Toxic feminity: female-on-female incivility

wtknight · 2018-05-03T13:21:05+00:00

Women always seem to me to get along well publicly. When women tell me what other women do, though, it always seems that there is a lot of social conflict below the surface. I think the conflict is often more subtle than the stereotype. Men on the other hand have more overt displays of dominance towards each other, but both genders essentially do the same thing.

YetAnotherCommenter · 2018-05-03T11:18:17+00:00

Most slut-shaming is done by women against each other.

Part of the reason intra-female competition may be a little less violent is that women aren't at risk of being 'socially defeminized' in the same way that men are at risk of being socially emasculated (this ultimately comes down to the fact that traditional gender roles see masculinity as a Platonic Form and femininity as an Innate Essence). That said, women still have reason to compete. Competing over men is a big one. And of course just general competition between each other for the usual reasons (influence, resources, limited opportunities etc).

Of course its hard to disentangle society and biology but both clearly influence things.

Mr_Smoogs · 2018-05-03T11:51:03+00:00

Women pre-select and mate poach. This gives them an inclination towards character assassination and boyfriend stealing.

Young women often don’t have female friends. They have female competition.

carefreevermillion · 2018-05-03T13:17:23+00:00

My workplace is rife with it, which means I have the lovely job as their manager to hear what everyone thinks of everyone else because they want me to fix their problems. I know that horrifically nasty things are said behind my back, and all you can really do is be as fair as possible and stick to the spirit and letter of the law (well, policies) so you're giving them as little fodder as possible.

thinkytoes · 2018-05-03T12:01:11+00:00

I'm a girl's girl so I do not relate to this view.

I know of it. I know I have witnessed massively bitchy chicks who are, as feminists called them, male identified. I take that to mean they rate the collective support of male opinion over the acceptance of their fellow woman. Loser shit because guys will slap you on the back for being sooooo cool and still put a giant diamond ring on the prettiest chick who makes them feel seen.

I assume women who cannot be civil to be as easy to ignore as men I do not want. Invisible. Everyone is just trying to make it. There is no inherent incivility that I have with other women.

Outside of maybe immaturity, I can't explain it but thrilled I am not around this type all the time. Competition I guess. Like how men tell us girls how they trump other men with money or dick size. But like in texts and bed where their boys can't hear.

Aaren_Augustine · 2018-05-03T11:56:25+00:00

The author of the Manipulated Man, Esther Vilar, had this to say about her basically showing women's collective hand; said in 1998 -

'So I hadn't imagined broadly enough the isolation I would find myself in after writing this book. Nor had I envisaged the consequences which it would have for subsequent writing and even for my private life - violent threats have not ceased to this date"

PuleaSpataru69 · 2018-05-03T12:51:11+00:00

Hah! Right now I am fighting with a landwhale on reddit because she thinks I am a slave because I like to cook and clean. She thinks this is making me a doormat. My husband makes more than me so I try to pull my weight in different ways. Apparently that makes me a doormat and I should leech off his money instead and when he gets home after a hard day of work I should tell him to cook and clean.

Everyone talks about the evil patriarchy but truth is nothing is nastier than women. I have been viciously attacked numerous times. Men are actually nice to me and they protect me.

Femininity is the strength of a woman, and real men see this. But landwhale feminazis see femininity as a weakness and try to put me down.

meomeowmeoww · 2018-05-03T10:45:13+00:00

Stop trying to make feminity happen! It's not going to happen!

ARealHoss · 2018-05-03T15:15:30+00:00

I earnestly believe it depends on the woman (like all things). Men and women tend to be equally aggressive, but how that aggression manifests itself varies between the sexes. Men tend to be more overt with their actions, while women are conditioned to be more subvert.

kasper138 · 2018-05-03T15:20:53+00:00

A man will cut off your arm; a woman will shit inside your heart.

PennnyLame · 2018-05-03T14:53:05+00:00

IME, the mean girl shtick is a gauntlet most girls deal with but it’s pretty isolated to junior high. I had close gf’s through HS and then got really, really close with women in college by living in a sorority, cultivating relationships with girls from my classes and volunteer work at a local charter school. I am neighbors with one of the girls I met volunteering in college- luckily our husbands get along. I am also close with my husband’s best friend’s wife.

I have “friends” that I keep at an arm’s length for sure (usually gf’s of male friends, colleagues that I network with or some other situation where I am cordial but not close) but I also have women that are actual friends who I trust and I consider an incredibly important part of my support system.

throwbacktuesday98 · 2018-05-03T10:32:18+00:00

Mean people exist in both sexes. I don't think there is a problem of 'toxic femininity.'

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SmurfESmurferson · 2018-05-03T16:39:58+00:00

Beware of any woman who proudly proclaims herself "not like other girls," that "other girls are just drama," or that she "just never clicks with other girls."

As a certified girl's girl, I assure you - the female gender didn't have a meeting to decide which girls we don't like. If we all don't like you, the common denominator is you.

blackedoutfast · 2018-05-03T16:59:34+00:00

women are constantly doing the "crabs in a bucket" thing where any time one of them starts to succeed, the rest of them will try to bring her back down. us dudes don't pick up on a lot of it because it's so subtle compared to what we do to each other.

men are always busting each others balls and talking about how we fucked each other's moms and how they're faggots and have small dicks and shit like that, but we know it's not serious. women are superficially nice and complimentary to each other, but there's always this a mean, insulting undercurrent with all these little jabs and backhanded compliments.

PersonofControversy · 2018-05-03T17:28:53+00:00

I'm going to weigh in on this discussion with my own point of view, which will probably be ignored but oh well here we go: As a guy with multiple sisters, as well as studying in a female dominated field where 70% of my friends are female (which, tbh, took some getting used to), I think the problem is this.

Girls do have female friends. The whole idea of young women not having friends, but competition, is ridiculous.

It's just that, to some guys, some female friendships don't look that much like friendships, and those friendships tend to attract a lot of attention.

I find that, in my purely anecdotal experience as young, college age dude that only really knows young, college aged girls, is that the stereotype of 'girl drama' isn't entirely untrue, and yet it doesn't seem to kill female friendships. For example I was once seeing this girl who was telling me the story of her flat, which involved such shenanigans such as one girl sleeping with her friends ex-boyfriend only a week after the friend broke up with him, one friend writing a long and angry diary entry about another friend (calling her all kinds of dirty names), and then the other girls in the flat finding and reading that diary, and some more, even crazier shit; like the fact that all these 5 flatmates were all viciously gossiping about each other, to each other, in a figurative pentagram of slander, and it hadn't blown up yet. And I just sat there amazed, because after all of this, these girls were still friends. Not just friends, but good friends. Or in another case where two of the girls I'm friends with had a falling out, and I didn't notice for two weeks because they would both still talk to me, would both still go to the same events with all our other friends, and play the same games and have fun in the same room, and I never actually noticed that they were steadfastly refusing to talk to each other until it was pointed out to me. Or how, growing up, I would listen to my sisters talk about the problems they had with their own friendship groups, and be amazed at how intense things got, especially compared to my own life. It was like, somehow, they each had like 5 best female friends who were wonderful and loving and supportive, and yet hung out with a group of 20 people, and so had to deal with the drama of sharing so much of their lives with 15 people they didn't actually like as much. While I, in contrast, had 5 good guy friends, and basically just did everything with them.

So I think some guys think girls don't have friends because, while (as far my experience shows) the stereotypical guy can just physical fight or directly argue to establish dominance/resolve issues, girls tend to resort to different tactics to do the same thing. Tactics that would literally burn most male friendships I've seen to the ground and then salt the metaphorical ashes,but seem to leave female friendships intact. And I also think that, while girls have the same number of supportive friendships as guys, they also tend to have larger social circles, so guys looking in see a lot of noisy interactions between girls and their not-friends that can drown out the actual friend-friend interactions.

And I'm certain a lot of girls feel the same way about guy friendships. I once shoved my best friend into the ground and accidentally almost broke his finger, because he stole my shoes on an night out; the next day we were back to normal and all our mutual female friends were amazed. Apparently there is a lot less physical play-fighting between girls, so the idea of two friends coming to physical blows and then staying friends was as weird to them, as the half the stuff I talked about above is to me.

Any thoughts? Also I already know all this stuff is purely anecdotal, and basically only relevant to my life, so please chime in with literally anything else.

[deleted] · 2018-05-03T20:14:28+00:00

Toxic femininity exists, but it means basically the same thing as toxic masculinity: Internalizing gender rolls/stereotypes to the point of self harm. For instance women who starve themselves, act helpless, sacrifice their dignity for male validation, etc. Girls being dicks to each other isn't automatically toxic femininity, it's just people being people. Men fight each other too.

Peter5930 · 2018-05-07T00:39:45+00:00

If you ever want to see brutal female-female interactions, try online games where there's an 80:20 male to female ratio. You get girls (referred to as e-girls) who lap up the male attention and get into big catfights with other e-girls that are obviously the result of 'there can be only one' type thinking where a girl enjoys being the only girl in a group and the centre of attention and hates the competition from the other girl. It doesn't really happen with the girls who don't play up the fact they're girls; they get along fine with everyone, but the ones that do like to play it up are just brutal towards each other.

cattermelon34 · 2018-05-03T11:01:45+00:00

It's a "meh" problem. If incivility is the outcome then it's nothing compared to toxic masculinity.

N0blesse0blige · 2018-05-03T12:00:10+00:00

You’re just casually assuming that women are mostly just toxic towards other women, not towards men?

Title	Toxic feminity: female-on-female incivility
Author	23dragonflies
Upvotes	19
Comments	140
Date	May 3, 2018 9:15 AM UTC (8 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/PurplePillDebate
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/PurplePillDebate/comments/8gp1br/toxic_feminity_femaleonfemale_incivility/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/PurplePillDebate/toxic-feminity-female-on-female-incivility.262649 https://theredarchive.com/post/262649

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