Aswad
Posts: 6618
Joined: 4/4/2007
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quote:
ORIGINAL: LadyNTrainer
I thought the reason that certain guys never thump their chests is that their man boobies would jiggle.
That's a mental image I could do without.
I think I shall use a geek analogy, now that I've had the dubious pleasure of being taken on a tour of ST:TOS through ST:E, because it actually happens to be a somewhat apt analogy, despite the poor realization in the shows (doubtless a function of budget, and lack of commitment to quality)... In the ST setting, the Klingons, for all that an effort was made to evolve them, are a bit embarassing in a sense, kind of like watching an old movie with 80's hairdo ("yee-ikes, what's that on my head?"). The reason for it, is that they aren't just made out to be larger than life, but because they take themselves and their rituals and ideas seriously as they do so, which is in stark contrast to the increasingly irreverent and pragmatic attitudes in the world around us.
Back to our own world... specifically, the Weimar Republic.
I recently discovered- much to my delight- that some musicians have taken it upon themselves to resurrect and/or reinvent the cabaret noir style. Unless my impression is faulty, most of these hark from the pre-emo goth subculture. And, as with that subculture, the dark cabaret¹ style recaptures some of that ability to be reverent about something, to allow it to have substance beyond mere pragmatics. As a bonus, instead of picking some of the less inspiring eras of this world, this genre has chosen the one which gave us Greta Garbo, Fritz Lange, Kafka, Einstein, Born and various others, a time which dared be reverent and inventive at the same time.
Chest thumping can go either way, as with the fictional and real examples above.
I'm not much for what passes for chest thumping in my home country, just as I'm not partial to the modern emo subculture, but I'm quite happy to indulge in some chest thumping- with reverence and conviction- about those things I happen to think could stand to be elevated in a man's mind and perception of the world, or which in my view merit a special position among the values espoused by a man of a sort I would care to rely on. Whether there is much jingling of man-boobs involved in said thumping, is surely secondary to the tune to which they jingle.
As for the original topic...
Culture and language are strongly intertwined, and there still exist significant cultural norms with regard to how a woman is to express herself, and how a man is to express himself, along with a fair bit of inherent difference. Social dynamics are only a part of it. The tendency for men to be direct and confrontational is outright parodied in the quote about how men, when down, go invade a foreign country. Women being more indirect, suggestive and circumspect, often with an aversion to confrontation, is similarly recognized to such an extent as to be a frequent source of jokes and general levity. Soft statements versus hard ones. Loyalty versus allegiance. Negotiation versus combat. Confidentiality versus dynamic trust networks. Women forgive, men forget. And so on, and so forth.
Not all of those are true of all women, and each of us will- based on our own experience- associate some of these patterns more strongly with a specific gender than other patterns, with the weighted sum of the patterns in evidence being used to make a guess as to the social gender of the person with which we are speaking or writing. That is as unavoidable and natural as reading geographical origins into accents and dialects. For instance, South American is distinctly different from Standard North American, which is in turn distinctly different from British English, to say nothing of "pure" Queen's English. The old compound plural form "you all" or "y'all" is more prevalent in black speakers, as I hear it told. Burrs are more common in mainland Europe than on the British Isles, and almost nonexistent in the USA. Consistent assibilation of the dental fricatives points to Romance area origins, particularly French, while folding to voiced only points to Scandinavia. Turning them into dental stops is less specific, but does reveal that one is not native (one dialect features it, but is so distinct otherwise as to be impossible to confuse with mere accent).
Patterns are a foundation element of language, obtained by association, conditioning, training, etc., and it would be quite silly to assume that we do not look for other patterns than those that were intentionally put there, or that we do not put patterns in there without intending to do so. And, incidentally, while it's too early to make a generalization, I am starting to think that men emphasize conveying what they want to say, while women emphasize avoiding what they do not want to say. If the observation is borne out, I would speculate that this is because men tend to read less into what is said, while women read more into it, such that adaptation is necessary (cross gender socialization is still less prevalent than same gender socialization, at least around here).
Health,
al-Aswad.
¹ For the curious, Jill Tracy's Evil Night Together makes a nice intro. Put your dancing shoes on.
_____________________________
"If God saw what any of us did that night, he didn't seem to mind.
From then on I knew: God doesn't make the world this way.
We do." -- Rorschack, Watchmen.
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RE: We are what we type.... - 
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... I raise my (beer) mug in salute. 
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