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Girls say, Girls say....
2004-03-21 5:43 p.m.

I’m the kinda girl that hangs with the guys/Like a fly on the wall with my secret eyes.

Gwen Stefani is no prolific pillar of wisdom, but there is something about that line from No Doubt's song "Hey Baby" that I always liked. It is me, I am it. Hardly having many female friends, and eighty-sixing most of the ones I had since I just couldn't stand their petty, self centered and negative behavior after awhile made me wonder millions of things. Why do I feel more comfortable around men? I do not believe in "essences", I do not accept essentialist, sexist reasoning that says "something about women is just more catty!" or "women can't be friends because they're too competitive!". Some people just aren't that smart, so they say things like that and believe that encoded in women's DNA is pattern behavior.

I AM smart. Very smart, in fact. And I know better. I know that society constructs much of what "gender" is and most of these "definitions" come from media, not an intense, psychological history of research and observation. It's parroting, not thinking.

I feel society raises girls to be competitive, to be jealous, to see the world as if it were full of limited resources, and if they don't fight over a friend, a guy, a skirt, etc., they'll never get another one. It's like the marriage market in Edith Wharton's novels - only one that extends well beyond "husbands" and reaches into friendships, personal politics, and territories.

Of course many women emerge unscathed and evade those problems. Most of my female friends are too smart to buy into that conformist bull shit and fight against a system (consciously or not) that tries to insist they act a certain way. Some women I know seem smart but still buy in; they gossip, get jealous, pick fights, and are generally pretty nasty to each other. It turns my stomach, so I generally try to avoid them.

So what's wound up happening? I'm the kind of girl that hangs with the guys, like a fly on the wall with the secret eyes.

Three of my closest friends are men. Some of the friendships I've had with men for years have taken much work. There's getting past the is-this-completely-platonic stage. There's getting past the do-you-respect-me-as-an-equal stage. There's the please-tell-your-girl/boyfriend-i'm-no-threat stage. There's the I'm-not-going-to-talk-to-you-for-a-year-you-bastard stage. There’s the I'm-so-glad-we're-talking-again-I-missed-you stage. But most of them have survived and blossomed into beautiful relationships. I love how much my friends confide in me, and I can even deal with them defeminizing me in certain ways - giving me nicknames, for example, that neutralize my gender - maybe just calling me by my initial. I love that I'm included in anything and everything they do - and I love that even if I can't speak to them for a month or two, I'll get an 11:30 pm phone call because one of them "heard a really funny story" that couldn't wait or read something on here that was concerning them a bit.

I think something about inter-gender relationships removes a bit of that societally constructed "threat" triangle. It's possible for me to do what I always do - my own thing. Hang back, observe, like a fly on the wall with my secret eyes - if I want to. I can spend most of the night talking to one single person, or get up and dance on the bar if I feel like it. None of this has ever seemed to threaten my male friends or the men I know in general - if there are ever comments made to mutual friends about how I don't "pay my dues" because I don't say hi to someone fast enough or spend hours pretending the person in front of me whom I don't know very well is just fascinating and really cool, they're made by women who don't know me very well. Likewise, if I'm ever accused of being "stuck-up" because I was feeling a little shy and sad one day and didn't feel much like talking to anyone, it's women who are the presumptuous accusers.

Why is a woman who can be at times quiet and pensive so threatening to other women? And why don't men react to such a woman in the same way?

This "majority" division stuff really got me down from an ideological standpoint. I have seen men be just as catty, if not cattier, or more manipulative, than women - but not the majority of them. I have met women who wouldn't even notice that so-and-so didn't say "hi! looooove your outfit!" the second they entered the room because they actually have enough self-confidence to just focus on their own lives, and not be threatened if someone doesn't pay overt amounts of attention to them. Again, though, not the majority of them. You better believe I made friends with those women, and fast, though - I wanted to know how it was that they could evade the prioritizing our culture tries to teach and our media reinforces.

So what is it? Tell me. Am I "giving certain people waaaaay too much credit" with all of this, as my husband says, when I try to look for some deep-seated, ideological reason for their negative or catty behavior? Is it just that they're immature, as my friend Julie says, period, and that this "crap" has nothing to do with gender? Or are we trained around certain models that we might feel we don't participate in but subconsciously do?

I'm very careful who I discuss this with, because, as I said, some people say "Oh, yeah, I know - women are just catty like that" and write the situation off as some biologically driven characteristic that becomes destiny. Well thanks, Dr. Freud, but I think there's much more to all of this.

A conspiracy theorist I'm not, a realist and observer I am. This divide and conquer crap works well - in a patriarchal system, we cannot have women organizing, we cannot have mutual recognition or empathy and camaraderie develop; if we do, we threaten the stability of the power infrastructure.

So do women then become agents of the system, feeling forever threatened by one another?

I love something about my two closest female friends, Lisa and Julie. Though it doesn't seem they have so much in common, they do have this:

They do not obsess over other people's lives, pouring over every little interaction and deeming someone "stuck-up" or "bitchy" because of a compulsive need to somehow be involved or their fear of inferiority. They do not, in other words, categorize people as such - they let people be people and shrug their shoulders at most things that have nothing to do with them. "I have better shit to worry about", Julie says whenever the rare occasion brings some thing like this up. Lisa and Julie are so beyond this, so above cattiness and manipulative behavior, so past jealousy and inferiority complexes. We have fun and are concerned and invested in our own lives. If they happen to notice someone isn't showering them with attention, they might just do what I always try to picture them doing when I get steamed: shrug their shoulders, turn around, and get back to their real world - the only one that matters. I am happy to say that I’ve met several women recently who are becoming better friends and whom I spend more and more time with each week – and I see that within their own relationships with other women there is a conscious effort not to turn into the stereotype. Maybe it’s just taken me a while to learn how to choose more wisely – or maybe all of this does just go back to just maturity vs. immaturity or selfishness and jealousy vs. open minded receptivity, no gender divisions involved.

So what do you think? Does any of this have to do with gender? Does so called "girl" behavior reflect societal constructions, or is that a blanket too large to throw on the situation? Does it depend on the individual? Would it be impossible to categorize as such?

Enlighten me with your wisdom. I read your blogs too, I know you have great, thoughtful answers up your sleeves.

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