Please explain all the fucking fellas who use Valentine’s Day as an excuse to grandstand, self-validate and self-exonerate – WITHOUT any demands from their women.

My ex, for example, bought me a card and stuff, and I was quite surprised. I didn’t even ask for birthday presents, just for him to be a better boyfriend. Seemingly too much to ask.

I know a lot of women who don’t ask for anything but their men just assume they’ll want to do Valentine’s. I also know of many who, like my bf, use it as an excuse to cover up their failings.

My current squeeze did, and I went along with it to keep him happy, but have told him that we are NOT next year, because it is BS.

Now, I’m not famed for understanding women.

Seems like you have trouble with the terms ‘bullshit generalisation’ and ‘scientifically-proven fact’ as well. And by the way, that blog post of yours on women was not in the least funny. I understand irony just fine, being a soon-to-be English Lit graduate and that was just some ‘cover-my-self-pitying misogynist ass’ crap. I was delighted to note that despite being a London woman, who has been known to have feelings, 0 of your ‘observations’ applied to me. In fact, I’m attending a pub quiz tomorrow.

However, I’d say 1, 2 (and I’d bet 5) evidently apply to you. EPIC FAIL.

There’s a reason I’m marrying that boy…

As to stereotypes, yes they can mislead but thinking in stereotypes is adaptive behaviour. You don’t have any ancestors who thought ‘Maybe this sabre-tooth is friendly’

They are also useful in describing general social relationships: for instance, not all capitalists are money grubbing bastards and not all working class people are horny handed sons of toil: however, the stereotype describes the objective relationship quite adequately.

There we go; anyone with an open ID log in can vote, and the more people who vote, the more accurate it is, right?

I might actually run a poll on this.

Let’s see if we can illustrate his thesis by conducting a little experiment.

Supposing you had to put your mortgage on the preference of 100 men and 100 women who are all offered the choice of ONE gift (of equal value in monetary terms).
The male and female subjects were offered either:
[A] one years subscription to SKY sports
or
[B] gift vouchers to a leading cosmetics & fragrance retailer.

Without ever conducting such a study my guess be that MOST men (who are all individuals) would select the sports channel, while the women (who are also individuals) would prefer the cosmetics option.

By the way, Emus can’t fly either.

Just because people tend to think in stereotypes doesn’t mean that doing so reflects reality…

Not all birds can fly though (ostrich, penguin, chickens).
Hell, some birds are not even birds sometimes (for connoisseur of cockney rhyming slang).

Other than that your post makes perfect sense to me.

Sure, I’ll take the bait: I am seriously telling you that I cannot think of a single behaviour that is unique to men and universal to all men. What did you think I would say?

I was going to say, “leaving the toilet seat up”, but I was trained to leave it down, so it isn’t universal.

You know, the kind of person who can draw a distinction between higher frequencies of behaviour and distinct behavioural differences. Or who appreciates that just because left handed people aren’t a majority, they should be ignored and belittled in every circumstance.

A) As relevant as considering the “usefullness” of the weather when it is an unalterable given
B) Depends on your conception of “reality”

I didn’t say “unique to all men and universal to all men”. Perhaps you might understand me better if I used the traditional (feminist) metaphor that goes something like ” men are like pebbles, all different but all posessing the same essential quality of pebblehood”. You can of course subsitute the word “men” for any category. Statements such as “men are more likely to watch football than women” or “women are more likely to be intersted in emotions than systems” follow from this and become widely accepted “facts” about the world. The fact that some women like football and some men are interested in emotions does not alter the validity of the statements, any more than the existence of left handed people alters the validity of the statement that most people are right handed.

Are you incapable of using a dictionary, Matt? Or is your ability to do so hampered by whatever it is that makes you think “lots of people employ stereotypes” is equivalent or leads to “stereotypes are useful and accurate descriptors of reality”? We may all have prejudices: the difference is that some people are capable of recognising them as such, and don’t try to build actual arguments on them.

Sure, I’ll take the bait: I am seriously telling you that I cannot think of a single behaviour that is unique to men and universal to all men. What did you think I would say?

(Shatterface #21: Every woman I’ve ever been out with has known exactly what makes me happy, too! But then, I do have impeccable taste in women.)

To give a practical example are any of the women on here seriously telling me they don’t think that all men have anything in common/have any predictable behaviours ??

I hope 24 meets your exacting standards – please let me know if you require any further supporting evidence.

But YOU seem to have a handle on ‘right’ and ‘wrong’…………………………well done.

It goes without saying that few would be interested in a couple of lightweights slogging out a turgid rehash of the ‘Selfish Gene’ or any of the other science-for-beginners publications.

Suffice to say we all rely on forms of shorthand from time to time not least because they may bestow an evolutionary benefit such as avoiding a potential predator or finding a potential mate.