Are you female? Do you spend your day talking about “accessorising”, “Pilates”, “size zero”, “superfoods”, “cellulite” and “kitten heels”? I thought not. <\/p>\n

On the BBC website,<\/a> there is a piece about “research” showing that women do not talk more than men but apparently have a larger vocabulary. This is “research” in the sense that it isn’t actually attributed but its results are amazingly specific.<\/p>\n

Researchers in the US have laid waste to the long-held belief that women talk more than men. But the survey did find that female subjects get through an average of 16,215 words a day, compared with their male counterparts’ 15,669, a difference of 546<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As a “lighthearted” talking point, the BBC lists some candidates for what these words might be (supposedly after consulting some women) and asks for other suggestions. There are a few phrases in the list that might be considered to be genuine specifically female concerns but most of the suggestions are what you’d get if you switched on a stereotyping machine and programmed it to reproduce the thoughts of a latter-day Bernard Manning.<\/p>\n

I shouldn’t think I have to spell it out but I am going to anyway. <\/p>\n

The general assumption behind most of this list is that women are complete airheads, mental sponges for Heat magazine. If the BBC had produced a similar list based on “jokey” “racial” chracteristics, you would expect that the website would have been (rightly) shut down by now.<\/p>\n

But, hey, it’s all light-hearted fun. It couldn’t possibly be part of the cultural construction of masculinity and feminity, could it? <\/p>\n

Share this:<\/h3>

• <\/span>Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)<\/span><\/a><\/li>
• <\/span>Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)<\/span><\/a><\/li>
• More<\/span><\/a><\/li>
• <\/li><\/ul>
  • <\/span>Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)<\/span><\/a><\/li>
  • <\/span>Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)<\/span><\/a><\/li>
  • <\/li>
  • <\/span>Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)<\/span><\/a><\/li>
  • <\/li><\/ul><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Are you female? Do you spend your day talking about “accessorising”, “Pilates”, “size zero”, “superfoods”, “cellulite” and “kitten heels”? I thought not. On the BBC website, there is a piece about “research” showing that women do not talk more than … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

    Share this:<\/h3>

    • <\/span>Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)<\/span><\/a><\/li>
    • <\/span>Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)<\/span><\/a><\/li>
    • More<\/span><\/a><\/li>
    • <\/li><\/ul>
      • <\/span>Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)<\/span><\/a><\/li>
      • <\/span>Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)<\/span><\/a><\/li>
      • <\/li>
      • <\/span>Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)<\/span><\/a><\/li>
      • <\/li><\/ul><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[3,10],"tags":[177,902,4009,252],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pnUcF-gS","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.whydontyou.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1046"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.whydontyou.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.whydontyou.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.whydontyou.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.whydontyou.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.whydontyou.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1046\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.whydontyou.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.whydontyou.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.whydontyou.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}