Men, Women, Blogging, Debating, and Relating

Pulling together a few threads from the Buddhoblogosphere:

There is some ongoing conversation about the different ways men and women participate (or don't) in blogging. I can't say that I've been involved in blogging long enough to have much of an opinion about this, but I have been learning a lot, and really appreciate NellaLou at Enlightenment Ward for initiating some intelligent questions about this.

Then yesterday, Nathan at Dangerous Harvests posed a question to the Buddhist blogging community about where the "line" is between the topics we do and no not blog about. This was in response to Mumon at Notes in Samsara, who, in a recent post, stated that he does not blog or even share about his practice with anyone but his teacher, as it leads to competitiveness.

One lens I have been using to understand much of this is provided by the research of George Washington University linguist, Deborah Tannen. She has been studying the communication patterns of men and women; how they differ, and why men and women might continually be misunderstanding one another. She even categorizes this as "cross cultural" communication. Her book, You Just Don't Understand, while getting on in years, is still a helpful tool in understanding and normalizing the different communication styles of men and women.

Tannen studies the communication patterns of boys and girls, which is where the communication patterns and cultural norms of men and women are formed.

"For women, as for girls, intimacy is the fabric of relationships, and talk is the thread from which it is woven. Little girls create and maintain friendships by exchanging secrets; similarly, women regard conversation as the cornerstone of friendship...What is important is not the individual subjects that are discussed but the sense of closeness, of a life shared, that emerges when people tell their thoughts, feelings, and impressions.

Bonds between boys can be as intense as girls', but they are based less on talking, more on doing things together. Boys' groups are larger, more inclusive, and more hierarchical, so boys must struggle to avoid the subordinate position in the group."

She describes that boys and men tend to use talk to establish and maintain hierarchies, and that this is often at the root of many a wife's complaint about a husband who "won't talk" when he gets home -- he does not feel the need to.

Then today, Nathan posts (how do you all post so frequently and keep up with one another?) about noticing the way many blogs, the content of which are much more personal, seem to get a lot less attention, or at least a lot less comments, but "the posts which routinely recieve a pile of comments are dramatic, irreverent, or deliberately contraversial."

Well I haven't read it yet, but Deborah Tannen has written a book on this too: The Argument Culture is her examination of this very phenomenon now pervading so many aspects of our lives. You can read a great article about it here.

Deborah Tannen again:

"In his book "Fighting for Life," Walter Ong points out that men use "agonistic" or warlike, oppositional formats to do almost anything; thus discussion becomes debate, and conversation a competitive sport. In contrast, women see conversation as a ritual means of establishing rapport. If Jane tells a problem and June says she has a similar one, they walk away feeling closer to each other. But this attempt at establishing rapport can backfire when used with men. Men take too literally women's ritual "troubles talk," just as women mistake men's ritual challenges for real attack."

Not that any one way is "bad" or wrong", but as NellaLou has pointed out, there is a spectrum somewhere between "catatonic and hysterical" which leaves an awfully large swathe of Middle Way. And this could shed some light on the different ways as well as the different reasons men and women blog.

Tannen adds the disclaimer:

"This is not to say that all women and all men, or all boys and girls, behave any one way. Many factors influence our styles, including regional and ethnic backgrounds, family experience and individual personality. But gender is a key factor, and understanding its influence can help clarify what happens when we talk."

Indeed, my own very general impressions have been that Buddhist women's blogs do lean more towards the personal / practice side of the spectrum, and men's more towards talking about worldly events and inviting discussion / debate about things.

These questions have caused me to ponder why I blog. Initially, I thought it would be a way for my friends (the ones I knew before) to keep up with me. This is who I thought I would be talking to. Some of my friends indeed are avid readers of this blog, and it is really handy to write and share about my experiences with Zen practice here. However, it turns out, a good amount of my friends are not very interested in this media at all.

Surprisingly to me, I have found that a whole community of Buddhist practitioners is interested in this media, and whom I find very interesting. It turns out that one of the reasons I blog is to connect with this community. And not surprisingly to me, the way I seem to be doing that is by sharing my personal experience with practice. Because I have no interest in jumping into any fray of debate with anyone.

I want to end with and echo this comment about "the line of telling and not telling", from another amazing woman Buddhist blogger at zendotstudio:

"For me one of the first things I noticed and truly admired about my Zen teacher was her sense of transparency, her willingness to share her daily practice with us. And truly that was the real beginning of my own practice. I learned so much by seeing how she manouvered her way through small situations, what bothered her, how she worked with it. It was the best instruction for me.

And of course everyone needs to decide where the comfort level of transparency is for them. And to look at why, perhaps?

And there is a phrase I remember from Dharma talks and I don't know who this it attributed to, "if you know one mango, you know them all." Your stuff, my stuff, it's not all that different. I think we write our blogs for many different reasons but I think it is always an offering."