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 ...
My wife has been a teacher for 15 years, and the levels of cattiness and stab-in-the-back behavior she has witnessed from her fellow female teachers is astonishing.
She has repeated, over and over, "I hate working with women. They are almost all like that."
FWIW, here is a little something from H.L. Mencken. Women are feral realists:
Henry Louis Mencken once wrote "A man’s women folk, whatever their outward show of respect for his merit and authority, always regard him secretly as an ass, and with something akin to pity" (1). While Mencken’s blunt declaration provides shock-value humor, it is also a serious and profound statement that reflects his intellectual deviation from the gender stereotypes of his time.
Mencken’s ideas about the societal roles of women differed greatly from those of traditional, conservative, Victorian Americans in the nineteen twenties. In fact, he frequently criticized this genre of Americans, whom he labeled the "booboise", for their "provincialism of attitude in manners, morals, politics, and taste" (Martin 67). In order to compare Mencken’s view with that of the "booboise", however, traditional ideas about gender roles must first be explored.
Women in the 1920’s were placed in a socially subordinate position relative to their male counterparts. This was influenced directly by the preceding Victorian era, in which women were expected to be subservient to men in nearly all walks of life. But, even with the "New Woman" of the modern era and notions of female empowerment, the advertising industry still did much to perpetuate ideas of the woman as a domestic servant (Horn 104). Thus, women in the twenties were viewed as domestic creatures, second class citizens, and emotional beings.
The advertisement pages of any "Ladies Home Journal" or "Vanity Fair" from the roaring twenties can testify that women were viewed in this time as the administrators of domestic life. Though the flood of new consumer products promised to "empower" women by offering the right to choose, the twenties paradoxically imprisoned them by further entrenching the connection between women and the private, domestic world. This necessarily precluded women from participating in the public arenas of politics, government, and business on the same level as men.
This is not to say that there were no women active outside of the family domain. Women created potent political lobbies, fought for birth control rights, started businesses, and entered the work force. Many women succeeded in areas typically deemed "masculine". These success, however, were only relative to previous eras of exclusion and remained extremely limited. For example, it has been noted that female voter turnout was significantly lower than that of males, racial and socioeconomic barriers limited the political power of women as a whole, and women attained only a fraction of the pay, skills, and status of men in the workplace. (Dumenil 108-112). Women were indeed "second class citizens" in the United States. Even the discourse and rhetoric of the times constructed women in the public sphere as second rate. Law professionals were called "lady lawyers" and government officials were referred to as "lady magistrates."
Finally, there pervaded in the twenties a conviction that women were emotionally guided individuals, usually incapable of thinking rationally. This notion perhaps has its roots, again, in the Victorian culture. The biological ability of the woman to bear children branded her as the caretaker, mother, and consequently, the giver of moral and emotional guidance. This feminine lack of reason served largely as the justification to exclude women from the realm of the public.
Mencken’s ideas about the roles of women countered those prominent at the time. He made public his ideas in the 1918 book "In Defense of Women". He attempted to explain the vast social mischaracterization of women and satirically scrutinize middle-class notions of masculinity.
Women, according to Mr. Mencken, were not a second class group of individuals, but an inherently superior one. He argued in his gender treatise that the source of a woman’s superiority lay in her intelligence when he wrote that "women, in point of fact, are not only intelligent: they have an almost monopoly on certain of the subtler and more utile forms of intelligence. The thing itself, indeed, might be reasonably described as a special feminine character" (8-9). Mencken argues further that the feminine intelligence has been mischaracterized throughout history and labeled as "women’s’ intuition". This "intuition," he claims, is nothing more than a male social construct, invented to mask the raw intelligence of women (28). Mencken concedes in his writings, however, that women have historically been and shall continue to be utter failures in law, business, and other "masculine" fields of interest. But, he challenges the validity of these domains and calls them "superficial", "imbecile" and "childish" practices which put "little more strain on the mental powers than a chimpanzee suffers in learning to scratch a match" (13). Women tend to succeed as teachers, nurses, and artists. These are the trades that Mencken hails as requiring ingenuity, quick comprehension, and courage (23). So, while he held that no external societal forces barred women from entering the public domain, women gravitated naturally toward the occupations that were truly worthwhile and beneficial to society, and thus away from law, business, and government.
These ideas strongly challenged the old-stock American views that women were subordinate and that their domestic role was a product of natural male superiority. In his mind, women were the leaders of the race and their role in the private sphere was only a result conscious rejection of the mind-numbing and intellectually futile public sphere of men.
Mencken also directly contested the notion of women as emotionally guided creatures by asserting that "women are not sentimental, i.e., not prone to permit mere emotion and illusion to corrupt their estimation of a situation. The doctrine, perhaps, will raise a protest" (29). To evidence this claim, he sites the example of monogamous marriage, which he claims men run from and women pursue adamantly. Mencken’s argument is that the occurrence of marriage in society proves that women alone have the capacity to maintain cool-headed and pursue their long-term interests without being subject to emotional distractions, such as love or pulchritude. Men, on the other hand, eventually give in and marry (though it is ultimately against their best interests). They are "bowled over in a combat of wits" (Mencken 32). Thus it is clear to Mencken that women are the harsh realists of the species rather than the emotional idealists. Mencken also scoffs at the suggestion that a woman’s maternal instinct and caretaker mentality naturally assign her an emotional role. He argues that this maternity comes only from pity for the weaker male sex and out of necessity. All men are boys, in Mencken’s opinion, that are still nourished by a mother’s milk.
Benjamin De Casseres once said "[Mencken] puts his finger squarely and surely on the eternal enemy of superior men: women" (qtd. in Schaum, 379). The concept of men as superior beings pervaded most of the cultural mores in America during the twenties. Henry Louis Mencken’s views of womens’ roles in society contrasted deeply with those mores. Mecken, lead the modern crusade against Calvinist patriarchal structures (Martin 69).
It is critical to explore Mencken’s analysis of societal gender roles on a level of pure understanding. Before a true understanding of how gender roles functioned in the twenties (and during other periods in our history), one must be aware of the many contrasting ideas that existed. Consciousness precedes understanding, and Mencken’s view exemplifies a situation in which it is vital to raise consciousness about a set of ideas that did not conform to social dogma in order for a broader understanding to be attained.
Adler, Betty. H.L.M. The Mencken Bibliography. Baltimore:John Hopkins Press 1961
Bulsterbaum, Allison. H.L. Mencken: A Research Guide. New York and London: Garland Publishig, 1988
Dumenil, Lynn. The Modern Temper: American Culture and Society in the 1920's. New York: Hill and Wang
Horn, Pamela. Women in the 1920's. United Kindgom: Alan Sutton Publishing, 1995.
Martin, Edward A. "H.L. Mencken and Equal Rights for Women." The Georgia Review 35 (1981): 65-76
Schaum, Melita. "H.L. Mencken and American Cultural Masculinism." Journal of American Studies 29 (1995): 379-398
Mencken, Henry Louis. In Defense fo Women. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1918
Not all guys. Usually the catty woman are able to play the supervising men. I'm not catty, and I probably would have gotten further in life being catty. However, most catty women turn out to be bitter. I hope never to grow bitter with life.
You know, it's really hard to tell when you're kidding. And I normally love to watch y'all beat up on the woman-haters. But this thread is not one of them. The behavior outlined in this article is quite prevalent in the school and workplace, and has been documented. Heck, my WIFE says she hates working with women, and she's a lot like you. You are the exception that proves the rule.
Oh, and you couldn't possibly like going to NFL games. You're a Texan's fan ;)
Rowwrrr....hissss!
;-)
My goodness, that's rude, nasty, presumptuous and ugly. You don't know anything about me at all.
Obviously.
I do believe you have joined a small group of people on this forum with whom I choose not to associate. Congratulations.
{snicker}
{yawn}
"It's impossible to talk about this issue without talking about patriarchy — it sets women up against each other,"
Hey! It took nearly half of the article before it came out that it's mens fault for women being bitches to each other.
It is true....the women I have had as bosses were horrible.....but so were most of the male bosses.
If guys were like this to each other, the women would out-number us three to one because we would beat each other to death.
And, women, don't think this is limited to just women with women. Wives to husbands do similar things.
"You aren't wearing THAT shirt with those sweat pants are you?"
"Yeah, why?"
"Because they don't match."
"I don't care, I am going to be sweating and they will be dirty when I get back."
"I'm just saying..."
"OK, fine. I won't go jogging. I'll just watch TV."
Ten minutes later...
"NO wonder you're fat. You just sit and watch TV. You need to get out and exercise!"
"You're right, hon. I'll go jogging."
"You aren't wearing THAT shirt with those sweat pants are you?"
Ooooh, this warrants a big ole MEOW!!! ;-)
I was sharpening my claws. ;-)
When I read the title I thought it was about Hillary.
And, for some strange reason, at least one week out of every month, my past female bosses were ESPECIALLY bitchy...I couldn't do anything right!
:o)
Perhaps a dose of reality would be appropriate follow-up to that Mencken article.
What we are seeing with this ugly behavior women are emulating is simply more of the consequences of feminism having destroyed femininity.
The reality is, every right, freedom, liberty and privilege American women enjoy, was afforded them by the blood, sweat and tears of American men. And that is simply God's honest truth. One only has to look around them to know the truth of that statement.
It is truly tragic what feminism has done to women, homemakers, and the home around which American life used to revolve. The home for which American men have, for over two hundred years, fought and died to protect.
American women are starting to rediscover just how good they had it as American Homemakers. Maybe now these women will turn the anger of what they have become, on those feminists who created them, like Frankenstein's monster.
I wonder where all the real men are that are passionate about women - and don't dump all of us into the "Wimmen are SCARY" bucket. How many times do we hear - "this one woman did blah blah blah to me so I blame all of them for a single infraction".
I'm amazed that conservative men have so many issues with strong women.
Define for me, if you would please "strong women". I keep seeing that word used in very different contexts.
I know you ain't pingin' me. :)
As long as I spank 'em and they bring me beers, no issues for me. ;o)
I thought you WERE Alexis Carrington!?
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