Women - the more moral sex?

In My Humble Opinion
21

Or to use another example, I have a guy friend who doesn’t do feelings. He refuses to tell me anything about his life, he has stated more than once that his highest goal in life is to be completely self-sufficient and not burden others. I’ve had to pretty much completely redefine my idea of friendship to be his friend, because he is 100% give and zero take. But when I say ‘‘give’’ I mean he is a problem solver and will push me to be a better person, not that he will be at my side saying, ‘‘poor you.’’

He is not right in the head, but he’s probably one of the most compassionate people I know. He just doesn’t waste time on feelings.

I remember a dear friend of mine lost her husband to cancer earlier this year, and I was paralyzed by grief on her behalf. I empathized so much that I couldn’t see the separation between me and her. And it was utterly useless. And he pretty much told me, ‘‘Stop feeling sorry about this, go make her food and take care of her children and be useful.’’

So who is more compassionate?

22

I read that as “more oral”

and I have to agree on one hand -

23

It’s different. I’ve found that some women tear down or bully each other emotionally or through gossip/slander/backbiting in ways that men rarely do, for instance.

24

There are a lot of different standards for morality. In my experience, women are far more moral than men in SOME of those areas, but far less moral in others.

25

I see whatcha did there.
As to the OP, we can all be shits and saints, so meh to one or the other gender having any sort of superiority. It’s all situational.

26

According to this article, the female prison population has been rising so even if they were more “moral” in the past, that seems to be changing.

According to the article, in 1980 their were 13000 women in prison. In 2010 their were 200,000.

And this article, the number of female gang members is also rising.

27

Couldn’t it also be that DA’s are more willing to prosecute, Jury’s more willing to convict, and Judge’s giving stiffer sentences to women?

28

Change that to less unwilling and you might have something. It does seem clear that women are engaging in more violent criminal activity now. Another victory for gender equality. I’m not sure why women chose men as the gender they wanted to be equivalent to. I suppose a lack of alternatives was the problem.

29

It could be that you don’t know how to form plurals.

30

In some ways that’s right. years ago an older woman having sex with an underage boy would have gotten her a high five. Now she gets prosecuted same as a man.

31

Well if immorality is measured by sexual infidelity as some do it has to be realized that for every man who is with a woman who isn’t his there is a woman with a man who isn’t hers.

32

“Sentences” was all right. Sometimes I wonder how some people think plurals work, but I expect I’ll never know.

33

It might be the same woman.

34

…

35

Are women inherently more moral? Almost certainly not, there are enough women who are terrible people in the world. Even if you do some stuff about hormone balance, it’s clear that most women have the capacity to be bad people at least on occasion.

Are women socialized to be better people? In American culture at least, I’d say yes. At the very least, they’re socialized to be more openly agreeable. In general, when women vehemently disagree, they’ll either avoid the topic or couch it in “well, I don’t know, I think maybe…” Whereas men, in general, will make a statement and not back down.

This has nothing to do with any specific man or woman, there are numerous exceptions, especially once you start looking at women in positions of power and respect. You can, of course, draw two disparate conclusions about this:

  1. Feminine traits are devalued because women are devalued.
  2. Women are socialized to have less valuable traits.

Both theories have had traction at various points. And in certain contexts both have some merit. It seems that third wave feminists generally take the former view, while second wavers generally take the second. You’ll see this in some disagreements on how to write female characters, one of the most notable places is discussion of Ripley from Alien. Some see her as a bad female character because she’s basically a man (the character was originally written as a man, after all), and some see her as a great female character because she gets the rare honor of being a strong, assertive woman.

Personally, I don’t like the gender essentialism in 1, but I think 2 is a bit sticky because it starts to skate really close to the “if you continue acting the way you’re acting right now you’re oppressing yourself” junk. I think 2 is generally more correct, in that I think it’s largely an issue of socialization over biology, but I do think the way cooperation and diplomacy are often undervalued compared to assertiveness is a good point as well. Especially once you get into the fact that women are generally looked down upon for having the same level of assertiveness a man is expected to have (and often vice versa). This does, of course, on balance cause other “morality problems” for women, who occasionally may be less likely to speak out for the greater good more than men because of that conditioning. So a man may or may not be more proactively moral, while a woman may be less actively harmful. Still, this is an extremely broad brush and there are more than enough women participating in and running charitable work (and enough inoffensive or timid men) that I’m not sure that last part really applies as much nowadays.

Either way, I don’t think men are inherently more or less moral than women. I’m not sure they’re even more or less moral in practice. I do think that an odd mix of socialization and sexism lead us to both ignore some of the immoral things women do and condition them in a way that they’re less likely to openly do them.

36

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’m not sure what kind of a feminist I am, but I was raised by a woman who taught me that girly stuff was lame. I didn’t realize at the time that was a kind of misogyny. I still have some of that in me. For a long time I didn’t like to admit that I wrote romance novels because that is generally considered a woman’s genre. Well, and so what if it is? I’ve only recently been challenging this. What the hell is wrong with me that I ever thought that was something to be embarrassed about? And I’m still embarrassed about it.

I’m in social work/nonprofit development, which is a highly feminized field. In a class of 124 MSWs, we had six men. I don’t know how much ya’ll know about the history of social work, but the current feminiziation of this field is a direct result of its history. In the late 1800s, around the time people started deciding maybe we shouldn’t beat dogs and children, there wasn’t a whole hell of a lot for white, privileged women of the upper middle class to do, so they started worrying about people’s morals. One of the first things they decided to was set up a ‘‘friendly visitors’’ program where women would visit the houses of the degenerate and teach them how to have the strength of character to not be poor. Turns out - oops! - people aren’t poor because of a character problem, they’re poor because they live in a fundamentally unequal system! Once the ladies figured this out the movement began to radicalize, then you had things like settlement houses which were community centers for immigrant families who needed resources.

My point is, the feminization of social work didn’t happen because women are inherently more altruistic creatures. It happened because the traditional man/woman labor divide in the household became obsolete for privileged people. The irony was not lost on me when I attended an elitist institution to learn how to be a social worker. It’s arguable that the movement stemmed from patriarchy, but I don’t think you can argue that it has to do with the essential nature of women per se.

37

Both of your posts are quite interesting.

I agree 100%. Research is showing that aspects of personality and behavior are inheritable and have biological underpinnings. I have no doubt in my mind that that our sex chromosomes–and the hormones they regulate–have a huge role to play in our predilections. I think social pressure is also important, but the fact you can see gender differences in toddler play indicates (IMHO) that social pressure isn’t everything. Just because we all know a little girl who likes to play with trucks or a little boy who likes to dress up as a fairy princess doesn’t mean that we can’t make some reasonable generalizations about what little girls and boys tend to gravitate towards, irrespective of their social milieus.

So true. I often hear women disparage “girly girls”, and I admit that I’ve rolled my eyes at hyperfeminine women myself. I have found myself embarrassed to admit that I like certain “chick” flicks, even though I don’t have the same embarrassment about liking the dumb movies that appeal to teenage boys.

38

I think there probably are probably innate differences in personality and behavior between men and women, but good luck separating nature from nuture in trying find out what they are.

Women may seem nicer than men because male sex roles gone wrong is more socially objectionable. Aggression gone wrong leads to violence and hurting others. Passivity gone wrong leads to hurting yourself, which doesn’t make society stand up and take notice in quite the same way. I also think women are nicer to men than they are to other women. (maybe because penis ensues :D)

I can’t resist closing with:

39

I believe men and women are faced with different sets of challenges on a primal level. Men need to win, conquer and keep. When we fail at these things I think a certain amount of anger, resentment and frustration can lead to some self centered anti social behavior. So I would say men are not inheritantly more immoral but more prone to developing immoral behavior.

40

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.

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.