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Daysia Mims
Professor Padgett
English 102
22 November 2016

Women are from Venus, Men are from Mars

Inquiry: How does communication between men and women affects relationships, friendships
and the workplace

Proposed thesis: I overall argue that body language and communication are key factors when it
comes to the relationship between men and women.

Since the beginning of time men and women have had obvious differences. Men and
women are not only different physically and emotionally; they also have differences when it
comes to communicating. Personal experience, TV shows and even academically, men and
women are proved to communicate on different levels. Some say that the line of communication
between men and women draws because women are more open for discussion, while men are
more prone to make more actions.
In early childhood, young girls start making friends in hopes of finding friends who they
can relate with. As a young woman, I look for friends who I can connect with and share
experiences with. Young boys and men are different because they make friends based off similar
activities they may share with others.
Research shows that women have more of an emotional outlook on things. Meanwhile,
men think more practically about things. It is a known fact that men and women learn their

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gender roles at a very early age. For example, young girls are taught to play house and play with
barbies while young boys are taught to play with trucks and always be active outside. The typical
gender roles that have been placed upon men and women can come in between the
communication that both share. For instance, it can become difficult to communicate with a man
who is emotionally detached. Men who are emotionally detached usually think that crying is
for the weak and men are supposed to only be concerned with manly things. When men are more
emotional than others there are other stereotypes placed upon them. When someone is not
allowed to express there emotions, it becomes an project to communicate and to form some sort
of relationship with that person.
In one experiment, the authors experimented with men and women to see whether if
different behaviors of men would affect how attractive women measured the men. During this
experiment, Gorkan and Swami took eighty-one women to experiment with. Gorkan and Swami
allowed the men to display different body postures (Gorkan 667). After collecting their results,
they concluded that men who showed the higher dominance behavior was more attractive to the
women. Men who showed the lower dominance behavior could most likely be more sensitive
(Gorkan 667). The results from the experiment were related to the topic of how most women fall
for the bad boys stereotype.
There is the idea of spouses communicating outside of their marriages with the opposite
sex and how that affects their marriage. One of the articles talks about how fast facebook and
online relationship can develop compared to meeting someone online (Carter 38). In my opinion,
the divorce rate and break ups go higher when significant others create a social media account. I
argue how to todays idea of relationship has the problem of communication and how we use
communication. In todays society we are spending most of how we spend our time is online.

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Love is now being measured by if my significant other like my pictures and if they follow
someone you dont like.
Some authors examine how men and women use body language and words differently.
Individual studies and meta-analytic reviews have found evidence for gender-linked language
features, such as words, phrases, and sentence length, that are used consistently more by one
gender than the other(Park 2). In this article, the authors also created two studies to examine
gender language differences through an open-vocabulary analysis of language. In study one, they
came up with thousands of topics. In study two, they labeled the topics by degree of assertiveness and affiliation in a sample of over 15,000 people (Park5). I have noticed that most of the
young and older men that I have been around use less facial expressions than women do in

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general.

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The chart above is a data collection of young teenagers who have access to different
electronics and social media accounts. After observing the graph, I can tell that the use of twitter
is highly favorable amongst both genders. Twitter doesnt expose young children to explain short
biographies or age. Social media has changed tremendously within the few years, that facebook
requires state identification. More boys assumingly use facebook more than girls do because they
are more eager to communicate with friends more often. At a young age, my mother supervised
my social account that I had the time. Before the age of sixteen, I wasnt allowed to sign up for a
facebook nor twitter. The reason being mostly centered around the fact that I was a young
female, my mom was concerned with sexual predators. Most Children wouldn't understand the
severity and dander of exposure on social media. Young boys are getting into certain things
earlier than young girls do in most instances. Girls are told at an early age that social media can

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ruin your life and your image because people usually judge only what they can see. My
argument is that twitter is more than likely used a platform to share your opinion with followers
rather with facebook the use is more for sharing your life and events that take place in your life.
John Grohol compares the ways men and women communicate in different settings. The
author gave the example of when a woman is feeling down, the man is most likely concerned
with how he can fix the problem and resolving the problem (Grohol). When the woman sees the
man feeling down, she is most likely to think that he is failing here and she thinks more deeper
on the issue (Grohol). In some universal situations, woman are not only more emotional but also
can think more thoroughly into a problem or situation. The entire article compares how the
female and male react when communication is falling apart. Women want to feel like their issues
are important and men want to feel like they arent being told what to do so much. For example,
in a family household, the mother wants understanding from everyone in the house of what she
expects. The father want the children to obey his command and respect his authority.

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The chart above is an observation between eighteen and twenty-nine year olds that show
differences in social media use within the ten year gap. Social media has had an heavy impact on
the communication between men and women over the years. Even though it has become easier to
communicate with each other, social media has made the millennium generation lazy. Social
media has composed the idea of love in a way thats easy. If you were to create an instagram or
twitter account, people are using these two platforms as a template for relationships and even
friendships. Relationships are made up of temporary feelings and text message that have no
interesting substance, according to social media. In the early 2000s, it was still popular to ask
each other on dates and have conversations that were either in person or talking on the phone.
Nowadays, it has become a norm to direct message someone you want to talk to and not confront
the person on what kind of relationship that you wish to have with them.

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The observations that were made in one of the articles was of women and men interacting
in groups and what she observes as the differences may be. The author opens the idea that
women have a consensus way of thinking. This means that they look for inputs as well as people
who can relate to them (Tannen).
Females body language when it comes to flirting, being submissive and even when it
comes to lying. Usually when woman flirt or try to entice men, we raise our eyebrows and toss
our hair. Men lie to appear more powerful, while women lie to protect other people and
themselves (Female Body Language | Science of People.). Sometimes when comparing men
and women, someone can experience double standards. This article concludes that women might
be better at reading body language because chemically, their brain is active when they examine
someones behavior.

WORKS CITED

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Ahmetglu, Gorkan and Swami, Viren. Do you prefer Nice Guys? The effect of male
dominance behavior on womens ratings of sexual attractiveness. (2012)

Carter, Zackery A. Married and Previously Married Men and Womens Perceptions of
Communication on Facebook with the Opposite Sex: How Communicating Through
Facebook Can Be Damaging to Marriages. (January, 2016). 36-55. 20p.

Park, Gregory, David Bryce Yaden, H. Andrew Schwartz, Margaret L. Kern, Johannes C.
Eichstaedt, Michael Kosinski, David Stillwell, Lyle H. Ungar, and Martin E. P. Seligman.
"Women Are Warmer but No Less Assertive than Men: Gender and Language on
Facebook." ONE PLoS ONE 11.5 (2016): 1-27. Web.

Grohol, John M. "6 Ways Men & Women Communicate Differently | World of
Psychology." World of Psychology. Psychcentral,com, 16 July 2014.
Web. 28 Oct. 2016.

Https://www.facebook.com/scienceofpeople. Female Body Language | Science of People.

Science of People/ N.p., 30 Sept.2016.
Daysia,
I think you've done a really great job here tackling a tough issue. You do a good job synthesizing
these sources with your ideas, and your visualizations accompany your argument
well too. This feels more like a report rather than a research paper. By which I

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mean, there is a lot of really interesting information and context here, but no real
argument guiding it. While I get a general sense of your thesis, or what you
generally want to argue and talk about, I don't have a strong sense of what specific
thesis ties this whole thing together. In other words, I need a bit more focus here.
Each paragraph should be pointing back to one specific thesis, and the entire paper
should maintain that level of focus. The paragraphs seem to go from one topic to
the next, only connected thematically. I dont think you need to do research to
assume that men and women communicate differently. It is your job to uncover the
specifics.