Happy & Healthy

MAN, LET ME FINISH

‘But still, I notice that…’ Well, good grief, he just barrels through my (if I may say so) quite brilliant exposition. And ten minutes later, I’m still somewhat dazed, wondering how it happened. A man who interrupts you. Does that sound familiar? It might, because that struggle even has a name: gender bias. Sounds like gender biatch and it is quite that. It comes down to the absurd fact that people listen better and value the words of a man more than those of a woman. And we are just as guilty of this as the men are. Just when you’re getting into your story, someone decides to break in and add their own nice phrase. ANNOYING. I already told you about my most pointless irritations. Well, this one ranks high on my list of meaningful irritations. But why is it that a man interrupts a woman more often than the other way around?

I am of the respectable caliber of talkative. Not only during tea with cookies, but also when the brainstorming is crackling with great plans. And yes, I sometimes blurt out a sentence before my turn. But really only because I’m afraid it will evaporate in my head before I can give it a verbal form. I try to pay attention, notebooks are my ally in this matter. Although you don’t just quickly set them aside next to your mint tea on the table. I then bite my tongue a bit, start humming as a pre-announcement, and as soon as there’s space, I launch into my speaking sprint. Interrupting just to interrupt, there’s another one. ‘Yes, but when I missed the bus, it was so much colder, wetter, later, my-story-is-really-worse than yours.’ Whyyyy? But anyway, men who interrupt you. And before someone brings up the argument that women talk three times as much as men, that’s the biggest nonsense. Scientific research shows that the difference in the number of words spoken by a man and a woman per day is negligible. So the idea that men don’t get a chance to talk otherwise is already debunked.

“Well, this one ranks high on my list of meaningful irritations.”

Donald (I keep thinking of a duck without pants) Trump interrupted Hillary Clinton 51 times during the first debate in the American elections. Fifty-one times. Good grief, that she even managed to make a statement is a miracle. Now you would think this is part of the game in political play, but Hillary did that ‘only’ 17 times with him. In debate number two, the score was 18 for Trump and 1 for Clinton. And if it were because his political vision is smarter than hers, but it’s not, right? Nope.

But ladies, we’ll get them under control. The answer is amplification, straight from the power women in the White House. If your feminine colleague on the left makes a brilliantly intelligent point, you repeat that point with all due respect to her. The power of repetition, yes. And don’t exaggerate, because then it resembles that dreadfully annoying echo game from the past. Just immerse yourself in your own sauce. And if someone still dares to claim that you really don’t have to say EVERYTHING twice to men, then you’ll get a smack.

Source: NRC Next