Dear Good Enough Guy:

Last year I bought some friends a gag gift for Christmas (a DVD teaching them how to belly dance). I bought it on my lunch hour while at work where a male co-worker saw and commented about it. I then made the mistake of going along with his joke, telling him it was for me and that I bought the DVD to learn how to belly dance so I could perform at the company Christmas Party. Will, by the end of the day, at least five guys came up to me asking and teasing about me being the entertainment for the Christmas party

Then a few months after that I was in the break room talking with a female co-worker about having new tiles put in my kitchen and bath. One of the guys, who had teased me in the past, overheard us talking. Two hours later, someone came to my desk and said he knew a guy who would do the tiles for me in both rooms for $50. I think he was inferring the price would be low if I performed for him. When I asked him about it, he said that’s not what he meant, but clearly he’d heard about the belly dancing DVD story.

So, do tell, Good Enough Guy, do men gossip just as much as we women?

Signed

One of the girls!

Hey Girl!

So… after all of the info you gave me… and all of the questions you could have asked about your situation… all you want to know is whether or not men gossip?

Well the thing is, a question like this forces me to make some HUGE generalizations. You’re asking me to fit all ages, colors, nationalities, etc, etc, into two giant groups called MEN and WOMEN. Not that I haven’t done it before; I just thought I’d throw in a disclaimer for the folks that will want to disagree with me no matter what I say.

Do men gossip as much as women? Yes, we do… and no, we don’t. Let me try to explain it this way:

Women gossip: men talk. Let’s say there’s a hottie that works in an office with five women and five men. Let’s say she talks a good game, doesn’t get offended when guys “tease” her, and maybe even flirts innocently with a guy or two in the office.

The five women will gossip: They may call her nasty names, make mean jokes behind her back, claim that they’ve seen her do things, or say that a friend of a friend of theirs was in the doctor’s office the day that she got those implants.

Why will they act this way? I’m not really sure, but I think it’s the same reason that my mother used to say that three boys can play together all day, but three girls can’t play together for three minutes before two of them are being mean to the third one. While little boys are wrestle-fighting and giving each other wedgies, little girls are learning to be mean with words, to smile in the face of the very person they’ve just talked bad about, becoming beginner gossips. And as they grow up, women hone this skill to razor sharp perfection. By their teenage years, they can eviscerate another person, female or male, without ever even looking their way.

On the other hand…

The five men will discuss: They will probably talk about whether the hottie is all talk, or if she might actually play ball. They will decide if one among them might stand a chance with her or, if more than one thinks he has a chance, they will decide who best to make a play first. In short, they will come up with a plan as to what they’ll do next. Men talk in terms of gaining things for themselves and aren’t as interested in hurting other people.

When girls where learning to throw darts at each other’s reputations, we were too busy trying to build our own reputations to care what women were doing. So while the women are saying that her skirt is too shirt, her top is too tight, her heels are too high, she wears too much make up, and that she looks like a stripper/ street walker, one guy will look over at another, give a little wink, and say, “Yeah… I’d hit it.”

That’s the long version of the differences between how women and men gossip. Here are a few more short ones:

-Women have to gossip because they run out of truth before they get tired of talking. Men like to tell stories, but don’t like to talk just for the sake of talking. Usually if a man is on the phone longer than 15 minutes, he’s talking to a woman.

-Women like gossip because they like to seem like to be right in the middle of everything. Men have a hard enough time staying out of the middle of things as it is.

-A woman wants to know what’s going on in every house on her block, but doesn’t want anyone to know what goes on in hers. A man is clueless as to what’s going on in the houses around him and likes it that way.

…And

-Most women from the time they can speak, will never at any age, be able to pass up a good rumor regardless of who it’s about, where it came from, or whether or not it’s true. Most men by the age of 40, don’t know, don’t want to know, don’t want to hear it, can’t really speak on it and would appreciate being left the hell alone.

Well ???, that’s the long and short of it. If I’ve offended you, or anyone else out there, I’m sure you’ll let me know. If not, you’ll call a friend and tell them that thing you heard about me; that’ll teach me!

So what do you say everyone – am I right or wrong?

William Jones is originally from the tiny town of Alton, Illinois, and now lives in the tinier town of Reisterstown, Maryland. He is a happy husband and a proud father of three, and writes as a hobby, in those few moments he finds between husbanding and daddy-ing