Most women have no idea what it's like to be a man on a daily basis either.

[jp11]

81. I think you would have had a better point if you hadn't

used or tried to use the differences between our hormones/brain chemistry/etc as seemingly the only way of explaining or excusing the kind of behavior that thread talked about the extremes of.

Rather a better way of putting it, at least to me, would have been yes there are distinct differences between men and women as well as our 'wiring' but on top of that you have all of the societal and cultural expectations ie gender roles. While so many like to say they are not important, outdated, don't exists, etc the truth is they matter and still affect how we interact with eachother and how we even pressure eachother to fit those roles. Simply put our parents and grandparents as well as all our history, literature, media, etc all play a role in reinforcing historic roles men and women should play. None of them on their own are likely to be the single thing that swipes the control or free thought from a person to adhere to some idea of who they should be but they all work together as well as the daily experiences we all have as individuals as who we are based on how we are treated.

Whenever we as individuals don't challenge or work to effect those around us to challenge those roles we are allowing them to go unchallenged and in some ways reinforced. Men don't need to be the sex that approaches a woman they are interested just as women don't need to wait for a guy to show he's interested if she is.

Of course you are right neither women nor men can truly know what it is like to see life from the other side absent reforming their personality in a perfect version of the opposite sex and even then perhaps not having had x time as the prior sex as personal history/memories.