Women: Is It Possible You’re Entirely Too Self-Conscious and Judgmental?

Posted on | December 11, 2013 | 61 Comments

Julie Eckert has written an article for Verily magazine called “The Care and Keeping of Online Personas” which is interesting in what it unwittingly conveys about the female worldview, namely their innate concern about courtesy, relationships and “popularity.”

This girlish concern for social status is something I’ve noticed since I was in elementary school. Among boys, social status is basically a matter of physical dominance: The big guys shove everybody else around, and if you’re not the biggest kid on the playground, your safety is dependent in large measure on having buddies, belonging to a gang of friends, being part of what is basically a self-defense league.

Male relationships therefore tend to be utilitarian alliances. You have your old buddies and best friends, but these friendships are absent a lot of the emotional fuss and bother that typify female friendships, because that kind of drama-queen act — the backstabbing and gossip and the “Mean Girls”-style cliqueish exclusion — would quickly be settled by physical violence among guys. Courtesy among men is basically a matter of (a) being careful not to piss off a stranger who might decide to kick your ass, and (b) being loyal to your friends, so you can count on having back-up if a fight does break out.

Female relationship are more complex and nuanced and inscrutable, and there’s always that whole “Pretty and Popular Club” thing: Keeping score of who’s friends with who, and who’s not friends with who, and did you see the hideous dress that slut Tiffany wore?

Please, ladies: Don’t give us guys any lectures about “equality,” as if we haven’t seen how you constantly scheme to enhance your own social status relative to other women, and as if we haven’t heard the workplace complaints of women about their female managers, who are in many case brutal tyrants to their female subordinates.

Anyway, Julie Eckert offers many excellent tips about maintaining decorum in the world of social media, but in a way that makes me ask: “Are women thinking way too hard about this stuff?” That is to say, have the real-life status games women play transferred themselves to the online world, where the related phenomena of judgmentalism (toward others) and self-consciousness (about how one is perceived by others) are now applied to social media?

“OMG! Did you see Tiffany’s new avatar? Isn’t it horrible? And did you see how she was tweeting to Josh? What a low-rent tramp!”

Realizing I’m at risk of sounding like Professor Henry Higgins — “Why can’t a woman be more like a man?” — I also realize there’s no point trying to change human nature. Women are women.

Follow Julie Eckert on Twitter.

Category: Culture, Feminism

Comments

61 Responses to “Women: Is It Possible You’re Entirely Too Self-Conscious and Judgmental?”

MrEvilMatt
December 11th, 2013 @ 11:08 am

Women: Is It Possible You’re Entirely Too Self-Conscious and Judgmental?: Julie Eckert has written an article … http://t.co/8fuwJz7Qzy
CHideout
December 11th, 2013 @ 11:08 am

Women: Is It Possible You’re Entirely Too Self-Conscious and Judgmental?: Julie Eckert has written an article … http://t.co/Jhr6NAN0mv
Citzcom
December 11th, 2013 @ 11:08 am

Women: Is It Possible You’re Entirely Too Self-Conscious and Judgmental?: Julie Eckert has written an article … http://t.co/sJV0Bo5e42
jwbrown1969
December 11th, 2013 @ 11:08 am

Women: Is It Possible You’re Entirely Too Self-Conscious and Judgmental?: Julie Eckert has written an article … http://t.co/OQYicKheYY
Lockestep1776
December 11th, 2013 @ 11:08 am

Women: Is It Possible You’re Entirely Too Self-Conscious and Judgmental?: Julie Eckert has written an article … http://t.co/J2ntxccbRG
Resista38176897
December 11th, 2013 @ 11:08 am

Women: Is It Possible You’re Entirely Too Self-Conscious and Judgmental?: Julie Eckert has written an article … http://t.co/lt8P0FM7kI
rsmccain
December 11th, 2013 @ 11:12 am

Women: Is It Possible You’re Entirely Too Self-Conscious and Judgmental? http://t.co/noOSAG6jsW Hat-tip @Julie_Eckert
AmPowerBlog
December 11th, 2013 @ 11:32 am

RT @rsmccain: Women: Is It Possible You’re Entirely Too Self-Conscious and Judgmental? http://t.co/noOSAG6jsW Hat-tip @Julie_Eckert
GregRiedel
December 11th, 2013 @ 11:37 am

“@rsmccain: Women: Is It Possible You’re Entirely Too Self-Conscious and Judgmental? http://t.co/GkeW1n2jbm Hat-tip @Julie_Eckert”
Quartermaster
December 11th, 2013 @ 11:49 am

“Women are women.”
Very profound. When did you notice?
Evi L. Bloggerlady
December 11th, 2013 @ 11:55 am

Now this is how you get a good woman!
Evi L. Bloggerlady
December 11th, 2013 @ 11:56 am
Dana
December 11th, 2013 @ 12:06 pm

I’ve said it many times before: women are their own worst enemies.

The Sexual Revolution is over, and the men won. Now, instead of women oh-so-coquettishly withholding their feminine charms, they are practically expected to hop right into bed with men, and do as expected, whether he’s married or she’s married, or whatever.

Then, once they get a tad bit older, once they’re thirty-something, they find that they really can’t compete with that 22-year-old hottie, who’s doing the same things that they were doing ten years earlier, and they’re shocked, shocked! to find out that their men are looking at said 22-year-old hottie . . . and sometimes doing more than just looking.
Dana
December 11th, 2013 @ 12:13 pm

Men have a real advantage. As our host noted, the fights get physical, and someone wins and someone loses, and that settles the fight!

For women, the fights don’t get settles as often or as quickly, and they linger on for days or weeks or months. Rusty and Jerry got into a fight over something, Rusty kicked Jerry’s ass, and now it’s over. Janis said something mean about DeDe, and they mope and squabble and aim catty remarks, directly and indirectly, they divide up friends, they scheme, and it goes on and on and on. Their fight doesn’t have a winner, so it never ends.
robertstacymccain
December 11th, 2013 @ 12:15 pm

This is why I’m against Mideast “peace talks”: Either the Palestinians admit they can’t beat Israel, or they don’t, and until they do, there is no peace.
M. Thompson
December 11th, 2013 @ 12:23 pm

It’s something I like.
Evi L. Bloggerlady
December 11th, 2013 @ 12:29 pm

I am not against Mideast “peace talks” I am just against big wastes of time. Either the Palestinians are ready to negotiate or they are not. They think they can expel the Jews (if not into the Med, then Utah or somewhere else) and get all the land, and then go back to the well and demand reparations.
Evi L. Bloggerlady
December 11th, 2013 @ 12:52 pm

Separated at Birth… Those boys start young don’t they!
Separated at Birth: Filthy Felon Bob Filner (Democrat Groper) and…? | Batshit Crazy News
December 11th, 2013 @ 12:53 pm

[…] TOM: Women, is it possible you are too judgmental? […]
Jerry Beckett
December 11th, 2013 @ 1:04 pm

I read this somewhere and I agree:

“Don’t try to understand women. Women understand women and they all hate each other.”
Peregrine John
December 11th, 2013 @ 1:30 pm

This does indeed track as a pretty direct analogy.
texlovera
December 11th, 2013 @ 1:33 pm

A woman is only a woman,
But a good cigar is a smoke.
Evi L. Bloggerlady
December 11th, 2013 @ 1:43 pm

Have you experienced the fun of divorce court PJ? ; ) I should not joke about that, you may have.
Dana
December 11th, 2013 @ 1:54 pm

Part of the problem is that the Israelis have “won” several wars with the Arabs, but never really won one; they just let the Arabs throw up their hands and say “Uncle!” after they were losing the fights, but before they were really, thoroughly beaten. Then, eight years later, a whole new crop of boys has become fighting aged men who haven’t been beaten, and are willing to try the fight again.

In World War II, the Allies took on the Germans and the Japanese — the Italians hardly counted — and we killed all of their fighting aged men, and devastated their cities from the air. We rebuilt Germany and Japan, because we had utterly destroyed them first.

The Israelis have never administered that kind of beating to the Arabs, never won their wars in so decisive and destructive a fashion that starting the fight all over again was no longer an option. Until they do that, and then expel every last Palestinian from their land, there will be no peace.
Dana
December 11th, 2013 @ 1:56 pm

Somehow, I find women a lot more fun than a cigar.
concern00
December 11th, 2013 @ 3:10 pm

Depends where the cigar has been.
Kirby McCain
December 11th, 2013 @ 3:22 pm

I won’t be wronged. I won’t be insulted. I won’t be laid a-hand on. I don’t do these things to other people, and I require the same from them.
Adjoran
December 11th, 2013 @ 3:24 pm

I skip over the girly posts – unless they have pictures.

But it all boils down, once again, to the odious “progressive era” Amendments 16-19, inclusive, which have so damaged our polity. We were so happy upon repealing the 18th that we forgot to get rid of the rest of them.

Here, of course, the problem is the 19th. Without women voting, there would be few if any elected Democrats and no taxpayer money wasted on “Gender Studies” and the current war on males at all levels of education.
Kirby McCain
December 11th, 2013 @ 3:31 pm

Once at a party I overheard someone say they didn’t like the way our host looked. That just really hurt my feelings.
Evi L. Bloggerlady
December 11th, 2013 @ 3:46 pm

You clearly have a discrimination/personal injury/punitive butt hurt action there.
Evi L. Bloggerlady
December 11th, 2013 @ 3:48 pm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlRHVg40Kw4 Don’t forget not tolerating dawdling service…
Evi L. Bloggerlady
December 11th, 2013 @ 3:49 pm

Yeah, the GOP should go with that argument in the mid terms…what could go wrong?
Kirby McCain
December 11th, 2013 @ 3:58 pm

They never result in peace so, the term peace talks is misleading at best. Isreali dispossession talks.
Alessandra
December 11th, 2013 @ 5:24 pm

Now, now – if it weren’t for us women – absolutely fantastic as we are – you men would be nowhere.
Alessandra
December 11th, 2013 @ 5:25 pm

And… a lot of men gossip more than women – if not with other co-workers, drinking buddies whatever, they additionally gossip through their girlfriends or wives
Alessandra
December 11th, 2013 @ 5:29 pm

There was a great recent interview on Letterman, the fairy of late night shows, but I forget who it was.

So this famous actor was telling about the personal history of his friendships: when he was 20, he wanted to be friends with the guy who had a car. When he was advancing in his career, he buddied up to all the lawyers.
Now that he was going in his 50s, it’s the medical doctors he went for, as things fell apart.
Alessandra
December 11th, 2013 @ 5:30 pm

“Realizing I’m at risk of sounding like Professor Henry Higgins — “Why can’t a woman be more like a man?””

That’s what the trannies and transexuals are, and you see what that gets you!
Alessandra
December 11th, 2013 @ 5:39 pm

““Pretty and Popular Club” thing: Keeping score of who’s friends with who, and who’s not friends with who, and did you see the hideous dress that slut Tiffany wore?”

There’s a lot of petty comparisons made regarding money too – constantly. I’ve noticed it and it really cuts across class levels – sometimes it seems that the lower middle class compete with the very rich to see who is more obnoxious compared to people who have less money than they do. No matter how far low you go down the income scale, you see a lot of snickering attitudes and looks: “oh look, her lifestyle is so poor compared to mine! she could never afford my hairdresser! that is such an inexpensive bag compared to mine, she could never shop where I shop, she bought her dress at that really cheap store… “
I Do Not Like You, John Boehner | Regular Right Guy
December 11th, 2013 @ 5:40 pm

[…] Women: Is It Possible You’re Entirely Too Self-Conscious and Judgmental? […]
Eric D. Mertz
December 11th, 2013 @ 7:08 pm

It amuses me how many social and psychological problems can be best summed up as “we have brains designed to work in small hunter-gatherer societies, not large urban societies.”
BobBelvedere
December 11th, 2013 @ 7:20 pm

RT @smitty_one_each: TOM Women: Is It Possible You’re Entirely Too Self-Conscious and Judgmental? http://t.co/6FP1WxrSBk #TCOT
PatDissent
December 11th, 2013 @ 7:24 pm

Yes. Next question…
Bob Recommends: Women: Is It Possible You’re Entirely Too Self-Conscious and Judgmental? by @RSMcCain | The Camp Of The Saints
December 11th, 2013 @ 7:26 pm

[…] Women: Is It Possible You’re Entirely Too Self-Conscious and Judgmental? : The Other McCain. […]
richard mcenroe
December 11th, 2013 @ 7:38 pm

JFK
RFK
Bill Clinton
John Edwards (x2)

Barack Obama (x2)
M. Thompson
December 11th, 2013 @ 10:47 pm

I think escaping the nagging led for men to explore the world.
Adjoran
December 11th, 2013 @ 11:55 pm

Depends on where the woman has been, too.
Adjoran
December 11th, 2013 @ 11:58 pm

See? I can’t win with you guys.

When I say we should tone it down a bit for the mass audience to try to win elections, I’m called a RINO establishment drone.

If I pull no punches, I’m told we can’t campaign like that.

Y’all are like women, come to think about it.
Adjoran
December 12th, 2013 @ 12:02 am

I know a young woman who has been having financial troubles since her divorce, her income doesn’t cover her expenses, even with help from relatives.

But when someone remarks to her about the sites she is surfing on the computer (during working hours) being pricey, she retorts, “But I have to have the name brand!”

She never forgets to vote, either. And we wonder why we are in this mess!
Alessandra
December 12th, 2013 @ 2:12 am

🙂 the majority of which were just these dysfunctional loners! Sitting on camel for years on end, trying to find some lost tomb in the middle of nowhere with his Bedouin guides…
Alessandra
December 12th, 2013 @ 2:13 am

Obama? What’s he done is that regard?