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From: peterr@utcsrgv.UUCP (Peter Rowley)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: strength vs. sensitivity
Message-ID: <5105@utcsrgv.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 30-Aug-84 04:16:59 EDT
Article-I.D.: utcsrgv.5105
Posted: Thu Aug 30 04:16:59 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 30-Aug-84 06:15:39 EDT
Organization: CSRI, University of Toronto
Lines: 12

If being strong involves making quick decisions and being sensitive involves
taking the feelings of others into account when making decisions, it appears
that sensitivity and being strong are at odds, since taking the feelings of
others into account involves spending time determining what those feelings
are (not at all easy) and then balancing them (also hard).  Only with extra
effort can the two coexist.  As has been said, though, it is clearly worth
it much of the time, and one can develop an intuition for when to lean
to making quick decisions or to taking the time to see how people feel.  At
least it seems possible-- I don't know of anyone who pulls it off particularly
well.  (Alan Alda? :-)

p. rowley, Univ. Toronto