuity of the gender stereotypes of past generations onto young generations. In focusing solely on our communication differences, we may tend to rely too heavily on them and use those communicative differences as a scapegoat for larger issues.  For instance, a male’s misinterpretation of a woman’s “no” as a coy flirtatious mechanism has been cited as an example of gender communicative distinctions.  Are our speech patterns that distinct, though, that a man could actually claim a “no” was meant to imply “yes”? What about the body language and facial expressions we share as communicators of a human language? Claiming these vast differences may be allowing for larger issues to be viewed as natural consequences of an inherent distinction; nevertheless, as humans, it does not seem likely that our communicative abilities would be that different naturally.  It would appear, then, that they are maximized through human intervention.

Countless rom-coms have been made highlighting the humor of miscommunication between genders, often depicting women obsessing over and analyzing every word and action of their sought-after men.  Self-help books have even been written on the matter, and numerous academic assessments of the phenomenon have been published. While the miscommunication can be quite comical, the casual acceptance of these misinterpretations as effects of our implicit natural differences serves as a catalyst for the continuity of the gender stereotypes the human race has worked so diligently to eliminate.

I am not saying that acknowledging the differences between men and women is totally wrong! I embrace my girls’ nights and enjoy dressing up for a night out as much as the next girl. However, drawing too much attention to the differences between the sexes—whether in humorous parodies of miscommunication or during an elementary school’s recess—only serves to heighten and perpetuate attitudes most of us would like to see forgotten, once and for all. It appears that we are simply perpetuating the differences that we have grown up accepting.

Efforts have been made to remedy the ideas of the stark contrast between men and women.  Gender neutral names are of a growing popularity, while many women have adopted “slang” speech tendencies sometimes to align themselves more with men.  However, it seems that in order to break these barriers finally, we must boldly cross that invisible line drawn across the playground, embracing the differences between men and women while realizing our similarities as well.