is it a coincidence that two women write for this blog?

Years ago, I had a brief fling with tai chi. I didn't really enjoying DOING the tai chi so much as what I learned about East vs. West while doing it. Those in the class raised in the Asian culture (what I call the East) were content to just learn tai chi by following the moves and letting their body learn on its own. Those of us who were raised in the West all needed more. We wanted some reading, diagrams, or written thought to take away. Our teacher kept insisting that we try to learn with our body and not with our brain. Yeah, right.

So now, instead of just complaining away (as we're encouraging you to do), I'm embarking on a (small) journey of reading about complaining. I've started by reading Complaining, Teasing, and Other Annoying Behaviors. And here is my first tidbit:

The author and his students conducted a study and discovered that "Men expressed significantly fewer pet peeves than women.... In all categories women expressed almost twice as many pet peeves as men and in some, such as disrespect and unconscious annoyances, four times as many. We might suspect that women are more willing to voice their dissatisfaction or that men have a tendency to behave in ways that annoy women, but we don't believe either of those explanations. We believe rather that women are more sensitive than men to other people's behaviors. Because women are more oriented to relationships than men are, they are more likely to pick up on both positive and negative features of those relationships."
( 2003: Library of Congress, p. 35-38)

According to the author, "unconscious annoyances" include not replacing the toilet paper roll, leaving tags sticking out of one's shirt, smacking lips while chewing gum, biting nails, jiggling legs, and grabbing himself.

Wait, GRABBING HIMSELF??!! Women are four times as likely as men to complain about men grabbing their private parts?!

Perhaps my tai chi teacher was on to something....


RainyBow

______________________


SunnyShine note: I have many, many pet peeves. I have no problem admitting this.