Letters to the Editor
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this is about miscommunication, not sex
An old joke:
Two southern belles are in rocking chairs on the veranda, sipping mint juleps. The first keeps prattling on about her husband Beauregard, how he took her to Europe, how he bought her a diamond necklace, how he always brings her flowers, on and on. The second keeps responding with, "That's nice..."
The first asks, "Well, what does your husband do for you?"
The second replies, "He sent me to finishing school."
The first asks, "Finishing school? What did you need with finishing school?"
The second replies, "That's where they taught me to say 'That's nice...' instead of 'Fuck you.'"
The problem isn't males, or females, or expected sexual behaviors from either. It's that in our culture the two sexes are reared very differently with regard to acceptable speech.
From the time they can talk, most boys are taught to speak their minds directly even to people who might disagree with them, whereas most girls are taught to "be sweet," which often translates to being very indirect, especially when they are afraid of causing disagreement. You don't undo 18+ years of socialization in an instant.
I used to teach freshman composition--I saw this problem of indirect communication all the time when assigning argumentative papers, and it happened more frequently in girls' essays than in boys'.