Why Are Women So Mean To Each Other?

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Easy if you work with all men! (which comes with it's own challenges, being the only woman....)

Now when it comes to the dogs, there's a lot more even men/women split. While women are always more dramatic, the men can be super high maintenance (or their egos are high maintenance). They seem more up front and honest, you know what they are feeling and thinking about something or about you and they are far less likely to be manipulative or to hold a grudge, but they can be such babies sometimes.
 
I've noticed that women who are successful through hard work, education, talent and intelligence are often very down-to-earth, kind and just all around good people. These include the women I work with and many of my friends.

My friend Kristine is an accomplished writer. She has published a book and she's working on a novel. She's a noted food, drink and travel freelance journalist. She's been all over the world and has great adventures. And she's probably one of the nicest people I have ever met. She's the anti-mean girl, and I consider myself blessed to have her as a friend.

To me the mean girls always fall into two camps. Either they have accomplished absolutely nothing with their lives. Or they are successful through manipulation, lies, backstabbing, and other sordid activities. Sarah Palin is this type of mean girl.
 
I'd say so, absolutely. Mind you, I know a few bitches in their 40's and have a few solid friends in their 20's. I also think with your own maturity and experience comes the ability to cut off or recognize back-stabbers in the first place. At least that's been my experience. :yes: No desire or patience for that nonsense. I really don't get it either. I've never had the desire to use or be cruel to anyone(undeserving), let alone another woman. :shrug: I value female comradery.

Same here. There were mean girls when I was in school, and my friends and I got into a period when we were younger where we had a little fighting going on, but I never went down the backstabbing, catty, gossipy bitch route, I don't talk to the mean girls (I didn't then, either, usually tried to ignore them as much as possible), and my friends and I grew up and got over any problems we had. I'm very trusting of my friends I've got now, I'm quite happy with my tight-knit small circle (which is more female-oriented than male-oriented-at most, I can think of about...5 men I could call close friends). I sometimes have a bit of difficulty interacting with other women, as well as men, in public situations, but that's more due to me still hanging on to some of my shyness than a fear that I'll have to compete with them or anything.

I'm not big on manipulation. For one thing, I wouldn't be very good at it, for another, I think it's a waste of time to play those kinds of games with people. And it may get you some things in the short term, but in the long run it's going to come back to bite you.

Honestly, in that story MrsSpringsteen shared, forget about the way the girls treated me, I'd be more pissed off and bothered by the "public deflowering". If I were that girl I'd have probably gone back and given those guys a good kick in a certain part of their anatomy.

Angela
 
People talk about alpha males but I guess there's also the phenomenon of the alpha female. But I have the impression the alpha female types tend to be not well liked by their peers and end up losing a lot of friends and even ending up embittered. The alpha male is a different kettle of fish entirely, it's more of a slagging/piss-take thing. The alpha male is the guy that has the best jokes and is allowed to take the piss out of everyone. But, males are more likely to stab each other in the front rather than backstabbing and there's less bitchiness in general. If someone, even the alpha male, goes too far with their slaggings or pisstakes, it's like, f*** you, say that again and I will actually hit you. Society doesn't allow females to go for that very direct and confrontational approach.
I'm not sure how applicable the 'alpha' label really is to anyone who's widely disliked. Usually that term implies possessing a kind of irresistible charisma, not merely being bossy or decisive or whatever.

In groups of female friends, there often enough is one woman who's the prime social galvanizer, typically takes the lead when planning the evening's agenda and so forth. But it's true that you'll seldom see the kinds of overt performance of dominant/submissive roles, however playful and qualified, that you'll see among male friends. In fact, in my experience, women who don't socialize much with men beyond romantic relationships are often taken aback to observe the 'slagging/piss-taking' stuff--they read it as aggressive, as the swaggerers lording it over the stooges, and wonder why the men taking the most slagging "let themselves get treated like that." I think that's probably pretty telling: women experience their social reputations as much less resilient than men do theirs, so there's more anxiety and defensiveness surrounding them and, correspondingly, less room for 'playful' slights.

I don't really have a grand theory how patriarchy might fit into all this, though I think it's probably relevant that--like it or not--male validation generally carries more social weight than female validation does, and therefore the interdependency within all-female groups is actually more superficial than with men: i.e., women remain somewhat isolated and vulnerable socially, even within the group. Which can make competition pressures--a normal and natural backdrop to any social group--rather treacherous at times. And at least to my mind, the ugly, toxic forms of female aggression cited by the OP are more about failures to handle competition constructively, than they are about the competition itself being "bad." But yeah, broader social norms concerning how women are supposed to behave--don't act pushy, don't act angry and so on--definitely factor in too, as does the related tendency to grant women less scope for 'authoritative' behavior. It's not at all unusual for a woman to fear confronting another woman more than confronting a man.

Re: behavior vis-a-vis subordinates--I'm afraid I've been on both the giving and the receiving end of that. I can remember, when I worked in retail management, being distinctly and uncomfortably aware that I had different emotional responses to subversive behavior from male subordinates than from female ones: with men, I tended to feel keenly threatened, and had to fight the impulse to respond in an exaggeratedly stony, steely way (so as to demonstrate how tough and unfluttered I was), whereas with women I tended to feel indignant, and had to fight the impulse to respond in a way that involved figuratively rubbing their noses into the carpet for having the unbelievable cheek to challenge me. This was, of course, because I subconsciously perceived men as having more authority than women. I'm not sure whether this came through in my actual behavior--I was mortified even at the time to find myself having these feelings, so I sure hope it didn't--but it wouldn't shock me if one way or another it did. Years later, in my present career, I had an unpleasant experience of the reverse sort--unpleasant enough to provoke me to file a complaint with the dean, hopefully the only time I'll ever do so--with a similarly prejudiced interim department head, who was decidedly not struggling to restrain her impulses. (And I wasn't even remotely acting subversive in that case, either...but, I digress.)

On a side note, though it's unfortunately sometimes presented in a crassly overstated way, I do think there's something to the idea that social conventions governing female behavior--and therefore, the particular patterns of female-on-female aggression which result--vary somewhat across subcultural lines. Some of the most influential writings on aggression among females have been heavily criticized for basing their models on studies conducted solely among white, upper-to-middle-class girls and women, and IMO that's a valid criticism.
 
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Just throwing this out there but often among dogs female-female aggression is deadly. Males will often fight temporarily over something, like food or territory or a female. In the end there is a winner and a loser and both understand this. Females will fight to the death simply because they cannot stand each other. Many dog breeds are more prone to same-sex aggression and among the ones that are, it's usually the females that will continuously pick fights and hold grudges for no apparent reason. There is a saying, "bitches equal stitches."
 
^ That seems unlikely; I really doubt that dogs would fight "just because I hate you, that's why." They probably perceive a real threat or challenge of some sort, even if we don't, and even if it's maladaptive "thinking" with regard to the situation. Also (not saying this necessarily applies to canines, but), when you consider that for many animals fights between females in nature frequently involve stakes like whose offspring get to eat when resources are scarce, it makes sense that that the drive to fight to the death would be there.
 
I don't know the psychology behind it as I'm not a behaviorist but all I know is that same-sex aggression is well documented in many breeds and it's very common especially among GSDs. Once the females have a bad fight typically they can never be reliable together safely, it is not something that can be prevented further by managing the environment (like in males, just remove and control the resources they are fighting over). Common enough that I'm fine having three males - two that are intact and bred for high prey drive and fight aggression - but won't deal with females anymore. I'm sure there is something that triggers some sort of threat or competition but the females seem to take it to a different level with each other.
 
It means I won't add a second female, and probably won't get any more in the future. It's not just the same-sex aggression, but how they train and think in general. The differences are kind of hard to explain but are there. The females are very smart, sharp thinkers and fast learners, but more likely to hold grudges (that's too much of an anthropomorphic term for dogs but I can't think of a better one). You make a mistake in training or in your handling of the dog and they don't always forgive, they remember. For me it is harder to make a connection and earn the respect and loyalty of a female. Also - this reason has nothing to do with this thread or how females treat each other (dog or human) - but hormones and heat cycles are a serious disruption to training, usually not worth it for those who do not intend to breed or co-own breeding dogs.
 
Good to know. I'm still thinking of getting an American Bulldog at some point, so maybe I'd better add the 'gendered behavior' question to my list of stuff to ask breeders about keeping and training them, since that's not a breed where you'd want to take chances with failing to earn their respect. I've never actually had a female dog before; I just know that back when Falstaff was in the obedience-training stage, and I'd gripe about how exasperatingly strong-willed and stubborn he was, several people replied to the effect of "Oh you should've gotten a girl, they're so much more sweet and compliant" so I figured it must be true. (Then again, more recently, someone who'd actually had female pugs told me that was b.s., that this was just the breed's bull-ish habit of going from ho-hum to hellbent in an instant I'd been seeing, and that they pretty much all do it, just over different things.)



Years ago, I remember reading an article summarizing some research into gender and group discipline within the Air Force. The gist of which was that women, on the whole, don't take to the 'everyone-fall-in-line-behind-the-leader' teamwork model very well--that it generally works better with women to employ a more decentralized structure, with individuals having relatively more autonomy over the task before them, and that this actually enhances group cohesion and morale for women in the big picture; whereas with men, it tends to reduce it. Granted, this was just one study, and I don't know whether its conclusions held up in subsequent research. It didn't occur to me at the time to think of it in evolutionary terms, as opposed to socialization consequences, but I suppose you could.
 
What the heck is that even supposed to mean? In response to the original question?

So ... women are so mean to each other because of ... PLEBA?
 
Why are we paying attention to diamond? Especially since he is known for deliberately stirring things up?

:scratch:
 
What the heck is that even supposed to mean? In response to the original question?

So ... women are so mean to each other because of ... PLEBA?

I don't think the Pleba ladies are mean. :hug: They have posted some fantastic band photos. Most of which, I have never seen before. And I thank them for that.
 
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