Thx to Tom for the pointer

A few weeks ago it was observed in the Harvard Gazette that when it comes to social networks, gender seems to matter. (To my shame if not embarrassment) I am a lurker on a mailing list of femme-geeks that came together following last summer’s BlogHer. It’s more of a support group than a geek fest, and more about geekular entrepreneurship, strategies for recognition, that sort of thing. It doesn’t offer much to a traveler on the technoid way.

The gazette article said, Male entrepreneurs have larger emotional support networks, and have an apparently greater facility for using emotional ties for utilitarian ends — in this case, making more money.

Then I received in the mail a tired gender-biased joke offering several words defined from a male and a female perspective. Here3 are three:

VULNERABLE (vul-ne-ra-bel) adj.
Female…. Fully opening up one’s self emotionally to another.
Male…….. Playing football without a cup.

COMMUNICATION (ko-myoo-ni-kay-shon) n.
Female….The open sharing of thoughts and feelings with one’s partner.
Male……. Leaving a note before taking off on a fishing trip with the boys.

FLATULENCE (flach-u-lens) n.
Female… An embarrassing byproduct of indigestion.
Male…… A source of entertainment, self-expression, male bonding.

I’m not sure that the author speaks for all of us, and I suspect that the Cosmo versus Argosy (do they still publish Argosy I wonder?) polarization is more interesting as an example of cliched role modeling than as a statement about how men develop those deep emotional bonds in their mutual support groups.

Like most of the things I’ve thought to write about over the last few months, lack of time, talent and insight force me to leave the subject here. I’d like to list some groups of nice, earnest, mutually supportive business men, and contrast them with the sparkling individual women who find perhaps less success on average than the some of the less gifted men in those supportive networks alluded to in the Gazette. Some of that stuff seems unfair, but is it a man’s world, really?

Thanks to Leslie for the link.