“Women Talk Too Much”

This is the title of an article by Sophie Kerr in the December 11, 1954, Saturday Evening Post. After the opening observation that “women have become awesomely articulate without having anything special added to their hearts, minds or spirits to be articulate about,” she says concerning female conversation: “No sentence on either side is finished without interruption, no question is ever fully answered, no story is permitted to end, and if an idea should stray into the arena it is not recognized, much less developed.” Even if one gets the floor “don’t think for an instant that the opposition actually listens; no, the opposition is crouched tense in her corner framing what she is going to say” when she can break in. “The rule is: Everybody talks. Nobody listens.” Author Kerr labels today’s superloquacious woman “the machine gunner of words, loaded with ammunition.” But she laments that the bulk of it is all trivia, not worth uttering, and concludes: “Let’s face it. Women need fewer words and more thought; less chatter and more meditative silence; a better selection of what they say and better manners when they say it.”

How different it can be with the theocratic women of Jehovah’s visible organization! They have many good things in their minds and hearts and spirits to be articulate about, yet listen courteously while others speak, to see how their responses can be most helpful. The conclusion about women of the world is also true about men—both sexes could do well on fewer words with more thought and could have a better selection of material if they meditated on what Jehovah’s Word says concerning the critical times hard to deal with that now confront baffled mankind.