Month: May 2021

I’ll start with strategy. Be it an assignment, studying for an exam, a research paper, or an entire course. What I’ve found has worked well for me is the following formula: Survey with a bird’s eye view. Question; come up with my own genuine curiosities & make a list of vocabulary and/or concepts that are unknown or confusing to me. Read and reread. Retrieve (test, test, test). Review; by way of well managed, time-efficient relaxed reading, writing or going through flash cards.

I’ve always wanted to take a social psychology class and so I’m really happy to be in this one. My expectations for this course are to absorb as much about the basic social psychology concepts as I can in this quick 12-week summer semester. Also, I expect to become just a little bit more tech-savvy thanks to this ePortfolio project! I think a good basic grasp on social psychology theories, etc. would benefit any person working in any field.

In response to Nathan DeWall’s article, Sexual Conflict: Uncovering the Mysteries of the Mating Battleground, and for lack of a less graphic adjective, this topic is a “juicy” one. So many different bodily fluids involved in these matters; blood, sweat, tears, and then of course sexual secretions of the “all alone type,” the fornicating type and the baby making type. There has probably more human energy, joy, strife and terror created because of these bodily fluids  than anything else in our world besides religion. It’s an intriquing topic that I cannot imagine no group of people in any room couldn’t have at least a mildly spirited conversation. 

In brainstorming the ways we (the sexes) annoy, anger, irritate and upset each other I noticed some interesting things. The first is that much of it seemed possibly dependent on social conditioning. Things men stereoypically not being good listeners and women being percieved as needing to talk excessively.  Another classic example would be the perception that women need more affection and tenderness than men do. I noticed that these types of annoyances are very difficult to differentiate between being a gender biased or gender conditioned characteristic and something that is inherently part of who we are biologically. No doubt, we’ve all known men or women, maybe we even are them, who don’t fall into one of our genders stereotypes. 

Other examples, like men typically having a sometimes exhaustingly strong libido while the woman feigns a headache to get out of having sex every night, remind me that we are undeniably & inherently different at times. The metaphor of the man being the rough/tough actor and his actual genitalia, as compared to the metaphor of the woman feeling all the feelings so deeply and her sexual and reproductive organs literally being deep and more so on the inside.

No doubt that men and women tend to be different but what part of that is societally conditioned and what are actual differences, is the piece I cannot leave out in discussing this topic. Being that either sex can feel pressure to be or act a certain way, the metaphorical battleground of the sexes is littered with an extra large sized dose of expectation, agenda and ego. Conversely, some of these items are the same, like for instance, lying. 

Men angering women: Not listening, lying by omission, lying, constant need for sex, checking out other women either blatantly or stealthily, not opening up; sharing/communicating their feelings, insisting on being “in charge” even when they don’t know what they are doing or where they are, being overly jealous/protective/possessive/controlling. 

Women angering men: Needing to talk, Lying by omission, lying, less libido, emotional/hormonal, being late, speding money on items percieved as frivolous, needing affection, needing to go out and be wined and dined with romance and cultural events, being analytical, dressing “too sexy.”

The first image I chose, I chose specifically because it shows a representative of both sexes being sneaky and/or distracted at the same time. I believe this is one of those things that both male/female probably do an equal amount but for some reason men are more typically expected to be the “dogs.” They both look at their cell phones over eachothers shoulders, which is a great image for this digital age and the challenges it can pose in relationships. 

The second image I chose is a cartoon style of a woman talking to a man in more of a defensive stance, not talking. This one to me represents what I have consistently been witness to and experienced first-hand. More often than not, the female needing to talk things out, to get clarity and to express all her feelings and to insist on knowing his which then turns the male often into a defensive, questioning dodging, minimizing, closed vault. These are such stereotypes but more common than not, I’ve found.