complementary - by Molly Mielke - Mind Mud

I studied film in college. Something I noticed time and time again was that men and women tend to relate to movies differently. While women use characters as conduits for outsourcing feelings and temporarily relieving them of the need to feel their own (full subject-object convergence), men tend to think of films as sources of external aspiration (maintaining subject-object differentiation). When asked, men are much more likely to leave a theater feeling inspired to better themselves in the likeness of the strong male character, while women tend to talk more about the catharsis they felt for the characters themselves. Extrapolating this further, I think women care much more about cultivating beauty and decreasing suffering (emotion-led), while men are primarily motivated by problem-solving and power (conquest-led). Blank slate theory would tell you that these mentalities are socially programmed into us by society, but I’m not so sure. If you’ve ever been in a heterosexual romantic rela

I studied film in college. Something I noticed time and time again was that men and women tend to relate to movies differently. While women use characters as conduits for outsourcing feelings and temporarily relieving them of the need to feel their own (full subject-object convergence), men tend to think of films as sources of external aspiration (maintaining subject-object differentiation). When asked, men are much more likely to leave a theater feeling inspired to better themselves in the likeness of the strong male character, while women tend to talk more about the catharsis they felt for t