Why are women so bitchy?

[BearingUp84]

For context - I'm a woman and I don't think I'm a bitch!

However there seems to be a group of school mums that seem intent on leaving me out of everything. I had no idea why. They meet up (pre covid obvs), have group chats etc. One of them can't even look me in the eye on the rare occasion she talks to me.

It's like the old adage, 2 company 3's a crowd. But it's when we're in a bigger group as well.

Why do some women just seem intent on leaving someone out? Constantly on the edges etc?

YABU - not all women are bitches
YANBU - these women are bitches, try make more friends

Just rah!

[Baluchistan95]

@123rd

Leave them to it. Do you want to be mates with a group like that-nah! Not all woman are like that at all. Life is too short to give them a second longer in your head.

I agree. Leave then to it.

[LadyOfLittleLeisure]

@HeyDemonsItsYaGirl

Maybe they sense your misogyny and don't want to be friends with you?

I'm watching a show on Netflix called 'The Bold Type' it's all a bit silly but one of the things I LOVE about it is the depiction of genuine, warm, supportive female friendships - much truer to reality than stereotypes of "bitchy" women excluding others/gossiping/trying to outdo each other.

[DrSbaitso]

Honestly, men are just as bad if not worse. But they aren't put into group environments with people they haven't already befriended as much as women are, they aren't socialised to "be nice" (and then castigated appropriately for failing to manage it) and there's no concept of a mystical "brotherhood" which again only ever appears as another standard to which to fail.

[CoelacanthSharpener]

*started

[CoelacanthSharpener]

Wow, the golden vaginas are out in force on this thread.

It's a fact that SOME women can be bitchy. SOME. (Certain posts on this thread only serve to back this up, ironically.) And it isn't anti-feminist or 'misogynistic' to think this or state it. Misogyny would be if someone tried to claim all women were bitches. Or if women came on to a thread like this and start trying to deny other women's truths... oh, but hang on, wait a minute...

[CrunchyBiscs]

The bitchiness and queen bee stuff is all about a lacking in self confidence in the bitchy and QBs - I think we all know this - the need to be seen as wanted within a group or to be the most popular one. The 'horror' of being left out and a loner - why do we pander to it.
It's not nice feeling unwanted but in the end being a content loner is a pretty good place to be.

[JerichoGirl]

@HeyDemonsItsYaGirl

Wroxie Bloody excellent post!

The internalised misogyny on this thread has been frightening.

I so agree. Always depressing to see women so invested in promoting misogyny.

[HeyDemonsItsYaGirl]

Wroxie Bloody excellent post!

The internalised misogyny on this thread has been frightening.

[LolaSmiles]

I have always been friends with guys for exactly this reason. It's just so much simpler.
Don't tell us, 'I'm not like the other women' 🙄

[Macncheeseballs]

Except you choose not to it seems

[LindaEllen]

I have always been friends with guys for exactly this reason. It's just so much simpler.

I don't understand why so many women feel the need to create drama and ill-feeling, when it's so easy to just get on with each other.

[HurricaneBitch]

I'm not a bitch, but I have no interest in school gate friends, I'm pleasant and speak if spoken to. I doubt you'd even notice me there, if you ignored me to try and get in with the cliquey crowd and then called them bitches because they didn't immediately envelope you, I'd think you were the biggest bitch.

Oh and my dh had far more friends at the school gates than I did, so men bring frozen out is complete bollocks too.

[SpongeBobJudgeyPants]

@MarieIVanArkleStinks

Men don't have nobler inner lives and social lives than women and they've played a massive trick on all of you who think that they do.

I made a similar point about the jostling for position as Alpha Male being equivalent to this 'Queen Bee' thing people talk about. Of course they don't have nobler inner lives.

I've never been followed home by a woman or afraid to enter a lonely place at night because of the risks posed by women. I've never been sexually assaulted by a woman or leered at by a woman, stalked, feared for my life, or looked over my shoulder because of other women. I don't carry a rape alarm because of women. Of course women do sometimes threaten and assault other women. More unusually they even kill. But compared with the almost daily reports of male on female violence and murder, these incidents are vanishingly rare. These are demonstrable facts borne out by statistics.

I've been bullied by girls at school it's true, as well as in the workplace (where I've also been sexually harassed and stalked by men). A few smirks from these silly friendship 'groups' - which I'd never join in a million years - are no real threat. School gate Mums are small stuff. They really are. When I've suffered real abuse and adversity in my life - always at the hands of men - my saviours and healers have been women.

This. Well said.

[Gwenhwyfar]

"Men don't have nobler inner lives and social lives than women and they've played a massive trick on all of you who think that they do."

But they are less likely to be cliquey in my experience. Their friendship groups are more open, possibly less intense as well, so there are pluses and minuses.

[MarieIVanArkleStinks]

Men don't have nobler inner lives and social lives than women and they've played a massive trick on all of you who think that they do.

I made a similar point about the jostling for position as Alpha Male being equivalent to this 'Queen Bee' thing people talk about. Of course they don't have nobler inner lives.

I've never been followed home by a woman or afraid to enter a lonely place at night because of the risks posed by women. I've never been sexually assaulted by a woman or leered at by a woman, stalked, feared for my life, or looked over my shoulder because of other women. I don't carry a rape alarm because of women. Of course women do sometimes threaten and assault other women. More unusually they even kill. But compared with the almost daily reports of male on female violence and murder, these incidents are vanishingly rare. These are demonstrable facts borne out by statistics.

I've been bullied by girls at school it's true, as well as in the workplace (where I've also been sexually harassed and stalked by men). A few smirks from these silly friendship 'groups' - which I'd never join in a million years - are no real threat. School gate Mums are small stuff. They really are. When I've suffered real abuse and adversity in my life - always at the hands of men - my saviours and healers have been women.

[Scautish]

@lothermand

Agreed. Those that are protesting it doesn’t exist clearly haven’t experienced it.

Yes bitch is a misogynist term but I think we all know what the OP means. I’ve experienced bitchy girls all my life because I’m different. Don’t take my own experience away from me.

[lothermand]

@PinkyParrot Motherland did take it to extremes, but I bet you it was based on an observation/experience.

I have witnessed this behaviour in the playground, if you're not in by nursery at the time of reception, you've had it. People are a closed shop, and if you've not experienced it then lucky you I say.

I spoke to mums that weren't part of the 'gang' as I've no wish to be part of any gang, that doesn't mean to say I'm not bothered about being excluded based upon not being there from the start!

It's all territorial, and people are so afraid of this, honestly I couldn't give a shit. Live and let live fgs.

The school gate mentality DOES exist..

[Wroxie]

Men have the luxury of not having to get embroiled in "playground status" wars (because they are busy with more important status wars).

What utter tripe. Men gossip as much as women, if not more, in my experience. They poke and insult each other constantly and call it 'banter'. They blather on constantly about sport and gambling and stock markets (same thing). They judge each other on their cars and watches and physique. If they were the majority of parents at the 'school gate' they would damn well have cliques and conflicts of all kinds. Men don't have nobler inner lives and social lives than women and they've played a massive trick on all of you who think that they do. Fucking pitiful.

[thepeopleversuswork]

MarieIVanArkleStinks

Totally agree with your post. Men have the luxury of not having to get embroiled in "playground status" wars (because they are busy with more important status wars).

I don't blame women for the fact that they lack this privilege and I understand why it happens.

But I do think we owe to ourselves to try to rise above this sort of petty shit. Trivial scraps over "school mum" status serve no purpose except to make us all feel worse and to reduce us to basic stereotypes.

[MsHedgehog]

I can’t help but wonder if the friendship was in OP’s head, rather than an actual friendship. She only claimed they were friends much later, after initially referring to them as mums at the school gates. That’s quite a big omission and IMO is very telling.

[LuaDipa]

@arethereanyleftatall

Can the op and those in agreement with her answer me this please.

I have a group of mum friends where we chat at the school gates. We got out maybe once or twice a year. So, not close friends but I've missed this 10 minute daily chat enormously in lockdown. Can't wait to see them again.

Am I really expected, whilst engrossed in chat with my friends, to look up and check if anyone would like to join in?? Our chat goes way back to when our eldest were in reception so we would have to start new (and thus boring) with anyone.

Of course not. But I assume you wouldn’t begin to actively exclude any of the current group without explanation. This is what has happened to the op and why she is upset.