Men vs Women - Battle of the Sexes

NICKNAMES: If Laura, Suzanne, Debra and Rose go out for lunch, they will call each other Laura, Suzanne, Debra and Rose. If Mike, Charlie, Bob and John go out, they will affectionately refer to each other as Fat Boy, Godzilla, Peanut-Head and Scrappy.

EATING OUT: When the bill arrives, Mike, Charlie, Bob and John will each throw in $20, even though it's only for $32.50. None of them will have anything smaller, and none will actually admit they want change back. When the girls get their bill, out come the pocket calculators.

MONEY: A man will pay $2 for a $1 item he wants.
A woman will pay $1 for a $2 item that she doesn't want.

BATHROOMS: A man has six items in his bathroom: a toothbrush, comb, shaving cream, razor, a bar of soap, and a towel from the Holiday Inn.

The average number of items in the typical woman's bathroom is 337. A man would not be able to identify most of these items.

ARGUMENTS: A woman has the last word in any argument. Anything a man says after that is the beginning of a new argument.

CATS: Women love cats. Men say they love cats, but when women aren't looking, men kick cats.

FUTURE: A woman worries about the future until she gets a husband. A man never worries about the future until he gets a wife.

SUCCESS: A successful man is one who makes more money than his wife can spend. A successful woman is one who can find such a man.

MARRIAGE: A woman marries a man expecting he will change, but he doesn't. A man marries a woman expecting that she won't change and she does.

DRESSING UP: A woman will dress up to go shopping, water the plants, empty the garbage, answer the phone, read a book, and get the mail. A man will dress up for weddings and funerals.

NATURAL: Men wake up as good-looking as they went to bed. Women somehow deteriorate during the night.

OFFSPRING: A woman knows all about her children. She knows about dentist appointments and romances, best friends, favorite foods, secret fears and hopes and dreams.

A man is vaguely aware of some short people living in the house.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: Any married man should forget his mistakes

The Kitchen Table Anthropologist 

Why no one seems to write books about the power of negative thinking

Have you ever asked yourself why are people so negative? You can't do this, you can't do that. This negativity affects every aspect of our lives and our relationships. I think it's all about fear and fear of failure.

My belief is that negative thinking kept us alive back in the caveman days. The fear of all things dangerous made a difference in our survival. I don't think any caveman survived by positive thinking and optimism. The pragmatic thinking that I may die, if I don’t look for danger, kept everyone alive. The negative person was the winner.

That same negative thinking probably affected relationships. Any man or woman who helped you survive was a good person. A day when everyone made it back to the cave alive at the end of the day was a good day.

So how does positive thinking affect us today?

Well this excerpt from the opinion pages of The New York Times makes an interesting point.

The Power of Negative Thinking

GREED — and its crafty sibling, speculation — are the designated culprits for the financial crisis. But another, much admired, habit of mind should get its share of the blame: the delusional optimism of mainstream, all-American, positive thinking.

Positive thinking is endemic to American culture — from weight loss programs to cancer support groups — and in the last two decades it has put down deep roots in the corporate world as well. Everyone knows that you won’t get a job paying more than $15 an hour unless you’re a “positive person,” and no one becomes a chief executive by issuing warnings of possible disaster.

When it comes to how we think, “negative” is not the only alternative to “positive.” As the case histories of depressives show, consistent pessimism can be just as baseless and deluded as its opposite. The alternative to both is realism — seeing the risks, having the courage to bear bad news and being prepared for famine as well as plenty. We ought to give it a try.

By Barbara Ehrenreich - Published September 23, 2008

It seems that positive thinking may not be all that it is cracked up to be. But negative thinking, in my opinion, has helped us survive for long time.

The Kitchen Table Anthropologist

Man’s Best Friend is Still a Hunter

In looking at ourselves, our pets seem to take on our personality or we see it in our pets. It is often said people seem to look like their pets.

Our pets are an important part of our lives. They bring us comfort, companionship and become a part of the family. We have made the hunting dog a house pet; we have made the working dog a companion. Have our pets really changed or are they still domesticated wild animals?

Let me offer this example of pet behavior that makes me think our pets have not changed either. A good friend of mine who has two very large dogs pointed out this behavior to me. She is a student of her dogs and their behavior. As soon as I understood her theory I realized I had also experienced this form of dog behavior.

 

We have all purchased a squeaky toy for our pets. They come in all sizes and shapes. Some of them are shaped like mice for our cats; others are shaped like small animals for our dogs. The one thing they all have in common is the squeaky sound they made when squeezed. They all have this little plastic noisemaker which is the first thing to break while our pets are playing with them. I had never stopped to consider the reason why toy makers put this little squeaky deal in their toys until my friend shared her experience.

We had a small dog-named Trixie as a house pet; she had the hart of a lion. She weighted under 20 pounds and was a great little dog. Her whole world was our house and backyard. One day she came up to the back door with a small baby rabbit in her mouth. As it turns out a wild mother rabbit had a litter of babies in our back year. She had not realized that she was sharing the yard with our feisty little Trixie.

We found the bunny nest and brought one of them into the house to feed and care for it since the mother rabbit was not taking care of it. I was up in the middle of the night feeding this cute little creature with an eyedropper. This little baby rabbit had won our harts.

Then tragedy struck, I was up stairs when I heard this high pitched squeaking sound coming from our family room. We all ran downstairs only to discover our little dog had gotten into the box with the baby rabbit and was killing the little guy. Rabbits in the wild never make a sound but when injured make a loud squeaking sound, one that I will never forget. To end the story the little baby rabbit died and our dog seemed to get a real charge out of doing her “job” of killing this little creature. What struck me and will always remain with me was the sound. It was a perfect match for the sound that pet toys make and I came to realize why our pets love the sound. They have been killing other smaller animals for thousands of years and for dogs, which are predators, it is the sound of the kill.

So next time your pet attacks their squeeze toy you know why it’s such an appealing sound, the sound of a successful hunt and kill. 

Animal behavior like our behavior never seems to change.

Women pay attention: Men are still hunters

Man has been a hunter since he first walked the earth, no one will argue with this concept. Man is still a hunter today, many will disagree. Because man has been hunting for thousands of years why would he stop today? Well he has not stopped hunting, it just looks different today. I am not talking about the political incorrect hunting of birds and animals that take place every fall around the world. I am talking about hunting behavior.

Yes man still hunts for food, but in most big cities traditional hunting has fallen out of popularity. In small towns all across America hunting in the fall of the year is still a tradition that has not changed. Fathers taking sons hunting and teaching them the traditions of the hunt has been going on for thousands of years and most likely will not change. Big city people, on the other hand, are not exposed to hunting and don’t understand why someone would want to go hunting; yet they are hunters also.

 

Man, the big city hunter does not go out and bring back a deer for his family he hunts in other ways. He hunts for a cab, hunts for a mate (or two, or more), hunts for tickets to the ball game, hunts for a better job. Hunting is a concentrated effort to survive by providing food for the family group.

Let’s take a look at hunting behavior; it has two basic parts, the hunt and the kill. For the big city hunter step one is hunting for a cab, which is followed by step two the “kill” or finally getting the cab. Hunting always takes patience and skill but the “kill” is like finding tickets to a playoff game and can be a thrill. Men, everyday in our society play out this two-step process. They even teach these rites of passage to their male children.

For early man to be successful at hunting for food; skill and patience were required. Sitting still for many hours waiting for that wild animal to come along was normal behavior. Men would hunt in small groups for safety and to help each other. They would sit quietly for hours not talking just waiting, watching and moving slowly. They would have food and drink but could not make any noise that would scare away the animals.

Today modern men can sit with each other and watch football on TV for hours and not talk with each other. When I grew up the men in our family always gather in the den after a big family and watched sports on TV. The women usually sat in the kitchen and talked. I could only cope so long with the men in the den; they could sit for hours and not say a word. I am much too social so I would go into the kitchen and sit with the women and talk. As I got older I realized I was the only male in the family who sat with the women in the kitchen.

Men have the ability to bond without saying a word. This type of bonding is very strong but since men never talk much, they never learn much about each other. They just bond for the next ball game (or hunt). Men can spend hour after hour on the couch watching TV with such concentration that they never hear their mate. Men can spend years together in the work place and never know much about each other. Women on the other hand can meet someone new and have a complete life history in five minutes or less.

Sound familiar? All those years of hunting has helped to mold modern man.

The Kitchen Table Anthropologist

My theories on behavior were sparked by a dog picking up newspapers

The idea for this blog came along quite by accident. My next-door neighbor had just gotten a new pup, a Vizsla. Early one morning we both came out at the same time to get our newspapers. As it turned out his dog had run out and picked up all the newspapers in our cul-de-sac, my neighbor was in the process of putting the newspapers back in each of our driveways, he was a little embarrassed by his dog’s behavior. To me it was very funny watching him trying to keep his dog from doing her “job” as a retriever, retrieving newspapers.

The Vizsla is a wonderful hunting dog. The American Kennel Club considers the Vizsla a part of the sporting dog group. They were bred for field activities and even today participate in hunting and field activities. Well for my neighbor, his dog is a house pet; in the last 100 years dogs have gone from working animals to house pets. It is very hard for a working dog to get past hundreds of years of breeding to now sit quietly and keep the family company.

Dogs were bred for hunting, protection and herding animals. Domestic dogs started out as workers, helping man. Many years’ later dogs became companions and lap dogs and some were bred for that purpose.

In looking at human behavior I began to realize how much we are affected by this same history. As humans we have been walking around the earth for thousands of years. In the last few centuries we have become more “modern” or “civilized” or have we?  Man started as a hunter and woman started as a gatherer, but why? Does this account for our current behavior? Are we more like early man than we would like to admit? Does a lot of this behavior live on in our subconscious?

I think we still behave like Early Man, and in reading this blog I think you will come to appreciate my point of view, it passes the common sense test. I am a Baby Boomer; which influences my perspective on life, which I don’t think is all that bad. I am not an anthropologist by training but in writing this blog I have learned a great deal about behavior and about myself.

The Kitchen Table Anthropologist

Words of wisdom on relationships

Men and women still have a hard time understanding each other not just on a first date but thought out the course of a relationship.

Man and women are of course different animals. For thousands of years men have been hunters and women have been gatherers. Yes maybe we don't exactly hunt and gather as we did as cave people but our behavior still supports this reality.

When it comes to relationships today if all you remember about the opposite sex is this, you will have a much greater insight into your significant other.

Men think women won't change and they do

Women think men will change and they don't

Think about it; understand it and it will improve your relationship with the opposite sex.

The Kitchen Table Anthropologist

Myths on sex - top nine

Myths on sex - top nine

I ran across this on-line article on the top nine sex myths and had to post a link. I think it is right on.

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2010/12/08/sex-myths-need-know/

Good reading, enjoy

The Kitchen Table Anthropologist