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.

Research conducted on a variety of animals has found a strong correlation between levels of testosterone and aggression. This relationship seems to be weaker among humans than among animals, yet it is still significant.

Seems like there may be a link to me. At least a possibility of it.

And yet, that possibility has never been proved. We’ve never found a definite link.

This is consistent with other studies, which show that among men known for their aggressive behavior, testosterone has a clear effect in provoking hostility and violence, an effect that has also been documented in women.

Same with this. You just don't want to even consider it as a possibility.

They don’t clearly show testosterone causes aggression. Every one of them points that out - please do read them and see for yourself.

@Pumperthepumper

I don’t know. Chimps could be said to live in a patriarchy, Lions too (especially when they’re several), a lot of animals really. In rarer cases in mammals Others like Elephants are matriarchal.
Some have taken male agression and domination to such extremes they live in more of a harem style society ruled by a male who fights others over control of females (Hippos).

The reality is given our closest relatives beahviour and all of human history it’s not that much of a stretch to think that patriarchy is a biological reality for humans.

A 'clear effect in provoking violence' is the same thing as a link.

Thats not what that says though - it says that among men who are already violent testosterone spikes provoke further hostility. That doesn’t mean it’s the testosterone that makes them violent.

Why would you like men to be naturally violent to be a good thing?

@Pumperthepumper

Its got nothing to do with whether it’s a good thing or not. Your trying to make it into a moral question is ridiculous and out of place - it’s biology

Until we have 100% proof of the patriarchy I think we should refer to it as 'the unproven feminist theory called the patriarchy'.

in my experience the worst behaved demographic in the workplace in terms of bullying and general mistreatment of others are middle aged women and their targets are almost always younger people, most often younger women.

happily, in my workplace it’s the opposite. I, along with the other middle aged women are fiercely protective of the younger women because we know what it’s like.

It’s not biology though. You can’t provide any proof that it’s biology.

Yep I agree too and my main area of working is in Midwifery. Cliques and bitchiness for a whole 12 hour shift. It's very sad.
Women should definitely be supporting women

Go ahead. It’s quite long though, but if you’re happy to type it out I’m sure nobody will care.

Why would you like men to be naturally violent to be a good thing?

I don't. I'm just not one of those people who believes we should try and bend reality to fit our desires. We see a lot of this nowadays, not least with the whole pretence that men can change sex and its nonsense.

Biology is biology. It doesn't care about right or wrong.

But there isn’t a biological violence in men. Which I think is a good thing.

@Pumperthepumper

Theres plenty of proof. You choose to ignore it. I really don’t think you understand what proof is. When something shows a clear link and causation that is proof, yet your being shown that and you refuse to call it such.

It’s true of so many mammals and it’s proven true of them and us. Your living in a fantasy land to think testosterone doesn’t make men more agressive and everything is socialisation

This is just semantics now though tbh. If something 'provokes violence' we would generally say it makes people violent.

For example, England supporters drinking beer all day provokes violence.

Can you post one piece of definitive proof?

No, it’s not semantics, it’s different because it’s not the cause of the violence. The violence already exists, the testosterone (or beer, if you want) provokes it.

And FTR this is partly why I just can't identify as a feminist, because it's often so much more than just focusing on women's issues. There's often a hellbent agenda which feminists will go to great lengths to preserve, even if this means ignoring science and being extremely selective with their reasoning.

It's just often seems so disingenuous to me, and I'm not trying to be rude.

I think you are trying to be rude, because you keep saying it’s ‘science’ and it isn’t.

Ironically, pretty disingenuous of you.

I'm not suggesting that the human race has no capacity for violence whatsoever without testosterone, or that it's always 100% related to hormones.

I'm saying that it seems very likely that it's a big factor influencing it and likely explains to a large extent why men are more violent than women.

It is science though when scientists prove that higher levels of testosterone influence the brain functions relating to fight or flight behaviour.

It doesn’t though, because there isn’t a definite link between aggression and testosterone. I said upthread, I used to work for a male suicide charity and we did loads and loads of work on social pressures and influences on men. Never once did we say men are biologically more violent than women, because they’re not.