As I grow older I am becoming a Chauvinist, and if the truth be told…it doesn’t really bother me.

The MSN website had a link entitled, When woman overuse the “s” word. My first reaction was to figure out what the word was. I immediately came up with a list of all the different "s" words woman have called me, but knowing that it was probably none of these, I clicked the link. After reading I figured I would insert my reaction in green bold text.

Stop Apologizing When It's Not Your Fault
By Mary Mohler

Originally published in Ladies' Home Journal magazine, June 2005.

On a recent Saturday morning, I set a plate of pancakes on the dining room table. "I wanted waffles," grumbled my youngest.

"I'm sorry," came my reflexive reply. "I thought you liked pancakes."
Only later did it occur to me to wonder when, and why, I had become so spineless. After all, in a global sense, this kid is lucky to be getting breakfast at all. Yet somehow I've made myself responsible not only for preparing the food my family eats but also for preparing food that all of them like. And if they don't? Well, it's my fault, of course. And I apologize.

When I think about it, if I had a dollar for every time I've uttered the S word, I'd be shoulder to shoulder with Donald Trump. Countless are the occasions when I've mumbled, "Sorry, I need to use the ladies' room," or "Sorry, I need to go to bed before I pass out." Sure, it's partly a verbal tic, but it has also become my main posture. I mean, if such basic human functions as sleeping and relieving myself require an apology, how will I ever justify taking time away from my family for such "luxuries" as exercising or reading a novel? [Pity grope.] I'm convinced that the primary image my family has of me is my expressing how very sorry I am. [There, there you poor thing.]

But then I have lots of company. Women tend to apologize constantly and unconsciously, as automatically as we say hello and goodbye. We apologize to our husbands, our children, our bosses, our assistants; to salesclerks, to bank tellers, to hairdressers. For showing up early or showing up late. We are so ready with "sorry" that we seem to accept responsibility even for situations that are in no way under our control. You are not to blame for the fact that mosquitoes the size of DC-10s ruined your family's picnic, nor could you have prevented the rain that fell on your daughter's outdoor graduation party. But you probably apologized for both.
It's not that we believe, literally, that we are accountable for the behavior of insects or the vagaries of climate. But we offer our apologies anyway, employing them as an all-purpose emotional emollient -- what prominent linguist Deborah Tannen, PhD, calls grease for the conversational wheels. So we apologize to interrupt ("Sorry, could I just add a comment?"), to get attention ("Sorry, could we get menus?"), to backhandedly assert our needs ("Sorry, I really need a break"), to beg pardon for our fallibility ("Sorry, I didn't catch that").

So sympathetic but it hardly stops there. "Women, much more than men, use 'I'm sorry' to express sympathy or empathy, as in 'I'm sorry that happened to you,' as opposed to, 'I did something wrong and I'm accepting my culpability,'" explains Dr. Tannen, professor of linguistics at Georgetown University, in Washington, D.C., and author of the best-selling You Just Don't Understand and Talking from 9 to 5.

In this context, the apologizer is simply acknowledging the other person's experience. In other instances, the ritual exchange of apologies is the verbal equivalent of a handshake -- a way of closing the subject. "It works like this," says Dr. Tannen. "I apologize to you for A, then you apologize to me for B, and we've maintained our equal footing." [Maintaining equal footing? Funny thing how woman view most everything as a power issue.] Apologizing can also be a means to prompt an apology from someone else, she points out. "If I'm annoyed that you broke a vase I loved, I might say, 'I'm sorry I yelled at you for breaking the vase.' The real point is to get you to say, 'No, I'm sorry -- I should have been more careful.'" [So if I am to understand this, woman say sorry to manipulate others into saying they are sorry. She is angry, and he wasn’t sorry about breaking a vase. Things happen. What was so special about that vase anyway?]

So what's wrong with any of that? [What’s wrong? How about denying true feelings of anger, or trying to manipulate someone by displaying a false reaction to elicit regret from the guy.] Don't such ritualized expressions convey empathy and reflect sophisticated interpersonal skills? [If woman are suppose to be better communicators and more in touch with their feelings, this paragraph doesn’t prove it to me.] Indeed they do. The problem is that for such rituals to work, both parties (read: both men and women) need to understand the terms. And therein lies the problem. "There aren't always clear rules about what 'sorry' means," bemoans my longtime friend Judy Grimm, a self-described "overapologizer" from Redlands, California. "When women say it, it means something entirely different from when men do."

"Women are accustomed to using apologies in a social way, but men tend to take a more literal view, seeing them as expressions of regret for their actions," agrees Dr. Tannen. "So they don't come back with the desired response. For example, if I apologize for A, and you merely accept my apology without reciprocating with B, I'm left in a weakened position." [Again, she makes it a power struggle.]

Let's imagine that your partner responds to your apology about the shattered vase with "yes, you're always overreacting to trivial stuff." [Seems like an accurate comment to me.]Now you will be seething not only about the broken vase but also about the broken social contract that your partner's lack of remorse represents. Such is the gulf that divides the sexes on this issue. [I'm never going to buy a vase for my wife. Seems like too much trouble.]

Furthermore, the gender difference is one of degree as well as of kind. "I teach etiquette, so I would never advise anyone of either sex not to apologize," says Barbara Pachter, a business communications consultant in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, and author of When the Little Things Count...and They Always Count. Still, she adds, when an apology is warranted, women will extend it 10 times instead of the one that suffices for men. [Ten to one, ahhh you have to love the male's efficiency.]

Why We Do It
So what is it about women that makes us such a "sorry" lot? Robin T. Lakoff, PhD, professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of Talking Power, suggests that our readiness to apologize may derive from our traditional position as second-class citizens. "Nobody apologizes unless they have to," Dr. Lakoff maintains. "Women have spent a lot of history at the mercy of the physically stronger sex. When your livelihood and your survival depend on someone else, you avoid annoying him [Stop right there. Women avoid annoying men? This is proof to me that this person has no idea what they are talking about.] -- or try to placate him if you do." Since women have been in positions of power for only the past 30 or 40 years, she adds, we remain creatures of this historical habit.

In our social roles, too, Dr. Lakoff says, much of what we do is designed to make people feel better and to forge personal connections: "We are the soothers, the conversational mediators." [Just don't break a vase!] And those roles are often reinforced by the kinds of work that women do. "Many of the jobs typically filled by women involve speaking on behalf of someone more powerful," Dr. Lakoff notes. "That often entails a lot of soothing." (As in "I'm sorry, he's out of the office" or "I'm sorry, we don't accept that credit card.") We're adept at these roles; consequently we feel comfortable in them.

But even if we consider apologies to be no more than entrenched social conventions, it's undeniable that women issue a great many more of them than men do, and in situations that are downright ludicrous. Attorney Sarah Weddington, the powerhouse who successfully argued Roe v. Wade before the U.S. Supreme Court, recalls her own "aha" moment, when she realized her tendency to apologize had gotten out of hand. As part of the research for a pending case involving environmental issues, she found herself the only woman accompanying a group of nine forest rangers who were traveling on horseback to examine lakes and rivers, with mules to carry provisions. "We all took turns having the pack of mules tied to our horse," she says. "When it was my turn, the lead mule got his rope tangled, frightening the other mules. Without thinking, I got off my horse, ran over to the mule and said, 'I am so sorry!'"

Once after she related this incident in a speech, Weddington remembers, a woman came up to her with an apology story that trumped hers: As an emergency room nurse, the woman witnessed a female patient whose first words after arriving in the ER with serious injuries from an accident [hmmm woman driver?] were "I'm sorry, I didn't have time to shave my legs." Lacking power or control, we default in such situations to an apology. It is an underdog's way to gain sympathy.

The Price We Pay
Using apologies like punctuation, however, can exact a subtle toll, says Pachter, particularly in the workplace, where women stand to lose the most. "As a strategic move, men like to deflect blame," she says. "If you are too ready with an apology, they are all too willing to let you take the fall."

Most men fail to appreciate the negotiating potential of the ritual apology -- "it's not part of male grammar," observes Dr. Lakoff -- and they sometimes won't take the time to decode the message. To men, saying "I'm sorry" means you have something to be sorry about. It is an admission of culpability and weakness. [Sounds reasonable to me.]

Group situations provide particularly fertile ground for women's "sorriness." How often have you introduced your contribution to a meeting with a phrase like, "Sorry, could I just interject something here?" Yet offering an apology along with your opinion tends to discount the merchandise, suggesting that you're not entirely convinced you have the right to speak or that you lack faith in the quality of your ideas.

"I really hate when I do that," says Grimm, "because it cheapens what I have to say." What happens, she adds, "is that women sometimes put more emphasis on the effects of what we say than on the content itself. And that keeps us from really speaking our minds."
Is the answer, then, to emulate men's speech? Not necessarily. [That would make too much sense.] (And why is it always women who are expected to change?) [Maybe because in this case, they are the ones with the issue?] The empathetic awareness of other's feelings is a virtue, a positive trait to which both sexes should aspire. "The world would be better off if men would apologize more," says Grimm ruefully -- and who would argue? [Wow, the entire world? This is really becoming too delusional. The solution of having men apologize all the time so that women won't, doesn't make sense. So men are the root cause of women’s sorry problem. For women tried of always having to struggle for power and control, here's an easy one, take control of your own emotions and actions instead of making men apologize for every little thing.] At the same time, it is important to realize that over an extended period, constantly apologizing diminishes not only what we say but also who we are.[Typical, woman want it both ways.Men need to apologize much more, and as soon as they do it will be too much.]

Yet the refusal to apologize carries the risk that men -- accustomed to seeing women in our conventional role of peacemaker -- may find us "abrasive" or "difficult" if they happen not to like the opinions we unapologetically express. And -- duh -- these are not adjectives that most of us willingly seek out.

Although Dr. Tannen cautions against assuming that a person's verbal style is a key to his or her psychological state, she says habitual apologies can be part of a pattern of self-effacing behavior. And Dr. Lakoff believes that one of the hidden costs of women's willingness to accept blame is that, as she says, "over time, we feel more and more blameworthy, less willing to be assertive." After all, repeatedly saying "I'm sorry" eventually sends the not-so-subtle message that our very existence is an imposition.

So what's the answer? Should we concentrate really hard and just stop saying "sorry" altogether? Of course not. [Huh?] But we do need to be a lot more mindful when we do. The next time that you find yourself automatically blurting out an apology, "stop and carefully consider why you're saying it and how it makes you feel," advises Dr. Lakoff. Start by keeping an informal tally of how often it is that you apologize (the numbers may be staggering). [Going a bit overboard, I think.] And, of course, remember to take the context into account. As Dr. Tannen points out, "what works just fine in girl talk may cost you dearly in the office." [I guess she is a Chauvinist too. Is there an assumption here that the boss is a male? What if the boss is a women?]

With practice, you will catch yourself and thereby thwart the nosedive in self-esteem that occurs every time you broach an idea with "Sorry..."
It's really not that hard. (Think of it as one small step for woman, one giant step for womankind.) [ Its a bloody movement.] Indeed, when you consciously look for other words with which to soothe or negotiate, you may just discover a whole new world of possibilities out there, including the greatest possibility of all: that you'll end up a more confident, self-assured person.

Well that’s the end of the article. Hope I didn’t offend anyone. If I did I’m sorry.