Screaming, Demands--What <i> Is</i> It With Men?

It took me a long time to get comfortable with the idea that people behave in profoundly different ways simply because of gender.

After all, when you’ve spent your early adulthood assuming you need to deny those differences to achieve political and social equality, you’ve got a lot of attitude adjusting to do.

I’m ready to come out of the closet on this, though. And while it’s not especially constructive to generalize about the sexes in a negative way, I have lately noticed two striking differences in the way men and women communicate:

* Men love to yell when they talk to each other, especially if they are talking about work. Women, however, seem able to communicate with each other without raising their voices.

* Men approach transactions as innocuous as applying for rental property as though they have spent a week boning up on “The Art of the Deal” and it’s make-or-break time. Women approach renting an apartment as a potentially pleasant social interaction.

A couple of weeks ago, my husband and I were trying to discuss the day’s events over dinner at our local Italian restaurant. Two salesmen at the next table, however, were disturbing our pizza. They were having a raucous conversation, gossiping about co-workers, bosses, competitors and telling tales of the brilliant manipulation of customers. The decibel level was almost unbearable.

“What is it with men?” I asked my husband. “Why do they have to scream at each other to be heard?”

His answer was drowned out by the story of how one salesman clinched a computer sale by vowing to set it up personally for the customer. He was transferred to a different office and never made good on his promise. “I’m sure my replacement will be able to help you, ma’am,” he said. This, judging from their guffaws, is a hysterically funny sales in-joke.

My husband and I engaged in a little coded communication ourselves: We widened our eyes at each other and shook our heads. And tried to keep talking over the noise.

Very close to that time, we had placed a newspaper ad to rent a condominium we own. We observed distinct gender differences in the conversational styles of people who called about the ad. Men were aggressive and demanding, wanting to know before they even saw the place if we’d be willing to lower the rent. Women were polite and even apologetic if, after I described the place, they decided that perhaps it wasn’t right for them after all.

It came down, finally, to two people, a male candy salesman in his mid-30s and a female steel executive in her 50s.

Prospective Male Tenant: “OK, I’ll take the place. But I can’t live with the peach paint in the bedrooms. And you’ll have to get rid of this carpet. I’d like something in Berber.” (Wouldn’t we all, pal?)

Prospective Female Tenant: “The place is lovely. I’d like to take it. Would it be all right with you if I painted one of the bedrooms white at some point? I’m very sorry, but I’m not really wild about that peach.”

She said nothing about the carpet, but we decided to replace it anyway--with Berber. Because she was so nice about the bedroom paint, we repainted it white for her. And because she was so apologetic about being 10 minutes late for our first appointment, we figured she’d be on time with her rent.

She got the lease.

Linguist Deborah Tannen’s best-selling book, “You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation” goes a long way toward explaining the behavior of the salesmen and the apartment seekers.

She says men see the world in hierarchical terms: You’re either one-up or one-down. Women, on the other hand, see themselves as “individuals in a network of connections.”

For men, she writes, “conversations are negotiations in which people try to achieve and maintain the upper hand if they can . . . . Life, then, is a contest, a struggle to preserve independence and avoid failure.”

For women, “conversations are negotiations for closeness in which people try to seek and give confirmation and support . . . . Life, then, is a community, a struggle to preserve intimacy and avoid isolation.”

It’s easy after reading Tannen to see why, for instance, women accuse men of lecturing and men accuse women of interrupting. Or why women accuse men of not listening and men accuse women of nagging.

But just because you understand the dynamic doesn’t make it tolerable.

So if I had my druthers, I would never sit next to two male salesmen at dinner. And I would have sold that damn condo long ago to someone partial to peach.

Next week: How I Got Her to Quit Nagging and Fetch Me Beers--One Man’s Story.