At Borders yesterday I picked up a paperback copy of Barbara and Allan Pease's "Why Men Don't Listen and Women Can't Read Maps." It's an amusing, rather breezy book aimed at a general popular audience, with an extensive bibliography consising mostly of other books of the same character. It's not front-line scientific research, double-blind, randomized and all that, but it's a definite cut above any of John Gray's Venus/Mars potboilers.
The chapters on the differences between male and female forms of sexuality are just about the best I've ever read in such succinct form--and make you wonder how the human race has ever managed to perpetuate itself successfully.
For those of you who enjoy on-line IQ tests, I recommend the book's 30-question Brain-Wiring Test, which purports to measure degrees of masculine vs. feminine responses to various situations. Each question has three answers.
Some questions are pretty obvious.
Others aren't. For example, : "In a movie theater, you usually prefer to sit;
a. on the right side;'
b. anywhere;
c. on the left side."
If you're male, give yourself 10 points for each A answer, 5 for each B, and -5 for each C.
If you're female, it's 15 for A, 5 for B, and -5 for C.
If you leave a question blank because you can't answer, you get a 5 for each one.
According to the Peases, most men score between 0 and 180, and most women score between 150 and 300. It is explained that "The closer to 0 they are, the more masculine they are and the higher their testosterone level is likely to be. These people demonstrate strong logical, analytical, and verbal skills and tend to be disciplined and well organjzed. The closer to 0 they score, the better they are at projecting costs and planning outcomes for statistical data, with their emotions hardly influencing them at all. These scores show that large amounts of testosterone were present in the early stages of fetal development."
This may be crap, but for what it's worth,my wife and I both answered the questions. My score was -10; hers was 230.
And she can't read a map worth a damn, and sometimes accuses me of not listening.
When we go to the movies, she's not choosy about where she sits. I am extremely uncomfortable anywhere except on the left side, aisle seat, rows 12-18.
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"It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in an argument." William Gibbs McAdoo. US Vice-President under Woodrow Wilson.
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