LOL... You know, I have thought about this a lot over the years, and the only thing I have ever been able to come up with is that women are not generally brought up to be openly aggressive and competitive the way boys are. From an early age, girls are taught to "play nice", to be sweet and kind etc... Whereas boys are taught to be assertive... Girls end up repressing these quite normal, natural desires to be aggressive... They bury the urge to be openly competitive... But, of course, anything repressed will come bubbling out eventually... And in this case, it's usually in the form of passive aggressiveness.....
I mean, men can go toe to toe and have a knock down brawl, and still end the night on good terms with one another... But can you say the same for women? Oh sure, they may have a polite exchange... giving each other a pleasing smile...a gracious pat... but is it really genuine? No, not usually....
That makes sense. In some other places (England and the West Indies in particular) women aren't discouraged from being aggressive. Therefore, you end up with women who fight just as viciously and openly as their male counterparts.
For all America's moves toward progressive attitudes, it's gender roles still tend towards the archaic. And when you can't fight openly for fear of political suicide, you must learn passive aggression.
This may be the man in me talking, but frankly, it would seem easier to me to deal with a punch in the head than it is to handle a passive aggressive fight.
Easy for *you* to say...little_e_June 7 2007, 17:54:01 UTC
I'm 5'3", 5 months pregnant, and just passed 100 pounds. I probably weigh 102 right now, and it's the biggest I've ever been in my life. I'd be at about my 'normal' weight of about 92 pounds if I weren't pregnant
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Re: Easy for *you* to say...bludragonJune 7 2007, 19:41:28 UTC
Perhaps. There are, of course, several ways to hurt or destroy a person.
I will agree that public perceptions will always have some influence over one's treatment, but I don't know if I'd go so far to say that (as one arbitrary example) a 40-something woman who's excellent in her field is justified in feeling threatened by a 19-year old pretty little flake who's just getting started.
In the corporate/business/legal worlds, women can't win. If you're aggressive or demanding (as a executive/professional/attorney can be expected to be) and female, you're a bitch or a ball-buster. If you're a man displaying the identical behavior, you're a go-getter or decisive. If you're too nice, you seriously risk your professional development
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I honestly think concentrating on sex and sexuality is in many ways a red herring in American feminism. Back in the 70s folks really got into the notion that porn is 'oppressive' of women... there's absolutely no evidence there. If anything, countries in which porn is more widely available generally show lower rates of violence against women in terms of rapes, etc. Obviously we could speculate that maybe in more porn-oriented cultures women are trained to accept being raped and so don't report it, but somehow I just don't happen to think that about most of Europe. Nor does it seem like women in South Africa would be particularly trained to report being raped, even though porn was completely illegal under the apartheid regime and now they have one of the world's highest rates of rape, period
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I think cattiness is a behavior people learn (or at least don't unlearn) in elementary/middle/highschool. We shove kids into these institutions where the rules are arbitrary, their social statuses are arbitrary, etc., and then they have to basically structure their own society. Since there's almost nothing in the way of real feedback on how effective someone is at contributing to that society (being particularly good at math, say, is not going to make the cafeteria food improve,) the result is that the entire social order is based on arbitrary crap, like how attractive someone is or how good they are at obeying a set of random social rules.
Wherever you are in the system, everyone below you is a potential threat, and you maintain your position in the system by maintaining the system--thus we see even people on the fringes competing to insult and degrade people even 'lower' than them, even as they claim to hate the identical behavior in those 'above' them.
Many of the successful women in business are the same women who were on top
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Here's a question for you to consider: if a group of random teenagers were robbed of all posessions and clothing and dumped on a desert island, would they reinvent cliques and social castes?
I guess my point is how much of these arbitrary pecking orders in high school (or corporate America) are simply human nature acting out?
On a desert island, I think the teenager who's best at finding coconuts and fresh water would quickly become king. In the 'natural state', our abilities have some impact on our environment. A strong person can build a better shelter or protect their stash of coconuts. A friendly person with good 'people skills' can organize people into a building team to do things an individual couldn't do alone.
Obviously they'd still have some amount of cliques and hierarchies, but I think that since their positions would be secured by some sort of external feedback (such as food production,) less of it would need to be maintained through strict social regulation.
I think we're basically always acting out some aspect of human nature, but the problem is that our natures aren't really designed for schools. What works well to keep you alive on a desert island isn't going to help you in the cafeteria.
Mostly true, yes. But I would also add that there are lots of women who show one face to men and quite another to women. I've seen this kind of behaviour quite often.
But even the bitchiest of employees is only going t be bitchy towards people lower on the corporate ladder than them. If there are more men than women above them, then you're going to see them being nice to more men than women.
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I mean, men can go toe to toe and have a knock down brawl, and still end the night on good terms with one another... But can you say the same for women? Oh sure, they may have a polite exchange... giving each other a pleasing smile...a gracious pat... but is it really genuine? No, not usually....
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In some other places (England and the West Indies in particular) women aren't discouraged from being aggressive. Therefore, you end up with women who fight just as viciously and openly as their male counterparts.
For all America's moves toward progressive attitudes, it's gender roles still tend towards the archaic. And when you can't fight openly for fear of political suicide, you must learn passive aggression.
This may be the man in me talking, but frankly, it would seem easier to me to deal with a punch in the head than it is to handle a passive aggressive fight.
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I will agree that public perceptions will always have some influence over one's treatment, but I don't know if I'd go so far to say that (as one arbitrary example) a 40-something woman who's excellent in her field is justified in feeling threatened by a 19-year old pretty little flake who's just getting started.
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Wherever you are in the system, everyone below you is a potential threat, and you maintain your position in the system by maintaining the system--thus we see even people on the fringes competing to insult and degrade people even 'lower' than them, even as they claim to hate the identical behavior in those 'above' them.
Many of the successful women in business are the same women who were on top ( ... )
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I guess my point is how much of these arbitrary pecking orders in high school (or corporate America) are simply human nature acting out?
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Obviously they'd still have some amount of cliques and hierarchies, but I think that since their positions would be secured by some sort of external feedback (such as food production,) less of it would need to be maintained through strict social regulation.
I think we're basically always acting out some aspect of human nature, but the problem is that our natures aren't really designed for schools. What works well to keep you alive on a desert island isn't going to help you in the cafeteria.
Of course, there's always Lord of the Flies.
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As in management, people don't respond to hard work, they respond to people who can command others to do hard work.
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But even the bitchiest of employees is only going t be bitchy towards people lower on the corporate ladder than them. If there are more men than women above them, then you're going to see them being nice to more men than women.
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I guess it would depend on whether the person was mature enough to understand how to use people.
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