And see, for the drabble form, my challenge is always getting to 100 words.

I know the conversational moment has passed, but I want to go back and elucidate what I meant about unapologizingness being more of a problem for me in relationships with women, and see if other people have had the same or contrary experiences. I am even going to link it to writing, because I tend to write in a male POV more easily than in a female POV (for some things, not all), and I think this relates to that.

I certainly noticed the environmental pressure for girls to be cute/pretty and not smart (and especially not smart-ass), but since that wasn't expected of me at home (quite the opposite) and since it just wasn't who I was, I never went that route.

I think men sort themselves socially along the Y axis, while women sort themselves socially along the X axis, to shorthand it. When I'm with a group of women (in general, not all women) I feel a great pressure to reinforce the similarities. In school it was dressing the same, liking the same music, thinking the same boys were cute. Being too far outside allowed parameters was a problem. Girls avoided being friends with me, starting in about 5th grade, because I was the smartest kid in the class.

Boys, on the other hand, seemed to be more comfortable that they could slot me into a ranking and didn't have to worry about what I wasn't advertising. And I never had a problem dating because I was smart (I had a problem dating in my hometown because I was weird, but that was different...and I still got some anyway), in part because I never tried to date guys less intelligent than me.

OK, there was that one time, but it only lasted 2 weeks.

College was different - I had a big group of female friends, and we were all smart, so I wasn't out of bounds. And for the most part we were feverishly establishing ourselves as individuals, so dressing different, having a different major, was not a problem.

The work world is back to high school, though. I've spent my adult life working for extremely gender-biased organizations, and it has seemed to me that other women have been more threatened by smart women than the men have.

I've also noticed, and this is going on right now, that the Good Ol' Boys have started to learn that when you want to say you like working with a woman, you can no longer say "She's got great legs" or "She's got great tits" but you can say "She's really smart." Cause, seriously, unless my new boss looked up my IQ test in my personnel record, he's got no grounds to describe me as "really smart" my second day on the job.

I probably apologise more to women than men too, Raq. Now that you mention it.

A friend recently yelled at me for saying I'd like to have a more defined waist. "Big boobs, big ass! You want more?" I apologise for wanting to gain weight, for not needing to shave, for all sorts of silly stuff.

Guys don't give a fuck, or at the very least tune out. I mean, they think I'm weird, but nothing to apologise for. I don't ever apologise when I'm smarter than they are, or when I hit harder, or take their blows--going toe to toe with a smile on my face might lose me a few dates, but that's about it.

Oh man, martial arts. I can't stand working with women who apologize constantly for throwing a punch at me, or throwing me. I've told more than one, "Look, you paid money to come here and do this. Why apologize? Besides, I told you to try to hit me."

Weird thing though - when I was teaching the self-defense course for rape victims at the Y, very few of them apologized constantly. Of course, mostly they didn't talk at all.

The b.org interface will do its own splitting, so you can fill the posting box with as much as you like.

No, no, I meant losing the flow when reading it. The splits at arbitrary length points can really mess with my reading concentration.

Raq, ita, your experience with the apology issue is fascinating to me; I read everyone's take on it, and I get the same outsider feel I get when people are talking about their college years, or how horrible high school was, all the various social darwinism issues. I just wasn't there for any of that. What I mostly remember about high school is rock and roll. I had zero interest in college; except on the tutoring level. And I don't understand people who say, I hate men, or I hate women. What kind of idiot proudly stands up and proclaims that they hate half of everything?

I got told, very young, that people - no gender specified - would try and make me into something that would make them feel comfortable around me. It was reinforced that people tended to do that mostly without even realising - it was a way to control me. The advice - this was my father talking - was to tell them all to go to hell and do what I was going to do.

Luckily, that was who I was anyway, so his advice was just reinforcement. The only time I apologise is if I feel I've wronged or hurt someone, and sometimes I do.

But the whole "work place pecking order" thing? Never felt that. It may well have been there. But it was never the sort of thing I noticed.

I love reading the different takes on this.

One thing, though, Raq - I remember watching a parade, where both cub scouts and brownies were marching with their troops. The little girls were almost impossible to get into a homogenous group; they didn't want to be a single entity. The little boys, though? You couldn't tell them apart.

The only time I apologise is if I feel I've wronged or hurt someone, and sometimes I do.

I don't like making people anxious or self-conscious, if I can avoid it simply. However, there are times when I think that they should just suck it up, because all I'm doing is wearing a short skirt.

It varies.

It varies.

Yep. Same here. I mean, if someone's having an issue with me, tell me. Email me, ring me up, tell me. But I want it understood, the fact that someone has got up the courage or resolution or stones or whatever to tell me what the issue, that doesn't mean I'm going to agree it's my problem.

Something like "Your opinions can be intimidating; you should phrase them more gently" is a big no. Sorry, but not apology sorry. More along the lines of "If you feel threatened by an opinion, my feeling is, go look inside yourself for why. And while you're at it, please stop interacting with me, and save yourself time, trouble and anxiety. No law says anyone has to interact with anyone else."

On topic, I am pleased with my agent. Three major editors looking at Kinkaids here in the US, and bigass UK publisher (their US distributor is Random House, and they're owned by the people who just bought Warner) wants to see Plainsong.

that doesn't mean I'm going to agree it's my problem

It doesn't have to be my problem for me to stop. It's more about how reasonable I think their problem is, how much I have invested in their happiness, what the level of effort is for me to stop pressing that button, and quite probably also my mood.

It doesn't have to be my problem for me to stop. It's more about how reasonable I think their problem is, how much I have invested in their happiness, what the level of effort is for me to stop pressing that button, and quite probably also my mood.

Again, yep. Key word: varies.

I think smarts can be intimidating, but (espcially in teenagers) it can be attitude rather than attributes which puts people off. My brother is a smart guy and he claimed all the wat up to his late 20s that people didn't like him because he was smarter than they were. What was really happening was that his sense that intelligence was the most important measure of a person and that he had impatience and sometimes contempt for people who fell short was more evident than he knew.

Robin, yep - and it would take a lot more perception than most teenagers have had time to develop, to realise that when the realisation would do them the most good.