To think women are more toxic than people would like to admit?

[MarthaMayver]

I'd like to start by saying by no means are all women toxic, I'm a female myself and have always been a huge supporter of feminism and "sisterhood" if you will. However the more behaviour I witness from women, I'm starting to stray away from seeing them as allies.

I have worked in female dominated sectors my entire life and have constantly had to witness cliques, gossiping, power plays, passive aggressiveness, and downright bullying. I had to leave my last job as it was affecting my mental health so badly.

I always thought this was just part and parcel of working in groups. However I started a new job last year, with an equal spread of male and female colleagues and there has been none of this. I'm now wondering if the problem with all of my previous workplaces was the fact that they were female dominated.

To me, it's very obvious in person how women favour men over their own gender, regardless of how much "female empowerment" and "Women Supporting Women" is preached these days. For example, they will let men get away with mistakes they wouldn't let other women get away with. Male incompetence is often seen as "cute", whereas the same behaviour coming from a woman would be laughed or sneered at.

There are so many stories coming out in recent years of mothers favouring their sons over their daughters, and at worst bullying and abusing their daughters whilst worshiping their sons. I now think back to my own childhood and I can remember many occasions where my mother would put me down for something, while supporting my male siblings for doing the same thing. There were also a lot of sly, underhand insults that I didn't realize at the time, that were never directed towards my brothers.

I'm prepared to be told IBU, but I'm also very interested in knowing how many people agree, or if anyone has any similar experiences.

Men as a class are only slightly worse than women, in the sense that if you select a man and a woman randomly from the population, the probability that the woman will be more agressive is 40%. Which is probably a lot closer to equality than you expected?

Saying men are more violent than women is like saying men are taller than women. It's true, even though the vast majority of men (who aren't hermits) will daily encounter women who are taller than themselves. If it were a crime to be very tall, if we put the tallest 1% of the population in prison, then probably 99% of prisoners would be men. The fact that nearly all prisoners are men doesn't really tell you much that is significant about the average man.

I think the way some posters are shifting the focus onto mens bad behaviour are proving my point that society isn't willing to admit womens toxic personality traits.

Completely agree. Well said

There's a whole load of sweeping generalisations in this post!

Your descriptions of male/female friendship groups just doesn't ring true for me. It's certainly not been my experience.

As for women being more controlling in relationships? I don't think so.

@brookstar
Obviously I'm not referring to all women, all female friendship groups, etc. These are just patterns I have personally noticed throughout my life.

"As for women being more controlling in relationships? I don't think so."
There have been actual studies on this. Search it up.

@Pumperthepumper
And you still haven’t said how women could have stopped the patriarchy

Why is this even relevant? What evidence is there that being female in a patriarchal society causes toxic female behaviour in the workplace? If in-group toxic behaviour is caused by oppression, then it would logically follow that the group not oppressed, men, would not exhibit in-group toxic behaviour, right? And yet you work for a male suicide charity and, like others, know for a fact that male toxic behaviour is also a thing.

Furthermore, different societies are more or less patriarchal than others but we still see universally that women and men exhibit the same toxic behaviours.

This would imply that patriarchy actually has very little to do with workplace toxic behaviour

It’s relevant because the OP wanted responses for that particular question! Are you even reading this thread?

Yes, I am reading the thread, I just have trouble recalling who posted what (due to a disability), so in this case then please consider my comment to be rhetorical (as I am interested in what you think about relevance of patriarchy to female toxic behaviours as well) or if you prefer, you can leave it for the OP to answer as I mistakenly thought you had asked that question. My apologies x

So when you used the word always you didn't actually mean that.

Could you share that research? A cursory search through my university library and Google scholar brought up just one small scale study from 2014.

Thanks for your apology. I don’t think it’s relevant at all.

How do you know they did? I think it's more likely that women, to an extent, enjoyed the power it gave them to hide behind men in society. Patriarchy is still rampant in the Middle East, and yet despite modern media, internet, etc, women over there aren't exactly up in arms about it? Why?

This one of the most naïve things I've read.

I don't know, enough people have blamed the fact that women can create terrible environments on the patriarchy, it does seem like maybe they aren't ready to admit that as a group can just be as aggressive and self-serving and system-building in their own way as groups of men can. I get the impression they think that without men women wouldn't build such environments.

I've been bullied and treated badly by both men and women and tbh there's not much difference. A bellend is a bellend.

Completely agree. I've gone from working in a small office with two men to a small office with two women. The male dominated office was much more relaxed, my boss was far more approachable and if anybody had a problem with my work it was raised to my face. In my current office the amount of bitching, backstabbing and emotional outbursts is absurd,

It's impossible to answer any concrete question about "the patriarchy" unless you can define it in a material way. Otherwise it's like answering questions about the bogeyman or the Illuminate.
.

You need to stop generalising, & work on meeting a bunch of better behaved women OP. There are plenty of women who don't default to bitchiness & cliques.

4 people is hardly a representative survey though is it?

Some people are bitchy. Some are not. Some of those people are female. Some are male.

Studies by whom?
Funded by what organisation?
Peer reviewed by which groups?
Published where?

If we're going to stop generalising negatively about women, then we also need to stop generalising negatively about men.

Better still, let's stop with the generalisations in general. MILs, people of other nationalities, religious people...none of these groups consists of identical people, yet they're spoken about as if they do.

That has not been my experience in 40 years of the workplace, whereas I've put up with sexual assault, innuendo, being passed over for promotion in favour of men by men, and toxicity . . . from men.

If you doubt it just spend some time on Mumsnet.
Also absolutely no reason “feminist” women can’t be just as toxic as women who aren’t. If anything they’re more self justified in their toxicness

Mothers turn on their daughters in a way that is basically unheard of in father-son relationship dynamics.
😂😂😂

Human beings turn on one another in decidedly similar ways. Some humans are toxic arseholes, & some are not.

Nobody benefits by playing puerile sex-based oneup(wo)manship like this.

Totally agree @saraclara

@KettrickenSmiled

It is actually a well studied thing that lesbian relationships have the highest rates of both physical and mental abuse, then straight couples, then gay men. Yes I know it’s weird but it’s true.

I read somewhere that the higher estrogen count someone had the more likely they were to be unhappy in a relationship, now I’m not saying that equals abuse, but it doesn’t equal stable relationship either.

I have had equal amout of heart break from woman as I have from Men

I have been used, backstabbed and bullied. Both at University and Post Graduate

One at University told all the boys I had herpes (I didnt)
One woman told another woman I looked like Taylor Swift - I heard her reply. She said 'make sure she does not hear that, all we need is for her to have more confidence'

I am not conceited in the slighted

When I obtained my promotion two years ago I was dumped by my current DP as he could not handle my earnings, I found out 'friends' had told each other about my promotion and the likely hood was I had got this as one of the partners fancied me / I was sleeping with him

I have had 5 sexual partners in my life (all LTP) and never slept around. Alot of the hate I have had from woman centres around an assumed promiscuity. It wad even worse when I was single for some reason. I heard one telling another 'they would keep an eye on me'. I mean its actually disgusting

Obviously I take nothing to do with these woman but I waste years of my time with them only to turn toxic.

I do have a few female friends but I agree OP - when a dating situation arises instead of trusting my judgement on the situation - its 'i will ask stewart'
Also the ones who proclaim to be 'girl power' and very quick to disappear once they meet their latest click from tinder and become frustratingly and weirdly co dependent.

I could go on but the point I am making is woman can be horrific

Cheers @Tinaaaaarrrghhh that's interesting. But I've also read that the problem with stats from lesbian/gay relationships is that the gay men are under-reporting.

Not sure about the oestrogen aspect, if that were true why would women in straight relationships not be equally unhappy/abusive as their lesbian sisters?