Are Girls Insane?
Ha ha, of course they are! It's basically a rhetorical question. [This post effectively destroys what tiny little chance I had of ever having sex with any of my blog readers. Except Mike. HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL.] But what's that you say? Something about needing proof? Okay:
Women think that other women are insane.
That's right, read it again. It's like invalidating the Identitive Property. How many times have you, man or woman, heard a female friend of yours proudly announce that she has "more guy-friends than girl-friends" and then go on to explain that girls are too stressful, bitchy, vindictive, indirect, non-confrontational, or "territorial" to spend much time around?***
Recently I was sitting around a campfire with several women between the ages of 29 and 65, one of whom is a lawyer and another who is a well-off conservationist/benefactor, as they talked about the possibility of working in an office full of women. The consensus in the group was that it wouldn't work. The lawyer piped up that she'd seen the results of such a setup and that it'd sucked. Now, this group wasn't dressed in burkhas or otherwise spouting off ultra-conservative rants ... quite the opposite: they were liberal, independent, educated, successful women suggesting that a group of women couldn't keep a lid on their collective insanity. My brain basically imploded when I heard it. On top of that, a number of my TOTALLY ANONYMOUS women grad-student friends talk about how their GENERIC UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT is a hornet's nest of tension due to the overwhelming presence of female students. These are simply recent repetitions in a litany of women talking about how insane other women are. I swear to God I am not making this shit up. So what's my point?
First, women who negatively generalize their own sex never seem to make the connection that they themselves are women. It's the equivalent of me complaining about asshole drivers who speed way too much and weave in and out of traffic on Hwy 20 returning from Steens Mtn in their black Honda station wagons with Oregon license plates 424 BEX.
These same women will vigorously defend womankind ... even though they think they're all insane anyway. I just can't wrap my head around it.
Here are my current working hypotheses for this whole thing.
1. Women have inhereted a gene that that makes them both hot and insane.
2. Cultural factors have made most women so hyper-self-conscious that they distrust other women.
3. The writer is an overly-critical asshole.
4. Monthly, uh ... y'know ... that thing with the thing ...
Items 1 and 3 have pretty much been proven and I'm suspicious of 4. Item 2 is an open question. I wish I could convince John McLoughlin to take this issue up on his Sunday-morning show.
***Before I get a boatload of well-deserved hate in the comment section, note that these are NOT MY WORDS. These generalizations were made by women about women on multiple occasions. I would never generalize women. Except to say that they are universally horrible drivers. And insane.
Women think that other women are insane.
That's right, read it again. It's like invalidating the Identitive Property. How many times have you, man or woman, heard a female friend of yours proudly announce that she has "more guy-friends than girl-friends" and then go on to explain that girls are too stressful, bitchy, vindictive, indirect, non-confrontational, or "territorial" to spend much time around?***
Recently I was sitting around a campfire with several women between the ages of 29 and 65, one of whom is a lawyer and another who is a well-off conservationist/benefactor, as they talked about the possibility of working in an office full of women. The consensus in the group was that it wouldn't work. The lawyer piped up that she'd seen the results of such a setup and that it'd sucked. Now, this group wasn't dressed in burkhas or otherwise spouting off ultra-conservative rants ... quite the opposite: they were liberal, independent, educated, successful women suggesting that a group of women couldn't keep a lid on their collective insanity. My brain basically imploded when I heard it. On top of that, a number of my TOTALLY ANONYMOUS women grad-student friends talk about how their GENERIC UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT is a hornet's nest of tension due to the overwhelming presence of female students. These are simply recent repetitions in a litany of women talking about how insane other women are. I swear to God I am not making this shit up. So what's my point?
First, women who negatively generalize their own sex never seem to make the connection that they themselves are women. It's the equivalent of me complaining about asshole drivers who speed way too much and weave in and out of traffic on Hwy 20 returning from Steens Mtn in their black Honda station wagons with Oregon license plates 424 BEX.
These same women will vigorously defend womankind ... even though they think they're all insane anyway. I just can't wrap my head around it.
Here are my current working hypotheses for this whole thing.
1. Women have inhereted a gene that that makes them both hot and insane.
2. Cultural factors have made most women so hyper-self-conscious that they distrust other women.
3. The writer is an overly-critical asshole.
4. Monthly, uh ... y'know ... that thing with the thing ...
Items 1 and 3 have pretty much been proven and I'm suspicious of 4. Item 2 is an open question. I wish I could convince John McLoughlin to take this issue up on his Sunday-morning show.
***Before I get a boatload of well-deserved hate in the comment section, note that these are NOT MY WORDS. These generalizations were made by women about women on multiple occasions. I would never generalize women. Except to say that they are universally horrible drivers. And insane.
posted by Waan at 12:18 AM
8 Comments:
Good post. Very insightful.
Let's have sex.
Warren... your basic flaw is that you are trying to understand. STOP IT! Just STOP! You will never understand because you are not supposed to.
The end.
To respond to both comments: life would be so much easier if I were gay. Or gayer.
I agree with scalpystraz, whoever that might be...
though, i must admit ive been trying to figure this out my whole life...
including now, when i:m out to meet people, but the only people i meet are people i share a dorm room with in a hostel, and, wouldn:t you know it, they are all women!! and i:m afraid of every one of them. :)
it's all madness
of course women who say that all women are insane realize that they too are women. and of course they also defend womankind. because women understand that these things can all be true. because women understand complexity. because women are complicated.
which is what makes them difficult to live and work with. and it's also what makes them funny and smart and fun and hot.
easy isn't everything.
Okay, I'm removing my tongue from the cheek and putting it tightly between my teeth. Laura, I completely reject the notion that this is a subject beyond my comprehension because I have a wang. Why shouldn't I understand this? Why should human character be so opaque that we can't understand ourselves?
I was raised to treat everyone equitably and, by and large, I think that's a really fair take on life. The idea of someone debasing themselves, or a whole class of people, based on their inherent attributes invalidates so much fair play to me. This goes well beyond describing general flaws--I mean, most guys would agree to the description of Guyhood being generally aggressive, straightforward, more prone to violence, less afraid of confrontation, etc. And obviously women are different from men in many ways.
No, the issue with women cuts to a more fundamental day-to-day interaction. Can you imagine applying for a job where the boss considers your gender before hiring you? It happens all the time (unfairly) but this train of logic seems to justify it if an employer is a woman hiring a woman. What happened to the idea of judging someone based on the THE CONTENT OF THEIR CHARACTER?
What bothers me deeply is that this form of thinking stratifies society even further--man vs woman, citizen vs citoyen, rational vs irrational, and, ultimately, right vs wrong. God knows I've had the great fortune of working for some incredibly sharp women in my short professional career--and I've learned a lot from what I consider to be a uniquely female take on management, groupthink, and attaining goals. I will not undermine their success and their mentorship as anomalous to a general female "complexity" simply because they are female. Either that or I have to rethink my take on half of humanity.
Retorts? Argue with me.
oh, come on. we're not undermining anything. my point with the complexity is that women can talk shit about other women, can go off on how they are difficult to be friends with and difficult to work with... and in the end we still want to be friends with them and work with them. we complain about it because it's true, but we still recognize that these relationships are worthwhile, for all the reasons you list.
plus enough already. we all know you're just trying to score points with chicks.
Nah, if that were true I'd blog about how I had to get penis reduction surgery. I'll tell you all about it sometime.
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