However, I do think – per Lively's advice – women need to raise their threshold for what constitutes an apology. My desire for tension is zero in all situations work, personal, whatever.Īdmitting fault is the quickest way to move on, so if you're not an ego-focused person, I believe apologising is the ideal way to get on with the rest of your day faster.Ĭase in point: in 2009, Munich's Haus der Kunst hosted a show So Sorry, specifically to draw attention to governments' insincere apologies intended only to sweep things under the rug.
Just to pre-empt any offence.īut should we stop apologising so much? I will say this, serial apologising makes your life more drama-free. The rest of us throw out "sorry" like candy on Halloween. For a man to apologise, they need to have done something really bad. They do, but scientific evidence shows it's not at the same level. I'm not saying men (rather, straight white men) don't apologise in New Zealand. Being told "you're so lucky" because you paid for an international holiday somewhere glamorous? You will apologise for others' commitments at home or unable to travel. Made money selling a property? You will apologise for the market at the right time. We are afraid of being cut down for success, so apologies are a way of deflecting attention. New Zealand's Tall Poppy Syndrome is another reason many of us are serial apologisers. In the end, it was my insurance covering both cars' repairs. He saw an opportunity for me – then a naïve queer kid – to take legal responsibility because I was being polite. It wasn't necessarily my mistake nobody ascertained anything yet. The other driver's response? "So you admit it's your fault?"
While nobody was to blame, I remember being vehemently apologetic. I remember being in a fender-bender, at school. I even apologise when someone has done something wrong, just to diffuse the situation. We feel pressure to appear warmer, even if it makes us look less competent. It's no wonder straight guys don't say sorry much: they don't have the same intuitional barriers when someone thinks you're "difficult". Another Canadian study - from the University of Waterloo - finds men rated the "offences" as less severe than women did. You can't be labelled angry, unreasonable, or hysterical if you're apologising. The same goes for men of colour, and the "Uppity Gay Man" trope. Wanda Sykes joked the Obamas could never be seen arguing publicly, "because White People are looking at you!" Australian feminist Ruby Hamad notes self-censorship arises more among minorities as they avoid being seen as "an Angry Black Woman". We are forever navigating an older, straighter, white men's world. Men from minorities, eg, queer men and men of colour, also end up apologising as much as women.
When men apologise at the same rate as women, they are as sensitive, even weak. The problem is they find very few infractions deserving of an apology, and women are apologising for just about everything." "If men deem an infraction egregious enough, they apologise. Anecdotally, Canadians stereotypically say sorry too, often, but less than New Zealanders. McMaster University research in Ontario, Canada, says women genuinely believe they should apologise more than their male counterparts. Lively's character was on the money: apologising is more female than male. If you're a woman, you say it about 10 times each day.