May 30, 2002
It's World Cup time... unfortunately, I don't think I'll be able to attend any games. Naturally, I don't really follow soccer very closely, but I do love to watch an exciting game on television from time to time. The skill required by all the players never ceases to amaze me...
Anyways, there are a few books which have been recently brought to my attention... the book "Queen Bees & Wannabees" by Rosalind Wiseman and "Women's Inhumanity to Women" by Phyllis Chesler. Both of these try to analyze patterns of female bullying as they get manifested in teens and adults. In fact, the conclusions these books draw are quite elucidating. Specifically, "Queen Bees & Wannabees" focuses on in-group/out-group thinking of teenage girls, and how it affects their behavior patterns as they grow into adult women. It suggests that female clique-forming centered around the so-called 'Queen Bee' archetype has it so that the alpha-females are judgmental, grudge-holding, undermining gossips who rule by fear of exclusion and social ridicule. (As if this is somehow news.) One example of behavior is their habit of vacuuming-up sensitive information about others, mixing it with lies and distributing the gossip at a strategic time to cause maximum humiliation. (Again, no surprises there...) Furthermore, these toxic behavior patterns carry-on well into adulthood, to boot. Examples of adult women acting in these ways are given to show how alpha-females integrate their behavior as young adults into their grown-up roles as career women, wives and mothers.
The book "Women's Inhumanity to Women" (note: the title does not confront the idea that women could ever be inhuman to men) looks at the ways in which adult women undermine and backbite each other in the workplace and in social situations... Such as how they attempt to form little groups in an attempt to humiliate other women by pointedly preventing outsiders from joining. Or how they competitively begrudge other females' good fortune to the point of trying to sabotage it in secretive and scheming ways. An almost-cliché result of these dynamics is how female office managers are sometimes more feared than male bosses. Chesler suggests that having to submit to groups who practice these sorts of behaviors can result in many women having "no courage, no spontaneity and no authentic relationships" with other human beings... In short: women like that have difficulty interacting with other people in ways that are not totally obnoxious. (Again, no surprises there.)
Both books are quite interesting reading, but they only stated what I already knew. To be fair, one can criticize these books by saying that they lack concrete statistical facts and rely heavily on stereotyping. But I invite you to read them nonetheless and reach your own conclusions...
In other news- if you've come to this page, then you already know from your own experience that women can go-on and on about how they wish that men were more sensitive. Yet when it comes to actually choosing a date Saturday night, their 'sensitive man' rhetoric is revealed to be a heap o' humbug and goat-farts. The instant she runs-across a man who is in touch with his emotions, then he's sentenced to languish in 'nice guy/just friends' purgatory for this sin. Modern women don't like sensitive men, traditional women don't like 'em either- except as sources of free psychological counseling. But I've been thinking about a theory of why 'sensitive' men aren't considered attractive by women. I sincerely invite people to comment. (Perhaps this is not a totally original idea? Perhaps it's been said elsewhere by others and I just don't know about it? That's one of the reasons I need input.) Here goes...
You know that self-described 'intelligent' women will huff and puff that men feel
'threatened' by smart women? How they sneer that men have an immature, control-freaking
need to be the brains behind a relationship or they'll think their pee-pees are
too small? That a smart woman is unattractive because she can't be out-smarted,
manipulated and taken advantage-of?
Well, here is my theory based on the exact
same principle: I think that women feel threatened by men who are more
emotionally-intelligent than they are. She
needs a macho, unfeeling guy in order to feel truly feminine (especially
if she's mannish, herself). That's right, if a woman runs across a man who is emotionally-intelligent, she'll
feel un-womanly next to him... because he might start to usurp her 'rightful'
female position of authorizing who should be feeling what and when. And
believe me, there are a lot of women out there who are total insecure clods
when it comes to being carried-away by their own emotions, yet she will still
think she should be in charge of her man's feelings because she assumes he must
be emotionally stunted compared to herself. In order for him to get in touch with
his 'feminine' side, he needs to be told when and how to feel... told by her,
that is. A man who can already do that on his own isn't a man who can be controlled
as easily. He's not as easy to manipulate.
A woman feels that she should be in control of the emotions in a relationship, and her power-position will be endangered by a man with more savoir-faire. A man who is already in-touch with his emotions might be capable of figuring-out how she tries to fuck with his thoughts. For instance:with a sweet and sensitive man, she can't claim that buying her things is equivalent to romance because he already knows what romance is! He is aware of his own hot-buttons, so he'll know what she's up-to when she tries to secretly push them. He can't be told that 'up' is 'down', because he's just not oblivious. And furthermore, sensitive men make poor whipping-boys because they might actually voice their pain and can't be relied-upon to unflinchingly absorb the abuse she loves to dish-out. If a man ever says to a woman 'you're hurting my feelings', that might make her feel bad for being a bitch and we certainly can't have that, can we??
And on this last point- women prefer insensitive men because they make good punching-bags for whenever they want to vent after a bad day. An insensitive man won’t raise an eyebrow as she rants and screams her bloody fool head-off. In a relationship with power struggles, an insensitive man won't blink in the face of her cathartic haranguing. It’s just more fun to be an unaccountable hollering maniac, and a sensitive man couldn't hold-up under all the crap she produces.
Yet women still claim they want someone 'sensitive'- why do they continue to insist it if it's so obviously a total freakin' lie? There can be no other reason other than the most obvious-- women are complaining, mewling infants who only want the things they don't already have. (Ouch! But I'm just telling it like it is...)
The more I think about this theory, the more it seems to make sense. Comments?
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