Published on 12, July, 2020
I've been thinking about this recently, the way that there are differences between the sexes in communication style. I've noticed as a general rule and of course there are exceptions, but that for the majority of people it holds true is that men generally communicate directly and women communicate indirectly. Men seem to impart the information that's relevant to the discussion at hand, they will then have a discussion about the information. Women will impart information that isn't relevant, sort of like filler around the edges and then drip feed in the actual relevant information during the discussion, so that you don't have all the information until a long way through the conversation and to get to the information you have to filter though a lot of junk data.
I'll use an example, but there are thousands of examples that could be used. I went to see my mum on the way home from work last night, cooked her dinner, had a conversation about various things, at one point I asked her what time were we all meeting (family) on Saturday for a family members birthday. She then proceeded to talk for about 20 minutes telling me about irrelevant people I don't know doing things which changed times etc. After 20 minutes I was still none the wiser to the time we were meeting so I said "So what time are we actually meeting on Saturday?", On Friday I phoned a friend to ask what time we were going to meet in the pub, his reply was "Half six". In both instance the only piece of information requested and the only piece of information relevant was the time, yet one took 20 minutes and had to be prompted to actually answer the question, where as the other just answered the question.
Now I'm using those two instances as examples, but as a general rule that kind of behaviour seems to hold true across life, whether it's with friends, family or in a work environment. I suspect that there's an element of my ASD contributing here because it makes me less tolerant of waffle and I like information and precision, not noise and vagueness.
I was thinking what are other people's perceptions?
My sister says that i text 'like a boy'. Apparently she means that i'm too direct
Yep she's NT, the whole of my immediate family are apart from me. I can be regarded as the blunt one! I don't care about celebrities, gossip, the lives of people I don't know and will never meet etc. If I'm going to talk about something I want it to have substance.
I work with men predominately, well almost exclusively.
They are often to coin an old sexist phrase,” like a bunch of old women”.
ok I don’t like that phrase but it puts it into some kind of meaning.
I often just shut them out, I do not find it at all comfortable trying to interact with them. It is generally based on stereo typical manly subject matter, if I were to really listen it would feel as though my mind were being slowly poisoned. Nasty videos on smart phones, often showing fights, so called practical jokes but often depicting hurt to another, then worst of all sexism,
I have to walk away or shut it out,
I would rather given the choice talk to women, They in my own opinion do not seek to denigrate the Male sex in quite the same way, they have gossip yes, but the intention is not to harm or degrade as much as the so called men I work with.
I sm a manual worker and a Male of 55 years old.
they are just a tiny bit higher up the evolutionary ladder to gorillas, no disrespect to gorillas.
My thoughts, my mind,
much love to all.
X()x.
I ask because I can be pretty direct ... question prompts yes/no answer...sometimes I don’t have the time to chew through small talk, gossip, she said/ he said stuff
Is your mum NT?
I think what you describe is true for most of the NTs I know, though I do know some men that rather waffle on about matters irrelevant to the subject at hand. However I’m not sure it’s so true for those with ASD e.g. I am female but I am very direct, I don’t like ‘fluff’ in conversations and I am often intolerant of other people talking for ages but not actually answering the questions that I asked them!
I agree with Patch too that personality probably plays a role also.
I think sex plays a role as well as personality type. When I was at uni we spent a lot of time looking at learning styles and how people relate and I remember this test we worked through https://www.123test.com/disc-personality-test/. The Ds (as a general rule) were the most direct and task orientated whereas some of the other styles preferred relationship over achieving the goal. Myers Briggs perhaps covers a similar theme.
I share your suspicion that ASD is also a factor and would much prefer for people to make their point and then move on to the general conversation afterwards!