GENIUS FORUMS

I see memory listed as a masculine trait, but I'm starting to wonder about this to some degree. While I recognize that the form of memory required for understanding is masculine, I'm wondering if there isn't two different forms of memory - one masculine and one feminine. Basically I'm looking at the things that men always forget and women always remember and get upset over. Birthdays, aniversaries and the like.

Katy wrote:I see memory listed as a masculine trait

Where is it listed as such?

the things that men always forget and women always remember and get upset over. Birthdays, aniversaries and the like.

Always? All men, all women? What's up with the gross generalizion?

And, why do you believe this is primarily a memory factor? I think it has more to do with brain function and prioritization. It is not that men's memories don't work when it comes to birthdays, it is more often that men have other, overriding concerns with which their minds are engaged, and also that men tend to place a lower value than women on "Birthdays, aniversaries and the like."

Smart people, btw, to whom a particular date is important, use a datebook or calendar to alert them. Memory is not necessary for the task.

Carl G wrote: Where is it listed as such?

David listed it as such in a thread "Mental Illness: 100% Feminine" a while back.

the things that men always forget and women always remember and get upset over. Birthdays, aniversaries and the like.

Always? All men, all women? What's up with the gross generalizion?

Well, no, but it is the prevailing stereotype, isn't it? I've found gender stereotypes to be acceptable on this board. ;)

And, why do you believe this is primarily a memory factor? I think it has more to do with brain function and prioritization.

Exactly what brain function would you call this if not memory? Remembering = Memory.

It seems to me that a ridiculous amount of such information gets stashed in women's minds, which is why I'm suggesting it as a separate type of memory unique to women (which men posess to the degree that they are feminine). As a sort of social/other memory instead of internal/personal.

Smart people, btw, to whom a particular date is important, use a datebook or calendar to alert them. Memory is not necessary for the task.

I know; there's nothing personal to this topic, just an idea I had while hitting "stumble upon" repeatedly last night. :)

This is a complicated subject that I would like to answer, but I don't have the energy right now. Otto Weininger gives this subject a thorough treatment in Sex and Character.

To some extent it's about the difference between conceptual and emotional memory. Speaking in that horrible stereotypical vein, men remember conceptually and women emotionally. I think most men have experienced women relating some feeling or circumstance and going off into tangents that he can't begin to fathom. They are tangents for him but not for her because her memory is triggered by emotions/feelings which tie seemingly disparate events together. She's talking about something someone said to her at work that night and then all of a sudden she's talking about something her father did 30 years ago. Those events are connected, but not in the way a man might connect them.

One could potentially argue that women don't really have any memory at all - or at least not very much - if one was to define memory as the conscious activity of consistently linking one concept to another. Women's memories seem to have a life and dynamic all of their own, whereas a man tends to formally construct his.

I have literally asked women why they think the things they relate are actually connnected and they almost always just look at me blankly like I'm an idiot or something. Truth is, they don't really understand why, they just "know" (i.e. feel) they are. This is, of course, more the case when the subject matter is not of a formalised, structured nature. In such cases there's little option for the mind than to build things up conceptually.

Dan Rowden wrote: This is, of course, more the case when the subject matter is not of a formalised, structured nature. In such cases there's little option for the mind than to build things up conceptually.

This doesn't make sense.

There is no subject matter that is or is not of a formalised, structured nature. It all depends on the quality of consciousness.

Are you saying that women typically cannot formally structure and conceptually build things up, or that whoever typically can and also encounters something yet to be clearly conceptualised, is most likely to?

To my mind, women typically have no strong sense of self-identity, but their minds latch onto sensations. "She" has no conscious "I". Or more accurately, an I embodied in her emotions, as Dan reckons. Because she lacks a clear sense of I, she cannot remember or relate things logically (absolutely). So her worldview is basically how she is feeling, and everything relates to that.

A woman's conversation is generally long and repetitive because she has to try to remember concepts via hearing. When she pauses, there's a strong likelihood that her topic then passes to what she is seeing right in front of her. Listen at any cafe. Those females who need to have stronger minds, such as politicians, are tyrannical because they have to annihilate and shout everyone else down to hear their own thoughts.

This is the main difference between masculine and feminine competitiveness. Women want to annihilate their opponent before even taking up the challenge; men wish to become superior to theirs by going through the development of their mind.

So, if women move out of the instinctive and emotional zone of awareness - which is not wholly reliable - into the deliberate and careful zone of consciously thinking things through, then they'd be able to pin identities down and remember them.

That's why it's called pondering.

Where are the odes to bachelorhood?

How about a society of single mothers and thinkers? Or, females who give birth, then head off to work every day, while the males are the parents. And what better than to change the parents' names to "Reason". That way, the children will form a deep attachment to the idea of logical masculine benevolence. I'd much rather hear children cry, "Reason! Reason! Help I!"

:)

"Mental Illness: 100% Feminine" ---- I'm very interested to know more about this.

If I only ever achieve one thing in my life-time, it will be sanity, and to write excellent works about sanity.

Kelly Jones wrote: If I only ever achieve one thing in my life-time, it will be sanity, and to write excellent works about sanity.

Another fiction writer in our midst!



Sorry, couldn't resist.

Kelly Jones wrote:"Mental Illness: 100% Feminine" ---- I'm very interested to know more about this.

If I only ever achieve one thing in my life-time, it will be sanity, and to write excellent works about sanity.

I believe it is back on page 3. :)