Pick up lines

Men --> women: pick up lines

Excellent wordplay!!

Cheers !! :)) :))

TOOTSIE !!

Michael Dorsey said to Julie Nichols “I was a better man with you as a woman than I ever was with a woman as a man”

This is my favourite line in the movie and it also highlights the crux of the movie. 

Michael Dorsey is an unemployed man who cross-dresses in order to be employed as an actress to earn his keep. His female identity named Dorothy Michaels is a female who posses stereotypical male-like characteristics such as standing up for women’s rights, courage to voice her opinions and being decisive in what she thinks is right etc. 

Tootsie is a movie filmed and broadcasted in the 1980s where American women’s statues were more subordinate to that of men’s as compared to today. Hence the suppression that American women felt in the 80s enables them to not just relate to Dorothy’s character in the show, but also look up to her and wish to model after her.

When Michael transformed to Dorothy, some of his linguistics cues changed too. As mentioned by Lakoff, men and women adopt different languages, whilst men talk about things related to their power and hierarchy in the society, women talk include choice and frequency of lexical particles which grammarians often describe as ‘meaningless’. Example: 

Michael Dorsey: You know, I could lay a big line on you and we could do a lot of role-playing, but the simple truth is, is that I find you very interesting and I'd really like to make love to you.

Dorothy Michaels: Oh I know what y'all really want is some gross, caricature of a woman to prove some idiotic point that power makes a woman masculine, or masculine women are ugly. Well shame on you for letting a man do that, or any man that does that. That means you, dear. Miss Marshall. Shame on you, you macho shit head.

Many critics of the movie mentioned that since Dorothy Michaels is really a man, the hidden message of the film is that men are actually better than women and only a man can be tough and honest enough to express women's rights. This reinforces gender stereotype where women are perceived to be weak and passive. 

I beg to differ; instead women stereotypes can provide alternative insights which reinforce male stereotypes. Recalling the first line of this writing, Michael realised that he was more successful as a woman than a man. This seems to me that a woman can better a man. Michael learns by putting himself in the shoes of a woman, literally. Michael learns that in order to make Dorothy a convincing woman to others, he has to take on stereotypically female characteristics such as being sympathetic, feeling, and observant. And incidentally, he realised such stereotypical female characteristics also make men better men. This suggest that the male audiences of the film, or oven the male producers of the film take on the stereotypes of men as insensitive, do no listen or even minimal expression of care and concern i.e. Michael. As such, Tootsie serve as a reminder and alternative that stereotypically female characteristics ironically, can make men better men and even reinforces male characteristics such as making them more attractive and charming to women. 

This is an insightful film, I like. :) :)

Guy's rules

Guys' Rules 

Now here are the rules from the male side. These are our rules!

Please note.... these are all numbered "1"ON PURPOSE!

1. Men are NOT mind readers.
1. Shopping is NOT a sport.  And no, we are never going to think of it that way.
1. Crying is blackmail.
1. Ask for what you want.  Let us be clear on this one: Subtle hints do not work!  Strong hints do not work!  Obvious hints do not work! Just say it!
1. Yes and No are perfectly acceptable answers to almost every question.
1. Come to us with a problem only if you want help solving it. That's what we do.Sympathy is what your girlfriends are for.
1. A headache that lasts for 17 months is a Problem. See a doctor.
1. Anything we said 6 months ago is inadmissible in an argument. In fact, all comments become null and void after 7 Days.
1. If you won't dress like the Victoria's Secret girls, don't Expect us to act like soap opera guys.
1. If you think you're fat, you probably are.  Don't ask us.
1. If something we said can be interpreted two ways and one of the ways makes you sad or angry, we meant the other one
1. You can either ask us to do something Or tell us how you want it done.  Not both.  If you already know best how to do it, just do it yourself.
1. Whenever possible, Please say whatever you have to say during commercials.
1. Christopher Columbus did NOT need directions and neither do we.
1. ALL men see in only 16 colors, like Windows default settings.  Peach, for example, is a fruit, not A color. Pumpkin is also a fruit. We have no idea what mauve is.

1. If we ask what is wrong and you say "nothing," We will act like nothing's wrong. We know you are lying, but it is just not worth the hassle.
1. If you ask a question you don't want an answer to, Expect an answer you don't want to hear.
1. When we have to go somewhere, absolutely anything you wear is fine. Really.
1. Don't ask us what we're thinking about unless you are prepared to discuss such topics as baseball, the shotgun formation, or golf.
1. You have enough clothes.
1. You have too many shoes.
1. I am in shape. Round IS a shape!

This is a blog entry i chance upon from http://www.forwardblog.com/2008/02/guys-rules.html 

I choose to share this because this shows the different communication styles between men and women that is so widespread that materials can be found easily on the internet, in the realm of of pop cultures and even Tom, Dick and Harry writes about them.

In addition, after laughing when I read this entry, the first thing that struck me was how frustrated a tone was the entry written in.  First, the rules are all numbered '1' on purpose implies how the author feels that all the 'rules' are so important for women to remember all of them.  Second, the deliberate capital letters e.g.  'Men are NOT mind readers.' used in words in the middle of the sentences is to amplify the point that the author wishes to make.  Third, the author uses 'we' as the first person in this article which represents men instead of the author's stand alone.  This suggests how the prevalent stereotypes and subsequent conflicts of men and women have successfully gathered enough support and courage for each gender to take sides to the point where the author daringly uses his opinions on this topic as a voice for all men.  

That;s my 2 cents worth!!  Enjoy!!

‘Teacher’s classroom teaching strategies

‘Teacher’s classroom teaching strategies should recognize that men and women use language differently’ is the title and also the point of Tennan writing this article to encourage teachers to adopt more diverse and perhaps more effective teaching methods. Tannen’s article was provoked by her analysis of women being a disadvantaged group in classroom settings as the environment encourages a greater amount of discussion time being dominated by men’s voices. Her evidence for the validity of the above point is that women in single-sex school do better in their later lives than women in mixed-school. 

Tennan’s intended audiences for this article are teachers. In her article, she adopted an informal tone of sharing and constantly puts herself in the position of a teacher alongside her peers. This illustrates her empathy with other teachers and well understanding of the classroom scenario through her personal anecdotes and her personal interviews with her colleagues to provide confirmation of her claims. 

Tennan’s article not only appeals to teachers who are receptive to new suggestions of classroom teaching strategies, her use of certain provoking statements seems to attempt to create a controversy and challenge all teachers to re-evaluate their classroom teaching methods. For instance, Tennan writes ‘This contrasts sharply with the way I teach’. In my opinion, the statement displays arrogance and superiority of her over her peers. A teacher who might be fully confident in his/her classroom teaching strategy might take offence in the above statement as it implies that Tennan’s teaching method is the only method that is right and effective and there is no alternatives. This may cause the disgruntled teacher to re-evaluate his/her classroom teaching strategies according to Tennan’s suggestions and also raise awareness of how men and women use language differently. Moreover what is there to lose if a simple trial of Tennan’s classroom teaching strategy can help discern the truth behind these compelling claims, they might think. 

Tennan’s deliberate writing style in this article makes it an effective double edge sword to both share and provoke really impresses me. She concludes with ‘The goal of complete equal opportunity in class may not be attainable, but realizing that once monolithic classroom participation in not equal opportunity is itself a powerful motivation to find more-diverse methods to serve diverse students – and every classroom is diverse.’ exhibits her vision to encourage diversity and improve classroom teaching strategies. The extreme claims, personal anecdotes, and even being obnoxious in displaying only data that agrees with her claim are tools to raise awareness of how men and women use language differently and eventually provoke all teachers to think-out-of-the-box to explore classroom teaching strategies that address the flaws of current conservative ones. 

After all, isn’t there a reason for how we know the existence of this article and why is it being chosen for critical analysis in class?

Can't we talk?

 The intentions of Deborah Tannen in the article of ‘Can’t we talk’ are to present her linguistic knowledge on the difference between the conversation styles of men and women so as to enhance communication and reduce misunderstandings.

The pattern that that she chose to adopt to present her knowledge is to compare men and women’s differential analysis despite the identical words and context it is being played.   

I find Tannen’s article an easy read because of the simple language used and the everyday stories in life that I can relate to or even imagine easily.  I like her organization of the article because she uses headers i.e. the different ideas between men and women e.g. Independence and intimacy, to present her points.  These headers provided a clear platform to state her points and context clearly and more importantly helped her achieved her aims of showcasing her linguistic knowledge of differential conversation styles between men and women.

Another plus point of the Tannen’s article is her objectivity in presenting perspectives of both sides of the coin – how men and women on their own, analyse the same set of words in the given context differently that leads to conflicts.  In addition to that, she writes about possible solutions to help both genders avoid such possible conflicts in future.  This greatly helped to achieve her intentions of written this article to help men and women to reduce conversational misunderstandings.

Despite the positivity of her article, I constantly ponder over the deeper causation of such difference in men and women’s conversation cues.  Tannen mentioned in her article that the conversation styles of men and women differ because both genders and bounded by different conversation rules e.g. men converse to demonstrate power and dominance while women converse to seek confirmation and encouragement.  However, she failed to address the roots of such behaviour. 

In my opinion, the difference in conversation cues between men and women can be attributed to many reasons such as culture, particular relationship of the men and women, broader context e.g. workplace instead of solely a couple scenario has illustrated by Tannen in her article.  In a patriarchal society, which in my opinion is the basis of Tannen’s perspective towards men and women’s conversation styles, we often hear of male dominance in the family or society.  This often leads to the case study of ‘Independence and intimacy’ where John upsets Linda when he made the decision to having a house guest without consulting Linda and when faced with a confrontation, he responded “I can’t tell my friend, ‘I’ve to ask my wife for her permission’!”.  On the other hand, in a matriarchal society, the mother of the family may play the same role as John in a patriarchal society.  The culture of a society shapes people and their behaviour.  Conversation styles are a part of behaviour which suggests women in a matriarchal society may display male’s dominance in a context and definitely male conversational styles naturally.  This implies to me that cultures across space may influence men and women’s behaviour more than simply attributing differences in conversational styles to that of gender.

If a broader context of communication between men and women e.g. in family, workplaces, political scenarios were given, it will certainly make Tannen’s article more convincing and less critical.  Whats more, her aims of her article is to present her linguistic knowledge on the difference between the conversation styles of men and women so as to enhance communication and reduce misunderstandings; so why should the illustrations be confined to mostly couple-talks instead of a broader context? 

Defending the Cavemen: Chores at home!

Defending the Cavemen:  This clip shares how a couple may communicate at home and in this context, it is the burden of performing household chores.  Enjoy!  :)) :))