# Women - the more moral sex? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [November 6, 2014, 10:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/women-the-more-moral-sex/703864 "2014-11-06T10:37:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2014, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/women-the-more-moral-sex/703864/41 "2014-11-10T16:13:57Z")
> [@BlackKnight](#): > > Being openly agreeable isn’t the same thing as being moral, though. Plenty of people (men and women) will be perfectly agreeable, polite, and friendly - then fuck you over behind your back as soon as they get the chance. Well, sure. But I think **Jragon’s** point is that people who are agreeable go along with societal conventions and mores, by definition. A person who only appears agreeable is not agreeable. > [@](#): > > There are times when being disagreeable is the proper moral choice. An obvious example would be early suffragettes. They were often seen as disagreeable. The agreeable women (and men) at the time either accepted the status quo or at least didn’t do anything about it. Right, which is why I don’t think women are more moral than men, if by “moral” we mean inherently good. But I agree with **Jragon** that women are pressured to follow social conventions and mores (to be more “agreeable”), which means they are more likely not to do things that society deems “bad”. I actually think guys are more likely to stand up against societal injustice BECAUSE they are not pressured to be “good” the same way that women are. ---
**Author:** ![BlackKnight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/eb8c5e/32.png) [@BlackKnight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlackKnight)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2014, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/women-the-more-moral-sex/703864/42 "2014-11-10T22:00:19Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > A person who only appears agreeable is not agreeable. **Jragon** specifically said “openly agreeable”, which is what I was responding to. I was just pointing out the fact that not contradicting someone to their face (or avoiding confrontation in general) has little or nothing to do with morality. ---
**Author:** ![Jragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2014, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/women-the-more-moral-sex/703864/43 "2014-11-10T22:28:22Z")
> [@BlackKnight](#): > > **Jragon** specifically said “openly agreeable”, which is what I was responding to. I was just pointing out the fact that not contradicting someone to their face (or avoiding confrontation in general) has little or nothing to do with morality. I was talking more about the appearance of morality, though. Women certainly appear to be moral because the often don’t rock the boat. A woman is going to be less likely to talk down to you, belittle you, and undercut you. That’s **usually** a bit immoral, but you’re right that there are times where being kind is absolutely the immoral thing. Hence why I mentioned (and monstro repeated), that men may be more “proactively moral” – prone to raise hell for what they believe in even if it ruffles feathers – even if they’re also more likely to be jerks. It’s not that being agreeable is the same as being moral, but being a contrary, verbally abusive jerk is its own special kind of immorality in **most** cases. A kind of immorality that’s very visible, very common, and we absolutely socialize women to be less prone to. ---
**Author:** ![Weedy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/weedy/32/301_2.png) [@Weedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weedy)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2014, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/women-the-more-moral-sex/703864/44 "2014-11-11T00:29:14Z")
> [@Spice\_Weasel](#): > > Excellent post, **Jragon.** > > I typically hate gender essentialism but I think both are true to a degree. I believe if you removed the constraints of society, most females would naturally behave in ways considered ‘‘womanly’’ and most men would behave in ways considered ‘‘manly.’’ The problem is that a significant minority would probably not, and that significant minority should not be reviled/cajoled/forced to fit society’s construct of what is a ‘‘man’’ or ‘‘woman.’’ I agree with this to a certain extent, but people can have both ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’ traits. I have a daughter whose two main hobbies are violent, gun-heavy video games, including pvp (player vs. player) and hair, nails, make-up. She keeps asking me if she is a ‘tomboy’ or a ‘princess’. There is no need to divide her traits by gender in a stereotypical way. She is a whole person, with various characteristics, not some hybrid. Most people are more complex than a single label. If you are going to say A and B are masculine traits, but a lot of women have them too, and B and C are feminine traits, but a lot of men have them too, than what is the point in using those words? I do think that people who look after small children are perforce going to be kinder, gentler, more empathic, because these traits (or behaviours) are effective for that situation. There are biological reasons why that has mostly been women in the past, but I don’t know how much that behaviour is actually genetically imprinted. Considering the very high degree of flexibility and adaptabiity humans exhibit, I don’t think it is actually very much. There is also a lot of individual variation for whatever characteristics are genetic. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/women-the-more-moral-sex/703864.md?page=2)