Men are from Mars, women from Venus?

These types of books are for people without a normal upbringing or for some reason or another cant form normal relationships.

That's interesting sm, maybe that was so originally but the 4 or 5 people I know who read this crap are all men in their teens/twenties/thirties who can't form proper relationships and are trying to find out whyyyyy. If the books helped I would be astonished.

i always think its women by this self help yak.same women who believe in homeopathy and things we dont understand

These books are much read by single men IMO - far more than by women. This might go some way towards explaining why "there are no decent men out there these days", they are all reading shite like this and thinking: brilliant, don't have to iron or make an effort to chat or listen, because it's my destineeeeee to be a sullen drain on my putative girlfriend's emotional resources.

I agree that Men & V is a load of bollocks and everyone knows my stance on protecting the motherbaby unit. Human behaviour is one thing i.e the desire to nurture and breastfeed a newborn- that's the animal in us- but masculine and feminine traits are just made up.
I read "Why men don't iron" with a really open mind, thinking it would give me some answers. It was just bad science.

hate all the quacky books,absolute tosh.hoovered up by the hard of thinking.and spouted as if factual

neuro-psych and use of mri is producing some amazing and fast moving research at the mo

M and V was the biggest pile of bull crap I have ever read. When I am in a bad mood don't speak to me for 10 minutes (aka I retreat to my cave) but no, because I am a woman I should want to speak about my feelings all the sodding time. Well I don't.

E&M - shocking isn't it? It does make you realise how far we've come I guess

Well, I've just looked at the GLTC catalogue (since chucked in the bin) and they must think male and female brains are different. Because they have lunch boxes: in pink or blue. They have drinks bottles: in pink or blue, and also a desk lamp: in pink or blue.
So this means there MUST be a specific female way of drinking, and also switching on and using a light, and the male way must be different otherwise why have they had to colour the products either pink or blue?
Oh, and swimming goggles, so girls and boys must swim differently too. How can all these marketing people be wrong?!

Pity we don't have an irony emoticon.

Sue McGregor was accused of being a terrorist for having "Ms" on her passport! laugh or cry?

Thanks LB - I'm listening to it now.

Fry's English Delight (a radio programme about language) was about the differences in the way that men and women communicate (or not) and was v interesting in the context of this thread. Really worth a listen download

(ps after this and my rec on the other thread I would like to make it clear that I don't work for the beeb, am just an avid R4 listener :o)

Elephants - I'm glad someone agrees with me. At uni, he was one who went unquestioned and it stinks in my opinion.

And I don't know where you read him say that women could have male brains and vice versa but it must have been in his later works because the stuff I read was all happy to polarise gendered brains.

:o epicfail

Loathsome book. I didn't see the Observer this week so I shall go and peruse

Truth is unless children are reared without any form of human contact, which would be highly unethical, it is impossible to be absolutely sure what is nurture and what is nature.

We unconsciously send signals to our babies and our children all the time and these signals are often gender related.

It should also be remembered that psychology is not an exact science.

I threw out Venus and Mars after giving it due course, ie. gritting my teeth and making it almost to the end of the book. Gray would say, "when the woman says says blah blah blah, she really means bleh bleh bleh" and I would be screaming at the book - no she doesnt you stupid fucker, she means exactly what she bloody well said in the first place! Wish someone had rolled a very bloody heavy boulder over the entrance to good old John's cave while he was in it.

I get that feeling about SBC too msrisotto. You read all this stuff about male brains and female brains, and then he pops in to mention oho, of course when I say "male"/"female" I don't mean "only men/women can have these brains", thereby flying in the face of centuries of etymology. Either you're spouting the line - which, astonishingly, we have heard before in any misogyny manual of your choice from the past few millennia - that women are soft cuddly divvers who should be nice to children and animals and not bother our pretty heads with science (leave all that tricky highly-paid stuff to the boys eh?), or you're not, Simon.

As a poster said above Living Dolls shows what shaky ground this book was written on. Baron Cohen also gets something of a bashing in the book.

I agree there are different types of people but naturally this has nothing to do with gender.

I'm reading Pink Brain Blue Brain at the moment so I'm hoping to be better able to argue against "neurosexism" when I see it.

Good article. The quotes at the bottom....Baron - Cohen is highly lauded a researcher in ASD but i've always thought his theories are heavily biased by sexist assumptions, it's so frustrating!

My big sister was very keen on the Venus and Mars stuff, and felt it really applied to her relationship, but what she wasn't seeing is that her and her dh were very different people who had been brought up in very different ways. Sure there was plenty of gender conditioning going on too, but I think it's quite destructive to then say "oh it's because he is a man", or "oh it's because I am a woman", as opposed to we are different, how are we going to work it out.

Neurosexism! What a great word.

I'm so sick of evopsych bullshit, I can't tell you.

Tortoise: This is what drives me demented about (to pinch the Observer's magnificent term) neurosexism. Name anything that is supposedly only done by men, or by women, and anyone can think of at least a handful of men/women who do the exact opposite of what their gender-assigned roles should be. That's a LOT of people demonstrating that the 'rule' doesn't apply to them and therefore can't be 'innate' or 'natural'.

AllarmBells, if your partner and you are from the "wrong" planets, then doesn't that shore up the argument that there aren't innate biological differences? Why not just write a book that says, some people communicate like this, others like that, here's a way to meet in the middle? It's the gendered crap that annoys us.

'Women! Shut up and suck cock. Whatever a man does is Right because he's a Man and you're only a woman.'

Perfect description of M&V. I was disgusted with it - all that cave shit!