Do Men and Women Communicate Differently?

Yes, men and women communicate differently. I've been online for almost 20 years. I don't remember what I was like before, but I do know that the online experience has changed me, radically. A lot of online spaces are male dominated. You don't get a lot of respect for pulling the “you hurt my feelings” routine. No one cares about your feelings. Suck it up and move on, or don't come back. For the most part, men don't spend a lot of time worried about their “tone,” and they're certainly not overly concerned with whether women think it's polite to disagree.

I've heard people put this kind of behavior down to a lack of civility that occurs when we aren't face to face, but my husband disagrees. Being an actual man, I take his word for it when he says that guys really are like that with each other when women aren't around.

I cut my internet teeth, and by association, my communication teeth on things like newsgroups, irc channels, and email lists. Even when they were predominately, or even exclusively, female groupings, those early online years were ruled by what I think of as male communication patterns. If you had something to say, you said it, and as long as no one started swearing or name-calling, it was all good.

Gradually, things began to change, though. As more and more women entered the internet without the experience of being called The Whore of Babylon on a newsgroup (true story), they expected people to treat them like they'd always been treated in real life. The definition of a flame war went from hysterically screaming invective to, “I don't like your tone,” and “If you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything at all.” It still catches me by surprise when I find myself in areas where people are more concerned with how you say something than the substance of what you're actually trying to say.

My own communication patterns may be permanently warped by the internet. I learned how to write and argue, taught by people who demanded that I stick to the facts of a matter and support my opinions. Any hurt feelings I may have developed in the process were my own to deal with. I find myself completely unprepared when I run into people who truly believe that it's a personal attack to disagree with someone's opinion. I've been shaped by my experiences online, and apparently, I argue like a man.

Organization -- or How I've already lost the battle

In the years before we had computers and scanners and highspeed internet connections, I thought I was at war with paper. No matter how much of the stuff I threw away, more managed to find its way into the house. The post office delivered bills and junk mail. My husband came home from work with magazines and newspapers. Even my kids got in on the action with bulletins and crafts from church. I'd throw away what I could and helplessly pile the rest somewhere out of the way of our daily lives to be dealt with later. Occasionally, I’d get fed up with the pile of paper masquerading as a centerpiece on my kitchen table and break it down into smaller, more manageable piles that would fool me into thinking I’d actually accomplished something. The cycle of rebuilding and demolishing that pile seemed never-ending—and continues to this day.

The promise of a paperless society thrilled me to no end. I signed up for and paid my bills online. I transferred subscriptions to electronic format. I formed a partnership with my scanner and saved important documents to hard drives. I backed up, saved, tagged, bookmarked, and indexed until I thought I had it all figured out.

I whittled down the list of things on paper to the bare minimum, and still the post office failed to remove me from their list of appointed rounds. There was always something new in the box, but now my war had spread to two fronts. What used to show up in my mailbox now showed up in my email. My bank would send me a notice that I had a new bill. The billing company would send me one to tell me that the new statement was ready. What used to be one bill in the mail was now two separate emails—more if either felt the need to confirm the payment after it was sent. My paperless society was drowning me in email, instead of paper. How was this an improvement?

While the information overload has never gotten in the way of anything I wanted to do, this is my only real failure on the organizational front. Whether it's paper or electronic, keeping track of all the information around me defeats me, daily. I've added calendars, alarms, and both physical and electronic notes just to keep up. I'm too stubborn to surrender, so I keep fighting, even though I think it's a losing proposition.