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.

I find this such an interesting argument though because as I said upthread, testosterone theory has been debunked but if you do believe in it, that means logically you think men have innate violence. Men have a natural, genetic violence in their make up.

To me, how we’re socialised is massively more likely to affect how we respond to others.

@Pumperthepumper I agree socialisation is more likely the cause of behaviours. Even if some hormones promote aggression an individual could channel that into ambition, sports, creative endeavour, all sorts of activities that have a positive outcome.

Here’s a study:

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31785281/

Testosterone is often considered a critical regulator of aggressive behaviour. There is castration/replacement evidence that testosterone indeed drives aggression in some species, but causal evidence in humans is generally lacking and/or-for the few studies that have pharmacologically manipulated testosterone concentrations-inconsistent.

Or here:
www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-testosterone-alone-doesnt-cause-violence/

Or here, as a kind of background to why people think it does (trigger warning though)

lithub.com/it-turns-out-theres-not-a-lot-of-science-linking-testosterone-to-violence/

Hmmm. I agree some people hear it and can’t accept it because it seems like something that can’t be helped or changed, so an excuse or get out of jail free card. And you can’t blame them really, many people feel the same way about the criminally insane or even the mentally ill who are abusive because of their illness. “Mental illness is not an excuse to be a dick” is often said on here.

But I do think if sex hormones do contribute to aggressive behaviour, why can’t it be solved? Sex hormones make us desire sex, make us fertile and makes babies. Generations before us thought that this cannot be changed and our lot in life is to constantly have babies because- unless we removed ourselves from human contact to live as as celibates in closed communities (which only a very tiny minority could actually succeed in doing this mind over body life path).

But we know enough about these hormones to adjust them in our bodies to prevent unwanted pregnancy and even to abort pregnancies, so we can control hormones to an extent already. Obviously, we are still having babies, the “control” isn’t perfect as even hormonal contraception isn’t 100% effective. But what a difference it has made to female equality of life!

So if an excess of sex hormones also affect our behaviour- and there are links that have been studied showing this may be so, then we definitely have the medical knowledge to try and at least reduce toxic behaviour by correcting excess hormones.

@gnilliwdog
@Pumperthepumper

Testosterone isn’t a theory, it really does cause different beahviour.

This whole idea of “socialisation” being responsible for human beahviour is nonsense - what caused the socialisation? Biology and hormones that’s what. Imagine thinking it was the other way around lol, that before socialisation we were just doughy unmoulded clay then like the Big Bang one day socialisation just happened and made men and women different and toxic in differing ways.

No other animal would we say such nonsense about. Humans follow other primate beahviour in many ways and more agressive male behaviour and in fighting for position amongst females in normal. Why are we surprised when we do the same.

Do we believe that all animal behaviour is socialisation or just human behaviour?
It seems very unscientific and more in the realm of some kind of feminist fantasy to pretend that human behaviour (or most of it) is all socialisation

@Discovereads thats exactly the problem though - you’re absolutely right, if testosterone was the reason for male violence we could end it overnight. But it’s not, so we can’t.

@gnilliwdog

But that would also mean hormones were causing those positive behaviours. Nobody said hormones could only cause toxicity and nothing good. It seems to me there’s a need to believe socialisation is the bogey man so that we can do something about it.

Animal behaviour is socially motivated in certain animales though - elephants and gorillas (and maybe lions?) treat male and female offspring differently. And we know that abuse is cyclical - you’re much more likely to become abusive yourself if you were raised in an abusive household.

And we do socialise girls and boys differently - take a wander into your local toy shop and look at what toys are marketed to each sex, and how. Not to mention ‘boys will be boys!’ and all these other microagressions.

@Pumperthepumper

Actually we couldn’t end testosterone overnight

We could end male violence overnight. Why not?

@Pumperthepumper

yes and what causes the socialisation? It’s not learned by experience it re emerges even amongst groups re introduced to the wild. Biology and hormones are the reason socialisation has taken the turns that it has. We weren’t once sought balls of clay all non toxic and then socialisation started, our biology and our socialisation are one and the same and forever intertwined.

There is a nastiness, a competition and a bitchiness towards attractive, slim, bright women. God help you if you're confident with it. There is a jealousy amongst women, probably coming from competition over men or male attention. It's there whether it's admitted or not.

I don’t think I’m following this, do you mean it’s a chicken or egg situation? Socialisation or hormones?

Regardless, it’s still incorrect. We have no proof that testosterone causes violence. We have loads that says socialisation does.

@Pumperthepumper

How do you suggest going about that I wonder?
Testosterone extractions? All men report to the great pink temple for estrogen enhancement and testosterone dehancement by 22:00

The thing your missing is this isn’t all negative, it causes both positive and negative like estrogen.

It’s who we are as a species

It’s probably both tbh. Nature and nurture as these types of things tend to be.
We have urges/emotions influenced by hormones and socialisation teaches us how to regulate and channel them. If we are poorly socialised, we have less capability to regulate and channel our urges/emotions. (All this is in context of a person who is mentally well btw, mental illness is a whole other discussion).

We already know that “boys will be boys” is poor socialisation because it is socialisation that overt aggression is accepted in boys. This is further enforced by the socialisation of girls to “be kind” which means that society does not accept overt aggression in girls, and that assertiveness is also not acceptable. Boys are socialised to exhibit dominance behaviours while girls are socialised to exhibit submissive behaviours.

So for men you add natural hormone of testosterone that is linked to violent aggression + socialisation that overt aggression is socially acceptable and you rather predictably get violence, lots of violence.

For women you add natural hormone of estrogen that might be linked to passive aggression + socialisation that zero aggression and assertiveness is acceptable and you get also rather predictably non-violence.

It’s also very clear that women are held to a higher standard than men in terms of controlling our behaviour. We are trained in it from birth. So yes, changes to socialisation are also essential to combat male violence.

Yes, exactly that. If testosterone is responsible for violence, why don’t we inject violent men with a different hormone as a cure?

@Pumperthepumper

Im saying it’s not chicken or egg - the hormones came before the socialisation and before humanity was fully human. They led to socialisation as we have known it, socialisation is a human behaviour not just a cause of human behaviour.

There is plenty of proof testosterone causes aggression which can lead to violence and anyone not ideologically invested in socialisation being a bogey man that cause all evil can easily see it is true. It’s true for almost all male mammals and animals in general.

So for men you add natural hormone of testosterone that is linked to violent aggression + socialisation that overt aggression is socially acceptable and you rather predictably get violence, lots of violence.

This keeps coming up but as I said, it’s not true. If you can find a study that definitively links testosterone with aggression then I’d be happy to read it.

My
Mother was fairly toxic in all honesty

She used to say that me and my sisters should expect an arsehole of a partner 'because he is a man'. Also that testosterone is the reason for cheating because they cannot help it

😭😭

There isn’t though. Again, if you find a study that says testosterone is 100% linked to increased aggression I’d love to read it.

I work in a female dominated industry and I have had a mixture of toxic environments and positive environments. I really think it depends on the people you are working with.
How do you explain the bullying that goes on in the building industry to the apprentices? Is it "just banter" because it's males doing it? If it were females it would probably be considered "toxic" bullying behaviour.

@Pumperthepumper

because it is also responsible for good things and it’s just our species. Remove it and you wouldn’t have men.

And Who is we? Do you and the local feminist group fancy trying to go door to door and round up all the men? Sounds like a practical plan.

Curing it would be curing humanity of men and who even knows if we could survive without it despite all the negatives

Ah my battery is dying, so to give you a tip, there have been numerous studies done on male prison inmates that found those convicted of violent offences had significantly higher testosterone levels than those convicted of nonviolent offences and also than those not ever convicted of any crime. Now, in case you are wondering, stress reduces testosterone in men so the high stress of a prison environment could not cause the elevated levels of testosterone observed.

We is society. If we have such an easy cure for male violence, why don’t we use it? What ‘good things’ would say, Ian Huntley lose?