According to literature I have read and what I have observed, the dynamic between a group of girlfriends is very different between a group of guy friends
Women:
Women tend to gossip more often and more maliciously than their male counterparts. Their gossiping tends to focus on members within the social circle. Status within the group is important and women will often exclude a member of the group or exhibit some other form of social bullying for no reason in order to establish dominance (IE “I’m so mad at Tina for wearing that sweater…lets not speak to her”) Grudges tend to linger. Women are more likely to give priority to their dating relationship - forgoing their friends in favor of hanging out with their “man”, especially in new relationships. In general, women often have trouble maintaining long term close relationships unless there is a clear hieararchy. In other words, Sally and her equally hot friends will likely not stay friends due to constant backstabbing and jockeying for position (and men) while she might stay friends with her ugly pal Betty for years because it is understood that there is no real competition between them.
Men:
Men tend to make friendships in “packs” and tend to make friendships more easily once someone has been identified as “cool”. Men tend to display agression or exhibit bullying against those they identify as outside of their social circle. Dominance within the group is generally determined by friendly competion and good natured mocking. Arguments, especially superficial ones (say over a girl two guys just met) tend to resolve themselves quickly and not linger. The nature of disagreements is that they are resolved and then forgotten, instead of lingering and building resentment. Friends tend to come first, at least until the point where he is looking to start a family. Men tend to form bonds with other men of similar interests. Male friendships require much less maintenance and tend to last longer.
Granted, there are obviously exceptions and most of my observations come from a relatively homogenius group, but in general, how would people characterize these statements?
Without getting into the rest of your post, this part is clearly untrue. Dominance is often determined by physical violence, and arguments of women can be the most lethal arguments men have. How did you arrive at you conclusion?
If you want a more professional analysis, you might want to read Men in Groups, by Lionel Tiger. It’s an older book (from the 70s or 80s) and you might have to get it from a library as I’m not sure it’s still in print.
Maybe I should expand on this point. It’s been my observation that a group of guys who consider each other friends tend to exhibit social dominance over each other by good-natured physical competion - sports, physical “roughhousing” or “horseplay”. Occasionally someone might get temporarily pissed off, but it usually doesn’t last long. Dominance over individuals who fall OUTSIDE of the circle usually takes the form of physical intimidation or violence.
As for women, you are correct. I would postualte that arguments over a woman can be the most lethal because sleeping with another mans girlfriend or wife is considered the ultimate form of male-friend betrayal. Keep in mind that this is only for established M/F relationships. My buddies and I might argue over “who saw her first” in a bar or get mad if another friend “cock blocks” us, but it wont ruin the friendship. On the other hand, two strange guys hitting on the same girl at once, add some alchohol, and a fight is likely.
Granted, much of my hypothesis has been formulated from observations in college - which in the case of my school was heavily skewed in favor of the frat guy meathead-jock stereotype.
Go dig up a copy of Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus. While a fair bit of it is pop-psych fluff (and the numerous sequels are all shameless exploitative gimmicks), there’s a good bit of material there about the differences between male bonding and female bonding, presented in laymen’s terms.
To summarize broadly: men prefer a clear hierarchy and pecking order, to rank each member above or below each other. Women prefer to establish networks, where all peers are comparably equivalent, but the status is in how well-connected each member is.
I would characterize them as being about girls and boys.
This is actually closer to my experience (or closer to my preferred peer group dynamic, if you will) with men than all the physical violence and pecking order stuff.
Your analysis is a little too pat and simplistic, and relfects your college centric world view. With male friends and peers beyond the age of college, there is a subtle (and not so subtle in some cases) lifestyle and acquisition competition, where the kid with the coolest toys and the biggest house wins. Peer dominaince (even within friendship groups) is in older male (and female) groups, is as much about lifestyle status as personality, physical prowess, and attractiveness is in younger groups.
I think your title more accurately describes what you have in your second paragraph, entitled “women.” This is girls’ behavior, not women’s.
One big difference I’ve noticed is that women tend to share emotions, and concerns, whereas men don’t seem to like to reveal that they even HAVE any emotions other than anger or lust. If they do, they appear to be unable to talk about them.
Try checking out Deborah Tannen’s “He Said, She Said,” for a nice comparison of men’s and women’s (as well as boys’ and girls’) conversational styles.
In my experience, your description of a women’s group, is more applicable to highschool aged females. For me, more often than not, the common denominator in a circle of women friends is mutually held interests. Not much jockeying for position involved in playing darts, hiking, shopping, book discussions, etc. As far as gossip, I’m sure it still happens, but most women I know have more important things taking up their time (marriage or long-term relationship, children, career, making payments on time).
Another point about gossip, is that I find rather than it being malicious, usually involves swapping of TMI. IOW, sharing of personal stories, which brand of tampon works best, coping with in-laws etc. rather than cutting down Tina and her sweater (cracks me up). As far as hierarchy, you show up and you have fun. Addressing the shunning aspect, I can’t say I’ve seen this happen since high school either, though I’ll say I’d probably want to spend less time with a friend who carped about everyone else being “hotter” than her or whined about Tina’s awful sweater.
Still speaking for myself, as far as status, I can’t say the person with the nicest house or job in my circle of friends, is necessarily the most respected. Not having to worry about things like that, is part of what I most enjoy about my friends.
Thanks but I’m 32 years old and have been out of college a significant number of years. I am simply using that as a reference because it is a time in most people’s lives where they are forming social bonds without the institutional hieararchies and rules imposed by their workplace.
Also, I was just at my girlfriends college homecoming last week and I just found it interesting to see how her friends act towards each other. It’s like whichever one wasn’t in the room basically gets talked about.
Your analysis sounds to me as if you haven’t really observed any real female friendships, just those sorts of familiar acquaintance-ships that happen whenever people are forced together in some artificial situation (work, school, etc).
Real female friends aren’t going to shun Tina because of her sweater; instead they will either tell her that the sweater is awful, or put up with it just as they do with all the various flaws of their friends because they love her. I got a smile out of the example, though. It was very junior high.
The behavior you describe is behavior I have seen at times from certain women in the workplace, where hierarchies can be important. I wouldn’t call those sorts of work relationships ‘friendships’, either.
I can’t speak as to how accurate you are concerning men.
To the extent that they’re accurate, they depend on certain gender socialisation patterns; people who don’t have that sort of socialisation will form different sorts of organisational patterns. This can be personal, subcultural, or some other thing; a couple of my social groups suggest the development of other gender roles (the popular one among the folks I know being ‘geek’, in which status depends on competence and sex is not a factor).
The biggest and most obvious example of social influence is the idea that the sexes socialise separately as a default state, and that therefore it’s possible to observe “the way women socialise” or “the way men socialise”. The concept under discussion presumes that the default for social interaction is not a mixed sex/gender group, and thus limits the cultures under consideration to those that sex-segregate (which strike me as being more likely to have sex-specific interaction patterns).
I know I can’t speak to “how women socialise”, despite being one; I spend hardly any time solely in the company of other women. I don’t notice any particular differences in how I interact with men and with women, aside from the fact that I’m marginally more likely to find members of one of those groups attractive. I also have a very strong sense of social heirarchy, and Deborah Tannen thinks I’m a man.
Anyone but me notice how negative women friendships are described, especially when compared to men? This alone makes me wonder about the OP’s intentions.
Or maybe the OP just tends to hang out with immature and bitchy women. In that case, he’d most likely never see genuine, healthy female friendships, because few women who are capable of one would want to be friends with the women he knows.
Not keeping up friendships because you’re “jockeying for position” and “competing for men”? “Social bullying to establish dominance”? “Lingering grudges”? Jeez. If I knew any females older than the junior-high set who acted like that, I sure wouldn’t make friends with them.
My own friendships with other women have always been much more positive and enjoyable than that, I’m happy to say—certainly since the end of junior high. Either I’ve been exceptionally lucky, or the OP isn’t using a representative sample.
The OP’s description of male friendship also sounds quite a bit different from the friendships my male friends seem to have with other men. However, since I can’t tell how they really act when there are no females around (maybe there is some sort of Guy Thing that radically changes their behavior, although I kind of doubt it), I can’t speak as positively about it.
(sorry…it was just too easy…I’ll await my beating now)
Well my girlfriends sorority pals are pretty bitchy. Maybe you are right, though. The majority of the girls I hang out with are either friends of my girlfriend, coworkers or the wives and girlfriends of my friends. My observation has been that the girls who tend to be “nicer” tend to have more platonic guy friends instead of a gaggle of girls to pal around with. The “bitchier” girls tend to just hang out with other girls or guys they are sexually interested in.
It’s true that behavior generally starts in jr high. I don’t believe that it completely stops in adulthood.
How would you describe the nature of those friendships?
How would you describe the guys that you hang out with? Are they “nice guys”? Jocks? Are they sensitive or agressive? Do they have sex with multiple partners or are they in committed relationships, or no relationships? Are the good looking or are they more “nice personality” types?
It was not my intention to paint either as particularly negative or positive. There are certainly negative aspects regarding male group dynamics - for example how a group of otherwise nice guys can feed off of each others aggression to bully and intimidate those outside of their group.
It’s been my experience that mean women tend to be the type who like to proclaim they have no women friends and hold this as a badge of honor. Like they think they are better than other women. When I hear a woman talk about her absense of gal pals, I stir clear from her. She is not to be trusted (IMHO).
It makes perfect sense that women with more guy friends would appeal to you than women who click only with women. Who’s more likely to be into “guy” things? Who’s more likely to appreciate a “guy” sense of humor? It’s not rocket science.
I think you can make the same argument for men, too. I wouldn’t want to have a guy as a friend if he’s a “man’s man”, constantly surrounded by his “boys”, constantly doing the male bonding thing. Such a person would not be interesting to a woman like me (who isn’t actually all that soft and feminine, but does have a female sensibility). A guy who has no plutonic friends would probably NOT be able to see a woman as anything more than a potential mate. Note that the guy could be a nice person all-around. But as a friend, we probably wouldn’t click.
Villification of a person (i.e., “bitch”) or a group’s social behavior is not necessary to rationalize these feelings.
msmith537, I definitely recognize the behavior you’re talking about, but I’m not sure it’s necessarily the default for men’s and women’s friendships. I can’t speak to men’s friendships, but I think that the patterns you describe in women’s friendships have more to do with the particular women you know. I would think that status and heirarchy would matter much more to the sort of woman who would join a sorority than the sort of woman who couldn’t be bothered.
Like Suse, your description also reminded me of workplace “friendships” among women–specifically of the gaggle of gossipy secretaries at the college where I work. Again, heirarchy is more important at work than not.
I’ve never really competed with my girlfriends over men. I’m married now, and before that, my girlfriends and I tended to have different taste in men anyway. I hung out with a girlfriend earlier this week. She helped me plant bulbs in my garden; we talked about my job, her recent trip to Egypt, and her breaking up with her long-term boyfriend. There was no sense of heirarchy or oneupsmanship. I don’t think I behave very differently in groups of women than I do with just one woman.
