Enlightenment! -or- August Explains the Male Mind to a Benighted Pretty Lady

August elaborates upon the Missing Logical Link:

You mentioned a proposition.
You mentioned saying something extraordinary.

Now there has to be an assumption somewhere between the two, and I figure that assumption is in a male brain.

That particular male has likely perceived the extraordinary as the competitive, and is hoping such competitiveness will translate into some friendly competition in the bedroom.
...

As for myself, my assumptions in similar situations are simple: loyalty and competition work in opposition to each other. I simply disengage. I have learned enough lessons the hard way.

Ah. So that's it.

Let us set aside all the sardonic commentary--indeed the floods of rhetorical self-indulgence, illustrated with many florid anecdotes, that sprang to Pretty Lady's fevered brain after she was finally able to wrap her hopelessly feminine mind around the above logical sequence. Let us consider this as read. Let us, merely, ask this theoretical male a theoretical question.

Are you familiar with the concept of a team? As in those sports thingies? Group of persons working together toward a Common Goal, such as to win the Super Bowl, or something else equally random and trivial?

Pretty Lady pauses, for the man to bring this undoubtedly familiar concept to mind, and hold it there.

Now. Think hard. Suppose you were a coach, auditioning players for a team. Would you require these potential players to prove their competence, by handling the ball or puck or stick or whatever, with finesse, logic and aplomb? Or would you require them to prove their loyalty, by fumbling around and dropping it all over the place, so as not to infringe upon the other players' inherent superiority?

Hmm?

Now, I ask you, theoretical man, to stretch a paradigm. Imagine, that in the mind of Woman, relationships are roughly equivalent to teams. This putative Woman regards a relationship as an entity in which two individuals work together to achieve a set of Common Goals, such as building a home, raising children, establishing a system of mutual nurturance, companionship and spiritual, emotional and intellectual growth.

Now, imagine that this hapless Woman, with this goal in mind, proceeds to audition for a place on this Relationship Team by proving her competence. Her method includes displaying perspicacity, humor, kindness, flexibility, wit, resourcefulness, and a basic ability to hold up her end of the stick, in both practical and aesthetic contexts.

And the Man promptly responds by thinking, "Who does this Woman think she is, being all clever and competent like that? I'll take that bitch down a peg. She's begging for it." So he treats this potential team member as a Woman--that is, as an exotic sort of prostitute--grinds her into the dirt, abandons her, and goes off in search of a ball-dropper to put under contract.

Are you, theoretical Man, perhaps getting a hint of the sort of frustrations and miscommunications that can arise, due to this mutual conflict of assumed paradigms, yet?

While you are chewing on this idea, Pretty Lady will pose some alternatives to the notion that an intelligent woman, making a humorous, perceptive, or witty remark, is attempting to emasculate a man by Competing with him. The possibility exists that her motive in making such a remark might be:

1) To express what's on her mind, in the hopes of kindling an answering spark of resonance in his.

2) To defuse a tense situation with humor.

3) To introduce an alternate perspective for mutual consideration.

4) To pre-empt being patronized, which can be mildly annoying, when a gentleman assumes that no sweet little blue-eyed blonde lady could possibly be able to process ideas or information beyond the first-grade level.

(Incidentally, a lady who engages in such patronage pre-emption may also be endeavoring to spare the man the humiliation that inevitably occurs, when she is finally forced to confess to having a Ph.D. in engineering.)

5) To engage his attention in a flirtatious way, for the purposes of mutual enjoyment.

6) To let her Freak Flag fly high, in the hopes of attracting someone who likes that sort of thing.

7) Just to express the sheer joy of being alive.

Now, it is certainly possible that the lady is a ball-busting bitch who wishes to see all men castrated and ground down under her dominating and vindictive heel. Such bitches are occasionally born. However, it is Pretty Lady's private suspicion that such bitches are also made, after a well-meaning lady has been given the competitive-whore treatment a couple of dozen times.

In closing, Pretty Lady would like to re-iterate the statement that loyalty has nothing, nothing, nothing whatsoever to do with competence. Loyalty is an aspect of character, which in all humans is divorced from other characteristics such as wit, intelligence, creativity and the like. You may not assess a woman's character in the course of a brief conversation, however witty or bovine this conversation may be. You can only assess it by interacting with her over a period of time, and observing her actions.

Of course, if you drive her away by vulgarly insulting her with a lewd proposition, the first time she dares to say something clever, your storehouse of Erroneous Assumptions will remain wholly intact. And you will, incidentally, end up with a very dull wife.