"A man would never do that"...

J

Fanfare! Upcoming publication

high stakes plot ideas

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You so baaaaddddd.

This is man-style

Cattitude


View attachment 1076

I don't trust this picture....Lionesses be mane-ing up these days.

http://indy100.independent.co.uk/ar...-mane-acts-and-roars-like-a-male--ZyeC8jMoSsx

mmamoriri-lioness-mane-Kai-Collins.jpg
 
She lacks a Y chromosome. Anyway those lovely lions are just lounging about :) We've all seen the lionesses are the hunters, every bit as brave as the lions. Braver, possibly, and unselfish team workers, risking their lives to feed the pride, where the males get first dibs at the dinner to keep them strong to fight off other males. And that's OK with the lionesses, because if their lion loses, the new male is likely to kill all the cubs. Can't understand how the lionesses can bear to permit that, but lions now and then kill a lioness. Don't know if that happens the other way round, though there are some pretty fierce pictures of lionesses standing up to them, bless them all.

lion and lioness.jpg
 
One thing that is different between the genders is their approach to shopping. I'm generalising, but for males shopping is a task that needs to be done to achieve the best results, whereas it's more a leisure activity for females.

A man who's looking for an item will search places selling it, including online, making comparisons to decide on trade-offs of price, location and quality. He may even make a few reconnaissance patrols, to check if a local trader has what he needs, before swooping in to make the score! It's like a military exercise.

A woman will wander seemingly aimlessly through a mall, examining many, many examples of what looks like the same thing to her male partner accompanying her—before returning to the first one she saw and buying that!

Let me give you a real-life experience as an example. I once went shopping with my ex-wife in a large shopping mall in Atlanta. I'm a very patient man, so didn't mind spending a couple of hours looking for a style of camouflage material dungarees she searched for. We ended up in the Army & Navy store, where the display of dungarees was in direct sunshine. It was very hot in the store as the air-conditioning had failed, so we diligently worked our way through 100 dungarees looking for her size getting sweatier and sweatier.

With great delight, I eventually snagged a size 8 and held it up. "I don't like the colour", she said. They were all exactly the same colour, so I was mystified, and asked her why, if she didn't like the colour she couldn't have said so 20 minutes ago? "I had to see it in my size," she replied.

It was at this point, I realised the male and female brains are very different in tiny but crucial ways....

Men make raids when they shop. Women indulge in relaxed retail therapy.

20150602143324472739168527.jpg
 
Well done on bearing with that. Il Matrimonio would leave after 5 minutes. When it comes to physical shops, not trying to be awkward, I think your observation is spot on, and I use a wheelchair at the moment, so I'm not a typical woman shopper just now, and my mother adores spending ages in shops.

I raid and in my young days I browsed but preferred to do it alone, unless with my sisters. But I browse online and I don't necessarily buy anything (though quite often I do) I am seeing what is selling as much as anything and probably need to get out more. This winter has been such a wet one, it's been too indoorsy.

Went to the Lowry Art Gallery and shopping Mall in Salford last week, smack bang next to Media City and the football pitch at Old Trafford. It's been many years since I went to Salford, didn't recognize the place. Bits of banter in the shops, lots of small laughs about nothing much. Into one shop came three care assistants, all girls, pushing two young women and one young man, all severely disabled, in huge great wheelchairs. The young man in particular, looked very aware of his situation although he did not speak.

It was their day to go out, the carers told the staff, but it was too cold for a proper walk and it was warm and free to walk around the Mall. And I also noticed lots of girls alone with babies. That might sound ever so traditional, but somehow it wasn't. The girls had something about them that made me think they were going it alone. It can certainly be done, I know; but I only did it for a year or so, and they gave off a kind of quiet self possession and a solitude I remembered with a pang.

Picture is a Dolpo child contemplating a shard of ice picked out of the river, must find out the name of the photographer...friend of my parents, I forget his name, but this image sums up something we're losing, too many of us, or so it seems to me. Boy and girl. Man and woman.

dolpo child.jpg
 
Thus proving once again that I'm not really a woman. I despise shopping. My MIL came grocery shopping once when they came for a visit, and she was terrified--she wanted to stroll the isles, looking at things, and I power-walked through, making a beeline for what I needed and then racing out of the store. That's how I shop for everything. And if I can get what I need on-line, without ever setting foot into a store, all the better. Malls give me the screaming heebee-geebees.
 
One thing that is different between the genders is their approach to shopping. I'm generalising, but for males shopping is a task that needs to be done to achieve the best results, whereas it's more a leisure activity for females.

A man who's looking for an item will search places selling it, including online, making comparisons to decide on trade-offs of price, location and quality. He may even make a few reconnaissance patrols, to check if a local trader has what he needs, before swooping in to make the score! It's like a military exercise.

A woman will wander seemingly aimlessly through a mall, examining many, many examples of what looks like the same thing to her male partner accompanying her—before returning to the first one she saw and buying that!

Let me give you a real-life experience as an example. I once went shopping with my ex-wife in a large shopping mall in Atlanta. I'm a very patient man, so didn't mind spending a couple of hours looking for a style of camouflage material dungarees she searched for. We ended up in the Army & Navy store, where the display of dungarees was in direct sunshine. It was very hot in the store as the air-conditioning had failed, so we diligently worked our way through 100 dungarees looking for her size getting sweatier and sweatier.

With great delight, I eventually snagged a size 8 and held it up. "I don't like the colour", she said. They were all exactly the same colour, so I was mystified, and asked her why, if she didn't like the colour she couldn't have said so 20 minutes ago? "I had to see it in my size," she replied.

It was at this point, I realised the male and female brains are very different in tiny but crucial ways....

Men make raids when they shop. Women indulge in relaxed retail therapy.

20150602143324472739168527.jpg

Except for those weird outliers like me lol. I know exactly which store I'm going to and I go in just that one store. :)
 
My daughter and her best friend (a boy) had a philosophical discussion about gender stereotypes on the way home from school a couple of months ago, in the way that only kids can do. They were discussing the term "tomboy"--how offensive that term is to both boys and girls, because it assumes that certain behaviours are "boy" behaviours and certain ones are "girl" behaviours. But the truth is that we all display a mix of these stereotypically gendered behaviours...and we always have done so. So when a girl climbs trees, that should make climbing trees a "girl" behaviour, because a girl is doing it. When a boy gives an upset friend a hug, that should make hugging "boy" behaviour, because a boy is doing it. Neither of them had seen the "Like a girl" video, but they saw very clearly that what society, and the very English language, was teaching them about gender stereotypes was way off base.
I would challenge any writer to write about people. Create people, not men or women.
 
I liked climbing trees. So did Il Matrimonio who fell out of one and broke his arm. Maybe I didn't climb as high and that could be why. I knew my personal risk boundaries. It's a spectrum. My mother bought us Action Man dolls. They are dolls. I had John Wayne, complete with horse and hat and rifle. A sister had a parachutist. She threw him out of the window to test his parachute and he got caught on an overhead cable and my father had to go out in the street with a chair and a wooden stick to get it down. Another sister had diver Action Man with a fuzzy kind of hair that smelled mouldy after a while of bath swimming. But fiction is a construct as well as a mirror. Anything goes, I think, but getting the feeling of being lectured from a novel.
 
I made the mistake of complimenting my son-in-law on his beard growth recently during a lacrosse match. He moved away and struck up a conversation with another man. I generally agree that in my experience, hetero men don't compliment each other's personal hygiene, dress or hair style directly. Joking is the norm. Gay men seem to do both, to their credit. I've written a couple of books with women sharing the top character spot, and I've found that writing them more motivated by internal discussions and observations seems to work effectively. I believe the motivational and emotional differences between the genders are real and are there for biological reasons, so rather than minimize them, I like to use them in such a way that they forward propel the story or action if possible.
 
In the subject of shopping- more girls I know hate it than like it. Which is annoying, because I like company while roaming the malls ;) Other than that, its really amazing how the gender stereotyping changes with context/situation. In Poland people thought me a complete butch. Here I am regarded as super-feminine (if eccentric) from the sole fact that I wear high heels o_O

Create people, not men or women.
Word

Anything goes, I think, but getting the feeling of being lectured from a novel.
This I should probably print out and hang above my bed.
 
One thing that is different between the genders is their approach to shopping. I'm generalising, but for males shopping is a task that needs to be done to achieve the best results, whereas it's more a leisure activity for females.

A man who's looking for an item will search places selling it, including online, making comparisons to decide on trade-offs of price, location and quality. He may even make a few reconnaissance patrols, to check if a local trader has what he needs, before swooping in to make the score! It's like a military exercise.

A woman will wander seemingly aimlessly through a mall, examining many, many examples of what looks like the same thing to her male partner accompanying her—before returning to the first one she saw and buying that!

Let me give you a real-life experience as an example. I once went shopping with my ex-wife in a large shopping mall in Atlanta. I'm a very patient man, so didn't mind spending a couple of hours looking for a style of camouflage material dungarees she searched for. We ended up in the Army & Navy store, where the display of dungarees was in direct sunshine. It was very hot in the store as the air-conditioning had failed, so we diligently worked our way through 100 dungarees looking for her size getting sweatier and sweatier.

With great delight, I eventually snagged a size 8 and held it up. "I don't like the colour", she said. They were all exactly the same colour, so I was mystified, and asked her why, if she didn't like the colour she couldn't have said so 20 minutes ago? "I had to see it in my size," she replied.

It was at this point, I realised the male and female brains are very different in tiny but crucial ways....

Men make raids when they shop. Women indulge in relaxed retail therapy.

20150602143324472739168527.jpg


This photo speaks to me.

My wife and I embody this photo. If we go to the supermarket for the express purpose of buying one or two things, we can't actually get them without walking up and down EVERY. SINGLE. AISLE. This is mandated by Astrid and is generally non-negotiable. Imagine the agony of going to the store for a bag of chips...so painful...
 
One thing that is different between the genders is their approach to shopping. I'm generalising, but for males shopping is a task that needs to be done to achieve the best results, whereas it's more a leisure activity for females.

A man who's looking for an item will search places selling it, including online, making comparisons to decide on trade-offs of price, location and quality. He may even make a few reconnaissance patrols, to check if a local trader has what he needs, before swooping in to make the score! It's like a military exercise.

A woman will wander seemingly aimlessly through a mall, examining many, many examples of what looks like the same thing to her male partner accompanying her—before returning to the first one she saw and buying that!

Let me give you a real-life experience as an example. I once went shopping with my ex-wife in a large shopping mall in Atlanta. I'm a very patient man, so didn't mind spending a couple of hours looking for a style of camouflage material dungarees she searched for. We ended up in the Army & Navy store, where the display of dungarees was in direct sunshine. It was very hot in the store as the air-conditioning had failed, so we diligently worked our way through 100 dungarees looking for her size getting sweatier and sweatier.

With great delight, I eventually snagged a size 8 and held it up. "I don't like the colour", she said. They were all exactly the same colour, so I was mystified, and asked her why, if she didn't like the colour she couldn't have said so 20 minutes ago? "I had to see it in my size," she replied.

It was at this point, I realised the male and female brains are very different in tiny but crucial ways....

Men make raids when they shop. Women indulge in relaxed retail therapy.

20150602143324472739168527.jpg
As I understand it, it goes all the way back to the hunter/gatherer mindset.
Wait wait wait stalk, chase, kill, bring back to camp versus searching out all the berries, nuts, and roots available.
I tend to treat everything like a race, so I come in at a jog, hurry in, slip through plodding shoppers the same way I drive, grab the one thing I was sent for, and and out of the store within about 30 seconds. Then get halfway home before getting the text that we also need milk.
 
Gender aside, I think the real - and very important- question is whether or not the particular character would do or say whatever.

and a post script:
I dislike shopping and approach it in the manner Jason describes; my husband (and other men of my acquaintance) could spend happy hours wandering through a hardware store
 
My father used to send me to the hardware store on Saturdays, sometimes. It was called Archibald's. What a treasure trove it was, though he, and we generally dubbed it (affectionately) ....

Archibollocks.

And that's more stereotyping. Is a stereotype a debased or over used archetype, then. Achilles, we get a handle on, and Hector, and his father Nestor. But what was Jason like. What was Perseus like, and Theseus? And Helen and Clytemnestra and Andromache. The myths present their situation, and then they just do as they do.

A tangent. Maybe. We're huge on causality as a society. Why do we think, say or do this. What if we essentially do what is in our nature to do, according to our instincts responding in a given situation.
 
Gender aside, I think the real - and very important- question is whether or not the particular character would do or say whatever.

and a post script:
I dislike shopping and approach it in the manner Jason describes; my husband (and other men of my acquaintance) could spend happy hours wandering through a hardware store
Oh crap, then there's the fitness section... I forgot about that.
"Gosh... Treadclimber, huh. Sweetie do you think we need more hand weights?"

"Sweetie?..."
 
The whole Hunter-Gatherer thing reminds me of that sorry image that KTLN shared of the all-male pride of lions. The only thing male lions can gather are groups of hard-working females and the only thing they can hunt productively are the flies on their faces. Sorry excuse for gender roles, as they seem to be right in there with male Preying Mantids. They only exist for one moment of sex, then they provide a tasty meal for their wives. Sad.
 
The whole Hunter-Gatherer thing reminds me of that sorry image that KTLN shared of the all-male pride of lions. The only thing male lions can gather are groups of hard-working females and the only thing they can hunt productively are the flies on their faces. Sorry excuse for gender roles, as they seem to be right in there with male Preying Mantids. They only exist for one moment of sex, then they provide a tasty meal for their wives. Sad.

Which is why many insects dispense with males altogether. Females just clone themselves. Which is why you should always err on the side of the female pronouns when discussing insects...
 
Still need them, want them in our lives and and love them, when not wanting to kill them (speaking for herself) And love the sorry layabout lions. They have their uses, definitely, as we do and vive la difference. And are plain beautiful in this world of wonders and horrors. Those preying mantids give me the heebies. (Sorry Robinne if you like them.)

I was glad when I saw soldier ants taking one down. She was hanging off a tree and the ant column was on the move, relocating. She helped herself like the Hydra in Jason and the Argonauts. Nom nom. Not 'blaming' her, she did what she needed to do until the soldiers saw and raced up the tree and dealt with her.
 
Fabulous all right, intelligent and I feel, horrific. God help us if they were our size, and maybe it would serve us right, as in Marco Polo fight scenes, but Icke is wrong. Any alien infiltration is not reptilian but insectoid, and probably mantid.

Il Matrimonio loved them, in a garden in Singapore when he was a boy.
 
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Fanfare! Upcoming publication

high stakes plot ideas

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