Assume men and women are the same

Since roles have changed, workedwise, so have our needs We are more alike than ever. So maybe we were never that different. We had adapted differently to our circumstances.

Skinner: "Today, we celebrate the first of many, many, many, many diversity forums. Why is it that women 'appear' to be worse at math than men? What is the source of this 'illusion' or as I call it, the biggest lie ever told." "You're a worse version of Hitler!" "Please believe me. I-I understand the problem of women." (he moves from behind the podium revealing he's wearing a purple dress and purple heels) "See." (the audience gasps) "Haw, haw!" (sing-songy) "The principal's a tranny." "Am I wearing women's clothes? I didn't notice. When I look in my closet, I don't see male clothes or female clothes. They're all the same." "Are you saying that men and women are identical?" "Oh, no, of course not! Women are unique in every way." "Now he's saying men and women aren't equal!" "No, no, no! It's the differences of which there are none that makes the sameness exceptional. Just tell me what to say!" (he starts to breathe heavily then pass out) "Oh dear. Um, attention students. Due to nervous exhaustion and diarrhea of the mouth... "(the students start laughing) "Yes, yes, yes. I said diarrhea."

Know that two people are different with different capabilities, but equally valuable and equally deserving of respect.

I don't really have anything to add - I just want to agree :o)

Yes! THANK you. Sexist rhetoric - against any gender - is exhausting (and distracts from the real battle: not eating enough tacos).

Thanks!!

The difference among men is greater than between men and women.
That's a worthy insight!!

There are similarities, but vive la différence!

Thank you for choosing an easily readable font size. I look forward to reading more. Heard you talking on a Tim Ferriss podcast recently. Any insight to make the path smoother is appreciated, including the font.

Overall men and women have the same abilities mentally and emotionally

Generalisations are easy to make, and help you negate your own problems by accepting 'this is the way thigs are'. Generalisations are lazy, whereas understanding and learning about an individual takes time. Truely how individual, different and unique we are - well that takes time and doesn't allow me to shift blame. That is why they exist. You could equally change men and women for peoples comments on - countries, races, ages etc...
Thanks Derek!

No book has helped me more in my relationships than "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus" http://amzn.to/1XT5Tvv

I always assume that. It was eye opening to me to hear studies that differentiated the sexes. I agree with your sentiment and have felt that they seemed somewhat exaggerated as happens with any generalization. To further agree, the difference between people in general, is really stunning at times. It took me many many years to get my head around that one.

So this is really about focusing on the interaction between yourself and other unique individuals you encounter and, in doing so, making the assumptions around gender have less influence.

We all see the world through the filters of our own experiences which is part of the reason why we have such entrenched preconceived notions and prejudices.

It's a pity how frantic and overstimulated our world is becoming so we lose sight of each other against the visual noise.

Agreed! Everyone is unique, there may be some stereotype gender traits, but we cannot base our assumptions of people on these, rather we should focus on getting to know one another individually

I think this is great advice. (Very important in our interactions with children to assume boys and girls are the same, to avoid sending limiting messages.) I've sometimes perceived that in male-female relationships when the woman feels hurt the story we tell is that she's oversensitive, whereas when the man feels hurt the story we tell is that the woman was cruel. In fact we are all oversensitive sometimes, and all say and do unkind, hurtful things sometimes.

A few years ago I was talking with a friend about the stories we wrote and he confessed that he didn't know how to write women. I responded by saying that "for me everyone is just people". As it turns out some of the best advice I've heard about how to write a character that appeals to a broad audience is to hit the base emotions that are a part of everyone. Everyone has the capacity for anger, or envy, or hope, etc. If writers didn't approach it that way then we would never be able to write about things like wizards, future societies, or aliens because there would be no way to make it relatable to an audience who is reading a book. It's those base emotions that we mirror that allows us to form a connection with another person through squiggly lines on paper. Certainly this approach must also be possible in person as well.

I will stop just as I hear the last comment about men leaving toilet seats up. Yet, there are differences. Biological ones will not change by social equality.

The differences are not the man/women thing. As I've said before it's our DNA that make us very different or very similar.

Derek,

I enjoyed the post. You could write a book on the subject but would need to constantly update it as both genders and human beings are constantly changing.

The differences between people is mostly based on their DNA. Every thing else is very slight compared to that.

Though God made woman from a man's rib, they are much the same but still quite different, thank God for the difference. We are meant to compliment each other, correct each other, support each other so we both become better and become as one. Selfishness of one or both can make this fail.

Hmm... Very interesting perspective Derek, and oh so true!!!:-0~

I do not believe there is a real argument here! We are all individuals, so how we generalize on this level. The only difference is some lead, others follow!

I'm not even the same from moment to moment. No expectations of anyone else ...

What Wayne said.

Let's not lose sight of ourselves and personal relationships with others, regardless of gender.

"But the differences among men, and the differences among women, are much bigger than the differences between men and women."

True of every group.

AMEN! :)

Nailed it, Derek. Thank you!

I agree that we focus more on the wrong sort of differences.

My take: Noticing the differences makes us feel like we have more control and understand the situation better...which is false assumption.

(people are too complicated for that)

The -human- sameness and core needs are always far greater than any set of differences could be, but the unknown frighten us and so we lock into something concrete as fast as possible, but not always something that draws us closer...but something tribal that separates us and identifies a threat.

Thank you, Derek, for regularly putting your thoughts out for me and others to enjoy. What fun we can all have.

Normally, the comments on your blog posts are an exception to my "never read the comments rule." However on this post, they seem to be comments from people who did not understand the point of your post or completely disagree with it. Personally I think you are absolutely correct.

But don't assume that we've experienced the same things. We live in a patriarchal culture. Our experiences dealing with safety, sexism etc are just not the same as men. If you want to know what someone's experience is like, just ask them.

Awesome one. It would be great if this rule is extended and practiced for every difference - race, religion, profession etc. Ultimately we should realize that the stereotypes shown on television are very unlikely to be found in real life.

There's only one caveat though, without stereotypes, comedy and gossip goes right out of the window lol, and its the life breath of some.

Thanks - I fully agree and this is succinct advice. It also helps because we're learning that even male and female (in experience and expression) are terms that are limited. Assuming gender sameness is a good approach. Thanks Derek.

Select difference from men where difference>(select difference from women) and men='women'
UNION
Select difference from women where difference>(select difference from men) and women='men';

http://rvrb.fm/21bCkL7

Another fun quip from you Derek! I once was in a conversation with a man from Eastern Europe who believed women needed to be hit if they disagreed with their man!! He was extremely fixated on the cultural programming of his upbringing on "How women are vs how men are".

To get him to understand how ludicrous this was I told him to imagine he as in a n airplane flying over all of Russia and China. It was filled with 3.5 billion people who all had a penis, aka men. I told him he would be flying for hours looking at 3.5 BILLION PEOPLE! Then I asked him to imaging they were all alike in behavior and thoughts. He finally laughed realizing the ridiculousness of it all!

I definitely agree with you, Derek. Maybe that's why I get along with both sexes so well.

I think you're absolutely on target. I've always tried to operate on the basis that the only difference between men and women is their role in reproduction, and for any other purpose it's irrelevant.

My wife was once asked, when she had a female boss, "What's it like working for a woman?" Her answer was, "Depends on the woman!" I think that was a great reply.
☺ Me too. — Derek

Men and women are different in their physical creation, thinking, feelings, planning and execution. This is so that they complement each other and need to love each other and attract each other just like everything in life labelled male and female and just like magnets where north attracts south.

We are all buman ☺.

The comment "depends on the woman" is a good one. However in general there is some differences. Like someone said forced equality will not change the basics. Although things have changed. It used to be girls talked about baby stuff men football cricket and the biggest fish they caught. Every family makes it their own way and its really diverse. I could get hailed down here but I have noted. In a hairy situations in general woman lose it at the critical time. Most men seem to hang in there. Woman are better at English than Maths but there is always the exception. Sex change operations have changed a small percentage but thats really a minority. News and magazines keep pumping out the side and story they want to push. Reality is far from what they force on us. Any way I am old and old school and like someone else said the Venus Mars thing has some truth. Just cant change the thinking of some of us old dogs. No rules are the same but if you study some things closely some things are different. As for God making a woman out of a rib na I dont believe that at all. I think that was early power thought. Woman were made from man so man wrote the bible, man who wrote it wanted every form of control over people. Saying woman came from a part of a man (rib)was suppose to put woman behind the eight ball from the start. Something I always wanted to know do we have an extra rib on one side. Going to go dig up a skeleton for the answer. (:

I beg to differ. Lol.

Yeah, Thanks!

This is correct, and I agree in general. Although it's unpopular to say it, however, I've found some concepts in John Gray's Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus to be helpful with communication in both romantic and platonic relationships.

It's true that men and women are motivated by many of the same things, and we respond to those motivations similarly. But during communication, I've found many women definitely appreciate a more empathetic style. This has held true with clients, with bosses, with friends and yes, with my wife.

So we can assume that men and women are the same, but we should also acknowledge and appreciate the fact that we are very different. And viva la diferance, right?

men think about the flying
women think about the landing
other than that we're the same

I agree with John Wall about "Mars and Venus", but he is more polite than I am.

"Poppycock!" women and men are the same!
Derek has a lot of wise and thought provoking things to share.
This pot though—more thought provoking than wise.

Women and Men are —due to biological evolution, hormonal constitution, societal influence and a constellation of other forces—vastly different. We think differently, we act differently, we have different needs, different expectations, different emotional reactions, different coping mechanisms and largely different core competencies. Different as Mars and Venus...they kind of look the same, they kind of live in the same neighborhood, but that's about as far as it goes.

And that's a beautiful thing.

Equality does not equal Homogeny.

And you, Mr. Sivers.... although you apparently live alone and we can only speculate about your personal relationships, which are none of our damn business, as a man who has spent a lot of time amongst women I say you know very well that the premise of this post is poo-poo, but it would get us lot yammering about the subject nonetheless. You clever boy, you.... ;)

Categories (in this case Men and Women) typically focus on differences, and not the similarities. Perhaps we're going at it wrong. What does the existence of the Platypus tell us about our categories?

“The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.”

― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

:)

Interesting in that I have had this thought or awareness since I was 11 or 12 years old. I believe it. Have a great day. Greetings from Canada Judy

I like how a certain monthly 12-step recovery magazine, filled with first person stories, doesn't put the name, which indicates gender, until the very end of each article.

Recovery depends on honesty, and often you honestly can't tell the gender of the speaker, until or unless it becomes relevant during the story.

I am annoyed at Aaron's comment #48.

My philosophy, for both men and women,is:
if you are going to censor, or write a comment that is censuring, then you have a sacred duty, before you comment, to read with due care, and to achieve good reading comprehension (like we test school kids for)
The duty of care might not be as strong if you are not writing to hurt the feelings of a person or the community of readers.

Aaron's third and sixth paragraph makes it plain he skipped over Derek saying "They're not the same."

... From childhood I remember a teacher who denied "reading challenged" students a chance to finally read, when they requested the James Bond books, because she censored. She assumed without reading the books that Ian Fleming gave his spy the explicit sexual escapades of 007 in the Hollywood movies. Wrong. Fleming was a gentleman who knew his audience for his time and place.

By the way, I liked his book Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and I can still sing the song.

Hi Derek,

Love your site, it's full of wisdom. I am curious why you think most of your friends are women if you also think men and women are basically the same? Is it just random chance?
(Thanks!) They’re not the same, but by using this rule, your thinking will be closer to correct than not. — Derek

One of the commenters, Brian at #16, mentioned fiction writing. Published writers advise that you test yourself: Imagine switching the gender of a character, and then if the action or dialogue doesn't ring true... you have messed up, and need to re-write.

.It was a woman who said, "The personal is the political."

So here is my political: Once a person, or a culture, sees the truth it is hard to "unsee" it, unless maybe you are scared of people or thought police.

Extremists must surely whine and complain, "Why can't you westerners still be like you were in the 1950's?" Because now we see, that's why. We can't go back to believing lies about certain minorities, either, much to the chagrin of certain dictators. Heck, a Muslim dictator, lacking Jews, will encourage people to hate a minority of fellow Muslims if that will help with his overall oppression.

Women are the "canaries in the coal mine" to spot oncoming oppression towards everyone; that is a universal truth.

I enjoyed the TV series "Stargate:Atlantis," which takes place in the present day, where the base commander is a woman. Who is succeeded by a woman of senior Air Force rank. ...And of course on TV's Starship "Voyager" the captain is a woman, as are some admirals. The future is approaching, and I am not afraid.

Yes, that's true. I've heard that before, but I don't know the source of this study. I think it was: men and women are different, but the differences are not so big between sexes than in their groups. (means: the diversity is higher in groups of men or women only)
That's interesting, because then we talk about diversity, we often do not see this: It's the personality that matters. I hope that this and neurodiversity will be more supported in the future.

I'm not an english speaker and wonder about this: The word "woman" contains the word "man". ;-)
What we know now, is that we all have got feminine and maskuline energy (like yin and yang). Women have got testosterone as well as men estrogen. The level is different and important, but more important is - to work with this, to cooperate and to learn from each other.

Great, concise insight. I’ve tried to explain this so many times in personal encounters.

Whenever we differ with another, we tend to not accept it as is, but rather try to justify it by seeing whether we belong in a different “group”. Oh, we like different kinds of movies and we also have different genders? It must boil down to that “fundamental” difference.

But when we disagree with someone of the same gender, social standing, etc., that’s when really consider the other person’s viewpoint, instead of blaming it on a superficial difference.

I was just talking to a friend about that subject, that men and women are more alike than not. I've always thought so. It's easy to erect (artificial) barriers to almost anything, and it certainly does seem that humans often excel at it.
“more alike than not”: that’s a nice simple way of putting it! Thank you. — Derek

It's a hard choice because we don't actually know how different men and women are. So how do we know how much to compensate and whether to compensate at all?

Derek:

Just finishing a book called The Authority Gap” about the differences between men’s & women’s authority in all cultures. It speaks to an aspect of your assertion here. While what you assert might be true, our interpretations are unconsciously biased.

I struggled with this one A LOT, especially coming from such a clearly gender-separated place as Uzbekistan. But recently I started noticing that ultimately, all arguments cancel out. Indeed, both men and women don't say what they think. So it's way easier and sane to look at everyone as HUMANS with certain gender -specific traits.

Yeah, good policy ...I never did buy the "men are from Venus and women are from Mars bs" (or is it the other way around?

This is actually remarkably true! And if you read the book 4Cross The Game That Explains Love And Life… you would see why! So cool that you made this observation. We all come from one of four positions in the game of life no matter if your male or female.

There's one thing that seems to be demonstrably true: that nature, reality, existence -- call it what you will -- loves uniqueness, testing different approaches, doing experiments, asking 'what if ...', and so on.

Regimentation: the desire for sameness, seems to be the polar opposite of the natural nature of existence.

Perhaps that's why there are so many different types of people, animals, vegetation -- and also why 99% of all species on Earth appears to have 'died out' over time. It seems the ability to evolve and adapt to changing conditions counts for much.

Moreover both men and women are individuals too. To me, it seems men and women are of equal value, but thankfully, we are different. We are absolutely not the same. My wife sees the world differently to me so detects aspects I miss and vice versa.

In addition, we can have different mixes of men and women too. Nature again has proven that different types of human can develop including gay, lesbian, trans, and so on. Perhaps in the future, we'll have even further types of human too.

Hi Derek,

I love your writing, because it makes me think.

It feels pragmatic, but some of the logic here can be contested.

How would you define ‘same’?

The answer to this will drastically impact whether or not I should believe / assume men and women are the same or not.

Plato took the opposing position in his work ‘The Republic’. He believed men and women were not the same. His argument is worth reviewing.

Men and women are different, it’s evolution. Just look at the animal kingdom.

Derek’s comment is to assume we are the same, he even acknowledges we are not the same.

no. women are women. men are men. there are no same same.

If we like the idea that civilisation means something particular, I like the idea that men and women -- and any mix of either -- are equal and different at the same time. Always have been. Perhaps if that idea had been dominant throughout our troubled human history, human progress today might be 1,000 years ahead of what we have now.

Unfortunately, of course, a glance back at our human history seems to make it clear seeing men and women as equals hasn't worked for much of our history. Why: could be that we're just a bit too dumb. So we take the long route to progress: we must have the pain first, then learn the lesson, then in about two generations, we repeat the process. Gradually, over time, let's hope the lessons get learned.

A man's job is to command the future. A woman's job is to present the past. Asymptotically, the two jobs are indistinguishable.

As a squirrel I approve of this message.

This theory works for me, as I am fond of women myself, as soon as I understood the lesser the assumed difference between the two the more easier it becomes to create better understanding and connect without any differences.

Not a doubt, both of them are very different, but it's always more virtual then it is real.

Totally agree! As a social researcher i find the gender variable much less interesting than variables like field of work or living in a rural vs. urban place. On many topics i research gender doesn't 'do' a lot; finance, voting, citizenship, housing preferences, the role of family, sustainability.

Many (western) cultural norms and customs exaggerate differences between women and men; their vocal ranges are closer to each other than the culturally defined voices for bass/tenor and alto/soprano. The padding on shoulders in men's suits. Hair removal vs. growing a beard. Even deodorant smells are gendered. But if it's cultural, you can chose, in most cases, to deviate from the norm.

This idea is just great. I would have never even considered it, but it's very true and I have been testing this idea in practice. Great philosophy!