By Lyn87
Some days I feel like Professor Higgins in My Fair Lady, singing “Why Can’t a Woman be More Like a Man?”
Why is thinking something women never do?
And why is logic never even tried?
Straightening up their hair is all they ever do.
Why don’t they straighten up the mess that’s inside?
I’ve known more than my share of top-rate thinkers and leaders and almost all of them are men. That’s not to say it’s universal: I’ve known plenty of guys that simper like wet kittens, and a few women who stand up and make the tough calls, but by and large the ratio is not even close.
Sometimes we organize ourselves into groups. We do that because nobody can know everything about everything and if we cooperate we can do things we couldn’t do individually. I’ll spare you a dissertation on group dynamics by distilling it down to something you probably already know – men cooperate better than women do.
There are a lot of reasons for that. A group of men will go through the “storming” stage of group formation in a more obvious way than a group of women. That doesn’t mean it’s any more or less tumultuous in its way, but it looks different. A group of guys will rack-and-stack each other, figure out who’s on top, and move out. Informal leadership can switch from one guy to another depending on the task at hand and that goes off without much of a hitch unless somebody has an ego problem. But once we butt heads like a bunch of big-horn sheep (Oddsock, you out there?), we cooperate to accomplish the task. Women just don’t do that as well. They may not do the same kind of obvious “measuring” we do, but it’s just as real. But the big difference is that when women clash they become enemies, whereas men clash in order to establish a hierarchy.
One undermines group cohesion and one builds it. Groups of men can and do organize to beat the crap out of things, usually other groups of men. Whether it is on a battlefield or a market, men organize because we’re better in groups than alone. We get it. A lot of women see men in groups and think we’re at each other’s throats when we’re really doing the rough-and-tumble of male group dynamics to get organized to crush something. It’s rarely personal.
The obvious question that arises is this: if women suck at organizing themselves, how did they gain the lead in nearly every metric that matters? It is well known that a higher percentage of women go to college than men. They make as much or more than men do for the same work. They get the car, the house, the kids and his income when they get tired of their provider. There is no glass ceiling but the glass floor is still there. Basically every sex-specific thing that is done by any organization of any size benefits women more than men. All of that is attributable to organized feminism breaking down the old order until “I am Woman, Hear Me Roar” is not a revolutionary anthem; it’s the foul air we all have to breathe.
The answer, I think, is that women were able to organize to defeat an enemy that really didn’t exist (patriarchal oppression) and to the small extent that women got the short end of the stick in pre-feminist society nobody wanted to defend the status quo. Feminism did not win because women created a strong organization capable of vanquishing a real opponent – feminism won because their opponents didn’t show up to fight (and in a lot of cases their “enemies” were on their side). If they had no men to fight on their behalf and faced a real opponent – a large group of organized men – the lasses would get their clocks cleaned in short order.
So how do groups succeed? The answer depends on what the organization does, but for my purposes let’s assume it’s the kind of organization that must compete in some way. In the absence of formal leadership a group of men would form up, jockey for leadership, figure out a plan, and go at it. The weaker men will follow the leaders (and who’s weak will depend on the task – not all tasks involve moving heavy objects). A group of women in a real competitive environment will usually dither until it’s too late, then do something ineffectual.
But what happens when you mix the sexes in a group? I posit that what happens is often estrogen poisoning. I’ve seen pretty good guys go wobbly when the women dither, prevaricate, procrastinate, and cry. Any decision that requires someone’s feelings to get hurt becomes an emotional hanky-fest where “What is the best way to succeed?” takes a back seat to “What can we do without hurting anyone’s feelings?” The reason is that some of the guys allow themselves to be manipulated by the women. When a group is all male and some guy trots out some crap about subordinating facts to feelings he’ll be rightly ridiculed and will learn to stop saying stupid, sappy nonsense.
But when the stupid, sappy nonsense comes from a crying woman, a lot of guys that you’d think would be the Rock of Gibraltar turn into the Sta-Puff Marshmallow Man, and not the car-crushing version from Ghostbusters, either. They’ll join Team Crying Woman and keep the leaders from hammering out the objectively best plan with endless talk about huuuuurts, and feeeeelings, and the chiiiiildren. It’s those guys that are the problem. By themselves the women couldn’t keep a determined group of men from accomplishing the task. It’s the fact that Team Crying Woman has men wearing their jersey, and those men can throw enough sand in the gears to keep the group focused on the superficial and the unimportant.
I saw this happen recently where a board had to make an obvious call that was going to hurt the feelings of a few people –but they had brought it on themselves. I was trying to figure out the odds based on what the people usually support. Turns out I would have been more accurate looking at the group dynamics.
I was the long-standing informal leader of the group and was pushing for the board to make the only call we could legitimately make. Nobody could name a single pertinent reason not to do the one thing the situation demanded, but one woman turned on the waterworks and the male formal leader pushed me under the bus with a frigging parliamentary maneuver. Did I mention the formal leader was in 100% agreement with me earlier that day and had actually helped me write the motion he was now objecting to, and the crying woman was his wife?
Mere coincidence, no doubt.
I’ll add that my wife was there as well and 100% with me, but then again she’s a borderline genius and thinks more logically than almost anyone I know. As I like to brag: when it comes to brains my wife has balls. (She’s a looker, too, but that’s not important for the moment.) Here’s the deal though, half of the guys clammed up rather than jump in between a heartless alpha bastard like me and my wife the Ice Queen on one side and the beta formal leader with his crying baby-momma on the other.
From the perspective of a process observer it was a fascinating study in human behavior. The guys would have followed me if not for the fact that the baby-momma was crying and the formal leader folded like origami.
So the beta males asked themselves, “Hmmm…. do I follow the alpha male who is correct or protect the crying woman?” One guy called for objectivity, one went for Team Crying Woman, and the other two sat on the sidelines and said nothing.
So estrogen poisoning flipped the formal leader to the other side and neutralized the other beta males as a bloc. Since he had the gavel and I couldn’t beat the numbers, the scales tipped toward Team Crying Woman.
What about the women though? They also had to ask themselves, “Hmmm…. do I follow the alpha male who is correct or the White Knight beta leader (who is now the alpha male on Team Crying Woman) and his crying wife? Two leaned my way a bit but wouldn’t commit to a position (knowing them I truly think it was based on my arguments rather than my alphatude in that setting). The other two stayed out of it entirely.
Again, had the formal leader not been under the influence of estrogen poisoning, most of the women would have followed me, especially had the formal leader stayed with me (plus I really was objectively right).
So to sum up, had it been a group of guys we would have dispensed with the problem in about 30 seconds. Had it been a group of women nothing would have been accomplished. And with a mixed-sex group it only took one woman to give estrogen poisoning to the men and cause institutional paralysis – the same outcome as if it had been all women.
I feel sort of like Professor Higgins, except I had to change the lyrics to, “Why Can’t These Men be More Like a Man?” But unlike the good professor I know the answer – one woman transmitting estrogen poisoning turned a mixed-sex group into one that reaches the same decisions as a group of all women.
