Men and Women Would Better Serve Society

¶ … men and women would better serve society if they opted to shampoo my crotch (in lieu of putting out the drivel that they do). I'm serious. Nothing people say, write, or teach with respect to relationship advice, male-female communication, or the dynamics of socialization (with particular regard to language) is worth a damn. I'm serious. It's worthless. And if Gore Vidal was right when he said the three worst words in the English language were Joyce Carol Oates, then Deborah Frances Tannen has to be a close second. I'm serious about that too. Nothing Tannen writes has any relevance or usefulness. Case in point, her essay "But What Do You Mean?"

There are many reasons why "But What Do You Mean?" is a waste of 15 minutes (the approximate time it takes to read it), but for the sake of brevity, I'll only discuss three. The first reason is her preference for anecdotes over empirical research, the second is her either intentional or unintentional disregard for body language and the strong impact our subconscious has on our capacity to effectively communicate, and the third reason is that it is quite obvious she has never dated a Jewish woman. If she had dated a Jewish woman, there's a decent chance she would have never penned this particular essay.

Okay, so to jump back to the first reason, "But What Do You Mean?" is an essay that claims to provide critical insight into communication differences between men and women. But, as mentioned, it does not. What it does do is give the reader a heavy dosage of Tannen's opinions of what women do when conversing with men (and vice versa). The problem with her opinions is that they are largely based on her own experiences (in addition to anecdotal information) as opposed to empirical scientific research. And the studies she does invoke throughout the essay are not mentioned by name, she just vaguely alludes to them in cliched terms, i.e. "studies have shown or research has shown," etc. If one is going to make any serious claim with respect to the proclivities of men and women in conversational settings, he/she should cite hard facts and data, not soft, baseless stereotypes, i.e. "Women are often told they are apologizing too much." Really, Ms Tannen? What women are you hanging out with? The women I know have a harder time apologizing and/or admitting they were wrong than Republicans (by the merits of Tannen's own standards for her analysis and argumentation, my stereotypical claim is just as valid as hers regarding women apologizing a lot).

The second reason Tannen's essay stinks is that it neglects to include a very strong force that often steers us in one direction over another in life, in our conversations, and in our thoughts: our subconscious. One doesn't have to read David Brooks' book "The Social Animal" to understand how powerful the subconscious mind is and how big of a role it plays in making decisions for us. What we like, what we don't like, what we say, what we don't say. Sure, she touches on this in an oblique way, calling conversation "ritualistic" or "automatic," at times. But what she doesn't quite seem to understand is that this ritual aspect to conversation (or our occasional glibness) is directly related to our subconscious. Sure, some of it is rote manners. But often enough it's a kernel of truth from the deep recesses of our minds that springs forth and we wonder, "Who just said that?" Or "Where did that come from?" This is a time when we realize that we are not as in control as we think we are. As Freud said, "The conscious mind may be compared to a fountain playing in the sun and falling back into the great subterranean pool of subconscious from which it rises." Often what we say (verbally, subconsciously, physically, etc.) and what we think we said are very different. Tannen should have included this phenomenon in her essay.