Lost in Translation: Differences between how men and women communicate

Focus on the Family’s "It's Uncomplicated" workshop has been in the spotlight ever since a student from Hwa Chong Institution, Ms Agatha Tan, posted an open letter to the principal raising concerns about the “gender stereotypes” that it was seen to be promoting.

Having been through junior college myself, I greatly appreciate the habit of critical thinking that the education system has helped foster in our students. Therefore, true to that habit, I obtained a copy of the booklet used in the workshop so that I could examine its contents for myself.

Rather than a workshop on sexuality education, as I had been led to believe, "It's Uncomplicated" turned out to be a workshop on managing relationships and communicating with members of the opposite sex.

Promoting Rape Culture?

One of the points which struck me was Ms Tan's concern that "the workshop and booklet actively serve to promote rape culture in school", with statements on the cover page of the booklet such as "no means yes?" and "yes means no?"

Any ordinary human being should be deeply concerned if this were so. A girl’s firm "no" to sexual advances from members of the opposite sex should be clearly understood for what it is, a "no".

But was this the message of the workshop?

Shorn of coloured lenses which attempt to interpret the statements in the context of sex or sexuality education, it becomes evident that the booklet seeks to educate young people about the nuances in language and common miscommunications between boys and girls.

The booklet carries a quote from an 18 year-old boy named Jason expressing his frustration, "Why do girls say one thing but mean another?"

Pages 20 and 21 of the booklet portray some differences in the use of language between boys and girls as seen in the picture above. 

Lost in Translation 

Having grown up in a home with a brother and a sister, and having interacted with men and women of all ages, I find it difficult to deny that there are, by and large and for the most part, certain differences in patterns of communication between males and females.

Nowhere are the differences between men and women better expressed than in the well-known book, Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. In writing his bestseller, relationship counsellor John Gray did seven years of research and questioned 25,000 participants in his relationship seminars. In the chapter, "Speaking Different Languages", he observed that the way men and women used words gave different meanings, with different connotations or emotional emphasis. 

He writes: "Not only do men and women communicate differently but they think, feel, perceive, react, respond, love, need, and appreciate differently. They almost seem to be from different planets, speaking different languages and needing different nourishment."

Differences between men and women may be reflected in the ways the opposite sexes interpret the use of superlatives in contrast with literal interpretations of words. They may express their feelings differently or jump to incorrect conclusions about the feelings of others. 

Drawing from the findings of neuroscience in his 2003 book, The Essential Difference, Professor of Developmental Psychopathology Simon Baron-Cohen traced the tendency of males to 'systematise' and of females to 'empathise' to biological origins rooted in male and female brains.

Similarly, Deborah Tannen, author of You Just Don't Understand, found in her research that the differences between the communication styles of men and women go beyond socialisation, and may be inherent in the basic make up of each sex.

Of course, like any academic position, there are voices of dissent, including Oxford language professor Deborah Cameron who suggested that nurture rather than nature may be the result of these differences. However, this does not deny the basic fact: men and women (or boys and girls) communicate differently.