Sidebar: Small Talk

Something I discovered during my 30 years of working among more men than women, is that they are BY FAR bigger gossips than women…contrary to the traditional “women as gossiper” lore.   If I wanted to find out what *dirt* was going on in the office, the go-to person who knew and would be more than happy to tell me, was almost always a male.  That part of my life over, recently I visited a friend who somehow found herself elected president of her 360-unit condo association. As we sat in her living room there was a knock on the door. It was a fellow who regularly ran around the condo grounds, and was coming to report everything he saw. He did that every day, and wasn’t paid or given any other incentive than just to tell my friend who had noisy parties or parked in violation of condo rules, even though the adjacent neighbors made no complaints.  That’s just one more example to show it wasn't just where I had worked.

I don’t like to discuss abortion because it’s such a polarizing issue. But it appears to me that more men seem to discuss it in the Facebook PolitiFact comment threads than women. I’ve wondered why that is, because men don’t get pregnant and not ever having to be in that position, I wonder how would they know what it’s like to personally make such an horrendous choice, to express themselves so much about it.  It’s not the same as taking steroids or getting drunk (as certain people contend); this is a distinctly feminine issue. Those who speak out on it in the media seem to be predominantly men as well.  I thought, well, maybe it’s like one more issue to gossip about.

So I did another count: I went through a series of PolitiFact threads and counted up the comments made by men: if I couldn’t tell (male or female) by the name or avatar or linking to the profile, I reduced the total comments by that post. I wanted to see if more men made comments and how it compared to any rulings related to abortion.

Findings: Men outnumber women almost two to one overall: 67.2% of the comments were by men. It was higher when the issue related to abortion, there it was just over 70%. So nothing really major was found, except that there is a lot more posting done by men. A little less conversation, a little more action please.