Conference turris::womannotes-v1

    
    Ah, yes, a subject near and dear to my heart!  I would *love* to
    *like* other women... and there are some that I do, but there are
    others!  WOW!  Why do we do this to each other??  I have been 
    "stabbed in the back", mis-treated, stepped on and put down by more
    women than men in my life.  And in watching my teenage daughters
    and their relationships with their peers I see it happening even
    in junior high!  Is it just jealousy when we see another woman
    with something/someone we don't have or what?  I have yet to
    understand.  
    
    A very close friend and I had a falling out over the color of a
    pair of shoes once....I didn't have the right color to wear as her
    matron of honor and that was the start of the end of our friendship.
    
    In the past, women friends have made passes at my husband/so .....
    
    Women peers that I work with seem to be arrogant, sometimes snobbish
    and more difficult to deal with in general than men.  Is it
    insecurity??  Fear that someone else will get ahead of them or what??
    
    I would love to learn more about why this happens.  I know I'm not
    the only one who feels this way.  I'll take my male friends over
    female any day.  At least until I see changes in female to female
    relationships.  
    
    Thoughts?? 
    
    	My
    

    re base note and .1
    
    Well, fortunately, I can really see that things-they-are-a-changing
    in this arena of female-female relationships.  What I'm going to
    say will generate flames, I'm sure, as they have in the past, but here
    goes anyway.
    
    Current feminist thinking goes something like this (please, someone
    more knowledgable, correct me, or help me clarify this) : the
    patriarchal society model that we have lived and grown up within basically
    *encourages* women to compete with other women.  In times bygone
    (mostly, anyway :-) ), it was competition for the strongest, healthiest
    richest, and handsomest men.  That competition among females has
    followed us and today it still plagues us as competition for the
    "token" spot as a woman in a male world.  The patriarchal society
    *wants us* to believe things like if there's one woman consulting
    engineer in cost center A then management won't be likely to promote
    another woman to that position because there already is a woman
    filling the "quota".  Silly, isn't it?  It's called TOKENISM and
    *lots* of women still buy into this.  The thinking of a woman who
    has bought into tokenism goes something like this:  well, most women
    are not intelligent enough, good enough, charismatic-enough, or
    "whatever-enough" to have made it into a position like mine in the
    male arena of (computers, medicine, law, engineering, etc.).  In
    doing this, a woman lifts herself above others as being "special".
    She does this to get men's approval as well, I believe.  Especially
    if she lets men know that she is "not a feminist, and mostly doesn't
    even get along with other women".  What a trap, what a shame, and
    what a waste.
    
    The system encourages us to compete against each other, because if we
    ever got together, wow, what a shake-up the world might see!  Women
    joined together for a common cause (such as ERA, parental leave,
    pay equity, for example?) is a *very* powerful force to contend with!

    I have none of this kind of trouble with any woman in my department
    (about 8 or 10 of us) and we have women at all levels.  I am almost
    arrogant enough to believe that this is because the women in my department
    are all such englightened people, the men too :-).  But seriously,
    if you (as a woman) just approach other women as the intelligent and
    highly diverse people that they are, you will get a much better
    (read: helpful, friendly) reaction than if you approach with distrust
    and suspicion.  And, you'll find your world opened up in a way that
    will enrich your life tremendously!

	-Ellen    

    Good words, Ellen!!
    
    I found that my relationships with my women friends GREATLY improved
    as I got better at liking myself.  Once I learned to stop beating
    myself over the head for all the things I wasn't, I started liking all
    all the things I WAS.  Then those positive feelings influenced how I saw
    other women in my life.  
    
    I am very lucky with the women friends in my life.  The ones I have
    are very precious to me.  A good friend deserves the quality investment
    of time and self that you would give to a man-woman relationship.
    (SO/boyfriend/whatever)                                                             
       
    Jane
    
    
      
      

    re: 1
    
    I think we had the same friend!  I couldn't afford to buy the shoes
    for the wedding though - :-)
    
    But seriously, I have been in the same situation.  I think like
    anything else you to *choose* your friends very carefully.  Because
    if you tell someone you most precious secrets and then find out
    the ole girl only hangs out without because you know important people
    (or something like that, maybe it's the clothes you buy and she
    wants to borrow them) then you will think all women are like that.
    But friendship takes awhile to grow and like everyone else I learned
    that the hard way.  So look, listen and give it time like any
    relationship just don't jump in too fast.
    
    bs

    I notice that my 13-year-old daughter, who played two notably
    unsuccessful seasons of little-league baseball and competed quite
    successfully on a gymnastics team for five years, has much less trouble
    in this area than I do.  (In baseball she had the luck to stumble onto
    a team so bad that she didn't have to be superwoman with a killer
    curveball to be accepted as a member of the team, either.  They were
    all rotten!) 
    
    She isn't afraid of a competitive situation.  She isn't afraid of her
    own competitive impulses to go out and get what she wants, be it a new
    used electric bass, money for a candy bar, or a school award.  Even
    more interesting, she doesn't seem to have any fear that competing with
    a friend will wreck the friendship.  (And she has lots of friends of
    both sexes.) 

    I think another factor is that all her friends seem to share many
    common interests.  When I was her age, the only interest most of
    the girls had in common was an interest in boys, and since I wasn't
    interested in boys (or the corrolaries, makeup and shopping), I
    didn't have any friends.  

    --bonnie

Wow, the first time I write to a notes file and I inadvertently start a
new topic.  Makes me feel kinda warm inside... ;-)

Well, if at first you don't succeed... This is the second time I am writing 
this due to some network error, so it may seem a bit short.

Why do I dislike women?  (Though I am trying to change, it would be more
accurate to use the present tense.)  It doesn't have to do with competition,
I've always had to compete with men, not women.  There aren't alot of women
in the CS program at WPI (or rather, stick with it) so I never viewed them
as worthy opponents.  That's one of the reasons, when you think you're
better than other women (that one person had a very good point) you tend
to resent them as 'spoiling your image'.  Considering how many intelligent 
women I have met lately through interviews and finally here at DEC, that 
snobbishness is quickly being dissolved.

I would say the main reason is how I was treated by other girls when I was
young.  I was always hanging around with the guys (face it, they're more
fun) and soon developed a reputation for being 'one of those type of girls'.
Contempt breed contempt and soon I was hating them as much as they hated me.

Keeping hate inside you for a long time tends to backfire, and I have spent
the last few years getting rid of my hate.  Now the time has come to go
one step further and try to be friends.  Considering how nice the women in
my group are, it shouldn't be too difficult.

PS: For those of you who categorize women like me as cat fighters, think
again, and stick to the soaps.
 

    
    	I think JEALOUSY has a lot to do with this topic.  Not a 
    	pre-meditated jealousy, but one that sits in the back of
    	the mind.  I see it in women, more around the ages of
    	23 - 30 (mostly because those are the ages I associate
    	with).  Escpecially, when it becomes involved with, promotions,
    	or the attraction of the oppposite sex.  I've also seen
    	it in Men.  How do women handle this ? Do they stop talking
    	to each other, stab each other in the back, put cyanide in their
    	coffee in the morninfg 8*)....?  How do Men handle it..they
    	fist-fight, they try to seduce the others SO.  But WHY....?
    	I wish I knew, but then if I knew, I wouldn't be here at DEC..
    	I'd be on the Oprah Winfrey, or Phil Donahue show.....
    
    			Mike
    

    I won't say that I dislike other women as a class.  But I find that
    most of my close friends are men and that I don't like most of the
    individual women I know.  I don't actively dislike them, I simply 
    don't care to take the initiative to get to know them better. 
    
    I find too many women petty in all aspects of their lives -- when
    they get together with other women, it seems like all even the most
    intelligent woman wants to talk about is shopping, haircuts, and sex,
    sometimes how bad the boss is treating them.  They tend to blow up over
    petty disagreements, and dishonesty is a given --  woe be to the woman
    who believes it when a female friend asks for an honest opinion!
    Appearances mean a great deal. 
    
    I've had more than one potential friend drop me because she thought
    my lack of willingness to confide the details of my intimate relations
    with my husband meant I didn't trust her.
    
    I'm a country-girl type -- jeans, no makeup, hair pulled back in a
    clip, no frills (except for the occasional miniskirt :-) ) -- and this
    personal style of mine has honestly offended a number of women I might
    otherwise have been able to be friends with.  One woman, who was
    bucking for a promotion at a bank downtown, said that she felt that
    my lack of concern for the things she was judged on at work reflected
    poorly on HER taste!  

    Even worse is the way we tend to drop any man who doesn't meet the
    approval of our friends, or drop the friend who doesn't approve of the
    man.  When I was in college, a woman I considered a close friend asked
    me, "Tell me the truth now, Bonnie, do you really think Fred (name
    changed to protect the guilty) and I make a good couple"?  Well, no,
    Fred was an a*****e with a budding drinking problem and a tendency to
    be a bit rough with her even while they were dating.   I didn't want to
    be too unkind to him since he had a lot of other valuable qualities, so
    I said yeah, he was cute and witty and seemed to be great with kids,
    but I thought maybe he should treat her with a little more respect when
    they were alone. 
    
    She walked out in a huff.  
    
    She spread a story that I had tried to take Fred away from her.
    (Barf me out, as my daughter would say.)
    
    When I cornered her in the cafeteria to ask her about it, she got
    real huffy and told me not to be a hypocrite, why else would I be
    badmouthing Fred like that to her if I didn't want them to break
    up so I could have him?
    
    I've seen men do some real stupid things, too, but not this kind
    of pettiness.
    
    However, I do think a lot of this is simply what we've learned. The
    friend who couldn't face the truth about Fred was certainly overly
    concerned about the competitive aspects!  And there are many positive
    sides to being able to talk about relationships in a detail that men
    have been taught not to understand. 
    
    --bonnie
    
    

    Many women today seem conditioned to live and act in ways
    which fail to generate respect. They take low-paying jobs,
    act silly, are dependent, etc..  It's impossible to really
    like someone you don't respect.

    There are several unfortunate things which led to me disliking women
    - particularly during high school.  I went to a technical high school
    (ratio 10:1) where the few women there  primarily majored in
    cosmetology, child care, and nursing.  These are not bad careers,
    but neither did the school encourage them to study/learn/grow as
    I felt might be most helpful to them.  I was majoring in electronics,
    the only girl in my class to do so, and I found friends in the women
    who were majoring in plumbing, carpentry, drafting, and printing.
     These were the mavericks - the freethinkers - the women with goals
    they felt strongly enough about to break the molds.  I wound up
    feeling like I had nothing in common with the bleached-blond
    beach-bunnies that many of the other women there *appeared* to be
    - the kind who talked of nothing but who laid whom last night, what
    their latest nail polish was, what record topped the charts, what
    color their next pair of jeans would be.  When I went to college
    I had trouble trusting women as friends at first, because by and
    large I'd found men to be far more honest and straightforward than
    women prior to that, and more fun to hang around with.  I met
    some women I liked at college, but I also found the high school
    stereotype I'd become familiar with was also present, to some degree,
    in the Susie Sorority and Cherry Cheerleader roles (yes, it's strong
    stereotyping, and I'm not saying sororities and chearleading are
    inherently bad, just that the phrase is familiar to most and I can't
    find a better way to describe it right now).
    
    But at Digital, there are competent men and women.  Working together.
     Towards a common goal.  I like the feelings here, and I feel that
    being a woman here, compared with other employment experiences 
    I've had, is a far more positive experience.  
    
    Also, as a sidenote on competence, when I attend engineering
    meetings on projects that I'll be documenting they probably
    don't think I understand the nitty-gritty terms they're discussing,
    I smile secretly knowing I have nothing to prove anymore, no chip on my
    shoulder, and the serene feeling that the proof will be in the pudding
    - the quality of my work.

    -Jody
    

    Do we not like women or do we really not like ourselves?  I can't
    see much difference.  Aren't we getting trapped but the same one
    that gets women time and time again? 
    
                         Why aren't we PERFECT?
    
    Truth is, Men aren't perfect and THEY dont care. 
                             
    
    By the way, despite my many flaws and numerous differences, my female
    friends like me anyway.  
                                                Wendy
    

    It seems obvious to me that as long as women dislike each other
    inequality of the sexes will be perpetuated.  It makes me feel very
    angry to read about women who don't like other women.  As long as
    women stay divided, men will run the world, the country, the company.
    
    Re .11, I think you should respect people who take low paying jobs.
     Remember, a person who takes a low paying job is a person who would
    rather work for a living, even if it's small, than be on wellfare
    or unemployment.  
    
    My own view is that I started out liking women and girls much more
    than I did men or boys.  Somewhere in my teens I had to discover
    that men/boys are people, too.  Actually, I think I discovered it
    by accident because of sexual attraction to males.
    
    Now I have both male and female friends.  I don't judge people by
    their sex.  I have 6 close female friends whose friendship I cherish.
     I know they will still be there when I'm 80 (if I live that long),
    but will the men in my life?  However, I also have male friends.
     I sometimes find myself enjoying the company of males more than
    females but I think that's usually because of sexual attraction.
    
    I admit I prefer working with men to other women.  Men seem to mind
    their own business more on a job.  There's less backstabbing, etc.
     I also have no desire to ever work for a woman.  I have and I didn't
    like it.  Women bosses tend to be more snobby and less friendly
    than male bosses, from my experience.
    
    However, when it comes to dating, sex, love and romance, I think
    women tend to treat the men they love a lot better (in general)
    than men tend to treat the women they love.
    
    Unfortunately, I think a lot of the problem is that almost all women
    want a man, and since there are not enough men to go around, the
    competition begins.
    
    Lorna
    

    RE: 14
    
    I take issue with "almost all" women wanting a man. If you remove
    from 10-25% of the population who DON'T, then add a good percentage
    who refuse to get involved in the compeition-for-men thing (I have
    never had friends who did, and known very few acquaintances who
    did) - the percentage drops to near half, at best.
    
    Could those of use who "dislike" (the very statement gives me the
    creeps) other women be disliking the possibility in themselves of
    being subjected to the stereotypical treatment and identity of
    "woman"?? Is it fear of some kind?
    
    Dawn
    

    I don't understand it either Eagle, but the thought is terribly
    upsetting.  Dislike other women?!?!?!?!  But there are so few of
    them!!!
    
    Like many of us technical women, I was surrounded with males from
    day 1.  High school physics: I was the only girl.  Chemistry and
    esp. math were similarly bad.  I went to a technical school for
    college that was maybe 5/1 when I arrived and is now fast approaching
    50/50 (freshman class was 48% or so female).  EVERY SINGLE PERSON
    ADMITTED TO THAT SCHOOL WAS SMART AND COMPETENT, NO MATTER IF THEY
    TRIED TO BE DITSY.  So every ditsy blonde (woman) I met, there was
    no escape, "oh she's just dumb", because she wasn't.  She couldn't
    be.  She just learned to play a certain game, one that I have never
    been good at: don't act smart, competent, or confident and skeer
    'em away.
    
    Almost everything was coed: my first 1.5 years was in a coed frat.
     I lived in quads except for one half of one semester.  I had TWO
    female roomates (out of 13 total) and that was just for my first
    half of a semester there.  [One of those roomates is one of my best
    friends (even if she married a creep).  When she and I are mad at
    each other, we say I'm mad at you, you don't love me, I'm hurt,
    and then we figure it out as best we can (usually solved once we
    get away from her hubby) and we can love each other again.]
    There was one all-female dorm, and all the rest were mixed.  You
    could have coed rooms if you wanted, sometimes if you didn't care
    you might be asked to room with someone of the opposite sex.  The
    last two years, there was one woman in the crowd of dorm people
    I hung out with: we seem to have a mutual admiration society running
    along.
    
    More male friends than female friends? yup (the odds were stacked
    that way...), but the ones I care about most, the ones who could
    hurt me worst, the ones I am most possessive about are the women.
     They were special then and they are special now (no, I'm not a
    lesbian; much more straight than gay on the sliding scale...)
    
    How can you not admire the woman who can take in ten foster kids
    because they are in trouble and she seems to help them without knowing
    how?  How can you not respect someone who says "well, I'm not supposed
    to understand this, I guess I'm not a "real woman", rolls up her
    sleeves and fixes the !@*&@! car with nothing but a book in her
    hand?  How can you not respect someone raising *children*, for crying
    out loud, those screaming brats?  
    
    I guess I just don't get it?  What's to compete for?  Why bother?
    
    Lee

    re: .17
    
    There are so few women???  I was under the impression that we formed
    roughly half the population?  I don't understand.  Or do you mean there
    are so few technical women who work at DEC?  I was talking about all
    women, everywhere, no matter where they work, or don't work.  (Even at
    DEC we don't all work at technical jobs.)
    
    The women you present are extremely admirable, no doubt about it.  So
    are women like my gutsy toughminded grandmother who taught me how to be
    the "bitch" I am today and the women who are leaders and doers in every
    field from social work to computer science. So is every woman who has
    the strength and guts to really be a mother to her kids, whether they
    came from her body or not. 
    
    However, I've seen too many women who, when faced with a car repair,
    sit and wring their hands and maybe cry until somebody else comes along
    to fix it.  I won't cite a list of examples here; we've all met
    women like that along the line.  (I happen to have one for a
    sister-in-law.)     

    It is as absurd to say that all women are likeable and admirable
    simply because of the genetic accident of being female as it would
    be to say that all men are likeable and admirable for that reason.

    --bonnie

    Re .18, there are certainly a lot of criteria to judge people by
    besides whether or not they have an interest in car repairs.
    
    I am very concerned that women be equal with men in every way they
    *choose* to be, but I no more want to be judged on how well I fix
    my car than on the size of my breasts.
    
    Lorna
    

    re .18, .19, I don't think Bonnie meant that everyone needs to be
    able to fix cars, but everyone should be able to rise to the occasion
    of a problem and at least *try* and not sit around and mope because
    there's no man around to do it for you.
    
    Personally, I think that people who own cars should *at least* be
    able to walk for help or call a tow truck if a car breaks and *not*
    sit and cry about it! (at least not for very long, and not to wait
    for a man to come by and do it for her!).
    
    	-Ellen

    
    After my Stereotyped Women and such discourse, I was prompted by
    a remark in a later note to think of women who choose to be homemakers.
     I want to clarify that I do not look down on them for this decision,
    or on any woman for making any decision.  I kind of feel sorry for
    those who felt they did not want to decide what to do with their
    lives, chose actively not to, and fell into "default mode housewife".
     For the valiant women who raise the children that will make our
    nation's future - bravo.  It is an exhilarating, ennervating, and
    sometimes thankless job.  Although I realize that women, up to a
    short while ago, were convinced there was no other recourse than
    to get married right out of school, have children, be a good mother,
    etc...I think it is important to encourage women to decide now on
    any combination of options:  working mother, working wife, working
    single woman dating, working single woman not dating, happy housewife
    with fulfilling family...etc...etc.
    
    Another interesting thing to note is that boys, when they are young,
    are taught that it takes 9 to make a baseball team, and no matter
    how much you like/dislike your teammates ALL of you have to cooperate
    to play and win.  Girls are often taught to play quietly, and if
    they can't get along with some of the other girls, they don't have
    to.  It's okay, there are other girls around who will play with
    them the way they like.  The amount of tolerance/acceptance/ability
    to cooperate and succeed without falling apart over minor differences
    becomes very vital later in life.  

    -Jody
    

    Lorna (.19)
    
    It wasn't their ability to fix cars I was commenting on, it was their
    refusal to do something for themselves, take matters into their own
    hands, using car repair as an example (since that was one of Lee's
    illustrations I thought it was clearer to continue it.)  I don't fix my
    own car, either, but I do know how to call the garage and say what I
    want repaired, which is more than my sister-in-law will do. 
    
    If women like my sister-in-law had *chosen* to be traditionally
    feminine, I wouldn't understand, but I could at least respect her
    choice. But she has never even thought about the issues, and refuses to
    consider them.  She has her interests as defined by society and that's
    it.  And that's the kind of woman I don't like or respect. 
    
    Maybe I hang around in bad company, but I've known far, far more
    women in this category than I have known women honest enough to
    admit there are issues. 
    
    But your comment does bring up an interesting point:  Yes, new
    stereotypes appear to be replacing the old.  There are half a dozen
    women in my group who are young mothers, who deeply long to be home
    with their kids right now, who really don't need jobs for economic
    reasons, but who are working at jobs they don't like because they're
    afraid their husbands will think they're boring if they don't or
    because they don't want to be "just a housewife". They're going through
    all the right motions to look liberated, but they're just trapped in a
    different mold. 
    
    Though I don't suppose all that many men are working for any reason
    other than because society says they should.
    
    --bonnie    

    I have written about this before, but I get very frustrated with
    women who have chosen or have been conditioned to tiptoe around
    men and cater to their every whim, and who have a long list of shoulds
    about women's behavior.  I used to work with someone who believed
    that being good and living right meant making her life revolve around
    men and their needs, being politically conservative, attending church,
    fixing up the house, baking cookies when asked, running personal
    errands for the boss...and so forth.
    
    I have no trouble with someone choosing to quietly live her live
    with those values, but she was always judging me by them.  She
    thoroughly resented me for feeling free to be single, childless
    (a clear choice for me!), technical, and autonomous.  Her disapproval
    exuded from her.   Approval from men is decidedly not something
    rewarding for me, and I don't think she liked that either.
                                                               
    She considered me a godless hedonist, and resented me a lot.  I
    think the only real differences between us were choices made about
    relationships (we both married early but only she had children)
    and career goals (she thought there were things women should do,
    and I thought that I could do anything I liked sufficiently well
    enough to learn doing it!).                               
    
    And she was someone who claimed to not like other women very much.
    
    Working with this woman on a project was one of the hardest things
    I have ever had to do.

        (Oh, no JimB is gonna tell us how alike we are again!)
        
        The people really close to me in my life have always been girls
        or women. Boys may be taught that it takes 9 people to make a
        baseball team and that you have to co�perate with people you
        don't like, but they aren't taught that boys who don't like
        baseball or aren't good at it have to be worked with. In many
        ways I'm a loner because I didn't play much team sports until
        late and by the time I did I was an outsider. 
        
        I've never really liked competition nor felt any urge to be
        better than others. I enjoy competing with myself, pushing
        myself to and past my limits, but it doesn't really matter if I
        end up better or worse than someone else. Girls and women may
        compete with each other for men, and be pretty tough about it,
        but at least as I was growing up, they were more interested in
        people than in winning. They didn't want to talk about cars
        (with which I am hopeless) or sports that I didn't care about.
        
        I learned early that with girls I could be "one of the guys"
        much easier than with the boys. Later I developed more male
        friends and lady friends who weren't just friends, but the
        old pattern still sticks.
        
        I guess the base of what I'm saying is that we try to make boys
        and girls, men and women each fit into little preconceptions of
        what they are and ought to be. These preconceptions fail to fit
        many of us, and when they do we can either make the mistake of
        disliking the people rather than the preconception, or if we
        stay within the preconception disliking the people who refuse
        to. Some of the worst of the preconceptions are the ones that
        are really true for most of the class they describe but are
        dreadfully off-base for the others.
        
        JimB. 

re: .24, JimB
>        These preconceptions fail to fit
>        many of us, and when they do we can either make the mistake of
>        disliking the people rather than the preconception, or if we
>        stay within the preconception disliking the people who refuse
>        to.

    I agree with Jim's observation. Reading some of the replies to this
    topic, I got the feeling that the women who say they don't like other
    women simply don't fit into the stereotype of what <someone> expects
    women to be like. That can cause a lot of tension, as people have
    described.

    I've generally had more women than men as friends, and it's probably
    the same thing -- I don't fit into, and don't like, the male stereotype
    so I avoid people who do.

    I wouldn't say that I dislike people who fit into either the standard
    male or female stereotypes, but generally I don't like them much. The
    stereotypes bother me too much to be objective about the people.

    					-- hs

    Yes, Jim has definitely hit on something here.  This definitely
    seems to be why I don't like the women they don't like.
    
    The next question is, how does one go about overcoming a prejudice
    such as this?  
    
    --bonnie
    

    re .25, .26, maybe people should never assume when first meeting
    someone that that person does match a certain stereotype.  A person
    may appear to fit a stereotype when you first meet them, but if
    you took the time to get to know them better, you might find that
    they really don't.
    
    In other words, just because I work as a secretary and don't make
    a habit of working on my car, doesn't mean I have no knowledge or
    interest in women's rights.
    
    I really can't say that I like women more than I do men, or men
    more than I do women.  I've met both men and women that I like a
    lot and whose company I enjoy, and I've met both men and women that
    I didn't like.  Human decency just doesn't divide up according to
    sex any more than it does to race.
    
    Lorna
    

   I do not regard other women as either bitches or sluts or
    bubble heads ...
    
    
  and tho we may have problems with your notes, Kerry, you are the
    only one who deletes your notes....
    
    
    Bonnie J  Moderator

    I have yet to meet a woman (and I too have met at least hundreds
    if not thousands) who, to my knowledge, regards other women as
    a class in a derogatory form.  I've met a wide range in quality
    of both women and men - there are an awful lot of male bubble-heads
    around, some are just more obvious than others.
    
    					Steve

        Kerry,
        
        Although you say that you hope that all of the women in the file
        who disagree with you will now express their disagreement, I
        suspect that that will not be the case for a couple of reasons.
        First of all, there are a very large number of women in this
        file, and I expect that the vast majority of them disagree with
        you, and the activity on this note would have to go up by a
        tremendous amount in order for them all to express their
        disagreement. After a while it would become hard to express it
        in an original manner. 
        
        Secondly, your habit of saying provocative things and then after
        there has been a furor over them deleting your notes leaving
        behind a confused muddle that appeasr to make those who disagree
        with you look foolish has been fairly widely recognized and many
        have decided that it is not an amusing passtime. Since you have
        already announced your intention to delete your opinions, and a
        couple of dozen of us have already expressed our views on the
        matter which disagree with yours, there is little reason to play
        it. Why not merely wait for you to delete yours?
        
        As to who represses discussion in this conference you or "all
        the women who disagree with you", I suggest that your tactics of
        "hit and run" noting do more to derail discussion and to reduce
        the active discussion of differing viewpoint than all of the
        contributions of women put together. Admittedly, there are a
        couple of women in this file who can get rather cynical, bitter
        and angry at the behavior of men and try to fix that in ways
        that I disapprove of, but they are much better behaved than
        you.
        
        Personally, your claim that out of thousands of women that you
        have met, you have yet to meet three who do not regard other
        women as bitches, sluts or bubbleheads, is so out of touch with
        reality as I have experienced it that I have a hard time
        believing that you actually mean it. Even if you do mean it, I
        suspect that it is your own bitterness and pain speaking.
        
        I can't go so far as Steve Lionel has and say that I've never
        met a women who viewed women as a class in a derogatary manner,
        but they have certainly been in a very small minority, well
        less than 10%, let us say. If we assume that your statements
        actually corespond to your experience and are not a mere
        tactic, how do we explain my number of 10% and your own estimate
        of 99.9%?
        
        There are a couple of ways. First of all, it might be that you
        have a preconceived notion of women that is so strong that it
        keeps you from seeing individual women as they actually are. You
        mention this possibility yourself although only to deny it. You
        make the claim to "see each and every person that I know/meet as
        an individual, I do not have a mental list of what category
        people belong in", but how well does this stand up to your
        other statements? Not well I fear.
        
        What, for instance have you said about women in this note?
        
            "talking to stones rarely has a positive effect"
        
            the above cited claim to have met fewer than three women
            who didn't categorize all women in one of three categories
            and dismiss them all as possible friends.
        
            "Women are so damned competitive they can't like one another."
        
            "[Your earlier note] is the conglomeration of the opinions
            of all the women I have met. It is not my opinion but
            they'res."
            
            "ther 80's woman has/is hiding behind the screen of, if
            you can't stand the heat stay out of the kitchen." 
            
            "80's women say they are liberated and therefore do not
            'mind' their SO's doing the 'femele' stuff."
            
            "actually they have evolved from the attitude that they
            can not stand the competition so they simply don't
            compete."
            
            "All women who disagree with me will [give proof that]
            this is not a notes file but rather an individual
            opinion poling place where generalizations cannot be
            expressed but rather discussion repressed." 
        
        Not one of these statements is about an individual. all of them
        are about women as a class. And as can be seen until you delete
        your notes, it is an exhaustive list of all the statements you
        have made in this topic regarding either women as a class or
        individually. It certainly seems to belie the claim you make to
        see every person as an individual. It is possible that you SEE
        them that way. You certainly don't WRITE about them that way. 
        
        Another possibility is that our differing preconceptions of
        women condition both which women we meet and how they behave
        towards us. Often people act the way we expect them to. That
        being the case, it often well to expect the best from people
        as that will bring the best out in them. From a practical
        stance, in so much as our different view points are actually
        conditioning the behavior of the women we know, I'd say that
        yours result in less pleasant interactions than mine.
        
        Finally, there is the possibility that our observations are
        extremely biased by our past experience. By this conjecture the
        pain and anger and frustration that women have caused you in the
        past have made you see them all in the worst of all lights. My
        predominently positive expereince could have colored my view
        seriously in the other direction, seeing them as better than
        they are. To me your extreme views (99.9% of wome are one way)
        seem more colored th.an mine (10% or less behave badly), but of
        course they would, now wouldn't they? 
        
        JimB.

    Hey, women as a class aren't as bad as Kerry says or as good as JimB
    has found them.  We're all just people, and some of us are more
    fallible or more tolerant or more or less likeable than others. JimB,
    your experience may be colored by the fact that in this pseudoliberated
    age, a woman hesitates to admit in public that deep down, or not so
    deep down, she doesn't love all women like sisters.  (Though it seems
    to me as patently absurd to say I should like all women because they
    are women as it does to say I should like all men because they are
    men!) 
    
    One reason many women have more trouble getting along with other women
    than they do getting along with men is a point that Kerry made --
    competition.  I think this has already been mentioned, but at the risk
    of being redundant, let me elaborate.  And *please* keep in mind that
    I'm not talking about any particular woman here except myself. 
    
    We live in a competitive society.  I wouldn't want to claim that human
    beings are by nature competitive in all times and in all places, but
    certainly if you grow up in contemporary American (united-statesian)
    society you learn that competition and aggressive behavior are what is
    rewarded. 
    
    Whether for better or worse men have been taught all through their
    lives what competition is and what it means.  Team sports have taught
    them the rules and the limits, when one competes and when one must
    cooperate in order to win.  This is true whether they participated and
    exelled, or whether lack of ability excluded them.  In fact, in many
    ways a man who grew up outside of the 'male fraternity' has a clearer
    idea of the rules that govern it than the men who are inside it. 
    
    Women don't have this training in handling aggression and competition.
    (This subject has been touched on in other notes in this file.)
    The only competition many of us learned was for men, and that was
    competition to the death.  Men learned "It's only a game" and that
    while winning is everything, if you do lose this time, you can come
    back next time and win.  Girls learned that if you don't have a
    man, you personally are nothing.  
    
    Many of us are in the process of throwing off this childhood training,
    but even when we get beyond thinking we have to have a man to validate
    our worth and accept the idea that we'll have to be team competitors in
    the business world, we're years behind in learning how to play by the
    rules.  Often we will take things too seriously, we'll go for the
    jugular when there's no need, or we'll back off when we should push
    ahead.  
    
    And we sometimes have trouble learning to turn it off. We've never had
    the team experience to teach us that after you get done fighting each
    other in a clean fight, and the winner won fairly, you go off and have
    a beer together.  We were taught that in the competition for a man,
    all women are the enemy and if you let down your guard, some other
    woman who wasn't so careless will get him.  So by training we tend
    to be ready to make concessions to a man and to fight for our rights
    against a woman.  All other things being equal, this makes it more
    likely that the man will respond with friendliness and the woman,
    even if she was inclined to be friendly in the first place, will
    respond with distance or even hostility.  As JimB points out, you
    tend to get what you expect. 
    
    This has grown longer than I expected but I hope it helps explain
    where at least some of us overly competitive women are coming from.
    It's hard to learn when you're being inappropriately competitive
    because the symptoms are so subtle and the feedback often sparse.
    
    --bonnie
    

    Please don't use the s*** word; I find it offensive in the extreme,
    in with the n***** word and the f****t word.  Those words have
    incredible power, and I really hate them.  So please cut it out.

    Nice bit on competition Bonnie.  Hits the nail on its proverbial
    head...
    
    re. stereotypes
    
    Even the people who seem to fit stereotypes vary from those stereotypes
    if you delve into them a bit.  I think you find what you look for
    in a person, and if you categorize someone right away as fitting
    a type of behavior, you never take the chance to find out their
    individual neatness.  
    
    This weekend I met a really neat guy.  He called himself a redneck
    and had just passed his PhD defense.  He doesn't like f*****s (gay
    men) and he calls black people the n-word.  He is an ardent feminist;
    I didn't really notice him until he started spouting a feminist
    line that would be seen as a bit extreme even for this file :) !
    
    An intelligent person with a southern drawl?  A racist feminist?
    Hmmph.  Contradictions.  He fit some "redneck" stereotypes and some
    "intelligentsia" stereotypes.
    
    Moral?  People of all genders and "types" have a remarkable tendency to
    rise above their training.  If hit in the face, stranded with no men
    available, a woman will take out the owner's manual and try to get her
    car running.  Faced with an intelligent woman, a sexist will learn
    better.  Faced with a good black person, a racist will be forced to
    accept that mom and dad and their society was wrong. 
    
    Maybe I'm a fool and not "in tune" with reality, but I am an optimist
    (today, anyway :) ).
    
    Lee

    I have not read through all the replies in this file, but I felt
    compelled to write in my own experience anyway.  I am ashamed to 
    hold up my hand and say "yes I'm one of those who has had problems 
    relating to other women", but admitting a problem is the first 
    step to healing it, yes?
    
    I'd like to point out that, in my own case, the _reason_ for my
    original "injury", if you will, had nothing to do with sexism, my
    perceptions of "woman's role" in society and abhorrence thereof,
    sexual competition or anything else.
    
    It had to do with birth order.
    
    I was born first.  My sister was born 13 months later.  And for
    33 years she did not forgive me for it.  She made it her life's
    occupation while we grew up together to try to "take me down a peg"
    by sniping and attacking my physical appearance (pretty homely back
    then), lack of social skills (too true), many "traditional" feminine
    behaviors and qualities (none of which I possessed).  Now, when I 
    first started out I didn't care a fig about traditional feminine 
    behaviors.  I could take them or leave them; they puzzled me, but 
    hey, other girls playing the game that way was okay by me.  But 
    she whispered that I should care because these were the most important
    things; if I failed at them (to play with dolls, to make goo-goo 
    eyes at the boys, to always act quiet and polite and mousey, to
    put on makeup, etc.) I _wasn't really a woman_.  
    
    She also encouraged all our acquaintances in this opinion of me
    too.  I have heard from a few old friends over the years of the
    talks they used to have about me behind my back.
    
    Our relationship is so much better now, and my thawing of relationships
    with other women started about the time she started to unbend and
    admitted that she was really jealous because she felt I always came
    first in our parents' eyes by virtue of birth order.  I now feel
    tears well up when I consider the communication and affection
    that is now possible between us.
    
    But I am scarred.  Like an old knee injury (fragile joints, those
    knees) getting into a situation that activates the old injury hurts
    it again.  I feel that the bad habits that many women I've known 
    indulge in--sniping, underhanded competition, bashing, you know 
    all that we've been accused of--are in the main _caused_ by our 
    having been oppressed in past generations (I mean, how else can 
    an underdog class express itself, and not get severely punished, 
    except surreptitiously?).  
    
    BUT -- (snif) I've been hurt by this too.  Oh Godess, how it has 
    hurt.  A compliment or gibe from a man is interesting info to me,
    but doesn't make or break my day (or my life).  A compliment or 
    gibe from a woman is as emotionally paralyzing to me as a punch 
    in the solar plexus that robs me of breath.  What my own sex thinks 
    of me matters terribly to me.  I feel my womanhood intensely--why, 
    I used to wonder in despair, did other women not seem to believe 
    in it?  I believed in it deeply, yet did my belief matter if no 
    one else believed in it?  What was I?  Some sort of fake man with 
    breasts pinned on in front?  Whatever I was, I was also lonely.
    
    Coming into my middle 30's seems to have helped this problem a lot.
    Maybe because I'm changing, maybe because more women in my age group
    are changing.  More and more of the women I know in my age group 
    seem to be emerging from their own cocoons (of all types) and wow! 
    we have some of life's experiences and feelings in common!  I wouldn't 
    be 12, 18, 22, or 25 again for all the tea in China.
    
    I think that one courageous thing we can all do is acknowledge that
    we may have damaged each other at some time.  I know that my situation
    with my sister could have been improved tremendously if I'd just
    acknowledged that she hurt me; maybe then her need to empower herself
    by attacking me wouldn't have continued as long as it did.  But
    I made myself look invulnerable, something she could safely batter
    in her rage, and hurt her further by shutting her out.  My father
    used to call this act The Great Stone Face.
    
    In addition to acknowledging that we may just have hurt each other
    in our own private struggles, we can try not to do so again.  I
    am extremely touched when I read someone's reply to a note "Gee,
    I never saw that issue from that perspective, thanks for making
    me aware of it so I don't cause more hurt to my friend/sister/
    lover/mother/daughter in the future."
    
    Marcia