Gender Bender

Differences between the sexes always makes for a good
discussion. For it has the twin desiderata of
a. People thinking they know something about it.
b. People thinking they don’t know something about it.

And say what you will, but the good researchers at Israel and Illinois have pushed the envelope of our understanding in this critical subject – by developing the Gender Genie.
Simply type or paste in a snippet of text, and the good genie would guess the gender of the author. Of course, it is a testament to my considerateness that I shall let the readers continue their speculative fun, and refrain from disclosing the accuracy of the genie with respect to this blog entry.

And to continue along my considerate vein, I shall share a piece of insight that I feel is fairly accurate:
To cajole a man, to manipulate him, use his ego; and with a woman, use emotion.

Ahoy, you say, I know this already. But sadly, women try to manipulate using emotion, and men try to manipulate using ego. Thus wasting away a ready weapon…

Dont fear, my overawed-at-my-brilliant-insight readers, this is not my last word on this highly critical subject facing mankind. There shall be a part II to this tomorrow… [just continuing the multi-part post tradition of the blog really]

7 thoughts on “Gender Bender”

  1. Well 42,
    If you don’t clarify the gender and insist on bringing it up often though….am inclined towards “This guy is so Gay!” 😉

  2. Well, the tradition of this blog is to promise a multi-part series and not deliver the latter parts. I must hasten to add that it is a tradition that is more honoured in its breach than observance.

  3. Thanks Nilu for supplying a ready example for our readers – your comment was a good example of trying to manipulate using ego. Buttresses my point that men try using ego as a manipulative weapon blindly since that is what is important to them.

  4. Incidentally, I do not understand the distinction between using emotion and using ego. Humiliation is an emotion, so it seems to be that using ego has to be a subset of using emotion and that women have a wider array of weapons at their disposal, atleast according to you.

  5. Ravikiran: I meant emotion in a more colloquial sense. To be more rigorous I’d say non-egotistical emotions, or as wise men have put it, “finer” emotions.

    yes, using ego results in emotion [pride/humiliation] but what I meant was that it these particular egotistical emotions that men are more susceptible to.
    This must be due to the long evolutionary period of the hunter-gatherer stage, when it was important for a male to be/perceived as an alpha/dominant male.

    On the other hand, moral-empathy is very important for females. In other words, emotion for others as opposed to just oneself. Other empathetic emotions include being swayed by an aesthetic sight. These are things you can’t use as good weapons against a man. Similarly, mere praise doesn’t get one much far with a woman.

  6. My not so succesful attempt at being funny has such an evolutionary reality hidden?

    And Ego in my opinion is quite basic to life – does not depend on gender. Manisfestation of Ego might vary – but not itself 😉

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