Do Men & Women assert themselves differently?

There’s been a few twitter controversies now about “modern women” and their behaviour; I’ve been informed on them by LV. I stay well away from such rubbish but an interesting narrative that was relayed to me struck me:

Last night at dinner another guest (from an adjoining table) had draped their jacket over the table. The girl who had sat at the table first, didn’t say anything, but when the boy came on to join, the first he did was to ask the diner at the adjoining table to remove their jacket.

The girl & boy were racially the same and culturally fairly similarly (both British undergrads) but a really important (and overlooked) skillset is “assertion.” How to get counterparties to do what you want, when you want and in the manner you want is a key component of success.

I suspect the more intersectional/minoritised one is to the mainstream of elite society, the more difficult it is to get it right. Noah Harris in Sapiens puzzled over the sex differences in outcomes in Sapiens (I don’t necessarily like his methods of speculation but it’s good food for thought) and I think it’s about the fine line between aggression, assertion and concession that can plague those who are in a marginalised gender, race, religion etc.

I also think that schools, families don’t actually impart emotionally intelligent behaviour to their offspring. Schools don’t actually teach young children the key skills that they need to successfully navigate life so I guess one has to be an auto-didact and life long learner to get ahead.