"Male Answer Syndrome" By Jane Campbell, Utne Reader, Jan/Feb 1992

 

And that is my final answer.

Male Answer Syndrome

Jane Campbell

Utne Reader, Jan/Feb, 1992

       "In the animal kingdom, males exhibit what is known as "display
behavior" in order to attract females and to ward off rival
males. They thrust out their chests, ruffle their plumage, and
generally try to appear more impressive than they really are. On
nature shows, this is comic. It appears comic, too, when it shows
up among humans: the guy in the Camaro with all the gold chains,
say, or Vanilla Ice's haircut. Lately however, it has been
discovered that display behavior is much more common among humans
than had been previously believed.

        Have you ever wondered why:

        *  Men who have never been west of Kentucky can tell you
                about the mentality of the Japanese?
        *  Men who can't pay their credit card bills have a plan
                for dealing with the national debt?
        *  Men who aren't on speaking terms with their families
                know how to achieve peace in the Middle East?
        *  Men who flunked high school Physics can explain what
                went wrong at NASA?
        *  Men who haven't had a date in six months know what
                women really want?

        Try an experiment: Ask my friend Jeff, who spends his
weekend fixing up his Harley, and watching female mud-wrestling,
how he thinks political autonomy will affect the economies of the
Baltic States.

        His brow will furrow; he will purse his lips
thoughtfully. "It's interesting that you mention that...", he
will begin, and then he will come up with something -- probably
nothing remotely feasible, but something.

        This behavior--the chronic answering of questions regardless of
actual knowledge--is known as Male Answer Syndrome. The
Compulsion to answer varies from person to person, but few men
are happy saying "I don't know". They prefer "That's not what's
important here".

        They try not to get bogged down by petty considerations such as
"Do I know anything about this subject?" or "Is what I have to
say interesting?" They take a broad view of questions, treating
them less as requests for specific pieces of information than as
invitations to expand on some theories, air a few prejudices, and
tell a couple of jokes. Some men seem to regard life as a talk
show on which they are the star guest. If you ask, "What is the
capital of Venezuela?" they hear, "So tell us a bit about your
early years, Bob".

        Sometimes this expansiveness is appealing. If you ask a
woman "Wy does Mary Hart wear those sweaters?" she will shrug
helplessly, acknowledging that some things are simply unknowable.
A man, on the other hand, will come up with a few theories (she
is related to the designer? color-blind?). Men have the courage
and inventiveness to try to explain the inexplicable.

        But Male Answer Syndrome (MAS) is by no means harmless,
as my friend Pauline discovered at the age of 8. She had found
that eating ice cream made her teeth hurt and asked her father if
Eskimos had the same problem. "No", he said. "They have rubber
teeth". Pauline repeated this information in a geography lesson
and found herself the laughing stock of the class. That was how
she learned that a man, even if he is your own father, would
rather make up an answer than admit to his own ignorance.

        Later in life women run into the same problem: Men can
speak with such conviction that women may be fooled into thinking
that they actually know what they are talking about.

        A woman who finds herself in the midst of an impassioned
argument about glasnost may suffer from an eerie sense of
displacement. Has a weird time-space warp landed her in the
Kremlin? No, she's in the mailroom with Dave and Bob, who she
knows for a fact read only the sports pages.

        My friend Jeff (he of the Harley) is full of expertise on
subjects as diverse as global warming and Elvis' current
whereabouts. In reality however, he is an expert at only one
thing: making a little knowledge go a very long way. For him
answering is a game, and not knowing what he is talking about
just adds to the thrill.

        Expressing skepticism can be highly inflammatory. Even
mild-mannered Abe Lincoln types may react to "Are you sure about
that?" as a vicious slur on their manhood and find themselves
backing up a ludicrous assertion with spurious facts.

        Many women actively encourage male answering behavior.
There is in the female a correlative condition known as the Say
What? Complex. Women who behind closed doors expound eloquently on
particle physics may be found, in male company, gaping at the
news that the earth is round.

        MAS tends to be mild until puberty; boys begin to speak

with authority on matters of foreign policy at the same time that
they start to grow facial hair. And there is a growing consensus
among scientists as to how MAS developed: Since killing woolly
mammoths and attacking enemies with rocks are now frowned upon,
and since shirts open to the navel are not appropriate in every
social occasion, men prove their masculinity by concocting
elaborate theories about football.

        Growing awareness of MAS has led some to call for a
moratorium on all male-female conversation. This is alarmist. But
care should be taken. Woman must remind themselves that if a man
tells them something particularly interesting, there is a good
chance that is particularly untrue.