Posted on 03/06/2006 9:51:00 PM PST by tbird5
It happens to the best of women. Here's Rosalind Wiseman, who has spent her entire working life teaching girls to treat each other decently. The script for the movie Mean Girls was based on her 2002 best-selling Queen Bees & Wannabes, a book that helps parents understand the drama and danger in the adolescent girl world. She knows the minefields that lie in gossip, jealousy, disloyalty and cruel judgments, and offers solid prescriptions for changing bad behaviour.
Yet despite her experience, she recently found herself sizing up two mothers who came to see her.
In her view, the women paid too much attention to their appearance, especially their hair. They seemed catty in their conversation, were micromanaging their kids' lives, and were silly.
"All these things came into my head. Why? They are antithetical to what I teach and believe," Wiseman says. "I was still judging these women."
Where does this nastiness come from?
Wiseman thinks it exists because it's supposed to exist. Being nasty to each other is one of the unspoken rules about how girls and women are supposed to behave; one of the rigidly enforced North American standards of what constitutes femininity.
"It's everything you know but haven't been sat down and taught," as Wiseman puts it.
When she judged the two women so harshly, it was as if she was acting out one of the observations she made in her book — that girls and women can be their own worst enemies.
(Excerpt) Read more at thestar.com ...
"Women from Central America, South America, Asia, Eastern Europe are just wonderful. ... LOL. American women suck."
I think there are a few men who will disagree with you, my dear.
Same is true of guys. If anything high achieving women would be more likely to be feminists.
'Night!
Not sure how y'all went sideways, but I can't bear to see you two fight, two of my fave girlfriends!
I understand we are supposed to smooch you for your comment!
That's true, and women seem to take conflict better than men.
Oh boy,
You are gonna get it now ;)
Yes...I'm waiting!
When the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride,
He shouts to scare the monster who will often turn aside.
But the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth and nail,
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
When Nag, the wayside cobra, hears the careless foot of man,
He will sometimes wriggle sideways and avoid it if he can,
But his mate makes no such motion where she camps beside the trail -
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
When the early Jesuit fathers preached to Hurons and Choctaws,
They prayed to be delivered from the vengeance of the squaws -
'Twas the women, not the warriors, turned those stark enthusiasts pale -
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
Man's timid heart is bursting with the things he must not say,
For the Woman that God gave him isn't his to give away;
But when hunter meets with husband, each confirms the others tale -
The female of the species is more deadly than the male.
Man, a bear in most relations, worm and savage otherwise,
Man propounds negotiations, Man accepts the compromise;
Very rarely will he squarely push the logic of a fact
To its ultimate conclusion in unmitigated act.
Fear, or foolishness, impels him, ere he lay the wicked low,
To concede some form of trial even to his fiercest foe.
Mirth obscene diverts his anger; Doubt and Pity oft perplex
Him in dealing with an issue - to the scandal of the Sex!
But the Woman that God gave him, every fibre of her frame
Proves her launched for one sole issue, armed and engined for the same,
And to serve that single issue, lest the generations fail,
The female of the species must be deadlier than the male.
She who faces Death by torture for each life beneath her breast
May not deal in doubt or pity - must not swerve for fact or jest.
These be purely male diversions - not in these her honor dwells -
She, the Other Law we live by, is that Law and nothing else!
She can bring no more to living than the powers that make her great
As the Mother of the Infant and the Mistress of the Mate;
And when Babe and Man are lacking and she strides unclaimed to claim
Her right as femme (and baron), her equipment is the same.
She is wedded to convictions - in default of grosser ties;
Her contentions are her children, Heaven help him, who denies!
He will meet no cool discussion, but the instant, white-hot wild
Wakened female of the species warring as for spouse and child.
Unprovoked and awful charges - even so the she-bear fights;
Speech that drips, corrodes and poisons - even so the cobra bites;
Scientific vivisection of one nerve till it is raw,
And the victim writhes with anguish - like the Jesuit with the squaw!
So it comes that Man, the coward, when he gathers to confer
With his fellow-braves in council, dare not leave a place for her
Where, at war with Life and Conscience, he uplifts his erring hands
To some God of abstract justice - which no woman understands.
And Man knows it! Knows, moreover, that the Woman that God gave him
Must command but may not govern; shall enthrall but not enslave him.
And She knows, because She warns him and Her instincts never fail,
That the female of Her species is more deadly than the male!
you're sweet and brave.
goodnight.
I disagree with Handk, there is no need to go get an undereducated subservient foreign woman.
American women come from all over the world and are of all ancestries, and come in all "flavors".
If you can't find what you re looking for here, it maybe a good time for a little introspection.
Heh, I like your version much better!
I am very tempted re 234....but I don't think he's worth the effort!
I lub you too Xena darlin' :)
At this point, that'll take some convincing. LOL
(Check the thread and see who threw down the gauntlet.)
Take care. I've gotta get some sleep! 'Night!
Can't handle the women who are not raised to be subservient, no doubt.
...or...you're a man.
Just for the record, I have NOTHING against men who have married foreign women or women who have married foreign men. I'm just talking about jerk-offs like handk who blanket all American women as if they're all like Maureen Dowd.
I agree, Handk isn't worth alot of effort...I'm not breaking a sweat.
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