You're very polite and articulate, [MENTION=6561]OrangeAppled[/MENTION]. I like that.
Also, perhaps I shouldn't have said that I'm not emotional. I actually feel things very deeply. But that's the thing; they're down deep, not obvious to most people. And my actions aren't ruled by them. When making a decision, I always try to rely on common sense, because emotions can often lead us astray. But so many of the men I've known seem to wear their emotions right on the surface, and allow them to pull them every which way. I just wonder where the idea of men being the more stoic, impassive of the two genders even came from. To me, it seems like just as much of a stereotype as "All Irish people are drunkards" or "All Arabs are terrorists". (I do not agree with either of those, by the way.)
It's rooted in a need to invalidate women as a way to excuse treating them as inferiors, IMO. What's weird to me is when women support this view also.
It's also an anima/animus thing, where our experience of our inferior function represents the "other", as in, "not oneself", and so it gets projected onto the opposite gender. The experience of it is far more emotional and less differentiated from non-cognitive aspects of the psyche, so "the other" is naturally seen as less rational/more emotional, and even untrustworthy or mysterious.
Not having obvious emotion for a woman can actually be more of a problem than it is for men showing obvious emotion... and it's because people interpret lack of
In teaching from pre-school to middle school, I have noticed that little boys are waaaaay more dramatic and emotionally disruptive than little girls, by a big margin. Little girls are taught from a very, very young age that they should be pleasing and non-disruptive, but instead accommodating of others and expressing emotion that is appropriate to a situation. But lack of emotional expression at times is seen as lack of feeling, which is seen as cold, and that can be deemed inappropriate. This is where women get shamed, because we're supposed to show signs of "nurturing" or ability to accommodate, and so not oohing over babies gets us pegged as "unnatural".
However, boys are taught that their emotion is valid, ie. it's linked to a legit concern, and so they are free to disrupt with it, or ask for it to be accommodated. This is why male emotion is often more violent/angry than sentimental, because it's okay for them to disrupt, but appeasing others is seen as a "feminine" quality. If a woman has a disruptive emotion, then she is being "masculine", which is seen as a threat (as it implies others must accommodate her, not vice versa), and so she is invalidated as irrational, because then her concern is not legit and doesn't have to be accommodated. She's being forced to be the one to accommodate.
So men can be more emotional, and yet maintain they are more rational, simply because they are defining what is valid or not and have been given that right through their environment from a young age.
FYI, these are my own ideas from my own observations, not an ideology I've adopted.
The other, appropriate more to "conventional" women, as it were, is in recognition of Proverbs. DON'T answer someone irrational...*directly*. Instead, use the female stereotypically superior *social networking* skills: make alliances with all the *other* women in the vicinity, and together, force the irrational woman to change her mind, or her ways, through *peer pressure*.
This is triggering my social PTSD...
Seriously though, I read how FPs supposedly tend to block out social feedback (especially NFP females). True to Jung's description, we resist being affected by others feelings, aka, their opinions of how people
should feel.
INTJs being tertiary Fi may have this tendency too. This means the Fe social shaming technique (which has its place in life, really it does; some evil things are rightfully suppressed more successfully this way than with laws) can not only be ineffective, but go right over our heads, not even registering enough for us to be called defiant of it. You see the problems this creates...
But in dealing with "irrational" people, the best way, for me, has been to shift my perspective, to match theirs, and then I can follow the line of how they came to where they are. In order to do this, I have to suspend what I think is the "obviously right" conclusion, and instead source their premise and follow it with their experiences and situation, etc, to their conclusion. Then I can find a, er, "weak spot", or a point where breakdown happened, and from there I try to lead them to a new place. In the end, the other person has shifted their perspective to something more "reasonable", and often it's more productive and they may thank you for it. The important part is to not invalidate, and that will immediately calm them down as they feel you are on "their side" and not dismissing them or attacking them. Then, appeal to the reasoning they do possess, as it does exist somewhere in there, and then to gently lead them using that. Often what people appear upset or irrational over is not even the root issue, and to get hung up on that leads to petty drama and shaming people as a nasty reaction to discontentment with things unrelated to them. Fe types can "repress" a lot, and then they project it onto others, and the idea is to get them to see their own feelings as valid, as opposed to asking them to further repress them to meet a list of "shoulds".
Some people are not open enough for this, but I'm pretty good at "blocking out", which is Plan B.