If you've ever travelled overseas, you've probably experienced the shock of discovering that their are entire countries of people who have vastly different values and perspectives on life to you. I want to propose that there is a similar cultural divide between women and men, and it is a misunderstanding of this difference in cultural experiences that is the cause of most frustrations of communication across the gender divide. If you can apply the points I'm about to make to your daily life, you should notice not only an improvement in your romantic life, but in all of your interactions with the opposite sex. I know that's a big claim, and I plan to deliver. So buckle up because this is going to be quite a ride.

Now I want to clarify that I am talking about cultural differences between genders and not inherent differences between sexes. Boys and girls pick up cultural cues from their parents and studies have shown that parent responses to gendered play is a primary predictor for early gendered behavioral differences. This is important to mention because a lot of what I am going to touch on is based on English speaking cultural observations and does not necessarily translate accurately across every society. Societies will also have gender non-conforming individuals as well as people raised in alternative cultures, but a general understanding of the cultures men and women exist within will also help in understanding the experience of women and men who struggle to fit in amongst their own gender expectations.

From a young age, boys tend toward dramatic/destructive play and girls tend toward constructive/parallel play and this develops into how we each understand our hierarchical position amongst our peers as adults. In more concrete terms, boy break things and race each other. Girls talk and play that game where you clap your hands in complex patterns while singing the song that goes with it. As adults, men are in primarily adversarial relationships with other men and compete for dominance through establishing one-up/one-down interactions. Women compete for dominance through status which is established through relationships and support of the group.

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Let's look at male/male interactions first. The one-up/one-down pecking order is fairly simple. In a context where social hierarchy is not yet established, men will seek to establish their position through one-on-one interactions that place one man above or below the other. Gone are the days of "my day could beat up your dad" or "last one to the fence is a loser", instead men will primarily compete to outdo each other on knowledge about a topic, telling better stories, or appearing more successful. A subtle one-upping comment might be "it must be so difficult for you trying to get by on a single income", and a defensive comment might be "oh no, we're actually doing quite well thanks to my investments and I'm getting to spend more time with the kids while I recover. I'll be back at work in no time." Notice that the one-upping comment could be taken to be an expression of sincere concern. Men will tend to read ambiguous comments like this as attacks rather than expressions of sympathy if they are coming from somebody they perceive to be aware of hierarchical competition (specifically other men). One of the common stereotypes is that men don't like asking for directions. Unpackaged further, men specifically dislike asking MEN for directions. A man who asks for help puts himself one-down in relation to the person being asked, and this is made more uncomfortable by it being a stranger where hierarchy is not established and there is an expectation that the person being spoken to will have awareness of the hierarchical implications.

Looking at other male/male interactions, another one-up/one-down transaction is in conversations about technical topics. Open any reddit post on any topic and you'll find male commenters will be the ones picking holes in an argument, questioning the validity of academic sources, and producing counter arguments. Even in conversations with experts in a field, men will establish a conflict of ideas and then allow the expert to display their authority on the matter through rebuttal. It is important to note that men who are engaging these one-up/one-down contests are often seeking to establish their position in a hierarchy, not necessarily trying to be the top of the hierarchy.

In situations where hierarchy is already established, such as a close friendship between men, there can also be discomfort if a man disrupts the hierarchy by saying something that puts himself one-down. A man who tells his friends that he feels incompetent and worried about his future will often be met with quick fix solutions and reassurances that he is fine rather than engagement about why he is having those feelings or sympathy for his situation. Even talking about how sad you are that your pet died can trigger a competing story about the respondent's pet who also died and how their grief was even worse, rather than sympathy for your loss.

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Now Let's look and female/female interactions. Women establish hierarchy through connection and collaboration rather than one-up/one-down competitions. In the example of asking for directions, when a woman is asking another woman for directions it is a collaboration rather than a competition. The collaboration establishes a degree of connection and can often result in questions about what the visitor is doing in the area, a display of sympathy and understanding of what it is like trying to find your way around a new area, confirmation that this university/neighborhood is terribly designed and the roads make no sense.

So while women are also interested in establishing their position in a hierarchy of other women, they achieve this through connections and support of other women. Even their power plays are performed in the guise of connection building and collaboration. A woman who approaches another woman in a professional context and begins asking a lot of personal questions may be perceived as pushing for unearned intimacy and therefore be viewed as intrusive. This intrusive forced intimacy may be resisted because it implies a stronger connection than she is entitled to. Conflicts over intimacy levels between women will often be resolved through topic shifts and friendly banter. In group settings, women can perform power plays by displaying elevated status by displaying an intimate connection with a higher status woman.

One of the most potent examples of this power play is the shift from winter to spring fashion in an extended social setting like school or the workplace. There will generally be a group of women who are understood to be popular. Those within their in group will know the day that the benchmark group have decided will be the first day of spring. A woman who wears spring fashion before the popular group will demonstrate a degree of hubris which can negatively impact her social standing and result in social exclusion, but if she manages to guess the correct day to start wearing spring fashion then she has displayed insider knowledge and will have her social standing elevated as other women push to have close connections with high status women. Women who are not wearing spring fashion within a day of the popular group declaring spring to have sprung can face social isolation as they are displaying a disconnection from the high status women.

Many women dislike this competition just as many men dislike one-upmanship, but these are the methods that these relative cultures use for establishing hierarchy and a refusal to participate results in an assumption of low status in the larger group but can become the basis of identity in small anti-culture subcultures. Even these subcultural groups can eventually become defined by similarly gendered hierarchical structures as they grow in size.

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So now that we have established a very basic understanding of intragender cultural engagement, it is time to get to the bit that is relevant to what most people reading this will want to know about: How does this affect communication between men and women?

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Let's first look at how male assumption affect their approach to talking to women. So if a guy who hasn't thought about any of this is approaching a woman to try to get her number, he's going to be experiencing all the same internal problems of asking a stranger for directions, and then some. He's basically about to tell a stranger that he sees them as valuable (putting himself one-down) and then giving her the opportunity to go one-up by rejecting him. For a guy who is at a club on his own, being two down in a single interaction can feel devastating and it is enough to put him off ever approaching in the first place.

Of the guys who do approach, we've all heard the horror stories right? Guys who try to use negging to one-up the woman on approach as though insulting her to prop up their own ego is somehow going to make you seem more attractive. Worse, there are guys who will try to one-up the woman in the opener by framing their proposition like they are doing the woman a favor, and then they will lose their shit when she politely tells them "no" and call her every profanity they can think of in some desperate attempt to rebuild their own shattered ego that can't handle a simple rejection. Women have literally been murdered for being insensitive to a man's delicate feelings when turning him down. Maybe that particular reaction isn't especially common, but if you are approaching a woman, I can guarantee you she will be thinking about guys like that if you open the same way they do. What do you think a shit test is if it isn't a woman who's had some experience testing how you'll handle being one-down with a woman?

So what is the solution? It is simple. If you are cold approaching a woman, think about how your actions would be perceived in a female/female cultural context rather than a male/male cultural context. She's not looking to establish you as one-up or one-down. The conflict she is going to perceive is more a question of intimacy vs intrusion. If you come on too strong, escalate too early, ask too many questions or share too much about yourself early on then you are going to be perceived as intruding. If you try to win points with big stories and info dumps she may act interested while scanning the room for exists, or she may absolutely love it. But, if you try to one-up her when she shares a story or opinion, you may find that you are actually communicating a rebuke for intrusion followed by an alternate offer of intimacy. This can be confusing for her and if she wants to experience intimacy with you she will begin to feel that she has to sit quietly and listen to you monologue... if that gets boring for her, she won't grab the flood for herself and tell her own stories again, she'll instead withdraw intimacy and start looking for the exits again.

An additional suggestion is that a completely cold approach, while good for a low stakes skills practice, isn't the most effective method of seduction. Seduction works much better if you are already known to the woman and her friends as somebody who is desirable or high status. A woman's status is largely determined buy the relationships she forms. If you already have a high status position in a social group, then any woman who is wanting to improve her social standing in the group will display interest in you to her peers as a way of reinforcing her membership in the group, and may view being seen with you as a way of improving her status. In a situation like this, you then have to be mindful of protecting your own status because hooking up with low status women can impact your desirability just as much as hooking up with high status women can. This is where having a lot of female friends becomes useful. If you are constantly seen in the company of desirable women, that can improve your desirability with other women. Don't stress about being "in the friend zone". Just be a good friend and help your female friends improve their social status in the female hierarchy and the women who want to force an appearance of intimacy with your friend and going to be fighting for your attention.

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Now let's look at some problems that face women who are approaching men. If you though men approaching women was hard, imagine trying to balance an internal intimacy vs intrusion paradigm when approaching somebody who is going to block your offerings of intimacy to point score because they are subconsciously trying to establish a hierarchy position while trying not to let on their surprise at being approached while also checking the room for hidden cameras. It is way easier to sit at the bar and wait for thirsty guys to come and show you magic tricks and insult your hair. She's going to be wading through sewage but at least she won't feel like she is intruding.

In heavily male dominated social contexts such as most corporate business encounters, women have a tendency to speak less than men but they are perceived by men as doing most of the talking. Part of this is that when they do talk, they are likely to need to spend more time establishing credibility to offset the fact that they will frequently interpret being one-upped to be a shut down of intimacy and will back off so they have to start from a disadvantaged position when they are given the floor because they don't have established credibility from shutting down their opposition and establishing credibility but interrupting other speakers. In addition, in order to simply be allowed to complete their statement without interruption the need to preface them with a statement of humility to acknowledge their low hierarchical status within the group such as "this is just an my opinion and I'm sure others may feel differently but...". All of this because they are have not been socialized to engage in this style of conversation.

Women who are wanting to break into male dominated contexts can benefit from being aware of the constant one-up/one-down battle men are engaging in during all of their interactions. It isn't often going to be culturally appropriate for women to pay this type of game and doing so inexpertly can have severe repercussions. To break into these types of context, it can be necessary to practice this style of one-up/one-down interaction with male friends and participating in the work culture in a more masculine way.

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So just to recap:

Men and women establish hierarchies within same sex groups in different ways.

Men compete with each other to establish their individual merit and position in the pecking order while women establish intimacy to promote cooperative engagement.

Men can improve their strike rate with women by understanding how women will read the interaction and working to mirror and escalate levels of intimacy rather than trying to treat seduction as a competition or test of manliness, yet also taking steps to position themselves in high status positions in mixed groups to become socially desirable.

Women can improve their experience in male dominated fields by understanding the constant conflict that men are constantly subjecting each other to and participating in subtle one-upping behavior to establish dominance in the workplace in order to be taken seriously during key moments. It can also help to understand that what can feel like sexual discrimination and mansplaining is actually men treating you the same way they treat each other, and the acceptable response is to do the same thing right back without taking it personally.

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Those who made it this far, congratulations!

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Now I'd like to heard from you.

Would you like to have a manly one-upmanship contest by disputing any of the points I've made with a counterclaim or dismissive remark? I recommend attacking my excessive use of large words to sound clever or finding a single spelling error to mock to show I'm not as clever as I think. Referencing "studies" that prove me wrong without linking them is also a valid strategy for one-upping.

Is this information new or helpful to you? Does it make sense? Have you thought of a way you could apply it in your own approach?

Can you think of any personal situations of your own where you can observe this kind of gendered interplay resulting in a miscommunication? How would you handle that situation differently using this information to get a better result?