Are Guys Really "Clueless" when it Comes to Reading Sexual Cues?

“Yes,” a href=”http://www.livescience.com/health/080320-clueless-guys.html”says an article /a in emLiveScience/em (thanks to the reader who emailed the link): br /br /blockquoteMore often than not, guys interpret even friendly cues, such as a subtle smile from a gal, as a sexual come-on, and a new study discovers why: Guys are clueless. br /br /More precisely, they are somewhat oblivious to the emotional subtleties of non-verbal cues, according to a new study of college students. br /br /”Young men just find it difficult to tell the difference between women who are being friendly and women who are interested in something more,” said lead researcher Coreen Farris of Indiana University’s Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. /blockquotebr /br /So men are a bunch of oblivious clowns–it’s obvious this is what the staff writer, Jeanna Bryner (or her editor) thinks of men. Take a look at the title: “Clueless guys can’t read women.” But the editors don’t have the last word: A number of the commenters disagree with the tone of the article (as do I). One disgusted guy writes in:br /br /blockquoteNice anti-male gender stereotyping. “Men are clueless.” That’s the sort of thing we’d expect in a radical feminist blog. The suggestion is, men are flawed for their “insensitivity to women’s subtle non-verbal cues.”br /br /Um, could it be that women pick up on details better than men? Women have more developed skills in social communication (while men have more developed skills in other important areas)?br /br /The TONE of your article is nothing short of male bashing — you obviously would not agree or you wouldn’t have written it that. “Men are clueless.”br /br /Ugh!/blockquotebr /br /Another equally dismayed commenter states:br /br /blockquoteOh wow, yet another denegrating article/study about men (guised as science) written by a woman, gee what a surprise. Let me make sure I have this right, it’s men fault for not reading subtle non-verbal clues by women who REFUSE TO BE CLEAR WITH VERBAL COMMUNICATION and it’s somehow a man’s fault? anyone follow this logic? if you do, you’re a woman./blockquotebr /br /If you want to get a handle on where this particular writer, Ms. Bryner, is coming from, take a look at a couple other of her articles in emLiveScience/em. Here’s one entitled, a href=”http://www.livescience.com/health/070619_gender_roles.html”Study Debunks Myth that Women Want Sex Less/a–note the positive title. If a study finds that men want sex, they are called clueless. Another article is entitled, a href=”http://www.livescience.com/health/071009-women-science.html”Why Men Dominate Math and Science Fields/a where ” a climate that is less than fully friendly to women remains, and its texture is often still so taken for granted that it tends to be invisible.” br /br /Of course, maybe it’s not Ms. Bryner. Maybe it’s the headline writers who think that every development has to be given an anti-male spin. Why would that be?