Gender Speak

First off, I am not apologetic about anything I write here.

If you are offended, or feel that I am generalizing, stereotyping or just plain stupid that’s fine.

The fact that I am starting my blog post like this should be enough by itself to warrant your further reading or not.

Ok, now that the disclaimer is over (can’t believe I even write stuff like that, but whatever) I can continue on with my post.

I honestly can’t believe I haven’t written anything about this before. However, I didn’t read through all of my random notes, but I definitely know I have thought about this, and expressed it to plenty of people before.

This post came about after 2 things happened today. First off, this hilarious article from The Onion:

http://www.theonion.com/content/opinion/bro_youre_a_god_among_bros

And secondly, a discussion I had with a female coworker regarding one of her female friends.

She was complaining about how she hates to hang out with this female friend of hers because the friend dominates the conversation. And how she always interrupts my coworker as soon as she starts to say something.

So I told her that she should say something to her about how she feels. And she said she wouldn’t do it.

Which brings me to the point of this post, my theory about men and women – at least men and women near or around my age group.

I believe that in a majority of social groups today, in the 18 to 30 year old category, I find that the glue that holds together these small social groups together is the men of the group. In almost every “friend circle” I have been involved in (not many) and the other ones that I have seen (again, still not that many), the men of the group are the originators – and the women kind of just tag along. They are either girlfriends, or friends of one of the men, or maybe you’ll get that one instance of the girl like PJ from the show “My Boys” (love the show) where she’s just “one of the guys”. In my opinion though, becoming “one of the guys” takes a lot of time and history – it requires a lot of history probably, and more than likely being a tom boy during developmental years. (Not a bad thing).

Some of you may be wondering why I have this theory about social groups, or may be agreeing with me about how social groups in our age range are formed. I think my female coworker provides me with a perfect example of why groups of women more than 2 rarely work.

Well, actually before I get to that, maybe I should just dish up the prime rib before I get to the mashed potatoes and grilled asparagus…

Gender speak was one of my favorite workshops I’ve ever gone through. And go figure, it was all done while I was at work.

Gender speak was a workshop which was supposed to teach us how to successfully deal with the other gender in the workplace. Want to know the only thing I remember from it? And as another disclaimer, I’m not even sure if this is right, but here we go:

Women create a level playing field. At it’s most basic, let’s take Barbie dolls. Little girls play with Barbies and they share. I can just see my sister now (who wasn’t a big fan of dolls – she was actually the tom boy and still today doesn’t get along very well with other women) trying her best to share with a neighbor girl all of her Barbie dolls.

One of them could be Barbie while the other one was Malibu Stacy (was this a Barbie product? Sorry Mattel – lead killer – if not) and guess what? They could ride in Barbie’s hot pink convertible to the mall to talk to Ken! Everything was happy go lucky and everyone was on an equal playing field and as long as things were in balance and harmonious then there was nothing to worry about.

On the flip side, we have the men (boys). The boys my age played with transformers. G.I. Joes. He-man characters. And for each “good guy” there was always an opposite (and now that I look back on it equally awesome) “bad guy”. The decepticons. Snake. Skeletor.

And if you had more than one boy playing, you could never both be on the good side. One had to be He-man on his mighty cat and the other had to Skeletor fighting over the castle of greyskull.

And dependent upon who argued the best, or maybe who got hit with a rock in the head first and went crying home to mommy, that’s who won.

See? Obviously I didn’t learn much. But here’s what I garner from what I remember: Men (boys) need that kind of structure to their social life. They need to know where they stand or rank in a hierarchy of people. Women (girls) need that structure too. However their structure is more flat and they don’t mind if Malibu Stacy wants to drive the convertible back home from the mall instead of Barbie…even though it is her car.

So how have I applied this to my professional career? No idea.

But just looking around at the guy friends I have, I realize that nothing really has changed since we were little kids. But for women, I think they’ve lost their way a bit (which is why I think that men are the glue that holds most of our social groups together).

Let’s start with the men - since I think I am one – and since I know our subject matter the best. By saying that “nothing has changed since we were little kids” I mean that instead of Transformers we have Fantasy Football. Instead of G.I. Joes we have how many shots of alcohol can you throw down in a night without puking?. Instead of He-man and all the other action figures we now have all the toys in the world – gaming consoles, huge TVs with surround sound, fast cars…you name it; I’m sure at least 2 guys are competing over how much one has of it over another guy.

And it’s not even that it has to be materialistic. I’d like to think that I know where I stand with my guy friends and what they all think of me. We all have our different strengths and weaknesses and at all times we’re pointing them out to each other. One may be exceptionally good at baseball, while the other basketball, while one excels at academics and the other is great with the women. And the thing is, we all, as a group of guys, understand this. So that when one of us steps out of line and thinks a little too highly of themselves (which I tend to do often), the group can come together and knock them down a notch – therefore restoring order to the male group hierarchy.

And that hierarchy is what holds it together in my opinion. The things we compete at are just the fillers to continue to hold those spots in order. Because without the order, you have a bit of chaos, which is what I feel women in our age group have gotten themselves in to.

Before I continue on with the women, I’d like to say that men’s position in the hierarchy is not defined in stone. At any time they may move upwards in a certain aspect of their lives, however it will first take a lot of work on their part as an individual, and second it will take the acceptance and recognition from the group that the individual has changed and raised (or lowered) their status. Without both – chaos again.

Now women. We live in a world where comparisons are constantly being made. And in the world that I live in, because of these comparisons, it breeds a better “comfort” zone using the social hierarchy that men adhere to. But remember, little girls wanted things to be fair and equal. Everyone on the same level. But what happens when the levels are strikingly different? What happens when one girl starts to wear Marc Jacob’s sunglasses and citizens jeans? At some point at least one of the women in the group will end up smarter, more beautiful, or have more things than the other women in the group.

And unlike the men, who would typically confront this outlier with verbal barbs and blatant taunting – they tend to just sit back and listen…and smile...and avoid confrontation. Which is exactly the reasoning why groups of women can’t really work in the long run – or why they can never feel “close”. I’m not a woman, but I believe I’ve seen this happen so many times. For women in my age group, it’s almost required that you dump on your so-called “friends” behind their backs. Because it would rude to do it to their faces right? How on earth would you get closer to the “friend” you really want to be friends with unless you share a common thread? The common thread of knocking on another girl because she’s obviously tried to raise her status within the group without really notifying the other girls.

Everything else being equal (in a woman’s world) the only thing left is to differentiate you from the others. Because there are still women out there who are willing to play like girls, and women that have moved on and created their own hierarchy, like the men. And since not all women subscribe to the same thoughts of their social group, you’ve got a real disconnect.

What used to be such a close knit group of girls in high school (or even junior high) has now split in to 3 or even 5 groups of friends – in as small of groups as 2. And the ugliest part of it all is that you’ve got them all smiling and lying through their teeth whenever they all get back together.

I honestly would hope that men aren’t like that. If I don’t like you, you’ll know it. Shit, I don’t even really like some of my guy friends, and that actually makes for a better relationship between us. But for the guys I am really close with, I think we all have a general idea of where we all stand at a given point. Order and peace.

Anyway, I could go on with this subject, maybe I will at a later time. For now, I’m just going to end it abruptly here. I think everyone reading either gets what I am saying or thinks I’m a complete idiot. For you women out there, look at your social groups and try your best to figure out what’s going on. It might help you avoid social turmoil (if that’s not your bag). For the men: $20 bucks says I can beat you at a round of 3 par at Greenlake. Holler. (I can’t believe I ended a post with that - /dork)