Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Mean girls, how do they work?
@RobHenderson tweeted this:
Which I think is a common and accurate statement.
But how exactly do mean girls arrive at consensus? Is it through one queen bee like Regina George? And, if so, how is that queen bee chosen?
To me, as a man, it is mystifying. Men tend to automatically arrange themselves in hierarchies, with "rule by the best" being the standard organizing principle. By default, best equals size and strength. But, depending on the activity, the hierarchy might be based on charisma, intelligence, wealth, musical ability, etc...
With women, this doesn't seem to happen. In fact, in female social hierarchies, the tall poppies are often ostracized leading to women constantly downplaying their abilities. Women who draw credit to themselves get shot down. So who, then rules, the roost? Is it a person who is uniquely able to play the false modesty game? Or is consensus arrived at organically, with a hive mind deciding who is "in" and who is "out".
Let me say that I'm glad to not have to play these games.
In my analysis, the core of the difference between male and female social status arrangement is the locus of the evaluation rubric.
For men, it's an external, verifiable, and discrete measurement - performance. Who scored the most points? Who brought in the most dollars? Who got everyone to show up for the party/vote/heist? While there is certainly haggling over who should get what percentage of "credit" for a particular success, there is still a "thing" that happened and that everyone can point.
For women, it's the constantly in flux consensus mechanism for status. You're "cool" because enough other people decided you were. Why or how did they decide that? Irrelevant they just did, and at a critical mass that those who disagree with the coolness assessment are necessary in the minority (perhaps not in number, but in social capital within the group). I think you see this in a lot of female coded activities - fashion, art, food, entertainment. Anything that is governed chiefly by the hard to define concept of "taste." There's no discrete external rubric for what makes this year's pants/tops/shoes "in" yet, somehow, everyone seems to know (or is forced to accept) what is "in." Interestingly, this creates a constantly updating mechanism wherein whatever is current in terms of taste sets up its own demise by creating the opportunity for an opposition to develop. You can't get whatever is "in" right just once, you have to update lest you fall "out."
This, to me, is why you have the infamous gender specific difference in neuroticism. Why
bitches be so crazy?do women, as a group in general, exhibit higher neuroticism? It's because their constant task is to covertly poll their social groups for the days' social standings which are, in turn, based on subtle expressions of taste (fashion, style, memetic currency etc.) without explicit voicing of opinions by the group members. Male or female, if this was your life, you'd be a little stressed, no?I'd implore anyone reading this to avoid plunging into normie-feminist rage responses. I tried to describe what I see as differences while doing my best to avoid any implicit value judgements. The female means of determining social status is critically and necessarily important to human families, communities, and societies. A world without women? The closest approximation we have to that is roughly prison. I'll take a daily "mean girls status market" over a daily "avoid random lethal violence" roulette wheel. Furthermore, I do believe women have outsized importance in building and maintaining culture. Politics flows from that, and laws from politics. Many societies have tried to sequester women away from culture and politics - universally, I would say, to their existential risk and eventual death.
But the problem of our time, I'd argue, is that the west has, for 30+ years now, actively fostered cultural developments that try to maximize female styles of behavior, communication, and social status regulation. In the past 10+ years, it has risen to the level of doing so in explicit opposition to all male styles of behavior, communication, and social status regulation. But, wait, please don't think I'm saying "What about men?!". Far from it. The insidious and tragic result of the rise of extremist feminism has been it's disastrous effects on social order as a whole and women specifically. We eat our own with the best and most earnest of intentions.
Social interaction in groups of women can involve feelings of like and dislike, love and hate at the same time and often towards the same person. Friendship between men and friendship between women isn’t and can probably never be the same. That isn’t because male friendship is particularly deeper; women and men can both have lifelong friends and casual acquaintances and everything in between. But the nature of close female friendship is different.
This is true even within families. For example, sisters who are close to each other will often argue viciously, be nasty and vindictive, but also be very close to each other, speak all the time, be very supportive, be best friends. Brothers are usually very close or very distant. There is either bad blood, good blood, or not much of a real relationship at all.
It is true that men are quicker to forgive their friends than women. But that is in large part because the boundary between friend and foe is more strictly delineated for men than for women. The concept of male camaraderie doesn’t really have an equivalent for women. Women have community, a form of female identity and collectiveness that is no less powerful, that extends in many cases to risking time, effort, disgust to care for another girl throwing up in a bathroom at a party who you’ve never met before out of a shared womanhood, but then also bitching to all your close friends about each other (and the drunk girl at the party) in a way that men, or at least most men, don’t really do.
On one point I disagree. Men join groups and then subordinate themselves to an oft unspoken and yet entirely real hierarchy. So do women. The grounds are no less material though; on both counts usually beauty. That both sexes have in common.
Some men laugh at women online in memes that amount to ‘how can you claim to be a ‘girl’s girl’ if you constantly gossip about each other behind your backs’. True, and indeed intolerable in a male friendship group, presumably. But women can both love and hate their friends, bicker about them in front of some mutual acquaintances and stand up for them in front of others.
One thing that make male hierarchies different than female ones is instability when exposed to the other sex.
Let's say there is a group of boys. One boy is the leader. He's best at sports, and he has natural charisma. When the boys meet the other sex, the girls will be attracted to the male leader. The hierarchy is stable.
Now let's take a group of girls. One girl is the leader. She's charismatic and smart. But when the girls meet a group of boys, the boys all ignore her and pay attention to the dumb blonde instead. The hierarchy is unstable.
This is obviously an oversimplification, but women generally respect male hierarchies more than the opposite.
Maybe, but I could just as easily spin a yarn about some dominant shaved-headed roid freak being the dominant male in a social circle but losing out when it comes to female attention to the skinny pretty boy with the beautiful face and hair.
True to an extent. I think it’s overstated, though. If I think back to high school, all the most beautiful girls were popular. Even where there were one or two exceptions where people were extremely disliked due to actions they’d taken, hooking up with someone’s boyfriend, whatever, this was very much a temporary thing and they were ostracized for a few weeks before being at every party again. If we’re using crass metaphor, they were temporarily exiled from court, not relegated to the peasantry.
I think some root cause of a certain subset of male anguish is that the fantasy of the mousy but extremely hot girl who glows up just for him is just that; barring weight loss in their twenties, beautiful women know they’re beautiful and always have because they remember being 11 and being catcalled by men in the street.
If I think of most groups of women friends I’ve encountered, the hierarchy is usually looks based because social groups for women are highly assortative based on hotness, often unconsciously. It would be extraordinarily uncommon to have a group in which the nerdy fat friend was dominant, unless the whole group was comprised of nerdy fat friends.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I appreciate the well thought through feedback. I think it adds a lot to the discussion of the topic.
May I request you go into more detail here? A lot of men would see this kind of behavior, in a male group, as sowing dissent and/or destabilizing the group. This could prove fatal in a situation in which group cohesion is necessary (i.e. some sort of intergroup violence). Thus, "talking shit" in male groups is dealt with severely.
Why is this not the same in female groups? Genuine question, not trying to lead anywhere.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link