Dutch men.

Just to make it clear that The Netherlands has it's own psychopaths and misogynists just like any other country. Infact, I think the terminology that went towards identifying psychopathic personality originated in the study of a family of Dutch origin in Suid-Afrika. You might say that there has been a noticeable difference between Dutch culture and from the culture that grew in an oppressed South Africa. This is true, but it's also true that there's a wide range of personalities where ever you go anywhere in the world because people are people. Culture does affect the way we live though, some people rebel against it, some adapt it slightly and some tend to live within it.

In The Netherlands a religious group has just been forbidden to only put forward male candidates for political election. And I remember a very misogynistic front page headline in one of the papers some years ago that was very anti women being out there in the workplace.

But generally speaking cultural differences are noticeable.

Tongue in cheek: subtitled How to find a man in Europe and leave him there.

http://americangirlsareeasy.com/book


Or


http://www2.rnw.nl/rnw/en/features/dutchhorizons/weeklyfeature/men010419.html?view=Standard&version=1

Short radio programme to listen to under the photo of the book.


Obviously all this is a lot of generalization but I've been thinking about cultural differences and the way they affect general outlooks on life.

I don't find the thought of being bought flowers or expensive presents at all romantic. If someone bought me flowers I'd feel it was like a barrier there. And, personally, I'd probably wish that I'd packed a box of chocolates just incase anything like this happened and then would sit and be uncomfortable for the rest of the time I was with the person.

I've never been able to flirt and that's fine with me but again I have found myself totally out of my depth because of it.

I mean cultural differences can vary behaviour a lot. I believe there's one group of people, possibly more than one, who don't consider kissing romantic.

Don't really feel well enough to write much at the moment. But I've been thinking about the way cultural differences affect how people see the world and each other.