7. Perception as Filter: Why Men and Women Live in Different Realities
Understanding means there’s nothing to forgive.
—Mother Teresa
If you ask a man and a woman sitting in a room together if they are sitting in the same room, they will almost surely think you’re crazy. “Of course it’s the same room,” they will answer. They’re wrong; it is not the same room. Even when they’re looking at exactly the same thing, men and women tend to perceive two different realities. The problem is that they end up arguing over which reality actually exists!
Everyone knows what perceptions are. It’s “what we take in.” What people forget is that our perceptions are just that—impressions taken in through the senses. They are not reality. How we see things depends ...
Get Same Words, Different Language: A Proven Guide for Creating Gender Intelligence at Work, Third Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
