To think this comment about women with no female friends is problematic?

Maybe I should also have said I find it hard to relate to women that talk fashion and makeup then rather than I find it hard to relate to women. Alas the vast majority of women I tend to encounter fall in this category though. I’m well aware that I’m a woman and that there are many others that don’t conform to the fashion and makeup stereotype. They are like rocking horse shit around here though, hence I tend to end up with mostly male friends.

There are many other factors as well of course, like most of the school mums are younger than me so are at different life stages. They’ll politely say hello back in passing but won’t “talk” to me. There’s only 1 mum that does have a prolonged conversation with me and she’s a similar age to me and similarly been put in the “hello in passing” box by the others so I’m wondering if subconsiously we have gelled more due to that.

I find it very hard to relate to women who talk about make up and fashion because it doesn't interest me. However, I obviously know women who don't talk about those things because women aren't a hive mind with a handful of 'feminine' interests.

It's ironic that women are saying I find it hard to relate to women because [insert stereotypes] and don't realise that they are women, so evidently, not all women conform to stereotypes.

Battling female stereotypes has been grueling for those at the coal face of feminism. It's been especially difficult with the rise of Trans ideology which is of course, founded on stereotypes.

Life would be so much better if we approached people as individuals and not as a cluster of preconceived ideas.

Why is it a red flag? Surely there really are women out there that only have male friends. I genuinely get on better with men because I find it harder to relate to women (I don’t do make up or fashion etc). I do have female friends, mainly from school/university. I tend to do more with my male friends though as I’ve found it really hard to find women that are into cycling, running, weight lifting, DIY or gaming. I do have regular female gaming friends though, one of which I sometimes meet up with. My DH seems to just have “people he knows” rather than friends.

So you accuse me of being judgemental but have already decided you have nothing in common with me despite knowing NOTHING about me 😂🤦‍♀️

and actually I think Megan Markle has lots of friends, both male and female. I also happen to be one of the (apparently) few people who have been suppprtive of her and think she gets a bad rap.

Don’t know but as I have LOTS of friends and she herself says she has none, than maybe that says all there is to say 🤷🏼‍♀️

Exactly

It’s not about preferring men. I don’t care what gender. If a female wants to share my interests, that’s fine. However, they are different in interests, usually. I always preferred male conversation at the parties I went to. These only happened a few times. One was a birthday, others at New Year. The women tended to congregate at one end of the room, the men at the other. There was always one guy joined the women and I’d tend to join the men. Maybe because I worked in the man’s world. I was the only woman who worked on a trawler, although some trawlermen saw that as bringing bad luck. I was the only woman who was regularly cutting seaweed for a living, stalking the deer, in our bit of the world. I was forced into male company for many years. Only women I saw were MiL, SiL and my mother, or checkout workers in the supermarket. Except for those parties when SOs were present.
So the women talked children and school, hairdressing, nails and makeup. I never set foot in a hairdresser. I cut my own, never wore make up or got my nails done. They had things in common, probably already knew each other. Oh yeah, and I hated shopping, so half the conversation was not interesting.

The men talked hunting, shooting, fishing and were more interesting than the women. I could learn more with them. Politics, economy. How to fix things..cars, plumbing….
Now, decades later, I talk to both equally as I only talk when out dog walking, meeting other dog walkers. We talk about weather and dogs .They're all married. I’m not.
I don’t have friends as in go for lunch, meet for coffee or whatever people do. Never had that in all my life. Lived in remote areas. Had a husband who would not let me out…made sure I was kept too busy to have time to go out. If not working, I was to be beside the phone in case he rang. I don’t have friends. I have acquaintances. I help neighbours, but we don’t socialise.

So a sweeping statement about not trusting women who prefer to talk to men is unfair. Everyone is different and not every woman who talks to guys wants to shag them. It seems to me to demonstrate insecurity. People are just people and not everything is about sex.

Why on earth would i stay around people who other me.

Very good point.

Same!

Depends. I have limited female friends because the insecurities of some women is beyond what I can be bothered with. I’m also not interested in hearing a woman slate another woman and then 30 seconds later be all smiley and in their face. Strong, secure and confident women only for me.

i can't see why i'd want to spend time around women who judge me for having mostly male friends and struggling to find common ground to build friendships with women like them who've historically gone out of their way to point out that i'm not like them, and therefore there is something 'wrong' about me.

Why on earth would i stay around people who other me.

I think it’s because people act on their own personal experience of friendships with men and women rather than statistics. And most people have some friends of both sexes as they get older.

I would not see myself as having much in common with a poster like @Donsyb for example. And sadly these kinds of judgemental attitudes towards other women are common. You only have to read the threads on this board about women like Meghan Markle to see that dynamic in action. No thanks.

This is literally me 😂

I'm wondering how many of the women who prefer men because they're so much more straightforward forward and less spiteful have been cat called or harassed, sexually assaulted or experienced domestic abuse. Survivors of abuse will tell you precisely how spiteful and bullying their abuser was

I can understand absolutely how bad experiences can colour future behaviour-of course I can. What I'm finding a little hard to...not sure what word to use, maybe identify with?..is the idea of coming across a few shit women who treated you appallingly and deciding, based on that, to choose friends from a group that historically and demonstrably collectively treat women badly.

With this judgemental attitude towards someone you don’t know AT ALL, why would people want to be friends with you?

‘I find this a bit troubling and potentially judgemental’

Why not pluck up the courage to find it actually troubling and actually judgemental? If it’s unimportant, let it go.

Angelina Jolie has said this week that she has no friends. Can’t say I was surprised - she used to be really weird (husbands blood in a vial round her neck etc), then “broke up America’s sweethearts”, and always comes across holier than thou to me. She’s the type of person I think of when I hear this kind of statement.

If your experience of all-female environments prior to heading to university (eg school, or sports teams) has frequently been negative, with bullying or cliques, and then your area of study, job and hobbies are quite male-dominated, then it's really easy to get to your late twenties with very few female friends, and a fair number of male ones. There's really no reason for other people to read too much into that if it doesn't affect them directly.

isnt it just.

i met my current female bff when i was 37, prior to that i either had ZERO friends, or just a couple of guys as i was involved in the car/bike scene. the only women i knew were the wives of my exH's friends.

I don’t have any friends of either gender so

circumstance plays a massive part, so can the gender split in your social scene. mine is male heavy, mostly made up of D&D nerds, artists, and gamers, its 60% gay male, with about 20% female, and the other is made up of a vanishingly small percentage of straight guys with a fairly large trans/nb group mixed through.

my close friends number male heavy because of it. my bff is female, so i don't say i don't have female friends, but she and i are the odd-ducks in the group, and i have always had more male friends than female simply because my interests and the clubs/social scene attract more men than women.

Excellent post! 👏👏

Can you hear yourself!? Someone expresses an opinion about women based on their lived experience and they get called names?

Well done you for perfectly highlighting why some women don't get on with other women.

👏... 👏... 👏

I have women friends now but as a child, my 2 best friends were boys and in my teens and 20s, I found men easier to get along with than women.

Like a previous poster, I'm autistic and I think that played a part in it. Boys and men just seemed more straightforward.