“I find women too difficult”

Ugh I loathe it when women say this. YANBU.

I do understand generalising and the point is that it is never the whole. However, I've never really could go behind these male and female stereotypes when it comes to friendship. How women are backstabbing, dramatic, gossipy, liars, drag you down, whereas men are upfront, honest, chill, fun, friendly, good banter. At least these have been mentioned in this thread.

Looking around my friends, family, colleagues, partner, partners friends, friends relationships. I seriously can't see a pattern to support this. Or maybe my definition of "fun" and "dramatic" are different.

you (hopefully) wouldn't make any other all-encompassing stereotypical views of groups of people
"I don't get on with Christians, Muslims are much friendlier.'
'I've never had a good friendship with a black person, they are so moody, white people are much nicer.'
'All short people are boring, I feel I have much more in common with tall people, despite being short myself.'
'Every boss I've had who had dark hair was horrible, but all the blonde bosses were lovely, I don't think it's a coincidence.'
'I've fallen out with every vegetarian I've ever been friends with, but never had any trouble with meat-eaters.'

You'd sound at best ridiculous, at worst racist.
So why is it okay on the basis of sex?

honestly, yes, it does sound like you are probably the common denominator
if you've had bad fall outs with multiple female friends and have found every single one of your female bosses bitchy and moody then perhaps it is you.

not saying you're a terrible person, but if you've had one bad experience with, say, a female boss, and you go into your next job and you have another female manager, perhaps you unconsciously think 'oh great, another woman, she'll probably be horrible like Kathy was.' Then any minor thing that boss does you take note of as 'evidence' whereas if it was a male you might not even notice it. Not to mention perhaps new boss picks up on your dislike, and (consciously or unconsciously) is more brusque to you, and doesn't have the same good/friendly relationship she has with other members of the team, as a result, you see 'oh great and now she's leaving me out, just like Kathy did, see female bosses are bitchy and horrible,' and so the cycle continues.

same if someone announces to a group of women 'Ugh I get on so much better with men, women are so bitchy and moody,' unsurprisingly those women probably won't think particularly highly of her (as she's just insulted them), and might not be very pleasant to her, thus 'proving' her hypothesis.

Don't write her off totally, it's the kind of thing I might say on a bad day.
I have had female and male bosses. The women bosses were bitchy and moody (the male ones weren't) .
I have male and female friends. I've had (way) worse fall outs with female friends than male.

Maybe I'm the common denominator 😅... but I've never been great at playing the popularity game with women like fitting into cliques. Men don't seem to have the same dynamics.

I'm quite quiet and am not particularly girly. She might similar.

@calvermegan it started at home with my mum from a very young age, then it continued in primary from some of the teachers and some of the girls.

By secondary I learned to fake it so I could fit in with various groups but I was only truly close with just one girl. Well two, but one of them borrowed my earrings and then pawned them so that was the end of that. There's more shit(from men/boys too which is why I don't use the "I get on better with men" line ), but meh . It is what it is.

Yes, it's a lot easier now as I've accepted I'm a convenience friend and that's ok and because I refuse to see womanhood as a prescribed definition. I like what I like , and as long as I'm not hurting anyone, well.. fuck it. I still don't fit in , but I don't need to anymore .

@5128gap they're not. Well , I haven't really interacted with many in the past 5/10 years. I have no interest in them (men in general) as friends or in a romantic way (as I have OH) so it's all very superficial and quick interactions.

In the past, some have been lovely, some have treated me better than they have treated others (took me a while to learn that it wasn't a good thing) and some(A LOT) have been absolutely fucking awful so I'm not a fan. Took me a while to get to this point though, and as a kid I did get on better with boys/had more boy friends , but then shit happened and that was the end of that one too.

Yes I have always found it easier living with males than females. I am female.

@calvermegan frankly ? I have no idea.

Here's the thing...I grew up being told daily I'm girling wrong. It's not that I decided I was not like other girls , it's that I was TOLD I wasn't. Everything from how I looked , to what I liked, to how I behaved, dressed , talked, laughed etc. was wrong,wrong,wrong and I had no fucking idea why, so I kinda just sucked it up , accepted it and faked it when I really had to.

Tbf, it's just as confusing now, because you have these huge camps that believe the other is doing it wrong and lines in the sand that are absolutely bonkers.

You didn't 'ask'. You distorted her statement into an assumption and a poor attempt at a gotcha:

"So you also have an agenda and aren’t authentic?"

There's nothing in her post that would indicate your 'So that must mean...' conclusion. She finds 'men easier to read' doesn't in any way = her own agenda.

'Woman' also does not = agenda all the time. I get on with women who are as forthright and easy to read as I am. Those that aren't have their own reasons for not being so, and it's not a judgement, just a fact. I find it difficult to handle if people say one thing to my face but are thinking/doing something completely different. I especially get frustrated when I say something clearly and simply, and it gets distorted in a completely nonsensical way so they can push their own agenda. This behaviour isn't exclusive to men or women, but there is certainly a trend heavily weighted towards a particular sex.

I think that's great, I really do.

And my best friend is female.

But there are women who prefer the company of men. My own DD. Because women are complicated and can be socially manipulative. Men are more simple. And for certain people, especially ND people, they are easier to read and understand than women.

Just because a female prefers the company of men, it doesn't mean it's about competing for male sexual attention or approval. Sometimes it's because they are better friends for that particular individual.

Girls can be really fucking mean.

exactly. you never hear a woman say 'I could never be friends with a group of lads, they're all so boring and gross, all they talk about is football and farting.'

I've been involved in these conversations before and the bigotry is weird. All women are [insert stereotype/slur] except me, obvs.

Despite men abusing women sexually, physically and emotionally, they're less 'bitchy', more straight forward and just thoroughly decent (like me).

You can't rationalise irrationality.

If you are 'womaning' wrong then as many if not more men are going to dislike you for it. So if men are typically lovely to you, I very much doubt its that.

no men "ever hold grudges"
ok....

OP, your colleague (and a few posters on this thread) sound like the definition of 'pick me!' 'and 'I'mnotlikeother girls,' women
Of course you are right, OP.It's fine to have a preference for hanging out with men, if that's what you prefer, same as some people prefer to be friends with people close to their own age, or of similar social status to them, or people who they think share their interests. But to make ridiculous generalisations solely on the basis of sex and assume everyone (apart from you)falls into those stereotypes is ridiculous.

by 'you' I obviously mean the 'pick me's' themselves rather than OP, who don't seem to make the distinction that if they, as women, don't fall into the 'girls are [bitchy/mean/boring/gossipy/only interested in make up and babies] stereotype' then, by definition, not all women are like that, and if they were less determined to consider themselves special they would be perfectly likely to other find women who shared their interests and were on their wavelengths.

This is what we mean. How do you manage to twist what she said into something completely different? We find women who aren't similarly minded to our more black-and-white way of thinking difficult to decipher and we hate having to second guess. It doesn't at all mean that ALL women do this, because we manage not to. It's not very 'authentic' of you to do mental acrobatics to distort what she said.

I know, there's a lot of projection going on.

If they have too much work to do, they should really only be saying 'goodbye' once and not over and over again. You haven't addressed WHY women have too much work to do. I'm a woman and I don't have too much work to do because I simply refuse to do more than my fair share. Look at this site. How often do you hear women saying they do all the housework, child rearing, hold down a FT job, look after PILs, look after grandchildren. What steps are they taking to change that? I don't support the patriarchy. It doesn't help men or women. But women seriously need to help themselves or else put up with massive inequality in the division of labour, which is what they still continue to do.

You’re so triggered by what I said. Wow…

Is that how you react to many people with a different perspective to you. You come across quite unpleasant.