Title: | ARCHIVE-- Topics of Interest to Women, Volume 1 --ARCHIVE |
Notice: | V1 is closed. TURRIS::WOMANNOTES-V5 is open. |
Moderator: | REGENT::BROOMHEAD |
Created: | Thu Jan 30 1986 |
Last Modified: | Fri Jun 30 1995 |
Last Successful Update: | Fri Jun 06 1997 |
Number of topics: | 873 |
Total number of notes: | 22329 |
My group hired a bright, intelligent woman. (Go ahead, smile Kel, I know you're reading this) In a conversation the other day she said she's noticed that some of the guys in the group use a different persona when addressing her. I've seen people do this before, especially when Mark Prine (white), Antonio Jones (black) and me (white) were best friends in a Mississipi highschool (despite Forsythe Co. Georgia, racism isn't all there is to the south). I've read about American Indians saying they could tell whether a white was talking to another white or to an indian just by the persona they used no matter how polite or correct. We all react to different individuals differently. This is something else though, where one person has a manner (different from their usual manner) that they adopt (consciously or unconsciously) around an individual of a particular type. Hmmm, that all seems a bit vague. Help, Kelly, time for you to become an active participant in this conference. Aside from the obviously threatening/patronizing mask have folks experienced/observed this? How do you react to it? Is there a graceful way to show the person what they're doing?
T.R | Title | User | Personal Name | Date | Lines |
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176.1 | I've noticed that too | MEWVAX::AUGUSTINE | Mon Jan 26 1987 09:20 | 10 | |
I've noticed this phenomenon in a few men that I end up dealing with. They treat everything I say, no matter how mundane, as the most fascinating, most brilliant thing they've ever heard. I just thought they were weird until my husband said that these same people treat HIM like a normal human being. Now I feel that their behavior is patronizing in a very sneaky way. I still deal with them, but my respect for them has fallen several notches. Liz | |||||
176.2 | When is it bad? | ULTRA::ZURKO | Security is not pretty | Mon Jan 26 1987 10:00 | 20 |
I was just thinking about something *like* this the other day. But not along the lines of cross-gender communication. It's cross-culture communication. I have two friends from hometown USA who are gay (and relatively open about it). When I'm with them, I fall into learning about and enjoying and commiserating with their culture/lifestyle. Sometimes, I get sillier than usual (leaning towards the camp?). And sometimes I make massive blunders, because I still don't know all they know about their culture. So, it isn't always bad to react differently to different people [insert long platitude about all of us being different and reacting to each other, etc.]. And, I never had any problems separating sharing a culture from interacting professionally with a person. Is that the real worry? From the other side, I have no problems sharing my culture (liberated-type female, for lack of a similarly brief and better label) with folks back home, or males up here. Well, not *no* problem, but I see that they are reacting differently (less?) because they're on unfamliar ground, and they're absorbing. Mez |