How to have a healthy conversation: when individuals learn to throw off the schackles of predisposition and engage in the art of "soft power," watch the words and passion flow.

• Author: Hyatt, I. Ralph
• Position: Life In America

IF YOU STILL ARE among those people who are jockeying around their lives saddled with the myth that men and women function at two different levels, may I respectfully suggest that you consider galloping off to another planet--like Mars!

A few years back, author John Gray wrote that--at least metaphorically--men come from Mars and women from Venus. Since each speaks a different form of the English language on Earth, he suggested that males and females do not understand what the other is trying to say. Resentment, anger, frustration, and all kinds of other interpersonal troubles are bound to follow. However, just as an American who yearns to live his or her life in Paris may attend Berlitz or a similar institution to learn French--or Spanish if he or she yearns to reside in Spain--so a man may learn "woman-speak" if he wishes to communicate effectively with females. Moreover, a woman may become adept at "man-speak" were she motivated to live happily with all types of male relationships.

Does the human species really possess specific gender behaviors called "woman-speak" and "man-speak"? Do these "differences" actually exist or were they created artificially? Is there scientific evidence for the biological basis of those speaking behaviors? Would it not be simpler and more sensible to assume that language differences between the sexes is an effect of how men and women historically have been treated in our culture--that it is not the result of biological or genetic differences?

Perhaps the feminist movement can offer a clue. Feminism, like racism and poverty, screams about equality, not differences. Like others who feel the sting of any type of discrimination, feminists have been yearning for equal opportunity, status, respect, and power. They resent merely being considered a large slab of humanity called "woman" that requires special roles of anything, including how to be conversed with. They do not monolithically think, feel, need, or talk differently than men. Men and women have similar wants, hopes, and aspirations. Each person has his or her own unique temperamental patterns and intellectual goals. On any particular issue, an open-minded woman unhesitatingly may think and act more like a majority of men than a large group of women chosen at random. With another issue, however, she may agree with the thoughts and actions of the majority of women.

When a man or woman speaks to another man or woman, the question each should ask themselves is, "What is the most effective way of communicating my queries, ideas, or feelings to this particular person?" Stylistic conversational differences between men and women best can be explained by cultural effects. Men generally speak to women the way they do because of the belittling, stonewalling, and injustices women historically have endured in our society. Scientists have not discovered a gene to account for gender language differences. I doubt they ever will. Why should women be spoken to differently than men? Are not both sexes people? There are individual differences among people regardless of sex. Why should useless, destructive myths about sexual group differences be manufactured when it comes to speaking? Is it not wiser to change divisive, repressive...