Men take everything too personally? hm.. In my experience it is the opposite. Maybe I chat with too many engineers.  :P

Interesting, Malta

Handbags, shoes, shopping, love lives,... certainly four conversation stoppers for me!!  

I don't think this is true. Personally, I prefer speaking to female language partners but I'm not shutting my door on male learners, either. In fact, my language partner is male. I think that if someone is serious about learning a language, this preference won't matter because what will matter is whether you have a resource or not.

For me, it does not really matter! I take classes here with men and women and I don't see a difference and I don't see why people would have a preference, sounds a bit odd to me. 

There is an interesting discussion about this here:

http://polydog.org/index.php?threads/what-gender-do-you-prefer-for-language-exchange.309/

I give you 2 answers

My public view: Opposites attract! Women are likely to be helpful to men; men are much more likely to be helpful to a female. Reasons: biology and nature.

Personal view: Women are more interesting to communicate with. Women have broader and alternative perspective. They listen better and polite. Men are too focused and have a narrower view: in a way simple and predictive behaviour. They take everything personally. Most of my friends are women, but paradoxically they are often the opposite. Most their friends are males; They enjoy company of men more. They find conversations with other women boring or shallow. They're not girlie or so feminine; they don't talk about shoes and handbags all day. In fact they often hate going shopping. They are likely to be logically minded.