On the laments of women who insist they really, truly would like more female friends, but are baffled as to how to make any.
As always when I play Answer Bitch, I will be happy to give you the complete truth that you didn’t want to hear, and are now mad at me for sharing instead of making up fluffy white lies.
You are as sexist as any Modern Neanderthal Man. Yes, you are. Oh, sure, you fervently believe that women ought to get paid as much as men and have the same job opportunities, and you’d kill anyone who suggests that you find computers baffling just because you’re a girl.
But most women…oh, well, they’re petty and they backstab and they giggle and think about their nail polish. That’s just how women are. MNM says the same thing, by the way: if you point out to him that you’re smart and can do math, he’ll agree that sure, you are special, but that’s just you, not most women. Which leads us into the second problem:
You like being special. You get an ego boost out of being the only girl around all the cool guys. You’re the woman chosen as funny, smart, elite, geeky, non-frivolous, whatever. Maybe they call you an “honorary guy”. If just any woman could be admired as an equal, where would you be?
You don’t call your guy friends on their shit. Part of being sexist is buying into the idea that male > female, and that annoying guy behavior is forgiveable while annoying girl behavior is deadly. Girl talks about eyeshadow? Off the guest list. Guy talks about football? Rolling of eyes, maybe, but he’s still your buddy. And of course, we must judge all women by the actions of a few:
I’ve been manipulated, sabotaged, and backstabbed by women in the past. The closest woman in my life, my mother, is a mental basketcase and the queen of guilt and manipulation.
If a man said this as a reason why he shuns female friends, you’d tear him a new one. If a woman said that she couldn’t stand men because they were obnoxious, sexist, paternalistic and she was sick of having her ass grabbed, you’d be sympathetic, but you’d also be thinking she was overgeneralizing and being unfair to the good guys. Yet this is an acceptable rationale for cutting women out of your life–some of them are bitches!
I actually just have a hard time relating to women and I recently realized that I actually treat some of them with suspicion, as the only chick in my office who’s close to my age just came over to chat for 2 minutes and I found myself continually questioning why she was here and what she was trying to find out by talking to me.
Has this woman done anything weird or offputting? Well, yes. She actually, if you can believe it, came over to chat. That’s, like, as if she was trying to make friends or something!
And believe me: the kind of woman you claim you want to be friends with, the smart one who isn’t petty and backstabbing, who is cool and friendly and won’t forget you exist when she gets a boyfriend? That “I’m the Queen of the Guys, get away from me, suspicious female!” might as well be painted on your furrowed brow.
Simple way to make female friends: stop the sexist attitude where you see men as human beings first, and women as females first. Don’t value the applause of your guy friends as the highest measure of your having overcome your unfortunate female genetic tendency towards pink things and giggling. Assume that women, like men, are capable of being assholes; they’re also capable of being pretty damn cool people.
If you really want to, that is. Perhaps you don’t.
mythago
7 Responses to “Repost: The Only Girl in the Room”
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Yeah!!
“I’ve been manipulated, sabotaged, and backstabbed by women in the past. The closest woman in my life, my mother, is a mental basketcase and the queen of guilt and manipulation.”
Geez, somebody needs therapy. Because, of course, your bad relationship with your mother couldn’t possibly have anything to do with your being drawn to manipulative people, right? It must be because all women are manipulative, backstabbing bitches just like your mother, right?
Hearing that stuff from a man is enough to make me slowly back away, but it’s even creepier coming from a woman.
I don’t have a shortage of female friends, but I find that it’s a lot easier to meet men than women. I guess I feel like when I’m talking to a man I have a built-in excuse; I’m trying to get laid. If I walk up to a woman and say “Hi, I’m Sara,” it feels totally random and strange. I would attribute a little of the difficulty of making female friends to the idea that it’s strange to just try to meet people who are around you without having some higher purpose.
Gah I was so guilty of this when I was younger!It was just me and my group of female friends, we were special, we poo-pooed Girly thinking and mannerisms and that made us undeniably superior. I can even remember how proud I got seeing the amazed look in a guys eyes when I told them I loved video games and could rant on about geeky subjects.
At least I grew out of it. (The sexism that is, not the geekyness!)
Ooh, yeah. Ditto to Torri. It took a LOT of feminism to get me over this one. The advice is right on, though.
When I came to graduate school, I entered my Ph.D. program with an all-woman cohort. The most supportive and interesting older students were also women. For the first time in my life, I am more likely to go out with women than with men. Is it coincidence that we have more fun, that I like myself better, that I have become a better teacher for all of my students? I think not.
Yeah. Guilty of the internalized misogyny here, too- though I am growing out of it. Having only sisters and a mother I have a troubled relationship with, coupled with being rejected by literally all of my high school girlfriends after we graduated (because at the time I acted on my occasional attraction to other women and they were afraid of teh gay), I started to pride myself on only having guy friends and not being like those Other women.
Turns out, I was just afraid of being rejected. Now as a mom I am turning back to women and finding strength in that. I may not be able to participate in conversations about fashion or spa days but I’m finding that I do like women and have more in common with them than I had thought in my younger days.
Late to the game here:
Dunno if this is relevant to female friendship behaviors, but I wonder if being taken out of the running for masculine attention early in life made it easier for me to make and keep female friends.
I’ve had a few obnoxious experiences, but there remains a core group of us that have been together since the world began, and newer friendships that appear on the way to becoming lifelong.
At a recent girl debauch, the six foot scary amazon who makes us all beautiful put it this way…we remain together because we are all good at what we do, and “we do one another.”