Gender Specific Fears: Is Criticism or Failure Worse?

[Pythagorean]

The invitation of the OP is for people to post their own individual experience. As I said, it's an informal pole, the goal of which is to see if the assertion is born out or contradicted here among people who feel like responding. To the extent people speak for themselves saying "Yes, this holds true for me, personally," or "No, that doesn't hold true for me personally" then I, and anyone whose interested, have some small bits of data to ponder and compare with any future imput that might come our way about this. To the extent people assert answers they believe apply to their whole sex, and also to the other sex, it creates gratuitous tension in anyone else considering responding. I can imagine them thinking "Well, I can't share my own experience now because it contradicts someone who'se declared there is no such difference and they may want to start an argument about it."

In defense of my response, I totally thought I was staying on topic, but I may have made my response unclear with my neo-socratic method.

Me personally, I have feared both criticism and failure, but they're occurences are seldom and usually in insignificant arenas, parties or other strange (to me) social situations, when it comes to my work and my school, I will not fail, I can only learn from my mistakes... if I ever get around to taking a break from posting on physicsforums or playing cthulhumud and actually get out there and make some mistakes (which is kind of the fun of the whole thing anyway, making mistakes, having problems to solve, etc, etc)

My point in general was that failure and criticism are common fears for any human, regardless of their sex, and when I speak, I'm not speaking for my sex, I'm speaking for my age group (who I see, and study, a lot of) who all have their insecurities regardless of their sex, and failure and criticism are nealry homogenous fears that weave in and out of all our existences sooner or later in some period of our social life. If a fear becomes obtusely consistant in your life, it's a phobia, a mental illness, and one's sex isn't more susceptible to phobias then another. Sex is a cultural difference more than most people realize.

I also don't want to discourage anyone from refuting this point. I won't argue about something that's still a big question today "nature or nurture". Professionals argue about it still, so there's obviously no easy answer. I like to hear the opinion's of people who see flaws in my logic.

 

[zoobyshoe]

In defense of my response, I totally thought I was staying on topic, but I may have made my response unclear with my neo-socratic method.

I thought your original response was on topic, informative, and you were speaking for yourself:

I'm a man, and I have a constructively mild fear both.

Side discussions happen, sometimes, and people have their own opinions in place about some things, but my goal here was to get individual reports and build a picture from scratch rather than solicit other people's assumptions and guesses about how the picture will form.

 

[Pythagorean]

hrmm... I guess I'm operating under the assumption that even when poeple talk about themselves (or sometimes especially when they talk about theirselves) they're guessing and assuming.

Have you also thought about the error in people lying. I haven't studied the replies in this thread besides yours mainly, but I'd assume most people wouldn't admit to having fears, especially if they fear criticism, so they'd either lie to you or not reply.

EDIT: Ah, I realize my last paragraph is an extension of post # 47 above