Galendgirl I find it interesting that you wrote dictator instead of director. Do you see leadership as dictatorship/experienced leadership as such? Maybe there is something there, maybe not?

And what if he leads her the wrong way? Do the men know where they are going?

No, but don't tell nobody.

I'm an explorer/director/builder/negotiator. Take no prisoners...

It doesn't matter. He will make mistakes and so will she.

The point is many woman want a man that takes the lead. If he leads, she must follow. There is no other option.

A lady never spits.

Oh, snap! Well recently leadership WAS dictatorship, so perhaps I do, at least at present!

Freud would have a heyday with that one!

And we all know they never ask for directions! LOL!

Well, I prefer the concept of a team effort. Each individual would bring different weaknesses and strengths to the relationship. This area of submission can easily escalate to control. Been there and rebelled, lol.

100% equal partnerships don't work. Not in business and not in love. Someone must have the final word. Otherwise, if the partners do not agree, nothing gets done.

Even in the gay community it's understood that one partner must be dominate and one submissive. The rolls my change in different situations, but one must submit to the other's will.

It's my opinion that this in the cause of most relationship problems. One partner doesn't allow the other to take the lead when that partner is clearly more knowledgeable in the given area.

The above example about men not asking for directions is a good illustration. Men don't ask for directions most of the time because we don't need them. Men think differently than women do. When a woman looks around and see only an unfamiliar landscape she becomes confused and asks for help. But, men don't navigate by the landscape. We find our way by having a map in our heads. We don't need directions if we know we're North of where we're going. We know all we need to do is go South and we'll get there. But, a woman sees him driving around this unfamiliar area and thinks "what an idiot" when SHE doesn't understand what's going on.

I know what you mean about heading south. I am a woman and I have a directional inner compass. Is that strange? After all, the stereo type would have me 'confused', not knowing where I am? Guess I am a freak huh?

Freaks unite! I've often been called the queen of serendipity when it comes to travel.

HOWEVER there are exceptions to every rule. When I moved to Houston where it's FLAT it took me quite a while...and there is still one place I'm totally screwed up about because a major road runs N/S on my side of town where it circles around Houston. South of Houston, it runs E/W and that is never an automatic directional point of reference for me there. I also need to drive a route myself to really know it (especially if there are traffic interchanges.) Even though I'm a picture girl, riding along as a passenger doesn't have the same impact on this combo kinetic/visual learner.

BTW - I've known men who can't navigate themselves out of a paper bag and still won't ask for directions, so there are freaks on both side of the stereotype.

I had a mentor who changed my life by empowering me with the ability to be a creative, smart, problem solver. I try to play that forward in my own leadership roles. My philosophy is that if I'm not making myself expendable, I'm not really doing my job...and apparently I do that well because I found myself expendable once again!

Where one door closes, another always opens

I was thinking. Since gentlemen are described as "every inch a gentleman", then a lady may be better described with "every hollow cubic inch of wet, hot space" than with "head to toe".

Just my two cents' worth. (although real ladies in real life cost much more in real life, and cash up front first, too.)

Yep. No worries!

I think you guys take this "male leadership" in the wrong direction, by taking it by its figurative meaning.

This is literally a literal way of saying that: When the tribe has to move, because they exhausted the land around them by eating the berries and the fruits and edible roots, and by depleting the wildlife of game, then it's the men who lead the tribe to new lands.

This is so because men, who were doing the hunting, would get much farther away from base camp on a daily basis, and sometimes a bunch of men would take a real excursion and not return for days.

Boys were sent in some cultures to live a month in the wilderness alone, as a testing of their manliness, as this was a ritual of entering manhood.

So men literally got around, and women did not. When it was time for a major move of the entire tribe, men led and women, children and shrunken heads followed.

This must not be mistaken for a literal meaning, that ladies allow men to make decisions for them in all kinds of things and attribute that to the leadership ability of men.

Men are no better or worse leaders than women, except for their leadership styles and leadership goals. Men go warring and sexing into foreign lands, and bring home gold. Women (Ekatyerina, Emperor Theresa, Pharao Cleopatra, and whole bunch of others in recorded history, but much more many and in greater proportions against men in pre-recorded history), do the leadership by gentle encouragement for universal buy-in to ideas. Men leaders say "it's my way or no way. You do what I say, or your head will roll." Women leaders, on the other hand, are builders, fosterers of society and wealth. Women don't mind building wealth at a peaceful, slow pace, much unlike men who always want to be a hero. Women are always conservative investors, in politics as much as in their personal lives. I played Monopoly games with literally hundreds of people, and women were hopeless opponents. They would get hold of a few properties, and they could not part with any. They did not own a set, yet they did not see the motivation of entering into a deal where they'd give up any real estate. No matter what deal you offered them. They always lost the game, and their participation slowed the game down tremendously. An all-male game would last as short as an hour and a half and maximum two hours. A game with as much as one or more women players would last four hours and up. To me they were boring, too, because the game lost its dynamic feature of a board where the properties would be moving between owners.

And in pre-historic times most nomadic tribes were matriarchal, that is, women-ruled. They brought home the dough more in amount and in dependable supply, and men, who hunted, brought home fun food (fat and meat portein are always fun to eat, more than veggies), but their supplying their side of the menu was small in amount, capriciously avaiable and whatever.

In those societies, women ruled, they made the decisions, and we don't know much about their daily lives and social structures. North American Indians, almost on the entire continent, were like this, matriarchal; yet we know very little of their social structuring and how community decisions were created. We know the women held all-women councils, and men only had executive jurisdiction over war. The much touted Indian Chiefs were mere spokespersons who told the tribes what the woman council decided. White man appeared, and every time white man would have had a chance to glimpse into the natural life of an indian community, he preempted it by 1. killing and robbing the Indians and/or by disruspting their social structures to such a large extent that it was unrecognizable from what they used to be before white man appeared. And all that if white man was in the first place interested about learning Indian life, but he was not, he was only interested in Indian life about the beahviors and skills that furthered easier survival for white man in the North American wilderness.

Ive got nothing.

At what price will you let your nothing go. (** Watch this, folks.)

All I have is this...

what my mother said,

my daddy,

told her,

"The perfect woman is a lady in public, and a hoe in bed".

End of story.