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Women Who Don't Like Other Women

Southern Kross

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I grew up with five boys approx the same age as me in a parent set up creche, i knew all of them from pretty much since the time they were born and slept in the same cots etc.
I pretty much was one of the boys since i had short hair till i was six or seven, usually wore trousers/shorts and tee's and generally did things which are considered more 'male'. Like bmx-ing for example.

I have always felt more comfortable around males though i did opt for longer hair and skirts when i was given the choice.

I found over the years that girly girls i just don't have much in common with. I am very feminine (aparently) but definately get on with men better in the larger picture.

I have nurtured/fostered several friendships with women in more recent years and find that i get on with women who are more outspoken, strong willed and have similar moral views... I do have several very good friendships now with women but initially i had to fight to make them work.
Yeah, being a tom boy doesn't necessarily mean you can't be bothered with women.

I'm not really girly at all, and like a lot of typically masculine things/activities (and dislike a lot of feminine things, like shopping), it doesn't preclude friendship with fairly girly girls. I think when I was younger and superficial differences mattered more, it was a bit of a barrier. Once you (and others) learn to look beyond that and see that at heart, human beings aren't all that different, it matters less. I mean if someone talks constantly about things that irritates or bores the shit out of me, I'm probably not going to be able to be friends with them, but that's got nothing to do with sex.

I think it can be kinda fashionable to bash (so called) feminine behaviour/traits, and some women want to differentiate themselves from the stereotypes by joining in on it. I can see why they do it (I really hate being lumped into those stereotypes too), but it's not the best way of going about it.
 

Salomé

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Tends to irritate the hell out of me. I usually see it as projection.

Does this mean you hate women who hate women?

Why restrict your irritation to women?

:whistling:
 

Betty Blue

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I think it can be kinda fashionable to bash (so called) feminine behaviour/traits, and some women want to differentiate themselves from the stereotypes by joining in on it. I can see why they do it (I really hate being lumped into those stereotypes too), but it's not the best way of going about it.

I have no problem bashing stereotypes, i like to dynamite those walls in the name of equality.

I will admit to stereotyping, albeit to a lesser degree than many.

Contradictory yes but it is impossible to be completely objective.
 
G

garbage

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I would hate all guys, too, if I thought of all guys as the "HEY BRO, HEY BRO, LET'S GET PUMPED AND DRINK AND DO P90X AND WATCH MMA" type
 

kyuuei

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My initial thoughts to this are:
1. These phrases are being spoken by a tomboy or someone who grew up closer to males that can't fit in with females quite yet because they haven't grown into more adult stages of life. (Guilty of these phrases in my teenage years for this reason.)
2. They're girls attempting to convince others that they're somehow the different, mystical exception to this entire world of females. These sort of social things come in other forms.. constantly re-affirming to others verbally how innocent and nice/friendly they are.. or how much of an asshole they are. As if people can't observe for themselves, they verbally throw those things out there to help compensate for the lack of affirmation from their friends on their own.

Either way, it's linked to immaturity in my head.

I don't have many female friends.. and I'm not going to say I was anywhere near close to the ones I grew up with as I am to those I am around now. Boys and men and their dynamics always appealed to me growing up.. But when you're young, you're constantly being told that boys and girls are different too.

Men are dramatic, catty, whiny, nagging, and everything else they complain to themselves about women for. Because PEOPLE have those traits. How they express it may be slightly different, but the principles and concepts are still there. Don't believe me? Go on a deployment with a group of guys, and see how dramatic they are.. how whiny and pouty they get. How much they nag about this, and that..

It isn't that I didn't relate to girls. It was more that I didn't relate to the immaturity and behaviors at the time. My immaturity stemmed from more boyish traits, is all. Had nothing to do with girls themselves and how they acted.

Anyone who thinks the dynamics are so vastly different that they cannot be friends with women, or close friends with women (Not to confuse this comment with people who simply have not met a woman they are close to friendship wise) is simply being sexist for no damn good reason.

The "Brotherhood" people talk about? I've had bonds with girls stretch beyond my immature, girl-denouncing childish ways.. When I kept proclaiming girls weren't close to me, they stuck by me until I stopped acting stupid. And I've had men I went to war with, who I risked my life for and they for mine, and they've dropped that friendship like a hot potato.

Usually, the dudes that create 'brotherhood's.. Do not invite girls into them. Sorry, but that's the way it is. You're a girl. If they're in that mentality, you will not be in their circle the same way you think you are. I feel very close to a group of guys that have this bond with each other.. But I am not one of their brothers. I am merely a friend to them all.

And as close of friends as I'd like to think my guys and I are while on deployment.. when the deployment is over, we all scatter.. and our friendship dynamic changes drastically when wives and girlfriends start to be seen again.
 

King sns

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I've said these statements before in the past. As I got older, I've developed some really great female friends. They back you up through everything... Now I realize that for some reason, I'm immediately more comfortable with males and it takes me longer to bond with females. I always preferred male doctors, male teachers, etc. They usually inspire calm in me where females can make me nervous. Just a gut reaction that's been ingrained in my neurons somehow.

Definitely have had longer and stronger friendships with females over time though. (Kind of weird to maintain a platonic relationship with that many males over time.)
 

Ism

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When girls say this, I feel kind of bad for them. It sucks to not have someone of the same gender you can relate to/ be close with.

But, yeah, the majority of the time I just ignore it, since they're usually bragging about it, not upset about it. Then again, I stopped hearing it since the age fourteen.
 

prplchknz

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I have equal amounts, which is none of either one except in chicago where i have a few female friends and few male friends but in general i get along best with gay men, i don;t know why, i'm not a fag hag in that i don't search out homosexuals to be friends with they usually pick me.
 
G

garbage

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I would hate all guys, too, if I thought of all guys as the "HEY BRO, HEY BRO, LET'S GET PUMPED AND DRINK AND DO P90X AND WATCH MMA" type
Oh, and to elaborate, this.

'Hatred' of one's own gender arises because stereotypes are feedback loops--we think that we're supposed to adopt such-and-such a stereotype in order to meet others' expectations, especially in light social settings, and so we do. A "surface-level" group of girls would display magnified versions of their stereotypical traits--but in more intimate settings, such as one-on-one or among a trusted group of friends, other facets of their personalities will likely surface.

Doesn't mean that 'a woman not liking other women' isn't valid or wrong; it's just that it's a heuristic--good in some situations, bad in others.

Same with dudes, as per that thread linked above.
 

Vasilisa

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I wrote my thoughts here and in a subsequent post in that thread.

I'm of two minds on this. First, at root its a kind of violence. If you want to get evolutionary biological/ cultural anthropological about it go right ahead. What it seems to boil down to is that women are more likely to display aggression indirectly, and it may be driven by biology more than we realize.

But a lot of biological tendencies and baser impulses are controlled by civilized people, thats why I don't view all men as sexually aggressive brutes.

I don't like wantonly hurtful or violent people. Be they men or women, whether the aggression is physical or psychological, indirect or direct. I don't choose to associate with them or feed into their destructive conflict cycles. They cause me mental pain, even if I am not the target of the aggression. Bullies repulse me. Its something I try to be conscious of in my own behavior, too. I don't become a bitch when in placed in a group of women. On this forum, I have mentioned my own experience of having problems feeling like I have much in common with many of the women that I meet. These things indicate to me that I am my own evidence that women aren't all driven to think and act the same, and I shouldn't assume my friendship experience reflects the gender.

So this leads me to my second opinion on this topic, which is this quote from the web. This is not my language, and I know the OP wasn't going that far or espousing hate, but I still think its a good response to those people who do.
Swear to God, I can’t stand to hear a woman claim that she thinks like a guy and hates women because they’re all catty. That’s misogyny. The very fact that you, as a woman, think differently from a socially-stereotyped woman is proof that our gender “norms” are fucking us over. Women are not all alike. Some of us like football. Some of us like talking on the phone. Some of us like religion. Some of us are emotional. Some of us speak three languages. Some of us have boyfriends. Some of us have girlfriends. Some of us wear lipstick. Some of us don’t shave our pits. Some of us have kids. Some of us worry we’ll drop our best friend’s baby. Now please stop claiming that you don’t act like a woman. It doesn’t make you a special fucking snowflake. It makes you a perpetrator of misogyny.
eta: Whatever, I am sorry that this has happened and your workplace environment has become so ugly. I know how it is to be in a toxic environment like that, and its very hard :hug:
 

kyuuei

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To the girls that are saying their bonds with men are stronger and that they lack bonds with women in their life..

... Do you feel the men think of the bond in the exact same way?

I really don't mean the 1 person you've bonded with your entire life and he really is a brother to you, etc. etc. And maybe the childhood friend is excluded from this too.. But in general, looking at the *majority* of your male friends where the claim is that they are more plentiful and fulfilling than your female friends, would you say that your gender has absolutely little to no influence on your relationship? Even if they treat you like a brother on the more shallow points.. do they do it to the point where they let you do things like.. say.. jump into fights, or invite you to every gathering they have as if excluding you would be excluding one of their fellow men, or other things of that nature? Does sexual attraction come into play, where they've attempted to date you, or found themselves attracted to you, or initially started the friendship out of attraction but it didnt end up being a factor for other reasons?

The only thing that ended up really holding me back from bonding with females is *my* lack of communication with them. I didn't really truly WANT to have a deep, meaningful bond with females.. so I simply never attempted it. Once I started saying that I should try it for the sake of doing so.. it turned out rather easy. The mentality was "ive never really bonded with them well before now.." and that complacency just kept rolling over year after year. I didnt like the same things they did, I didn't want to go shopping, blah blah blah. But those are all superficial and shallow aspects of it. I wouldn't say a majority of females in my life are my closest friends (We don't talk everyday.. I don't hang out with them constantly, or things like that), but I can say the only real lasting friendships in my life are from females. (I have some current friendships with males that I cannot see dying out anytime soon.. but I have thought that before in my life too, so I don't want to speak for the future.) The men tend to come, and go.. ebb and flow.. Good friendships fizzle out for no real reason, or they get caught up in a relationship, marry, and start to pour all of their emotional aspects of life into their wife and deem me useless afterwards.. whatever the reason is, its normally not malicious or bad.. they just don't really last.

Im not a girly girl, I have different tastes from many of my chick friends.. but they really do accept me for who I am just the way I am.. Something I've found rather lacking in men. If they don't want me to change or act 'lady-like' in one shape or another, it's normally out of apathy and not genuine interest in me being who I am. Even people that are attracted to my tomboyish ways and that aspect of me starts the friendship initially, they will end up disliking a piece of it that doesn't fit in their box of preconceptions. It may not be a factor that would influence a shallow, everyday relationship. But in the back of my mind, the knowledge that I am not his equal in his mind is always there. Even if, to him, we're 'separate but equal' I'm not satisfied with that. It really didn't work out for people in the past, and there's a good reason why.. No one that separates things can look at them as equal at the same time. It's not in human nature to do so.
 

Wolfie

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I very much enjoyed reading all of your responses. This topic is interesting to me.


EDIT: I'm curious as to why the OP is concerned with this. Do you see it as some kind of ism or do you like people to fit nicely into gender defined roles...or something else?

Was there a specific instance/group of instances etc that lead you to start the thread?

I would not say I like people to fit into defined gender roles at all.

I suppose this is a concern to me because of my background and my particular experiences. My mom is a very asexual type, so is my sister, and that was my entire family growing up. As a result, I didn't feel the need to be "girly" or "boyish" or anything. I felt the freedom to just be myself. But as I grew older and I saw how many girls bonded with each other with this sort of stereotypical behavior and attitude, I felt the need to place myself apart. I was different. After a period of mostly male friendships, and friendships with other women who didn't get along with other women, (except me, because I was cool), I realized where I realized where I had made an error.

By making generalizations about girly girls, I was just making superficial judgments. There is nothing wrong with being girly. Women constantly defensively exclaiming "I'm not a girly girl" begins to create the picture that it is something negative, that smart women should not be. I find most women who say this are not just stating it to describe themselves, they are priding themselves on it. Why can't we just say we are people? We're sometimes girly, we are sometimes boyish, we are whatever. I just don't like how we label ourselves and other women, and I don't think it helps womankind in society's often cruel judgment of us.

I have old female friends from that phase of my life who have not grown out of women bashing. For these particular women, I see it as male dependence and low self esteem. They take the terrible things that some men say to heart, and feed into it by trying to be the epitome of male-defined coolness.

I could go on and on, but there's so much to say that I'm going to get obsessive about the cohesiveness of this essay.

I really liked hearing your experiences. Share more!

Edit: I suppose this issue I have with some of my female friends is why I felt like starting this thread. I feel somewhat isolated in my social circle right now, so I was hoping to hear other experiences.
 

Luv Deluxe

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I have many thoughts on this interesting topic, and I hope that I can crystallize them here without offending anyone. Everyone has a unique history, and everyone - whether male or female - is different. While knowing that generalizations can be inherently dangerous, we nonetheless find patterns while examining our experiences, and we learn what tends to work for us in relationships.

I'm one of those women who has a more difficult time getting along with other women. I don't identify as a tomboy, either. I'm still very aware of the social and biological differences between myself and my guy friends, and while I can relate to them at least better than I relate to women, I know those differences will always be present. With female friends, however, I have often struggled to maintain identification at all. There are several reasons for this, and the negative experiences of my adolescence have almost certainly augmented the interpersonal distance on some level.

My elementary, middle, and high school years were, for lack of a better word, horrible. The bullying began when I was in first grade, and while some eras were worse than others, it remained a consistent factor throughout my childhood and teenage years. This torment, whether by coincidence or not, was perpetrated exclusively by the other girls. When I was six years old, I couldn't understand why this was happening; I only knew that it was, and that it hurt. It began with name-calling, social exclusion, etc., but soon escalated to the theft of my personal property and the orchestration of pranks intended to publicly humiliate me. I knew a completely different group of girls by the time I reached high school, but things had not improved much. I regularly received hate mail, which dissected and ridiculed my personality, sometimes outright encouraging me to kill myself. I began to spend most of my time in the counselor's office. Sometimes I skipped school when I couldn't work up the mental stamina to endure it. Eventually, I ended up in professional therapy. I had one loyal friend, and yes, he was a boy. (We are still friends to this day.)

I've been able to do a lot of healing in the six years between then and now, but I'm still a little wary of new women. It's not that I immediately dislike them or have no desire to befriend them; it simply takes more time and effort to build trust and become comfortable around them (as compared to men). At the same time, if a woman complains about difficulty or drama with other women, I will not dismiss her. There is always a chance that the issues could be very serious, and she may be in great need of someone to talk to.

Okay - now I need to move away from the heavy stuff.

I think people tend to forge closer relationships over shared interests, tastes, and experiences. Most of my tastes and interests are not stereotypically feminine. I'm not remotely suggesting that all women like romantic comedies, makeovers, and gossip rags, but I personally don't care for any of those items and therefore should not be expected to prefer the company of someone who is a stereotypical girly-girl. It has simply been trickier to find female buddies who enjoy the same things I do. Again, I'm not saying those girls don't exist; I just haven't met them, and it has consequently been easier to connect with guys over these activities. One of my guy pals couldn't get a night off work when we had planned to go to a hockey game (for which I already had tickets), so I dragged a female friend along instead. It was a bad experience for both of us.

Then there's the matter of clashing perspectives. In particular, my views on relationships and sex tend to contrast quite a bit from the opinions of my female friends. We can still get along, but it's hard for either party to discuss certain issues without raising eyebrows or making the other person feel judged in some way. Again, my guy friends actually empathize with my perspectives more often than not.

And yes, there are absolutely differences between a man-man friendship and the friendship maintained by a man and myself. Sometimes the relationship does indeed shift from platonic to romantic. We're both adults, and these things can and do happen. It's nobody's fault. In fact, this is just about the only way I can cultivate a meaningful romantic interest in someone - by being friends first. My boyfriend and I were friends for about six months before we acknowledged our chemistry. On the other hand, it can be difficult to discourage a friend you're not interested in, or to swallow feelings when they're not reciprocated. With a strong bond and mutual respect, however, this doesn't have to be insurmountable.

Gender role fulfillment crops up every so often too, which serves as a reminder that I'm not "one of the guys." One of my friends is a total bro on the surface, but he always looks out for me whenever we (and a couple of other male friends) go out for drinks. He tends to watch when other guys approach me, and steps in if they behave inappropriately.

Ultimately, we all bring individual personalities and experiences to the table, and not all of us are going to prefer the same things. I've unfortunately had to make some generalizations in order to illustrate my viewpoints here, but I believe that gender is not a neat, clean, black and white concept. There are girls who enjoy sports and men who care about fashion, girls who dislike talking about their emotions and men who can't get enough of it. I'm only reporting what has been true for myself, so that I can explain why I seem to prefer the company of men.


tl;dr: The expression of one's frustration with other women need not necessarily be a sign of misogyny, immaturity, insecurity, projection, or low self-esteem. To automatically dismiss it as such seems lazy, in my opinion.
 
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