I was told many years ago: if you’re told to learn a language because of economic benefit - the language is probably not going to be nearly as important by the time you learn it.
That’s always made me laugh although I think that it applies to the traditional method.
@Imyirtseshem, I think you have a point, and you may be right that boys aren’t really encouraged to pursue intellectual things any more than girls are. But I do think that maybe boys are encouraged to be more competitive, or at least more overtly competitive. There is also a serious problem with girls becoming too obsessed with their appearance to focus on other things (just look at the statistics for eating disorders)! So I think we need more female role models who show girls that it’s “cool” to use your brain and pursue different kinds of hobbies.
As for the article on Benny’s blog, it was written by Susanna on her initiative as Fasulye explained. LingQ seems to be kind of an “anti-Benny environment”, so maybe I should be careful what I say here… (!), but personally, I’m a fan of his blog. I don’t agree with everything he says and does, and I don’t follow his method myself, but I would encourage people to use any method that works for them, including Benny’s. It seems to me like his method might be well-suited to a lot of people who want to learn a language for practical reasons, but aren’t “language nerds” like me. I do think his language guide is too expensive, and wouldn’t necessarily recommend that people buy it… But in general, I think Benny is doing a positive thing by encouraging more people to learn languages, and I’m really glad he’s agreed to share our video on his blog so more people can see it! (Oh, and the blurb that says “this article was written by Benny Lewis” seems to be attached to all of his posts by default. I do agree that it should be removed for guest posts, though.)
Janalisa, I think that if it were ‘cool’ in general, in our society, to use our brains, then we would see more men and women learning languages. 
Quote: “Janalisa, I think that if it were ‘cool’ in general, in our society, to use our brains, then we would see more men and women learning languages. :)”
Even, if I’m not Janalisa but Fasulye, I for 100 % agree with your statement, Imyirtseshem.
Fasulye
Imyirtseshem, you are definitely right about that! Of course it would be great to see more people learning languages in general (not just women)!
@Janalisa “LingQ seems to be kind of an “anti-Benny environment”, so maybe I should be careful what I say here… (!)”
it’s not an “anti-benny environment” per se. however, there are a lot of people here -like moi- who do not like neither his claims nor his kinda rude replies (I guess it’s just I don’t like people who call you names for no reason -maybe cause sometimes he reminds me of myself xD).
most bloggers and forums try to stay neutral (exempli gratia: htlal, chinese-forums, the mezzofanti guild…) but in the end “staying neutral” means either close or delete posts related to his missions…
in short, there are a lot of anti-benny’s posts here cause Lingq do not erase them… most of the “haterz” do not have any problems with benny the learner or benny the motivational speaker but benny the troll
that’s all
@Janalisa
Here at LingQ there are plenty of posts critical of Steve Kaufmann. Does that mean it is an “anti-Steve” environment? 
@Janalisa Not everyone here is anti-Benny. I like his blog, although I don’t agree with everything on it. I guess the anti-Benny people are more vocal.
I also want to say that I really like your blog, I’m a regular reader.
I thought the video was very interesting, but are there really so many differences between female polyglots and male polyglots?
I’m new to the LingQ forums, so I guess I don’t really have a good feel for the atmosphere here yet. I kind of assumed the forum would tend to reflect the views of Steve Kaufmann, but of course that’s silly, since people have their own opinions and are free to express them. Sorry for my misconception.
@aybee77: I’m really glad you like my blog! And I don’t think there are really so many differences between male and female polyglots, except that there are less female polyglots for some reason.
I can not speak for the western society in genreal however in the eastern society like Indian or Pakistani which is normally a male dominated society. Males are more or less taught as " bread-winners" in one’s family so they are taught to work harder in evey facet of their life at a younger age. On the other hand, girls are taught to be as stay-at-home moms and would have to take care the needs of their kids so they are not pressurized to persue further education. So that’s probably the reason they are not into working harder or into persuing a variety of hobbies. That’s why they spend most of their precious time on listening to music, watching soaps and talking to their friends. In terms of having a talent for learning a language, I think both genders are equal. I have not come across a single girl in my life who has a thick accent as comapred to their male counterpart. I don’t know if it has got something to do with their vocal cord or quality.
I think that Western society is still, to some degree, as you describe the culture of India and Pakistan. The thing is that we have had a lot of change in this regard. Actually, quite a lot of change in the last 50 years which is ongoing. I imagine that at one point there were next to no female polyglots in any culture. The number of female polyglots and language learners is higher in western nations.
You are sure you’ve never heard a woman with an accent? I certainly have. But it can be said that men tend to have rougher voices. Still, this isn’t an issue of accent and doesn’t prevent women from having accents too. I hear them daily.
@asad100101 Not to be pressurized to pursue further education is one thing, but to be pressurized not to is quite another one…
Fasulye - I agree with what you said about women probably not wanting to appear publicly on youtube. I am a polyglot and in my daily life I have to keep this fact low key. There has just been too many I guess you could say envious people for it to be worth it doing something like that. I am talking from a career perspective here. I have to always be seen to be modest about my skills in this area. I do not know if this is a female thing though. The more languages I know, the less I am able to talk to my colleagues about the topic of languages. I think they might feel they too should be trying and they always have a good excuse why they cannot invest the time.
double post
Janalisa, it may be that there are more posts critical of Benny here, than supportive, or for that matter, in agreement with me, than critical of me. However, it is not fair to say that the posters “reflect my views”. That is to show little respect for the posters, who all have their own opinions. Nor should anyone have any hesitation to post any opinion here. As long as personal insults and vulgarity are avoided, no one is blocked or censored.
Marianne, you add an important point to the discussion. As a private person and on the internet I am visible and audible as a polyglot but I am also hiding this towards collegues and in work situations in general. For this main reason I use my nickname for almost all my internet activities and not my private name. I don’t want possible colleges to google up my polyglot activities on the internet. I had it at one workplace that some collegues thought I was overambitious because I was telephoning with the customers in TWO foreign languages and not only in ONE foreign language as my collegues did. Collegues might interpret my ambition to study and speak several languages as too much professional career ambition which I don’t have. My wish is to have a normal job and earn enough money to be independent from welfare aids.
Fasulye
Fasulye - I am glad you can relate to this. I have stopped mentioning which languages I am learning but obviously I cannot avoid the situations where they obviously hear that I am speaking to customers. My job is communicating with people in different languages but that does not stop some people from not liking it. I think the problem is envy. However with some hard work they would be able to do exactly the same.
Steve, sorry for the misunderstanding. I didn’t mean to suggest that you were censoring peoples’ opinions, and I’m sorry if what I said came across as disrespectful. I just got the impression from the first mention of Benny on this thread that maybe people here are generally opposed to him, but that was me jumping to conclusions. Anyway, let’s move on!
Marianne and Fasulye, I also refrain from telling people about all my language-learning ambitions. If they find out, they tend to be overly impressed and exaggerate my abilities to others, which is embarrassing. If the subject comes up and people ask how many languages I speak, I only say I speak three (my native English, Japanese, and French) and don’t even mention any others. I’m not sure how I’ll answer this question when I get to the point where I actually can speak 5-6 languages well!
Janalisa - that is a good tactic. I have the same situation. People exaggerate how many languages I know. However, when I am pushed into a corner I always feel forced to explain how I learnt them in order to justify that is it possible (because sometimes people do not believe it).