Since the beginning of society, men have ventured to understand women and women have strived to understand men. However, when men and women attempt to discuss this topic, it usually ends in an aggressive and unproductive conversation. During this study, I asked a group of young men questions they had for women and a group of young women questions they had about men. Then I proceeded to use the questions to interview the opposite genders, where I received many interesting answers from people with unique opinions and ideologies.

During this study, I collected a mix of productive and unproductive answers. Out of the productive questions I received several very thoughtful and interesting answers. The unproductive questions stemmed from both genders such as “why are they so gross?” and “why are they low-key pervy?” Similarly the young men asked unproductive questions such as “what turns you off?” and “why are you so much more concerned with your hygiene?” While these questions are not dissatisfactory, they are slightly superficial and unproductive. This implies one of two outcomes, either the participants still are not mature enough to have a conversation about gender in a productive way, or that they did not take this discussion seriously.

The first question women seemed to be very curious about was male insecurities. The men answered “Most men are insecure about being successful,” “in general penis size and wealth,” “insecure about masculinity, insecure about being men in general, and not living up to the masculinity standard.” Even as a man I was surprised by the amount of people concerned about success and money. It is important to have a drive for success, but the insecurities most likely stem from the traditional masculine role, where men are expected to provide for their family. The idea that men need to provide is slowly shifting to a more equal balance between men and women with the wage gap slowly closing in and women having a higher annual income in many cases. In an article written by Men’s Journal titted “The most common insecurities among men,” the second and third most common insecurities were job security and financial security, a little lower down the list was men being insecure about meeting expectations. These are all closely related insecurities and reassure the fact that these are common concerns regarding masculinity.

The first question men were curious about was a slightly controversial one. The question was “What makes you a woman?” The women answered “the ability to care for a child,” “more emotional,” “ability to understand other women,” and “having a menstrual cycle.” This question has become more sensitive due to the gender argument and conversations around transgender and LGBTQ people. The answers I received seemed to be focused on a more traditional view on womanhood and not on gender identity. The European Institute for Gender Equality defines “Woman” as “Female human being; a person assigned a female sex at birth, or a person who defines herself as a woman.” None of the answers touched on identifying as a woman even though it has become a much more normalized thing in society than in the past. It was also interesting how they were focused on emotional characteristics, as well as physical characteristics.

The next question women asked about was an important one regarding societal expectations. The question was “Why do men feel the need to pay when with a girl.” The men answered “It goes back to hunter-gatherer,” “because sexism is embedded in our culture,” and “societal expectations and evolution.” I was intrigued to see how they mentioned sexism. I always thought of men paying as a common etiquette and not necessarily a negative thing. The expectation of men paying for things is slightly misconceived as men are always paying for everything which stems from the idea that men have to provide. In reality, when you are in a long-term relationship, it is more likely that it is an equal balance between both partners.

The question that men asked that stood out to me the most was “What stereotypes about women do you find most offensive?” The women answered, “that dressing up and putting on makeup is slut shamed,” “that we are too emotional, and women can’t do masculine things like sports” and “stay-at-home women and traditional housewife stereotypes.” According to Helpfulproffesor.com, the most common stereotypes about women are “Women are too emotional for leadership,” “Woman are passive,” and “Woman are weak.” These matched well with the two answers I received. This surprised me slightly because I was not fully aware of these stereotypes.

The question that women asked that stood out to me the most was “Are men actually less emotional or do they feel the need to suppress their feelings in order to be perceived as stronger?” I got two similar answers and two very different answers. One of the men said, “Yes, because of the process of hiding their emotions you slowly have less emotions. Most men probably have equal emotions to a woman,” and “I think men are less emotional but they suppress their emotions. Men have less emotions than women. They suppress because they want to be seen as tough.” On the other hand another person said, “Men are not less emotional, and most men I know show their emotion equally or more than the women I know,” and “Men are 100% not less emotional and mostly all men have the same amount of emotions.” These answers were very interesting because all the other questions had more similarly related answers but this one was almost polar opposite answers.

Overall I feel like these questions were beneficial because they gave me insight on what peoples opinions on slightly controversial topics were regarding gender. If I could do one thing differently next time, I would have more questions that would allow for more disagreement and debate which would have made it slightly more interesting, but I am happy with the results and answers as a whole. I feel like this topic is very important for both genders to better understand each other and instead of having a research article where it is forced, it should be something that happens normally and is a more normalized, comfortable thing to do in society.