I don't have a problem with generalizations. On questions of attraction, the typical BP "everyone is different" and "some do, some don't" responses bug me (except in the few cases where there isn't a trend that can be identified).

Using emotions as an example, if someone said "women are more likely than men to have their feelings affect their thoughts and actions", that's pretty plausible. But the things I see on TRP often go way past generalization territory and into absolute statement territory. Here's an example.

There is little logic required to influence the thoughts of women. Women base their thought processes solely on 2 factors: how they feel about something (emotions) and how they feel about something right there and then (perception).

To me, the two statements "men are more likely to X, and women more likely to Y" and "men are X, women are Y. period." are fundamentally different. I think there are many reasonable generalizations that can be made about the two genders, but not a lot of absolute statements. I'm not even sure that the absolute statement above would work on any individual, let alone half the population!

Thoughts? Do you think that it's important to make the distinction between a generalization and an absolute statement?

Also, do you think that such absolute statements require more evidence to back them up?

Clarification: The point I'm trying to make is that there is a fundamental difference between the generalization and the absolute statement here. They're not just two ways of saying that same thing. The generalization says that women tend to rely on feelings more, while the absolute statement says that women only use feelings and that this applies to all women.