May 01, 2008
Men are From Mars
So for another class I had to read the book, "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus", and once I was finsihed I was quite frustrated with the book. My first criticism is that the author seems quite biased towards males. What I got out of the book is that women basically need to change the entire way they communicate so that the male doesn't get frustrated and go into his "cave". For those who haven't read it, the cave is a place where men go when they're stressed or frustrated to be alone, because they can solve their problems on their own. This book encourages the cave, telling women to just leave men alone, don't ask questions and wait until he's ready to come out of the cave. The only criticism the male population recieved in this book was that they need to stop trying to answer solve the problems of their significant other, and just listen. It seemed pretty unfair to me that females had to completely changed the way they requested things, asked for help, or offered constructive criticism, and the only change for males is to not help and just listen. I'm sure this stems into a report vs. rapport talk. But I was just wondering if anyone had read the book, and if so what they thought?
5 comments:
I haven't read the book, but it sounds like it is pushing the stereotypes that society created as feminine and masculine standards. It is appropriate for men to not to show their emotions. That they must keep to themselves and go to the "cave" to solve any problems they may have. That they shouldn't talk about their problems with their significant other, but just listen and don't offer any advice.
This guy is completely disreputable. Not only is he not a real doctor but after writing this book he divorced his wife! I know we talked about him a little in class but I feel like he's not even worth mentioning. Women and men should just be respectful of our different ways of communicating whether they use report or rapport talk.
I think this is kind of funny, how this book is pushing the stereotypes that men do not need to communicate and that they don't really know how. The book seems to insist that the men only have primitive forms of communication so that women must dumb it down to the men's level or they will never be understood.
I like my man cave lol. All kidding aside though, I think Dr Lucas has done a very good job at pointing out the shortcomings of this author. In addition, I am really glad this author came up in our class discussions as I have had many friends and acquaintances in the past bring him up in the course of conversation. I love having this new sense or awareness about gender communication and real "researched" information to make better arguments to support my opinions more effectively now.
I grew up with a very manly-man of a dad. He never really showed any emotions and didn't openly discuss anything that was bothering him...ever. I just think it's sad sometimes that the notion of what it is to be a man has turned into that. No tears. No emotion. Men don't need to disapper into thier "caves" in order to deal with conflict. If the relationship between the man and woman is one of any respect, they should be able to communicate openly and honestly with eachother.
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