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.

Potatoes were poisonous until ‘cavemen’ worked out how to propínate them. No answer to the rest of the post though?

@gnilliwdog

I find it hard to believe they were fundamentally different from more recent tribal societies we’ve seen who were still living that lifestyle (when the “new” world was discovered and pacific islands and Australia first seen by Europeans or when Amazonian tribes were discovered). In all those societies men were very much in charge of “mens business” (like disputes and small scale warfare).
Tribal Hunter gatherer society doesn’t seem to have been much different from most historical society in that respect.

@Pumperthepumper

No it wouldn’t. Not if they were less able to do so and more needed in the nurturing role as to compliment the aggressive role. They were splitting duties biologically speaking so that one didn’t have to do the others and they could maximise the chance off offspring survival.

And poison (chuckles) aside, primitive weapons are obviously much more effective when used by someone with more strength.

You don’t have to chuckle, they had poison. A lot of the crops we have today are the result of Neanderthal intelligence in crop propagation.

Do you have any evidence for any of this? Or is it just something that you think might have happened? How did their DNA know about the duty splitting? What about when one of the parents died and the other one had to take on the protector role?

@Tinaaaaarrrghhh I am just struggling with the idea that men in prehistoric times fought more because of testosterone i.e. that is what made them fight. It seems just as likely to me that they were fighting because they were physically stronger and because women may have been pregnant or breastfeeding. I don't imagine they wanted to fight at all. This was pre colonial times or military warfare. These were small groups of people wandering the planet looking for food and shelter. If they fought it may have been about resources, not because a hormone made them want to fight. We know very little about these people, as it is pre-history. We can find remnants of what they ate, where they lived, what tools they used. But it's very hard for us to imagine what their society was like.

I wonder how much the roles st work affect this. I used to work in the NHS - at the time women stayed home usually with babies so senior roles were often men. I would say there was quite a bit of bitchiness. I remember being shocked when one of the new doctors on the wards said that staff could be deliberately unhelpful whilst fawning over the new Male docs.

Singles sex groups tend to get spiteful and petty. I hear from teachers that boys schools are the bitchiest place ever.

It isn’t a female tjing, it’s what happens when there isn’t the 50:50 sex bakance that humans do best with.

I’ve never worked in a mostly female environment so can’t comment on that but I can say that my husbands entirely male work place is incredibly toxic. Homophobia, racism, sexism, ‘locker room banter’ are rife, not to mention the fact that unless you’re in hospital there is no such thing as a ‘sick day’ and you would be openly laughed at if you asked the boss for paternity leave. I don’t think toxic work places are female but I think single sex work places are more likely to be toxic.

Sorry, that tickled me. 😂

You defo raise some interesting points though, many of which sound feasible.

Yes, this makes sense. I was thinking that testosterone might have evolved from this requirement.

How did their DNA know about the duty splitting? What about when one of the parents died and the other one had to take on the protector role?

This might have been what drove women's ability to multitask so well.

Realistically speaking, the female would probably defend her young if it came to it, which is what we see in mammals. But fighting for dominance would've made less sense.

Why less sense?

Actually @YesJess werent you the poster arguing that women could have stopped the patriarchy? In which case, does it not make sense that cavewomen would have seized the opportunity for dominance when they could?

No, I wasn't.

No, it was the OP who said that. That’s disappointing, I thought we were going to get a history of female oppression and what they could have done differently.

Because they were physically weaker. If they beat the other females a male could still just come along and take whatever resources they were fighting over for his own family.

And women would've spent a lot more time pregnant without contraception.

But as we’ve learned, they could have poisoned him or used weapons. So why wouldn’t they, according to this bold new theory?

@Pumperthepumper are you imagining a small group of mesolithic women killing the males in their group to stop the patriarchy? Maybe it happened. I can imagine some tiny clan deciding the males in their group were proving a pita and killing them in their sleep with a rock. Sadly they couldn't write the story down. Or maybe the women liked having the males around to help with survival. The extra strength would help. Maybe they had strong family bonds and enjoyed each other's company. It's interesting to speculate.

No, I don’t think it happened because why would it? Someone said above (maybe you?) that it doesn’t make sense that they would fight for the sake of dominance. It is interesting to speculate, but as an insight into debunked testosterone theory it’s absolutely mindless junk.

@Pumperthepumper No, I didn't make the comment about dominance. Was it @YesJess ? I doubt it happened either, though possible in some tiny group I suppose. If it did I doubt it was because the women had really high levels of testosterone and the men were unusually deficient. i'm getting confused what any one is arguing about now, anyway.

It’s just weird to claim poisoning someone is aggressive. Cruel or vengeful behaviour maybe, but not the confrontational, explosive reaction that marks out aggression. As a matter of interest, women are indeed statistically more likely to be poisoners by a factor of around 4:1.

This is the post I meant @gnilliwdog

No, you’ve missed the point. It’s not that it’s aggressive, it’s that it’s violent or a way to get rid of your enemies without using physical force. My point was, why wouldn’t cavewomen feel the same protection over their offspring and use any other method to ward off predators, if that’s what lead to testosterone evolution.