Inevitable miscommunication

Every society builds socialization into its culture.  The language the society speaks bears the marks of that socialization process.  English is no different and its American speakers use it in a way that marks them as having been socialized in the U.S.  The two genders within the American experience seem to also have semantic markers that show that they use language to different ends sometimes.  So, while there is a general American socialization process, with language expressions illustrating American attitudes (as there is for individualism and materialism, for example) there is a gender socialization process with language expressions illustrating men's or women's attitudes about how to share personal information and how to relate directly or indirectly to the environment around them.

And that difference in socialization, as shown in language expression, causes great difficulties.  The attitudes expressed in words bear out the values behind them, and that is where the rub comes.  A great example is that  practice of women to acknowledge other women's ideas as they express their own while men practice an almost opposite habit of adding detail to another speaker's story to enhance it or taking the floor from a speaker with more important information.  Great conflict arises since women see men's speech as supercompetitive or as always having to add something to women's already complete thoughts while men see women's speech as too dependent on what others think.  And, that is only one cause underlying miscommunication.  There are certainly other kinds of conflicts.

So, the two sexes are socialized to misinterpret each others' remarks.  That's a shame in many cases.  It leads to vicious fighting, hurt feelings, and ideas that same sex conversation is to be preferred over cross-sex conversation.  (Of course, misunderstandings arise within the arena of same-sex conversations, too.  It's just clearer as to what the cause of the misunderstandings are.)

Even knowing the features of the two sexes' conversation patterns that underlie attitudes and values doesn't really stave off miscommunication.  But, it does make for a quicker rebound and a more tolerant view of why one sex says something that seems contrary to the first nature of the other sex.