Interesting Meme

[Deborah2B]

319795

I thought this was an interesting picture.

[docrobbysherry]

I don't think I would understand that even if I was a natal female?:eek:

[candykowal]

Part of women's month suggests, as a woman, you should have the courage to tell another woman direct when she has offended, hurt or disappointed you.
I would be a little concerned someone might start a cat fight. Trust in confrontation?

[Lori Ann Westlake]

Interesting meme indeed! Like the Doc, I'm scratching my head over what this might mean. "Be trustworthy," yes, "support other women," but in what ways precisely? Or to turn this around, I guess it's an admonition against some form of betrayal, or hostility toward other women, perhaps some form of behavior that women especially are reputed to be guilty of. But what, precisely?


Part of women's month suggests, as a woman, you should have the courage to tell another woman direct when she has offended, hurt or disappointed you.
I would be a little concerned someone might start a cat fight. Trust in confrontation?

Well, it could be an admonition against starting cat fights over petty issues. That's one form of avoidable hostility. But that seems contradicted by the advice to confront another woman who's offended you. That must run some risk of starting a fight between the two women.

Fair enough, at least one can be "trusted" to be honest with another woman--whether she likes it or not! But I don't see how failure to confront amounts to a "betrayal," or to lack of trustworthiness. isn't it just "keeping the peace"?

I'm not sure what other ideas come to mind. One is that women's worst critics are said to be other women! Maybe it's about that. Another is women's reputed inability to keep a secret. That really is about "trust," and betrayal of a confidence. So it seems a good candidate for an explanation. Mind you, I must say my own wife has always been good at keeping secrets, so I can't complain.

[Beverley Sims]

I tend to get the confidence of women and then they forget what I really am.

[Karren H]

It's a high bar to meet!! That boat has sailed as far as my wife.... she doesn't want me to be a woman and she sure doesn't trust me.... sigh....

[Aunt Kelly]

If you're not a woman, you probably wouldn't get it.

[Miel GG]

Clear as crystal for a GG : sisterhood and empowerment 💪

@Deborah, curious about your reason for posting it !

Some answers are quite perplexing...

[Maria 60]

When Hilory Clinton lost the election I couldn't believe it, my niece works in the HR department where she works. She told me while in training thay taught her that women are jealous of other woman and almost guarantees no women voted for her. But one would think with the women movement they would want a women president, I guess we have to be a women to understand it.

[Lori Ann Westlake]

Clear as crystal for a GG : sisterhood and empowerment

Certainly, Miel, it seemed obvious to me that it's an admonition to support other women--or "empower" them, if you like. What I don't get is the significance of the word "trust." Its existence implies an opposite--"distrust"--the kind of woman other women can not trust. The kind of woman who "disempowers" other women. But in what way, precisely? And why should it apply to women in particular? Does jealousy explain it, as Maria suggested? Are women more jealous of each other than men are? Or is it just a general observation about the fact that some humans behave badly, in any number of ways? Am I overthinking this?

[Deborah2B]

Clear as crystal for a GG : sisterhood and empowerment ��

@Deborah, curious about your reason for posting it !

Some answers are quite perplexing...

Miel GG part of my reason was since we CD's like to present ourselves as woman we should be one that any woman, GG or not, can trust. Trust in what you say and do.

[Miel GG]

Certainly, Miel, it seemed obvious to me that it's an admonition to support other women--or "empower" them, if you like. What I don't get is the significance of the word "trust." Its existence implies an opposite--"distrust"--the kind of woman other women can not trust. The kind of woman who "disempowers" other women. But in what way, precisely? And why should it apply to women in particular? Does jealousy explain it, as Maria suggested? Are women more jealous of each other than men are? Or is it just a general observation about the fact that some humans behave badly, in any number of ways? Am I overthinking this?
We can agree on the fact that humans behave badly sometimes.

However the context here is important because you cannot truly understand the meaning of the quote without a good understanding of how discrimination works (and I cannot explain it in details here). This kind of quote is specific to groups suffering from inequalities who are dealing with members who do not realise how the discrimination system works and whose actions, intentional or not, maintain this system. In this case women.

It is a feminist quote. Being feminist is being a trusty person for another GG. Being feminist is being particularly attentive to not devaluate another GG, helping her to be more self confident and successfully achieve her goals. But all women aren't feminists.

An example : in the western partriarchal society women have to be good housekeepers. When having a reception, still today, some GGs will judge negatively their hostess if she hasn't done the cooking herself or if the house isn't immaculate. Why ? Because they have integrated the rules defined by men and don't question the rules. They aren't supportive of the GG who acts differently although she has her own reasons to do so (maybe she doesn't like cooking or she wants her husband to take part of housekeeping or she was too busy with her job/child/elder or she simply prefers to make something else of her free time...).They aren't women another woman can trust.



Miel GG part of my reason was since we CD's like to present ourselves as woman we should be one that any woman, GG or not, can trust. Trust in what you say and do.
Thanks for your answer, that's my guess about your post.
For the reason I explained before I assume it will be a difficult goal for a CD. Based on my readings here, quite a few reduce being a woman to looking like one. If you willingly reduce women to their appearance (and often a fantasied/stereotyped one) and show no interest in the real life and discrimination GGs endure then you are not allowed to say you understand women and far from being one.
On the other hand, if one is feminist he could be a trusty CD. There is hope !

[Genifer Teal]

It's easy to say a few White Lies when you don't want to hurt someone's feelings. It could also be easy to say that dress looks great on you when actually you're thinking all eyes will be on you instead because it really doesn't make her look good. Lots of different reasons women may not trust each other.

[MonicaPVD]

Let's fix that:
Be a human other humans can trust.

We get carried away with the aesthetics of *being* a woman, let's be good humans.

[CarlaWestin]

Monica, that's where I am. In every post above, exchange the word 'woman' with something else and see how it plays.

[Devi SM]

May be I could say that meme doesn't apply yo crossdressers because they are not women but in my case it has been a reality.

As a man I dissapointed my wife in different ways man always do with their misconception of what means to be a man, so being a woman I could understand how poisoning the testosterone is and being free of it I have now my heart and mind aligned in a different way that has resulted better for my wife.

I'm now a better person because I'm a woman but not in competition with my wife, that's a very common situation between women, so that meme points to that situation of being transparent and honest.

[kellyanne]

319795

I thought this was an interesting picture.

indeed a great truth it can be

Check out Rousseau's " Emile" for a deep dives on (female - female) relations and (male - female) relations and why they take the forms they do.

[Lori Ann Westlake]

Miel, the example you quoted interested me for several reasons worth mentioning at length. I notice most of the posts here tend to be short, so I hope I'll be forgiven a very long post.

Yes, it's a good example of how some women can undermine another woman's self esteem and goals by judging her negatively for being a poor cook or housekeeper. Or a "bad mother," which you didn't say, but it is implicit in what you said about women who would rather devote time to something else, such as a career. Fair enough, point taken!

However, I don't see anything uniquely "Western" about women cooking or caring for the home. Women do these things pretty much the world over: in Russia, China, Japan, the Mideast, South America... In Mumbai wives at home cook lunch for their husbands while the renowned dabbawala service delivers these "tiffin boxes" to their husbands who work in the city.

More relevant. when women criticize other women for "falling short" of certain standards, it's not "men's rules" they're enforcing, but women's rules and women's standards, far more than men's. I grant of course that plenty of men would grumble if their wives didn't put food on the table, or left the house in an unholy mess. But that's a lower level of expectation.

Take cooking for instance. Plenty of women love cooking--like the sister-in-law I mentioned in a recent post (and many others too). Many women "bond around" cooking, among other activities, the way men "bond around" more typically male topics, from cars to carpentry. Of course individuals vary widely, and I do realize some women hate to cook and just see it as a chore.

However, the point I'm making is that men by and large are happy enough as long as food tastes good and fills their stomach. It's more often women who are concerned with the finer points not only of cuisine, but especially, of nutrition, whether food is "healthy," the calories and carbs and possible toxic ingredients and all the rest of it. Women read the warning labels, while men gobble down what's inside regardless. (A stereotype, as with all "gender" things, but a tendency nonetheless.) Come to that, there are some men who are irritated by their wives' insistence on serving "healthy" food and prefer to eat junk food!

This doesn't have to be "Western" either. I ran across this from a Saudi woman who is fluent in English, working in business, with little time to spare in her life, who just the same feels compelled to fulfill what she sees as her domestic responsibilities:


Now... most Saudi women have their maids cook for them... my husband doesn?t really mind, but I cannot think of a woman, who is a total stranger to cook for me and my family and transfer her energy to them! Besides, I?m an excellent cook and I?m a really picky eater. I want my husband and kids to eat clean, tasty, and healthy food. I don?t want to be under the control and mercy of a maid, who might decide to leave all of a sudden and who is basically not a trained cook nor a professional house manager; she is just a helper at home. It?s my house and my family, and I?m responsible for them.

Her sense of responsibility, her natural need for control over her domain, and her pride in doing things well all stand out. And she makes it clear that this is not something her husband is "forcing" her to do. These urges come from inside herself, no matter how "patriarchal" Mideastern culture may be compared with our own. (I have to admire her for that.) And if somebody criticizes a woman--complaining for example that "she's not feeding her kids properly"--it's more likely to be another woman rather than a man who does that.

The point seems clearer still when it comes to housekeeping. Generally speaking, women like to keep a neat, clean and attractive home, even when they're living alone, so men have nothing to do with it. Men of course appreciate that, but here again, men's standards on average are lower. A typical "bachelor pad" is likely to be cluttered, less elegant, and most important of all, dustier and dirtier. Research has confirmed that women have less tolerance for dirt than men do. Some theorize that the evolutionary basis for this is the avoidance of pathogens to which children are particularly vulnerable, since women have always been more involved in child and especially infant care.

So if a woman criticizes another woman for failing to keep an immaculate home, it's women's standards she's enforcing, not men's. In any case keeping a fine home can be one way that women compete with other women for status. Some women are downright "houseproud" in ways that actually irritate their husbands. who are told "don't do this, don't do that; you'll make a mess." Generally a man wouldn't care if his hostess's house was not completely spotless. But there are women who would draw a finger across their hostess's mantelshelf and remark to a friend "Look at that! She doesn't even dust!" I couldn't imagine a man doing such a thing. Women's instincts, women's standards, women's rules. People have standards for their own sex that they expect other members to uphold, and look down on those who fall short. With men it's things like being "tough," and a man who isn't "tough enough" is a "wimp" or a "sissy." Women have standards for themselves in quite different areas, including cleanliness. Anyway all this fits with my earlier conjecture that the meme related to the well-known observation that "women's worst critics are other women."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

In spite of all that, it turns out that's got nothing to do with the meaning of the meme. I suspected all along that there was something behind it that was not being explained. So in the end I Googled it and found it was only the first sentence of a more complete quotation. It's on a poster here (https://i.pinimg.com/originals/60/b9/e5/60b9e584f34cfb7c7b016f1511e7bd77.jpg), but I won't display it because it's too big and overflows the screen. It's from the journalist and author Sophia A. Nelson (http://epluribus.one) (born 1967), who said this:


Be a woman other women can trust. Have the courage to tell another woman direct when she has offended, hurt or disappointed you. Successful women have a loyal tribe of loyal and honest women behind them. Not haters. Not backstabbers or women who whisper behind their back. Be a woman who lifts other women.

So that explains Candy's remarks about "confrontation" and so on that I couldn't make sense of before. Obviously I had a mental block. In my mind if someone had offended me there were only two alternatives: to confront, or not to confront. (Echoes of Hamlet's "to be or not to be.") It didn't occur to me that there was a third alternative: namely, to go dragging third parties into a petty and purely personal dispute between two people. I suppose I might grumble to someone else; but grumbling is just grumbling, a mere venting of feelings that stops there. This is about something more: about triangulating third parties into the dispute and actively whipping up hostility against the offender, orchestrating a kind of "vendetta by proxy." Not a nice practice at all, especially since the target doesn't know she's being targeted or why, and what to do about it. I certainly agree that people who do this are not to be trusted. At least tactful confrontation is honest.

[alwayshave]

Deborah, to me the meme states that women don't trust each other.

[mbmeen12]

The term womxn (/ˈwʊmən/) is an alternative spelling of the English word woman. Womxn has been found in writing since the 1970s, along with the term womyn, to avoid perceived sexism in the standard spelling, which contains the word "man"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Womxn#:~:text=The%20term%20womxn%20(%2F%CB%88w,con tains%20the%20word%20%22man%22.

Better keep up!

[Miel GG]

However, I don't see anything uniquely "Western" about women cooking or caring for the home. Women do these things pretty much the world over: in Russia, China, Japan, the Mideast, South America... In Mumbai wives at home cook lunch for their husbands while the renowned dabbawala service delivers these "tiffin boxes" to their husbands who work in the city.

More relevant. when women criticize other women for "falling short" of certain standards, it's not "men's rules" they're enforcing, but women's rules and women's standards, far more than men's.


I chose to focus on Western women because we are discussing a complicated theme and it would have otherwise required long explanations in relation to cultural differences. And of course because the vast majority of CD s are westerners here... Not many posts about saris (thanks for posting @manemami), boubous or kimonos...

It is difficult to understand gender discriminations without taking a step back from your personal observations. You cannot ignore the fact that we are living in a bi-gendered system in which men are in control. This control leads to the division among female activities and male activities, the less valued going to women (care of childrens, seniors, sick people, ... and house). So I cannot suscribe to your affirmation : More relevant. when women criticize other women for "falling short" of certain standards, it's not "men's rules" they're enforcing, but women's rules and women's standards, far more than men's. because it is first and foremost men's rules which are operating here. How can one not see that if a woman is criticizing another woman it is for the most part because she has subconsciously internalized men's rules ?



In spite of all that, it turns out that's got nothing to do with the meaning of the meme. I suspected all along that there was something behind it that was not being explained. So in the end I Googled it and found it was only the first sentence of a more complete quotation. It's on a poster here (https://i.pinimg.com/originals/60/b9/e5/60b9e584f34cfb7c7b016f1511e7bd77.jpg), but I won't display it because it's too big and overflows the screen. It's from the journalist and author Sophia A. Nelson (http://epluribus.one) (born 1967), who said this:


Be a woman other women can trust. Have the courage to tell another woman direct when she has offended, hurt or disappointed you. Successful women have a loyal tribe of loyal and honest women behind them. Not haters. Not backstabbers or women who whisper behind their back. Be a woman who lifts other women.

Sorry, I have to disagree. The whole quote underlines the importance for a woman to be surrounded by supportive women who will empower her. Being supportive doesn't mean you can't disagree but you will not undermine. Please re-read what I said about feminists above.

[Micki_Finn]

Certainly, Miel, it seemed obvious to me that it's an admonition to support other women--or "empower" them, if you like. What I don't get is the significance of the word "trust." Its existence implies an opposite--"distrust"--the kind of woman other women can not trust. The kind of woman who "disempowers" other women. But in what way, precisely? And why should it apply to women in particular? Does jealousy explain it, as Maria suggested? Are women more jealous of each other than men are? Or is it just a general observation about the fact that some humans behave badly, in any number of ways? Am I overthinking this?

Most of y’all are probably unaware of this, but women are often conditioned by society to backstab, betray, and cut each other down. You probably call this cattiness. This is a powerful tool of the patriarchy to keep women subservient and disorganized, so really this meme speaks to some fundamental realities of our world.

[Lori Ann Westlake]

Check out Rousseau's " Emile" for a deep dives on (female - female) relations and (male - female) relations and why they take the forms they do.

Though I haven't had the time to read Emile, I did take a glance at Wikipedia's summary of the contents, and found, among other things:


Rousseau states that women should be "passive and weak", "put up little resistance" and are "made specially to please man"

Admittedly he adds that "man ought to please her in turn." However, it's easy to see why Mary Wollstonecraft objected so vehemently to the book--and to that Roussellian dictum especially, I'm sure!


The term womxn (/ˈwʊmən/) is an alternative spelling of the English word woman. Womxn has been found in writing since the 1970s, along with the term womyn, to avoid perceived sexism in the standard spelling, which contains the word "man"

Well, I read the Wikipedia article you quoted on "womxn," and I must admit this spelling was new to me. However, I was thoroughly familiar with "womyn" since way back. All I can say is that if "womyn" hasn't caught on among the public in half a century, it's unlikely to do so now. Language evolves the way the majority of people want it to, and all past attempts at "spelling reform" (for whatever reason) have gone to the wall. Let alone attempts to introduce "genderless" pronouns and possessives.

About the only feminist language innovation to be generally adopted is the term "Ms," which at least is useful and practical for referring to a woman when we don't know if she's married or single (or divorced). Besides, we can mumble the word "Ms" in such a way that nobody can be sure whether we're saying "Miss," "Ms," or "Mrs."

When it comes to a singular for "womyn," the one I have seen a long time ago is "womon." It has appeared less often, but that's because for some reason people talk of women in the plural far more than they do in the singular. That's why people (including myself) often find themselves typing "a women" when they mean "a woman." They never type "a men" (unless they're concluding a prayer), So "womon" hasn't been seen so often. But at least it conforms to the normal rules of English pronunciation. If these people are serious about trying to get the public to adopt alternative spellings, their chances are slim enough as it is, so why compromise them further? Why not at least pick a sensible spelling, instead of one (like "womxn") that people are most likely to reject as absurd?


[About the meaning of the quote:[ Sorry, I have to disagree. The whole quote underlines the importance for a woman to be surrounded by supportive women who will empower her. Being supportive doesn't mean you can't disagree but you will not undermine.

Actually I don't disagree with that statement at all. As I said in an earlier post, the first part of the quote was self-evidently an exhortation to women to support other women. And by extension, not undermine them. The only point I was making was that this is a general statement, while the quote turned out to be focused on a specific way in which some women undermine other women.


It is difficult to understand gender discriminations without taking a step back from your personal observations. You cannot ignore the fact that we are living in a bi-gendered system in which men are in control. This control leads to the division among female activities and male activities, the less valued going to women (care of childrens, seniors, sick people, ... and house).

Admittedly my personal observations were directed toward the limited topics of cooking and home care that were originally brought up. But taking a giant step back to view the Western world (in particular) at large, it's obvious from this and another, later statement that our understandings of the world are simply poles apart! I can't see us agreeing any time soon.

There's so much involved here that it's hard to know where to begin--and more important, where to stop! But briefly, if we're talking about "gender roles" in the workplace, say, we only live in a partially gendered society with enormous overlap between what men do and what women do. That's to be expected, since men and women tend to be born different in the first place, with different aptitudes, capabilities, and preferences--again with a lot of overlap. These differences are due to Nature, not to any rules set by men. And if women are "more liberated" today than they were in the past, that's because we're living in better conditions than we used to, thanks to technologies of all kinds for which men have been largely responsible.

I say "partially" gendered because, for instance, over one third of doctors and lawyers are women. In the U.S., that is. On the other hand, only two percent of plumbers and auto mechanics are women--even though these jobs pay more than some of the "caring" jobs you mentioned. Most women don't want to do those jobs. "Just try getting women into the trades," said one recruiter. "It's like pulling teeth!"

That reflects for one thing that women prefer to work with people, while more men are happy working with "things"--an innate tendency to difference between the sexes. These differences show up even if I translate them back into a single profession: medicine. Women are free to be doctors, and specialize however they like--internal medicine, oncology, cardiology, whatever. The reasons why women choose one specialty over another itself tells us something about women's preferences. While 35 percent of doctors as a whole are women, nearly two-thirds, 63 percent, of pediatricians are women. This reflects women's maternal instinct to care for children. Over half, 57 percent, of Ob/Gyns are women. That's obvious: it's all about women and babies. The only reason why it's less attractive than pediatrics is that it can involve surgery, and women prefer "softer," less "mechanical" methods of healing. They also love "talk therapy." About two-thirds of psychotherapists are women. What's bottom of the league? Only five percent of those in orthopedics are women. That's all about "ball joint replacement" and whatnot. Women can recognize auto mechanics, even when it's in disguise, and they stay away from it in droves!

To that extent, men and women both are tending to obey Nature's rules rather than "men's rules," with a lot of flexibility of course. As for who makes "society's" rules, they're not "men's" rules so much as the outcome of a complex and often subtle negotiation between men and women. (I'm reminded of ellbee's remark (https://www.crossdressers.com/forums/showthread.php?p=4513563#post4513563) on another thread about "the systemic oppression men face on a daily basis.") When it comes to laws, in the U.S. a quarter of the House and of the Senate is female. I understand that's about the world average. In France I gather it's even higher, something like 39 percent women. So on the face of it that's "partially gendered." However, that doesn't take into account the fact that these officials are elected. And more women vote than men. in the U.S. anyway. So a politician has to pay attention to what women want, otherwise he's out of office.


So I cannot suscribe to your affirmation : More relevant. when women criticize other women for "falling short" of certain standards, it's not "men's rules" they're enforcing, but women's rules and women's standards, far more than men's. because it is first and foremost men's rules which are operating here. How can one not see that if a woman is criticizing another woman it is for the most part because she has subconsciously internalized men's rules ?

I'm afraid I don't see that at all. To start with, women are often competitive, or have different values from other women, so there are all kinds of ordinary reasons for them to disagree or criticize. Just as an example, mobs of women enforcing morality by calling another woman a... well, that word gets bleeped here, so let's just say "no better than she should be" (as the phrase goes), because she is "breaking the rules" by offering herself as unfair competition for their husbands and boyfriends. These are society's rules about sexual behavior, fidelity and "not poaching," in which married men and women both have an interest. As for internalizing men's rules, I know of no evidence that such a process is taking place. Women are not robots, not "Stepford wives" programmed by men. They're human beings with a will of their own. "Society's" rules no doubt are internalized to some degree by all of us, not just by women. But those are the outcome of a society-wide negotiation, not just "men's" rules, and also vary from one subculture to another. I think you're attributing too much power to men that they really don't have.

There are different types of feminism, and what people think of "feminism" depends very much on what type they have in mind--if indeed they know. I was just looking at a Washington Post poll (https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/feminism-project/poll/) on "What Americans Think about Feminism." Overall, opinions tended to be supportive, including those of many men, though there was naturally a gender divide. I have little doubt that what most people had in mind was what Christina Hoff Sommers called "equity" feminism, which has become mainstream and most people support: equal pay and opportunities for women and so forth, which Sommers called "as American as apple pie." (Wyoming, a Western pioneer state, first gave the vote to women as early as 1869, as I expect you know.) However, what you're championing seems to be the "radical" kind. One question asked respondents whether "the feminist movement" unfairly blames men for women's challenges. 64 percent of women and 43 percent of women said No. I think they'd change their minds in a hurry if they read of men being blamed, not only for women's lifestyle choices (the subject of another question), but even for women's own bad behavior toward other women. That really is quite a stretch.


Most of y?all are probably unaware of this, but women are often conditioned by society to backstab, betray, and cut each other down. You probably call this cattiness. This is a powerful tool of the patriarchy to keep women subservient and disorganized, so really this meme speaks to some fundamental realities of our world.

This sounds to me like a secularized version of "the Devil made me do it." From what I gather of her background, I'm pretty sure the author of the quotation would be shocked and disappointed to hear such a suggestion, when her goal was to persuade "untrustworthy" women to take responsibility for their behavior toward other women, not to fabricate excuses for blaming it on "society" or on men--all the more implausible when no men are involved.

Assuming that women are in fact more prone than men to this kind of "behind-your-back" behavior, I would attribute the cause, not to "society," but to individual biopsychology. Women on average are more "socially oriented" than men and when faced with what they see as a "problem"--which includes feeling "offended" by another woman--are more likely to seek a "social solution," which involves seeking help from, and alliances with, others. Unfortunately this is harmful behavior if it results in a woman being unknowingly and unfairly targeted by these allies, or a "catfight" that divides a formerly harmonious group into opposing factions. Men on the other hand are usually less sensitive to "slights" in the first place, but more to the point, men faced with a "problem" are more likely to want to deal with it themselves if they can. Or to just "tough it out." So if they've got a purely personal "issue" with another man, they more often see it as "my fight, not someone else's," and they're less likely to make the fight "spill over" by involving third parties. Of course men also fight among themselves--all that testosterone, y'know--but usually more openly, I would say.

[DianeT]

Assuming that women are in fact more prone than men to this kind of "behind-your-back" behavior, I would attribute the cause, not to "society," but to individual biopsychology.
Lori, since you are alluding to biopsychology, I'm interested in what genes or physical specificities would make genetic women resort to backstabbing more than their XY-based companions?
As you are discarding "society" as a cause, do you think that our behaviors are based solely on biology?

[kellyanne]

See Schopenhauer's " on Women"

The classic thesis is men control societal resources and ultimately all women compete on one playing field - attraction from men, for this reason men and women cannot be friends because a man has one reason to become friends

with a woman but many to befriend a man.

The wife would not accept another woman with a strong sports interests attending baseball games with her hubby because she believes here primary interest is really him - not baseball - but she has no such concerns per se if he attends with a male friend.

Another effect , according to Rousseau and Schopenhauer , is women care more about what others think than men and ultimately they rank one opinion above all else - the opinion of the man she has found favor with,

so she worries what others may think if she is seen to interact with a man not her hubby - her view is that in can be seen as evidence of a romance past, present or future.

Schopenhauer suggests inter female conflict is ultimately from odium figulinum or " trade jealousy" .

[DianeT]

KellyAnne, the same Rousseau wrote "Woman is made to submit to man and to endure even injustice at his hands" (L'Emile). And the same Schopenhauer (supposedly inspired by Rousseau) wrote "They form the sexus sequior, the second sex, inferior in every respect to the first." (On women). Schopenhauer absolutely loathed women (and his mother above all). I am afraid I can't seriously recognize them any credibility or authority over that particular subject.

I'm still curious about the explanation for biology-originated behaviors.

[char GG]

It seems this meme causes a lot of over-thinking.

[Lori Ann Westlake]

Hi Diane,

I wouldn't say society has no effect on our behavior. Not at all! I mentioned an example above of "social rules," about sexual mores in that case (which can change somewhat, as we know), and obviously we internalize all kind of social rules from childhood, such as "Thou shalt not steal." So yes, our natural instincts do become modified and refined by social rules. Which is just as well, otherwise we'd all be behaving like savages, doing whatever our instincts told us to do, no matter what the harm to others.

Even then, instinct still plays a part in curbing bad behavior, because we have evolved intelligence, awareness of long term consequences, and controls over impulsive behavior, along with feelings we call "empathy," a "conscience," a sense of "guilt," and so on. And, dare I add, a sense of pride in "doing the right thing," whatever that may mean, either in general human terms or by the rules of a particular society, which can vary. All of these feelings are natural too, and serve as inhibitions against harming others, though of course they don't always prevail when temptation looms. They don't have to be "taught," though admittedly people can feel guilty simply for breaking the rules of their own society or subculture, which may not apply in another. I expect the rules of any particular society evolved to be functional in whatever environment they lived in (with a certain amount of randomness thrown in), though those rules can linger long after the environment has changed, as we know. But if humans at large had no "conscience," we wouldn't have a "society at all. "Welcome to the Jungle!" as "Guns 'n' Roses" sang!

Getting back to your question, I thought I explained this in my response to Micki Finn's post, but I'll try again. If "society" actually encourages backstabbing, whispering and plotting secretly behind people's backs, getting "gangs" together to attack and undermine a single person, and suchlike skullduggery, why should women be more prone than men to act on this injunction? That is, assuming that they are--a point I was careful to mention--but I think it's fair to say that women, more than men, have a reputation for indulging in this kind of behavior. Not that it's exclusive to women of course; a lot of men have done the same to other men, especially in politics. There are no absolute differences between the sexes. But it does seem by reputation to be more of a "women's thing," even out of petty motives. Teenage girls in high school for instance often practice "exclusion games," forming a "clique" of alliances and excluding the "unpopular" girls from the clique. But the alliances can also shift and change. Best friends today, daggers drawn tomorrow.

In any case I don't believe for a moment that society "encourages" this kind of behavior. Especially men. These are not "men's rules" at all. "Men's rules" say things like "Play the game! (by the rules). Play fair." "Fight your own fight." "Two onto one ain't fair." "Pick on someone your own size." "Don't hit below the belt." And so on. Of course these rules are often broken, but that's beside the point. They're still ideals that society teaches. So could it be that men teach them to other men, but not to women? That's a possible hypothesis, but I don't believe it. Rules of that kind are meant to apply society-wide, to women and men alike.

If women are indeed more prone than men to whispering, backstabbing and other manipulative behaviors, the explanation has to be sought elsewhere. Specifically in the innate differences that have evolved between women and men in their adaptations to survival.

The world of living organisms has always been competitive in the cause of survival. But with men, the competition has more often been directly with Nature itself, both animate and inanimate: a world of "Things." I mentioned that in my post about "people versus things," a female versus a male world. Of course there's an enormous overlap between the two. But the whole notion of "survival alone in the wild" tends to be a male one.

Researchers have observed that men's self esteem depends more on being capable of maintaining independence from others, while women's self esteem depends more on maintaining "closeness" to and alliances with others. This reflects women's greater "social" orientation compared with men. It's a survival technique, as is men's conquest of Nature. Women are not as physically tough and muscular, have infants to care for, and need the protection of others. But there's an up-side and a down-side to this orientation. If a woman feels "offended, hurt, or disappointed" by another woman, she may perceive it as a threat to their alliance in a way that a man would not. She may also have been reluctant to "confront" in the first place because she feared that conflict would end their alliance anyway. So her reaction is to go seeking alliances with other women by way of compensation. But in addition, the fear and sense of threat posed by the original "offender" leads the "offended" woman to turn hostile and seek help in denigrating her and trying to exclude her. I guess that's about the best way I can explain it.

[DianeT]

Lori, I don't think anybody said that women were prone to backstabbing. The quote from which the meme was extracted just mentions it as a possibility. You derive a whole line of reasoning from that hypothesis, but don't you want to verify this hypothesis first?

As for "men's rules", you say there aren't, but still mention a few, revolving around the themes of gaming and fighting. Why just games and fights? The rules of men I would like to talk about are mostly social expectations about men and women. You are telling me there are no such rules. I find it hard to believe that men rules do not exist and therefore that women could not interiorize them when men were dominant for thousands of years, ruling states, families, forbidding women to vote, to divorce, to have jobs without the husband's approval, to even have sexual pleasure in some instances. And hard to believe that our education system wasn't built on these grounds and could not shape women's behaviours. Your explanations about women's behaviours circle back in several occasions to the assumed fact that they innately love to be responsible of their home, love children, hate mechanics, etc. I don't believe they do due to their nature. But that they were simply told from a tender age (check the girl section in a toy shop) that the home is their responsibility (and know the blame will be put on them, not their husbands, when a guess notices some missed spot), that a woman must love babies and children, that they are genetically incapable of fixing cars, that they should be the ones taking the dishes back to the kitchen while the husbands chat and drink in the garden. This is all social expectations, and like you said, we can abide by them without being explicitly told to (monkey sees monkey does is also education).
The world is slowly changing, so do the minds. There's nothing a woman can't do. And probably nothing they wouldn't like to do, if only we didn't tell them it's not for them. Since the "society" placed us (I'm speaking as a man here) in command for so long and left enduring stigmates of this in our social and cultural environment, as men we have the great responsibility of getting the balance right when we can. After all, we too can be a human being that women can trust.

[kellyanne]

All people suffer the prejudice of their own era.

History shows that the day will come when all we believe will be considered unacceptable, ergo should everything we think and say be dismissed outright?

It is the nature of our times to dismiss any opinion we do not agree with as untrue and wrong, and anything else the writer says must also be wrong because it is not agreeable to the reader.

As to Schopenhauer's enmity to the fair gender - I had mentioned that in a caveat.

[DianeT]

Kellyane, you brought these examples up, I didn't ask for them. The prejudices of the era are what they are, but if I'm not interested in three-century old ramblings from a depressive disgruntled ultra-mysoginist philosopher to educate myself about women, that is my right, as it is my right to not recognize your sources as the best example of an objective point of view about women. I imagine that if an author of the 18th century had written an essay about transvestites, explaining they were inferior to men and their brains smaller, you wouldn't be defending her/him at all and would be quick to explain that gender theory has fortunately progressed since. But for (genetic) women, it seems anything will fly. Well, no. And especially not in such a thread.

Also, I tried to be respectful in my answer, attacking your sources but not you personally. And addressed you by your name. It would be nice if you could return the favor.

[Lori Ann Westlake]

Apologies for the monster post, but these are complex issues.


Lori, I don't think anybody said that women were prone to backstabbing. The quote from which the meme was extracted just mentions it as a possibility. You derive a whole line of reasoning from that hypothesis, but don't you want to verify this hypothesis first?

In fact that's not the case, Diane. It's true that Sophia Nelson's quote was addressed specifically to women, from which one might infer that she believes backstabbing (etc.) to be more of a female vice. However, the same assumption was implicit in remarks from Miel and from Micki, who both intimated that women's frequent hostility toward other women was the fault of men (or the evil Patriarchy) who "trained" women in particular (not men) to act this way as a "divide and conquer" strategy to "keep women down." (As if men don't also fight among themselves, though usually in a more direct way.) Most of all though, it's an impression I've gained myself from multiple sources over life in general. If I didn't have that impression already, I would have said :Who says women are more prone to this behavior anyway? It's just a human trait."

Is it true? Others seem to think so. Here are a couple of sources from the Web:

Women vs. men: Who likes to backstab more? (http://howtounderstandpeople.blogspot.com/2015/02/women-vs-men-who-likes-to-backstab-more.html)

Then here's a more formal paper from Tracy Vaillancourt, a professor at the University of Ottawa:

Do human females use indirect aggression as an intrasexual competition strategy? (https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.2013.0080)

She starts off by saying outright:


Indirect aggression includes behaviours such as criticizing a competitor's appearance, spreading rumours about a person's sexual behaviour and social exclusion. Human females have a particular proclivity for using indirect aggression, which is typically directed at other females, especially attractive and sexually available females, in the context of intrasexual competition for mates.

So she places this behavior in the context of competition for mates, but I'd say it occurs in broader contexts also. In any case men also compete for mates--often with physical violence toward other men--but that's "direct" aggression as opposed to "indirect."

As for the rest, it's an exaggeration of what I said to claim that "all" women love looking after a home, or hate mechanics. These are tendencies, that's all. in the case of mechanics, it's not so much that women "hate" mechanics, but that most would rather do other, usually more "people-oriented" jobs. Anyway plumbing and especially auto mechanics can be "dirty" jobs, and women are less tolerant of dirt than men, as I said earlier. Rosie the Riveter at least had a clean job (if you're familiar with that American icon). A more pertinent question might be "if gender imbalances are the result of discrimination engineered by men, why are men so anxious to keep women out of ordinary working class jobs like plumbing, but far more willing to allow women into "power professions" like doctoring, lawyering, journalism, politics and others?"

To talk about the past is to open up a colossal can of worms, hence many details to follow. Yet I'm not concerned about the past, because it's over. And we can't judge the past by present day standards. But in summary, there's a tendency by some to blame men for "oppressing" women in the past, where the truth is that men and women alike were both oppressed by Nature--until humans, men especially, got the upper hand over Nature in very recent times. Nature gave men more physical power than women, that's all.

For nearly all of human history we struggled for survival in brutal conditions that in turn brutalized our ancestors who lived in them. They routinely practiced cruelties intolerable to us in the comfort and security of today. Starvation, disease, pain and death were rampant, along with the "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse": War, Famine, Plague, and Pestilence. War in particular was inevitable, given humans' propensity for breeding and overrunning their resources, leading to competition for territory. Most wars in history were caused by overpopulation. (My wife had a favorite high school history teacher who pointed that out. He told the truth about humans.) This was still true of the war in Rwanda in the 1990s. It wasn't "all about 'tribalism,'" as some people claimed. The past was often a world of cut-throat competition for survival at every level, including robbers on the road. Highwaymen were still common in Britain in the late 18th century, as we know. As for the Wild West, it was still wild even a century later.

Voting? Never mind women; most men didn't have a vote in medieval times. In those days it was logistically impossible to conduct an election in a territory the size of a nation. The resources to do such things didn't exist. Often it wasn't even safe for women to travel unescorted, so control (and defense) of a nation naturally devolved upon a feudal hierarchy of armed men. At the time of England's Great Reform Bill of 1832, if I remember correctly, only one in eight men had a vote, due to the need for a (real) property qualification. Earlier in 1780 it was one in eighteen. It was probably assumed that if men weren't accomplished enough (and therefore educated and intelligent enough) to achieve property ownership, they weren't fit to vote wisely.

Women owning real estate? Sometimes they could, but in primitive times it was no use "owning" property if you couldn't defend it against marauders, and men were needed to do that. Noblewomen of course owned lands in their name, but they had armies of soldiers to protect it. Men were considered responsible for their wives' misbehavior, so they were permitted more control over their wives. And so on.

All this changed slowly over the centuries as civilization evolved further, but originally societies were far more dependent upon men, including individual men, for survival. Men's superior strength and toughness were essential for hard manual labor, for dangerous work, and for fighting and defending territory. So entire cultures looked up to and valued men for these qualities. "Gender roles" of course were vastly simplified, exaggerated and absolutized in more primitive days. There wasn't as much room for variation in a simpler, mostly agrarian society. Millions of would-be "intellectual" men never got an education--no resources to do it, and few job opportunities except as monks and priests--so were forced by default into manual labor or warriorship to survive.

The way men were valued more highly than they are today was demonstrated in an anecdote I read a long time ago about some American radical feminists trying to indoctrinate women in India. The feminists were excoriating men as "oppressors," while the Indian women were staring at them as if they'd come from Mars. They placed a far higher value on men in their own culture, and didn't hold contempt for men. The reason was simple enough. With India being a less "developed" nation than the United States, industrially and economically, these women were far more in touch with the days when men's physical labor was, and often still was, so necessary and valued.

Men's trade and technologies created wealth--even such simple things as clocks and eyeglasses and an 18th-century advance in crop rotation--slowly improved life over the centuries and made it more secure, while authority became more centralized and stabilizing (partly thanks to the invention of gunpowder). It all culminated in the Industrial Revolution and everything that came after. As physical conditions changed, so did society. More wealth, more safety, more resources, more sophistication and job possibilities, a greater diversity of roles for everybody, including women, who took advantage of them,

Men, through the technology for which they were chiefly responsible--in the past anyway--gave away much of their power to women, and "liberated" women from the restrictions formerly imposed on them by Nature, due to their lesser physical strength and toughness. Plus of course women's need to be preoccupied with infant and child care, while men had other things to do. Which is not to ignore the fact that women historically have nearly always contributed to the food supply as well, by farming, gathering and so on.

But the role of biology and instinct can not be ignored in all of this. As far as gender roles were exaggerated and rigid in former times, at least they were based on natural differences between women's and men's instincts. For instance, it's not just the physiological fact that it's women who have babies, but the accompanying psychological fact that women in general are more motivated toward infant and child care. Not exclusively of course; "good fathers" are needed too. And some women just "aren't motherly." But on average, women are more motivated to invest time in child care. It's not just a "social rule." It's in their DNA.

Also, some traits that people might call "sexism" are not imposed by "social rules" at all, and for that reason cannot be easily changed. No doubt they were formed originally under survival pressures of some kind, but that's so far back in our evolution that they've now become instinctive. An interesting example is the fact that men and women alike subconsciously perceive deeper voices as "more authoritative." Nobody "teaches" people to see them that way. It's instinctive. Interestingly, CEOs with deeper voices tend to earn more money as a trend. It can work for women too. Women with shrill voices attract more attention when they're in distress and need rescuing, but they're less likely to be seen as reliable leaders. So it's not just a men-women thing, but it may have originated with men being seen as authoritative in the most vital fields of security and survival; or perhaps the difference between adults (powerful, wise) and children (weak, inexperienced). Maggie Thatcher took advantage of this by getting voice training to sound more authoritative, and won big-time. People do not reject women leaders out of hand. But to my knowledge, Hillary Clinton did no such thing, and lost. Evolution has programmed a lot more into our brains than we realize.

Once our environment began to change, starting especially with the Victorian era, we saw women responding by changing their roles rapidly, certainly by historical standards. If women had internalized the notion that "men were the superior members of society," as they were in Victorian times, that idea has vanished into thin air like a puff of smoke from a steam train. Another notable example was that women always had to be wary of unwanted pregnancy, but after the birth control pill was introduced in the 1960s, it was swiftly followed by a loosening of women's sexual inhibitions and we had a so-called "sexual revolution" the very next decade. (And also, regrettably, a sudden tide of divorce.) But if some women at the time imagined they wanted unattached sex the way men supposedly do (though that's not the whole truth either), at the end of the 1970s we were hearing "Women want relationships after all!" That was women's natural instincts reasserting themselves after a decade of experiment.

Something similar happened after a generation of second-wave feminism. By the 1990s, numerous women were starting to complain that "feminism" was focusing too heavily on trying to turn women into substitute men, pushing women into careers in the name of "equality," while ignoring women like themselves who preferred to stay home and raise their children. Some felt feminism had devalued the mission that to them was most important and rewarding in their lives, so if another woman asked them "What do you do?" they felt embarrassed to say "I'm just a housewife and mother." That's when the backlash really set in, and more and more women started saying things like "the NOW doesn't speak for me." Again, women's instincts reasserting themselves.

The bottom line here is that I don't see any evidence that women in general today are obeying any "men's rules" they've supposedly internalized. For one thing if men were so much in control of women's thoughts and motives, how come there are so many radical feminists around blaming men for everything that's wrong with their lives? If men were programming women's behavior, they sure did a lousy job!

While we all internalize some social rules, overall I don't see women today acting in ways that can't in the main be explained by their natural instincts and variations among individuals, as opposed to some set of rules devised specifically by men, solely for men's advantage. Occam's Razor and all that. Men and women have had tens, even hundreds of thousands of years for evolution to shape their aptitudes and behaviors differently. Despite decades of "equal pay," "equal opportunity" and "antidiscrimination" laws, not to mention "sexual harassment" laws and whatnot designed to promote "equality," "equality" does not mean "sameness." So it doesn't surprise me in the least to see women behaving differently and making different life choices from men, as a pattern. It's exactly what I'd expect.

Women of course aren't all the same, any more than men are. When it comes to "gender conditioning," I've never forgotten something a woman told me back in the 1990s. She was trying to argue that "social conditioning" was responsible for men and women being different. She described how, when she was a girl, her father insisted on her brother being the one to mow the lawn, because that was a "man's job," and as a girl she wasn't supposed to do it. But her brother got fed up with doing it all the time. Meanwhile, she was fascinated by the motor mower. So she came to an arrangement with her brother, where she had fun mowing the lawn while he went off to do something he wanted to do instead.

What was the outcome of all this? As a woman, her hobby was building engines and racing cars! Well, good for her! People should do what they'd good at and enjoy the most! But I had to laugh because she blew her own argument right out of the water. She demonstrated that attempts at "social conditioning" exist, yes- But she also proved that they didn't work!--certainly not in her case. Instead, she followed her own natural bent. Many people do things in defiance of their "social conditioning"--including crossdressing of course--and if they seem to go along with this conditioning instead, it's more likely because it's in harmony with their natural leanings to begin with.

[kellyanne]

No offense intended

ciao