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.

White people and men already have equality, that’s why equality drives focus on equalising poc and women. Right?

If you don’t support feminism, then hand back your right to vote, to work, to education, to maternity leave, to drive etc.

In my old workplace, I worked in a female dominated area, then moved to a male one.
The women would gossip and talk shit about anyone and everyone behind their back. They would gaslight too. Some of the worse bullying I saw was from women.
When I worked with the men (I was the only woman), what you saw was what you got. No backchat or gossip. If you fell out, it was sorted and forgotten in an afternoon. With the women, the smallest thing could cause an issue for years

From my experience in school, with bullying, the girls were vicious... and it would go on for years. They worked out what buttons to push to trigger you, and they would do it every time. The boys would push you over with a laugh, and that was it.

Before anyone tries to flame me into oblivion, please realise that this is my experience. I am not saying it is the same in general for anyone else.

@WaffleIron I mean I’m not sure what you’re referring to there is typically a pretty wide range of opinions on here in that regard. It’s not like the posts here have universally disagreed with OP, lots of them are agreeing that women can be more toxic than people like to admit, they are considering why it might be the case and it’s clear they are also women.

If you’re aware of a male dominated forum which has this level of diversity of opinion and introspection send us a link will you? They can be plenty critical of various people sure, even or especially individual men, but they rarely call out men as a group in my experience.
I’d be very happy to be proven wrong, I may just be on the wrong male dominated forums/ comment sections.

Do you think maybe because a lot of the threads are about abusive men that maybe it seems like women are stereotyping more? Because that’s probably more about availability bias (it is mumsnet, likely to be mostly women in heterosexual relationships), and the fact that men tend to be more abusive/dangerously abusive to women than women do to men. A lot of men who are abusive to their partners and not the men in their lives are misogynists, they are being nasty to their partner in large part because she is a woman, that’s why gender figures at all in the conversation. women come to MN because they know there’ll be lots of other women who have been through similar.

No.

Sorry but that’s bullshit name calling to say I’m anything related to MRA, I’m a feminist. Whats so hard about understanding can we please just talk about the topic in the OP without the discussion being shit down by “this is just a distraction not worthy of discussion because it’s nothing compared to x done by men”

Its rather like wanting to have a thread about sexism in the U.K. and someone constantly popping up and saying why aren’t we focusing on actual sexism like living under Taliban rule in Afghanistan. That we have zero right to discuss or address sexism, because sexism in the U.K. is nothing compared to the Taliban in Afghanistan. And if you try to continue to discuss sexism in the U.K. that poster getting belligerent and saying “so women executed in the street are nothing compared to your unequal pay packet?” It’s maddening and I am sick of it.

Everyone is a twat.

However, yes, many women don't want to acknowledge that like normal people. I find it bot insulting to women's intelligence when literally everything we do is "man made women do it". It's 2022, most of us are our own people with own minds.

The issue is that no matter what we do, some women will tell us it's for men orwe are made to do it by men.

We are damned if we do, damned if we don't. From leg shaving to cleaning. I find that pretty toxic.

And you don't need to kill someone to be a toxic twat.... Great whataboutery. I have a belief that if women were standardly physically stronger like man, the crime rates would kind of leveled.

@IrisVersicolor fair point, well made.

It might sound weird but when sexist men view women as "beneath them" it can actually make them feel more protective over women, thus being less critical of us.
Whereas the constant competition, comparisons and bitterness from women all the time just gets so, so, so wearing and depressing.

Bubble, if it’s physical makeup that stops women from being violent, why don’t they just use weapons or poison to level the crime rates?

So women should be grateful to the men who see us as beneath them?

Can it? I’d say more frequently if makes them aggressive belligerent and dismissive.

Yes, women can be utterly vile, particularly towards other women. Most people of both sexes fit somewhere between those who are truly horrible and those who provide shining examples of the best, kindest and most positive types of behaviour.

Women are less likely to exhibit their nastiness in physically or sexually violent ways. However, they are still more than capable of being so horrible and underhand that they make their victims want to harm themselves, saving the female bully from being caught out having to do the job herself. Tbh, I think a great many women are far too self-forgiving of the mental torture they inflict on others, despite the heavy toll it can have on the victim’s mental health - it doesn’t make you a nicer person to be too weak to physically intimidate someone if you choose to put them down through words or deliberate exclusion, instead.

@BigFatLiar completely agree. The constant blaming of everything on men is getting tedious. A lot of women are bitches OP, YANBU.

Men commit the most horrendous crimes against women. Women don’t often commit these types of crimes against men or other women. Men can go to another level of despicable behaviour imo.

@Pumperthepumper good question, in fact Steven Pinker makes a pretty persuasive argument in his book Better Angels of Our Nature that as women’s rights have increased borne men and women have become less likely to murder or be violent.

Also, it’s true that people who are physically dominant are more likely to get the upper hand in violence and perhaps engage in it more, but I don’t think we see women murdering children at the same rates as men murder men, or women or children- I could be wrong on that though.

I don’t think it’s whataboutery to point out that most unpleasant criminal behaviour, up to and including murder is statistically far more common among men- it’s relevant to the conversation of female toxicity, which is being judged presumably in contrast to male toxicity. Discussions about serious crime among men help to clarify why toxic masculinity is considered a more pressing issue, even if we can all also acknowledge we’ve met some pretty nasty women in our time.

Genuinely, yes, I can.

Workwise, on the whole my male colleagues were easier and more straightforward to deal with. Definitely less gossipy, and they didn't make things personal.

On a personal level, my male friends are just as good people as my female ones. The only people who have treated me really badly (and they're mercifully few) have been female.

This.

Men commit the most horrendous crimes against women. Women don’t often commit these types of crimes against men or other women. Men can go to another level of despicable behaviour imo.

Indeed, it is unequivocally true.

But, what is the point of these comments? Is it that, no discussion is allowed unless it is discussing the very ‘worst’ of any given situation? This would limit all discussions quite severely.

A - we would most likely have some more testosterone (that apparently comes with balding tho... So no thank you)
B - being stronger or on par would most likely make women think differently about fall out. Eg. Punching someone 1/3 stronger than you? Bad idea, but if you kind of match? The thought process would be different most likely
C - i believe there are many more women murderes than we know about. They just don't do it obviously like many man do.
D - men were in battles since they were always stronger so for thousands of years, praised for killing and fighting

That's just my thinking though. Not sure if anything is anywhere studied.

But surely if it’s just physical strength that’s holding women back, ie we all have the same violent urges, we would just find other ways to kill?

I don’t know about studies specially on this, but I do know that testosterone theory has been widely debunked ie there’s no link between increased testosterone and violence.

The OP was talking about workplace behaviours. There are plenty of other threads about crime.

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.

'It’s relevant to the conversation of female toxicity, which is being judged presumably in contrast to male toxicity.'

I don't know if it's being judged in contrast so much as in tandem. We all know about toxic masculinity but obviously female toxicity exists alongside that. Women are half the supporting structure of all sorts of cultural beliefs and practises so examining their role is useful, I would think.

Women do kill though. Every single day.

@Walkaround
Completely agree and what is distressing is how such toxicity is linked to suicides & attempts. In fact a Priti Patel aide received a £25k payout after a suicide attempt over bullying.