To think this comment about women with no female friends is problematic?

[Newlifeincoming]

I saw a comment recently that said “women who don’t have any friends that are women are red flags. I don’t care what anyone says.”

I find this a bit troubling and potentially judgemental.

AIBU for thinking that this perspective is unfair and doesn’t account for individual circumstances or preferences? What do you think about this kind of statement?

With this judgemental attitude towards someone you don’t know AT ALL, why would people want to be friends with you?

I can understand absolutely how bad experiences can colour future behaviour-of course I can. What I'm finding a little hard to...not sure what word to use, maybe identify with?..is the idea of coming across a few shit women who treated you appallingly and deciding, based on that, to choose friends from a group that historically and demonstrably collectively treat women badly.

I'm wondering how many of the women who prefer men because they're so much more straightforward forward and less spiteful have been cat called or harassed, sexually assaulted or experienced domestic abuse. Survivors of abuse will tell you precisely how spiteful and bullying their abuser was

This is literally me 😂

I think it’s because people act on their own personal experience of friendships with men and women rather than statistics. And most people have some friends of both sexes as they get older.

I would not see myself as having much in common with a poster like @Donsyb for example. And sadly these kinds of judgemental attitudes towards other women are common. You only have to read the threads on this board about women like Meghan Markle to see that dynamic in action. No thanks.

i can't see why i'd want to spend time around women who judge me for having mostly male friends and struggling to find common ground to build friendships with women like them who've historically gone out of their way to point out that i'm not like them, and therefore there is something 'wrong' about me.

Why on earth would i stay around people who other me.

Depends. I have limited female friends because the insecurities of some women is beyond what I can be bothered with. I’m also not interested in hearing a woman slate another woman and then 30 seconds later be all smiley and in their face. Strong, secure and confident women only for me.

Same!

Why on earth would i stay around people who other me.

Very good point.

It’s not about preferring men. I don’t care what gender. If a female wants to share my interests, that’s fine. However, they are different in interests, usually. I always preferred male conversation at the parties I went to. These only happened a few times. One was a birthday, others at New Year. The women tended to congregate at one end of the room, the men at the other. There was always one guy joined the women and I’d tend to join the men. Maybe because I worked in the man’s world. I was the only woman who worked on a trawler, although some trawlermen saw that as bringing bad luck. I was the only woman who was regularly cutting seaweed for a living, stalking the deer, in our bit of the world. I was forced into male company for many years. Only women I saw were MiL, SiL and my mother, or checkout workers in the supermarket. Except for those parties when SOs were present.
So the women talked children and school, hairdressing, nails and makeup. I never set foot in a hairdresser. I cut my own, never wore make up or got my nails done. They had things in common, probably already knew each other. Oh yeah, and I hated shopping, so half the conversation was not interesting.

The men talked hunting, shooting, fishing and were more interesting than the women. I could learn more with them. Politics, economy. How to fix things..cars, plumbing….
Now, decades later, I talk to both equally as I only talk when out dog walking, meeting other dog walkers. We talk about weather and dogs .They're all married. I’m not.
I don’t have friends as in go for lunch, meet for coffee or whatever people do. Never had that in all my life. Lived in remote areas. Had a husband who would not let me out…made sure I was kept too busy to have time to go out. If not working, I was to be beside the phone in case he rang. I don’t have friends. I have acquaintances. I help neighbours, but we don’t socialise.

So a sweeping statement about not trusting women who prefer to talk to men is unfair. Everyone is different and not every woman who talks to guys wants to shag them. It seems to me to demonstrate insecurity. People are just people and not everything is about sex.

Exactly

Don’t know but as I have LOTS of friends and she herself says she has none, than maybe that says all there is to say 🤷🏼‍♀️

So you accuse me of being judgemental but have already decided you have nothing in common with me despite knowing NOTHING about me 😂🤦‍♀️

and actually I think Megan Markle has lots of friends, both male and female. I also happen to be one of the (apparently) few people who have been suppprtive of her and think she gets a bad rap.

Why is it a red flag? Surely there really are women out there that only have male friends. I genuinely get on better with men because I find it harder to relate to women (I don’t do make up or fashion etc). I do have female friends, mainly from school/university. I tend to do more with my male friends though as I’ve found it really hard to find women that are into cycling, running, weight lifting, DIY or gaming. I do have regular female gaming friends though, one of which I sometimes meet up with. My DH seems to just have “people he knows” rather than friends.

I find it very hard to relate to women who talk about make up and fashion because it doesn't interest me. However, I obviously know women who don't talk about those things because women aren't a hive mind with a handful of 'feminine' interests.

It's ironic that women are saying I find it hard to relate to women because [insert stereotypes] and don't realise that they are women, so evidently, not all women conform to stereotypes.

Battling female stereotypes has been grueling for those at the coal face of feminism. It's been especially difficult with the rise of Trans ideology which is of course, founded on stereotypes.

Life would be so much better if we approached people as individuals and not as a cluster of preconceived ideas.

Maybe I should also have said I find it hard to relate to women that talk fashion and makeup then rather than I find it hard to relate to women. Alas the vast majority of women I tend to encounter fall in this category though. I’m well aware that I’m a woman and that there are many others that don’t conform to the fashion and makeup stereotype. They are like rocking horse shit around here though, hence I tend to end up with mostly male friends.

There are many other factors as well of course, like most of the school mums are younger than me so are at different life stages. They’ll politely say hello back in passing but won’t “talk” to me. There’s only 1 mum that does have a prolonged conversation with me and she’s a similar age to me and similarly been put in the “hello in passing” box by the others so I’m wondering if subconsiously we have gelled more due to that.

I'm sorry you live in a place akin to Stepford where all the women have only a handful of dull interests. It must be very difficult.

I've been discussing this kind of thing across two threads.

On the one hand, I preferred playing with boys when I was a girl and still have difficulty knowing how to interact with other women. On the other hand, the fact that I preferred playing with boys when I was a girl led me into danger: my mother warned me about strange men; unfortunately, she didn't warn me about our neighbours' sons.

When I was a little girl, I thought that we were all part of one big happy gang à la Enid Blyton. In fact, the older boys were grooming us. I was "part of the gang"; another girl was the gang leader's "girlfriend".

I was 7; she was 8. The "gang leader" was at secondary school.

ETA Until I wrote this comment, I'd quite forgotten about the other girl having the "status" of "girlfriend". That was 57 years ago.

@Closetheblinds " Strong, secure and confident women only for me"

And this means you have limited women friends? Blimey.....

Where did I say they had dull interests? They have different interests to me, I’m the minority that doesn’t fit in. Hence many of my friends being male as they tend to do more of the activities I like to do.

I'm so sorry you experienced that. Horrendous behaviour. There seems to be a disconnect when discussing the behaviour between the sexes. It seems to me that when girls behave badly, it's translated as all girls are like that. When boys behave badly, it's individual boys are like that; not all boys.

I think that we're so used to lumping all women together as a sex class, that we don't notice we're doing it. The media is largely male and the view of women is often very reductive. It's very easy to internalise as is the language used to describe the sexes.

There are hundreds of cruel names for women and women's behaviour, but only a handful of negative names for men. The type of behaviour men are lauded for; promiscuity, assertiveness etc is negative when displayed by women.

I am one of "those" women. I'm autistic and get on better with men. There's a theory that autism is a hyper masculine brain.

I love my fellow women and am a feminist.

You believe the sexes have different brains? Not that you've a woman and therefore think like a woman, but have a masculine brain.

I believe men are more likely to have a certain type of brain and women another. Probably due to hormones in utero.

I completely agree with this. The current thread about MM and trademark failure is full of women gleefully rubbing their thighs at the hoped-for downfall of a woman that they don't even know. There is something very wrong with that.

I'm no fan of the royal family at all but those nasty threads are allowed to stand forever.

For the obtuse banging on about rape, cat-calling, etc. as some sort of gotcha (which it really isn't), no woman is going to knowingly be friends with a man who indulges in that grotesque behaviour. Likewise, many women will not want to associate with the type of woman on the MM threads here. I definitely wouldn't.

There are marked differences in friendships and women (or men) are allowed to find and associate with the people they accord with, and they're free to do that without censure from anyone else.