Women With No Female Friends

In My Humble Opinion
81

I used to be prejudiced against other females. I had a lot of guy friends from a young age, and I think I felt the need to explain it somehow. At first it just started out because I was into the same things my other guy friends were – I used to beat the boys up on the playground (lovingly) and we would play ‘‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’’ together. People can talk all they want about the inaccuracy of stereotypes, and that’s fine now that we’re educated adults – but when I was a child, there were boy things and girl things. I could get into both, but my lazy weekend afternoons were spent outside catching frogs, climbing trees, pretending I was a badass motorcycle cop and admiring my micromachines collection. My mother openly encouraged my hatred of girly things–she often told me how much she disliked other women. Fashion, shopping, baby dolls, etc – this stuff was ‘‘inferior.’’

I had female friends whom I loved, but I always felt more comfortable around the boys. Most of my friends were guys (nerdy Magic: The Gathering-playing, Dune-reading guys) until I started hanging out with a bunch of gay guys AND lesbians later in high school… this really challenged my preconceived notions about gender and gender stereotyping.

Nevertheless, I held onto this notion that I was more comfortable around men than women for a good, long time… my junior year of college I moved in with my boyfriend (now husband)and his 4 guy buddies, thinking it was going to be pure bliss. It was occasionally fantastic but often horrifying (a couple of them were really, REALLY sexist, but the ridiculous shenanigans made it worth it.) Every time we all get together, I feel like I belong there. I’m used to the energy and thrive off of it.

And then there is writing – I am 100% more comfortable with writing from a male perspective than a female one. This has happened naturally ever since I wrote as a little kid. I am better at writing men than women. I don’t know why. I suppose it’s because a part of me still holds this stereotype about what woman should be – for the most part my women come off as being how someone imagines women are supposed to act. The men are much more nuanced, non-stereotyped characters, and I dare say feel more authentic.

My husband is the one who made me let go of the idea that I don’t like girls. He pointed out how many female friends I have. It’s true, I have female friends, roughly as many as I have guy friends. I never would have seen it coming, but there you go. One of them is an aerospace engineer, one of them is an actress, one is a manager of audio equipment at the Chicago Field Museum, one is a professor of clinical psychology and another one is in the Peace Corps in El Salvador. They are beautiful, strong, intelligent, fun women, and not a one of them fits the manipulative, competitive stereotype I held onto for so long. I think my prejudice really only hurt myself.

82

This reminds me how when I was young and more engrossed in drawing, I tended to draw males more than females. Oddly enough, they tended to be white guys. My mother (perhaps more troubled than she let show)would question me about this bias, and my answer was always “They’re easier to draw”.

Later, as I moved into adolescence, I began to get better at diversifying my creations. Now, when I pick up a pencil, I’m just as likely to draw a black woman as I am a white guy.

As I look back, I am disturbed that my early bias was so natural to me. I used to think that maybe in a former life, I was a white guy, but now I really do think I had a subconscious notion of white male superiority. Where this came from, I don’t know. My parents were both “pro-black” and “pro-woman”, and yet at least during my early years, I was self-hating. Perhaps that’s why I almost over compensate when it comes to getting along with people who are “like” me.

I think I’ve been lucky to be able to work in both female- and male-dominated environments, as well as gender-mixed ones. It has kept me from generalizing too much. There hasn’t been too much that I haven’t seen. Slutty women. Doggish men. Arrogant bitches. Condescending pricks. Cold-hearted ice queens. Hysterical, neurotic, overly emotional guys. I have noticed that you can sense insecurity in women more than you can in guys, but guys tend to be more obvious with passive-agressiveness and just plain triflin’ behavior.

I think there’s something to be said for the idea that you gravitate towards the gender that hurt you the least during your formative years. My first bullies were boys, not girls, so maybe that’s why I’ve always had more girlfriends than guy friends. Not that girls didn’t say nasty things to me, but the boys were much more out in the open with their meanness. They were much more likely to hurt my feelings in the worse possible way, and then laugh as I cried. As a kid, I was friendly with the popular girls (don’t know how I pulled that one off), but all the male friends (or acquaintances) I had were rejects from the other boys. So in a way, they were “safe”.

83

Huh? I’m not getting this at all. I’m seeing a lot of women saying “If a woman just so happens to have male friends then that’s cool, but women who hate their own gender or persistently assume that women are only interested in stereotypically girly stuff, not so much”.

Hell, I fall into the “just so happen to have more male friends” myself - as I said in my earlier post, I do have a number of good female friends, but my closest friends and the ones I spend time with on a daily basis are almost all male. So I’m hardly likely to support some notion that if a woman hangs around mostly with guys she is obviously EVIL and NASTY. I am, however, somewhat put off by those women who seem to be just dying to tell you all about how they like men best because girls are so *mean *and catty, or who insist that they couldn’t possibly have female friends because they’re not interested in discussing clothes and lipstick and babies (because that’s all women ever do, right?).

I would be perfectly happy to date a woman who just happens to hang out mostly with guys; I would be extremely reluctant to be in any way romantically involved with one who does so because she “doesn’t like other women” or has a bunch of weird ideas about what women are supposed to be like. (Of course, a lot of this is because I figure that if she has bizarre ideas about what women are like, she’ll probably end up projecting them onto me as well, so that wouldn’t apply so much in heterosexual relationships.)

84

Well I’m 36 this year and I’ve gotten worse since I’ve hit my mid thirties.

85

Oooh, then it may not…

86

Sub paintball or a fitness boot camp for the guns (though I am perfectly willing to learn how to shoot if a friend were to teach me) and this is the type of stuff my female friends and I do. I also really love sci-fi and comics, though not the horror genre.

87

I’m a guy and there have been times in my life when i felt like i get along better with women. Now I think I have a more nuanced view.

I don’t have any brothers and my mom and sisters are all very strong personalities as well as intelligent and charming. (So’s my dad, though he’s not stereotypically masculine). I sometimes feel more comfortable with women than with men. Other times, in other situations, I feel more comfortable with men. It depends.

I don’t have some of the stereotypical guy interests. I’m not particularly interested in cars or sports (although I’m not anti-sport). I don’t enjoy talking about woman I want to “bang” or who I’ve banged. I like talking over fighting. I am an actor (amateur).

None of those things are the defining characteristics of being male, and I’ve met and made friends with plenty of guys who share my likes and dislikes. Still, it’s hard to get completely away from the stereotypes. I was surprised when I learned that a female friend’s boyfriend thought I was gay (and hence “not a threat”), but I guess I could see how someone who didn’t know me very well could come to that conclusion.

I don’t see woman having mostly guy friends as a red flag without taking into consideration other factors. It really depends on the motivation. As has been said above, if it’s because of circumstance interests, then it seems unremarkable to me. If it’s that they dislike women and can’t or refuse to get along with any of them, I get worried.

Sometimes I see women with only or primarily guy friends, but it eventually turns out that all of them or almost all of them are interested in being more than friends. In these situations I can’t always tell if it is because of the guys or because of the girl. Probably it’s usually a bit of both and I’m sure it varies on a case by case basis.

88

I don’t know if I’ve ever met anyone that bad, but the chick from irishgirl’s post is pretty much what I was talking about in the “red flags” post that started this thread.

They tend to claim similar things to what’s being said here, “I can just be myself around guys” and “guys don’t judge me/act catty towards me.” Now I’m not saying that it’s impossible that the situation is exactly as described, but what they often don’t realize is that there really isn’t anything profound about their friendships with men, they don’t have any special rapport, it’s just that the guys are willing to bend over backwards in their efforts to keep these girls in their lives. Of course the friendship is going to seem much easier and more natural to the girls, because they don’t have to put any effort into it, and can be as flaky, rude, or unpleasant as they want without any consequences.

And I don’t care how ugly a girl is, there will always be a group of drama kids or furries or something that will fawn over them like that.

I’m not trying to say anything about the people posting in this thread, I don’t know any of you, but this is my experience with four particular girls I’ve dated (I know, not a large sample size), and it seems that others have encountered their type as well. It’s just been a huge pain in my ass. [Monty Burns]And if I were to have all her friends killed, then I’d be the bad guy![/MB]

89

:dubious:

Is this a parody post? Sure sounds like it.

90

Nope its true. Basically my observation is that if you are an attractive woman and don’t care about it, it starts some sort of competition thing going with other women that somehow leaves you ending up as the bad guy, the conceited on the yadda yadda yadda for pointing it out.

You’re supposed to just take the bullshit from other women because you have it “easier” because you are attractive. And if you get tired of it and stop dealing with petty women which is most women in my experience with regard to this, you have “issues”

Its ok, you can slam me for it, I’m used to it by now. Shrugs.

91

I tend to immediately place this into the ‘girly interest’ category, along with sewing and knitting.

When I went to kindergarten, the class split down pretty evenly during play time. The girls went for the dolls and playing house, and the boys were all over the toy trucks and playing army. And then there was me. All I wanted to do was play trucks and army.

We paintball sometimes, but we’re pretty sadistic when we do. There’s no 3-foot surrender option, etc. Last time some of the guys brought girlfriends and sisters there were a lot of complaints that we were too rough on them and they never wanted to come again. I don’t think any of us would go to a fitness boot camp. We’d rather just go camping. It’a always good when someone gets beer shits and uses poison ivy for toilet paper.

It’s not about rapport or having someone bend over backwards for you. It’s that I don’t have to fake interest in something that I have no interest in, and I don’t have to hide the fact that I like dick and fart jokes or worry about giving someone too much info. It is especially difficult to find common ground with women my age because in very, very many cases their biological clocks are ticking or they already have kids and I am a very childfree person. Guys relate to that a little bit better because they don’t seem to have the overwhelming focus on reproduction. OK, so some do, but I’m not likely to develop a friendship with them. It really is all about finding that group of people that you don’t have to explain everything to.

I don’t get along with every guy I meet, and I don’t hate every woman I meet. Over the years, I started to find that I have pretty much only got guy friends left. I had female friends in the beginning of college and that trickled off because I went into engineering and was busy all the time. I made friends with those around me, and they were men, and that’s how it’s been for the last 8 years. It’s always been more men than women, but the division is more pronounced now.

92

We could definitely start a book club if you’re willing to put up with “dystopian reality” novels, some satire, and a bit of historical fiction in addition to the stuff you mentioned. I tend to like humor and darker fiction and am not into feel-good stuff and glurge. I seem to have a semi-masochistic escapism drive when I read.

I’m also an INTJ and I had a small rift happen with one of my college friends for the same reasons that red_awning mentioned; regardless of caring about it, sometimes I was just a foil to her attempts at romance with the guys she was after and I wasn’t interested in. ::shrugs:: We’re over it now, but it was an issue of resentment for her for a while during freshman year. It happens with some women.

I’ve met a few ladies like irishgirl, and they’re pains to deal with and are probably more of the focus of what the OP has devolved into than a lot of the “has more guy friends” respondents. High maintenance girls often seem to be able to attract guys and most of it is because they’re high maintenance and there are a handful of guys who think that’s what’s good for them. ::shrugs::

93

I’m more suspicious of people who don’t have any old friends (five years or more) than those who don’t have many opposite sex friends.

However, I do think that a lot of the women who can’t be friends with other women have underlying issues like those that have already been mentioned. When I was younger, I preferred being around the guys. I did need to be the center of attention, I did feel that women were catty, and I painted them with the wide Oprah/girly stuff sucks/they hate sports brush that some seem to be using in this thread.

Over time, I’ve changed and so have my friendships.Now my male friends take a very faraway backseat to my close girlfriends. My best friendship is absolutely amazing and I can’t imagine being that close to anyone else besides my husband.

94

I’m not at all into historical fiction, though. I tend not to like them as books or movies, and it doesn’t much matter whether it’s a book that was written a long time ago or a book that was written about a long time ago. I’m really picky about what I will read, and have no problem getting rid of a book if I don’t like it after the first chapter or so.

All of my very old friends are guys. That’s probably because for the last 12 years I’ve been around a lot more of them than I have been around girls due to my choice of careers. There were only 2 other females in my engineering class, and of those, one was a major tomboy like me and the other one talked about nothing other than her wedding and how her fiance bought her a car, etc.

Then everybody quit or graduated and went off their own ways. About 30 of us made it until graduation, and split off everywhere. Some of us are still friends. As it happened, I still talk to two of the guys. So it goes. My guy friends take a back seat to no one, and never have.

95

But what about people who don’t have a lot of female (or black, or what have you) friends because the places where they do their socializing are mostly populated by men, white people, or are demographically skewed in some other way? Is it a red flag if someone only socializes in an environment that favors one demographic over another (assuming they are not explicitly doing so to avoid “undesirables”- that would be a red flag to most people, IMO).

96

Well, there’s really a huge great big difference between “My friends happen to be mostly [male/white/straight/whatever]” and “I just cannot get along with people who are [female/black/gay/whatever]”, though." You know? One is just circumstances, the other is… for me, kind of a red flag.