I like women, for the most part. I very much dislike women who complain about stuff a lot. Most of the women I worked with spent most of their time compaining. About their husbands/boyfriends, their weight, their periods, their clothes. Bleah!
My best girlfriends are like me and we’ve been friends for ages. I have a hard time making new girl friends because I don’t do “girl talk” very well. But I always try. I’m friendly.
The woman at the OP’s office is just plain rude when she acts like the other women are invisible.
The only women I find I REALLY get along with are the ones who deviate somehow from the norm of femininity - bi/lesbian, transgendered, working/studying in science or engineering fields… just not traditionally feminine. I do my best to get along with the rest of the gender, of course, and I don’t think there’s anything WRONG with them… but they are complicated and scary and I don’t understand them. We’ll be friendly, but I can’t get close.
Oddly enough, the men I’m closest to often can’t stand hanging out with other men and tend to get along much better with women.
This whole thread is weird though-“I can’t talk to woman because they are catty and bitchy and talk about shoes and clothes and men” vs “I like men because I hate talking about shoes and clothes and men”.
I’m glad I have the mates I do! My best friends are female. We NEVER do the shoes and clothes conversations but have been known to talk about the males in our lives. We don’t do catty or bitchy or one-up-(wo)manship. I went to an all girls high school, maybe that is why? Perhaps we learned the evilness of bitchiness early in life?
Whatever. I enjoy my female friends. It is sad to see that those dragging down women are women. Maybe you should stop talking shoes, clothes and men and just be friends (ohhhhh how bitchy and womanly of me). If the only women you meet are shallow backstabbers then you are meeting women in the wrong place.
Just for the record I am not gay. I just think women make better friends.
I think you are correct about this. This is mostly why I have very high hopes about meeting some nice women to be friends with out here in the city.
I come from a town of about 800 people. Everyone knows everybody else, everyone has their nose in everyone else’s business… ugh. We were also secluded… we lived in what most people would call “the boonies” - way out in the woods, all by ourselves, living awful, secluded, and somewhat sheltered lives. I am very thankful I got away from it. It was just a pit of drug use, drinking, teenage pregnancy, and senseless, foolish violence and intolerance - for no apparent reason other than sheer boredom. You grew up fast or you didn’t grow up at all.
Sometimes I wonder if all those pretty girls sneer at me because I give off some scent, some aura, some hint of the awful place I come from.
And people wonder why I’m shy. But I have high hopes. I know the whole world isn’t like that. I can’t wait to meet them.
alice_in_wonderland, irishgirl, monstro, Rhiannon, calm kiwi (and all others who spoke up for women being okay) – phew. I’m feeling like it’s safe to come back in this thread, which went off in a direction I wasn’t expecting. It might be my age (50), but I’m of a generation of feminism where being anti-woman is kind of unthinkable – so getting a “yeah, well, women do suck” reaction surprised me. I generally take people as they come, without a lot of preconceptions about … well, anything … so I have male friends I talk feelings with, and female friends I talk “stuff” with, and no one I discuss makeup with because I don’t wear makeup. (No, wait, my sister and I had a five-minute conversation about eyeliner a few years ago.)
At this point in my life, I have a lot of male friends – but that feels totally circumstantial to me. The last few years I’ve been doing the online dating thing, so most of the new people I’ve been meeting have been male, and most of them are, well, duh, single, so they’re available to go out to dinner or to a movie or something in a way my paired-off friends aren’t. Several of the friends I see most regularly are guys I dated for a while who didn’t work out as lovers, but who make excellent pals – which is something my current beau is still trying to come to terms with.
Anyway, the point is that I have a lot of male friends, and significantly fewer female friends, right now – but it’s not because I don’t like women. My women friends are all people like me (and my male friends) – smart, interesting, funny, involved in all kinds of stuff in terms of jobs and hobbies and interests. If they have long conversations about kids and clothes, they must be having them with someone other than me.
I’m pretty sure that some of the women who do this are not aware of it tho’, esspecially the younger ones, they don’t realise that’s why they get on great with men or rather don’t get on so great with women.
I went to an all girls school (not much fun), pre-university my ‘male’ contact was limited to knowing a few lads on the school bus and those in the Venture Scout unit (where I was essentially seen as my brother’s little sister). This skewed my perceptions somewhat and to this day I’m not sure exactly where the line between flirting and being open/friendly is - many a time I was laughingly accused of flirting where I assumed I was showing nothing but interest. As a result where other women may condemn another woman for the way she ‘manipulates’ men I’m more likely to give her the benefit of the doubt.
To be honest I worry more about men who see you simply as an accessory to your male partner or seem to lose interest in the conversation you were having when they realise you are unavailable/not ineterested ‘that way’. I feel insulted that they weren’t actually interested in ‘me’ but there you go …
twickster I do sympathise tho’, I guess we’ve all dealt with similar things and it’s pointless - little exchanges with other members of the human race are what adds interest and warmth to life. Try not to waste energy being upset by her - feel sorry on all she’s missing out on instead.
I just don’t get this at all. I don’t think I’ve EVER met a single person whose gender was the most notable thing about them.
I make friends with people who have similar interests and meshing personalities. Sometimes it’s women, sometimes it’s men. Nor have I ever noticed any particular ‘female’ relationships or communication styles as opposed to ‘male’ ones.
I have male colleagues that I get along with just fine, but when I come to think of it, I don’t have very many male friends. The female friends I’ve had (even the odd one mentioned earlier) have been my pals for many years.
Cat --the woman in question knows, believe me.
I have both male and female friends–more female than male, but such is the nature of married with kids suburbia.
what I find I have lost patience with is the gender assigned roles at parties and such. Men in family room, women in the kitchen–each with their own topics of convor. It is screechingly boring.
I am more interested in topics than chitchat–and that makes me a good one on one conversationalist, but a bad work the room person. As I get older, I have less and less patience with role expectations.
Not sure where this fits into the thread, but thought it should be said.
I have nothing against women as friends, and have some stalwart, excellent ones. I just can’t do the blather–male or female anymore.
I have a general dislike for most people. But given my druthers, most times I’d spend time with guys over girls. My best friends are my husband and Gazz, who I’ve been friends with since grade nine in high school. Gazz and I can sit on the couch for six, ten, twelve hours, playing tomb raider and just wittering on about anything - politics, religion, the shape of Lara’s arse in Tomb Raider 3 compared to 1, etc. I work in a tech-oriented department, I’m the only girl in my team. I get on great with the guys there. We talk and joke, but I’m not having to invest in a relationship with them. There’s no bitching or two-faced friendships. If someone’s got a problem, you come out with it, there’s an argument then everybody’s mates again when it’s all over.
That’s not to say that I’ve completely discounted friendships with women. If I met a girl who was into the same things I was, who I could connect with, then I wouldn’t hate her just because she’s a girl. But it’s been my experience that the people who share my interests and my ideals the most seem to have penises. And that’s cool with me.
Well I mean, I come from a generation of human beings where being anti-any whole group of people just because you don’t like a stereotype is kind of unthinkable. I’m with you, I don’t know when people started to think being prejudiced was something to declare without shame. Saying you don’t like women because they’re girly, then defining girly as “anything a female does that I personally find stupid” is about as ignorant as it gets. The world is full of women who defy that stereotype. Not being obsessed with grooming or not bursting into tears in public if someone doesn’t like your shirt isn’t some exceptional achievement that raises one up out of the rank of woman into the exhaulted status of “just like a guy.” When I think about all the women I know who are very smart and cool and honorable, I can’t picture any of them wanting any truck with a woman who would think of saying, “ew, women, yuck.”
If you tell yourself that what’s girly to do your nails and gossip and what’s being like a guy is going out and joining the army or the soccer team or being the senator or comporting yourself with dignity, then of course you will hate women. But all those “guy” things are perfectly girly because girls do them. LOTS of girls do them, no matter what the girls are doing in your little pond. There is no excuse for feeding into stereotypes just so you can flatter yourself by saying you’re the exception. That’s called being an uncle tom.
pokey- your post reminded me of Grayson Perry, the award winning British artist who is also a transvestite. He defines anything done by a man as “manly”, and therefore his cross-dressing is by definition “manly”.
The converse is of course that anything done by a woman is “womanly”, “feminine” or “girly”, whether that is painting her nails or doing an army assault course.
There is nothing wrong with being a woman who falls at one end or another of the “stereotypically feminine” spectrum. Just with thinking that anyone who doesn’t fall in the same place is somehow worse than you.
Saying you find it difficult to engage with certain topics of conversations or with certain styles of communication is one thing, saying “most women are so shallow, vapid and stupid because they don’t talk about things I want to talk about, in the way I want to talk about them” is something else.
As for me, I have male and female friends.
I have the big life issues conversations with both, and also the the stupid celebrity gossip type conversations. After hours with my 8 man boat crew I would long for a nice chat with a girlfriend, after a day at the shops with my girlfriends I often can’t wait to get home to my husband. However, I wouldn’t want to live in a world without any of them!
Though it is entirely likely that I come from a different generation from you and your generation may have discovered some magical abitilty that past generations have been unable to discover, at the end of the day I believe men and women relate to each other differently.
YES we can have friends, even best friends, from the opposing camp but in GENERALY as friends, males relate to males and females relate to females. That doesn’t for a moment suggest that friendships (that DO for last years) can’t last but they are the minority. When most people think of their best friend they think of someone the same sex (except for those who name their spouse…).
Both sexes have a way of relating to members of the same sex that is slightly different (or hugely different, based on the cultural, religious or even the political situation) then the other sex.
While there is obviously no arguement that both sexes are equally competent in areas like employment, there is still an arguement that the sexes communicate in a different way. We adapt the way we communicate everyday. We speak to a boss in a slightly different way then we speak to a co-worker, to a friend then a stranger and SOMETIMES to a male to a female. That doesn’t suggest we see males or females as less or more, just people who have a different way of communicating.
I know sometimes a girly chat is the best thing. That doesn’t mean I don’t have male friends and don’t appreciate the value of that.
I mentioned feminism specifically because of a conversation I’d had a few days before – with a female coworker, actually. We were talking about The Amazing Race, and the fact that one of the teams keeps exhorting each other with “come on, girls!,” and I mentioned that I’m “of a generation of feminists” that just Does Not refer to grown women as girls.
irishgirl – excellent post, thanks. This:
is right on the money.
calm kiwi – I do agree that the sexes tend to act and react and communicate differently (I just got through a big disagreement with my beau because he was reacting to something like a guy, and I kept expecting him to snap out of it and act like a human being ), and there really are times I think of men as being a different species – but, as I said a few posts ago, I have men friends I talk about touchy-feely stuff with, and women I talk about politics, etc., with.
Slight hijack, but I find this point to be very interesting.
Most of the women I have worked with incessantly bitch on and on and on about their husbands. It’s as if they have a license to do so. And no one raises an eyebrow. Yet it’s a very rare occurrence for a man to bitch about his wife. I find this interesting.
If most of the women you work with/have worked with do this why would you find this interesting? It is how most women communicate. Is it annoying to you? Sounds like a YES. Is it annoying in general? Maybe. Is it going to keep happening because women communicate like that? Hell Yeah but not because it annoys you.
twickster I know exatly what you mean. I have two ‘best’ friends. One I have been friends with for 26 years the other for 15 years. One I can discuss any thought that enters my brain and I love her dearly. Our relationship is about emotions.
The other is my ‘blokey’ friend. I love her to bits but we rarely talk about the girly stuff. We argue about politics, we play card games in silence, we almost never talk about our kids. We are just bloody good mates (I am the only one who knows she still has a ciggy whenever can and she gave up 10 years ago).
They are perfect examples of how we communicate differently with different people, what I talk about with one I wouldn’t mention to the other. That proves your point
BUT
It is generaly easier to relate to someone of our own sex (in the friendship way) so it is not hard to imagine that we may have to adapt that to the workplace.
Well, your generation’s influence has weakened, at least as far as maleness and femaleness are concerned. Conservatism has brought back a belief that there are essential differences between the sexes that override ourselves as individuals, and a certain belief in the usefulness of stereotyping (today we call it “profiling”). And the backlash against conservatism has (inevitably) brought about a backlash against the new, narrower sex roles. Thus people who don’t identify with their gender, from WWDLOW/MWDLOM to full-out transsys.
Not if you’re subtle about it. Then it’s called image management, politics, social engineering.
Well, not really. I find I have less respect for the men who are willing to pander to her on the off chance that she may “notice” them and I have less respect for her for not dealing fairly and squarely with the issue at hand, instead of using her personal charm to manipulate someone else.
This particular woman is not at my work–she is at my church, heading a committee. It is sad and somewhat icky (I am not very articulate on a Sunday morning!) to watch her “convince” a guy to give more money or sit on a committee or whatever, just 'cause she bats her eyes at him (so to speak).
I would hope we were past all that, but it seems not.
I wouldn’t trade my female friends in for anything–they alone know the slings and arrows and triumphs in my life–mostly because they have walked that walk themselves. But I value the men in my life as well.
It seems that we are talking about a small segment of the population here–at least, I hope so!
We’ll be friendly, but I can’t get close.
But I have high hopes. I know the whole world isn’t like that. I can’t wait to meet them.
), and there really are times I think of men as being a different species – but, as I said a few posts ago, I have men friends I talk about touchy-feely stuff with, and women I talk about politics, etc., with.