sunny wrote:violently ruthless to eachother
Wow. How much female-on-female violence do you think there is in the world? Statistics please.
As Alice said above, most women who have made it into positions of power have already deformed their feminine impulses to get where they are. No one is disputing that. But the anecdote about your women friends in the workplace amounts to an urban legend. I AM a woman. My former job lasted ten years under the direct supervision of a woman. She was sensitive to the point of getting run over a lot. HER supervisor was an egomaniac who delighted in humiliating the (mostly) women at our shop, including my boss. He was sarcastic and dismissive. He never apologized, ever, for his frequent hatefulness. When my female boss offended someone, she apologized profusely. There are NO men at my current place of employment (salaries are crap) and I would equate it with paradise.
Regardless of gender, I think it's a violent, broken, hateful world we live in. Period. We are at war with eachother---man against man, man against woman, woman against man, woman against woman.
The experiences and feelings of my women friends are not at all urban legends. I am relating to you what they as women have experienced and related to me. YOU as a woman can speak for your self, your own perspective and experiences, however, you don't speak for ALL WOMANKIND! Sorry, please don't minimize the feelings and perspective of my friends. You may be strong and assertive and unaffected by the ways that my friends are inevitably crushed by. It seems you had a good boss. That's great.
Now all this talk of violence. Some of the most ruthless forms of violence are psychic, emotional, mental, and can crush the spirits of individuals (regardless of gender) who have delicate personalities. It's not just a violent act to punch, kick, maim and kill someone. No, violence is played out in so many delicate, subtle and unassuming forms. All violence is not necessarily physical in form.
As I've observed, it appears to me that female-to-female relationships are dynamically different than male-to-male relationships. And the power wars and the tools of combat are often very different. Or given the same tools, they are often used differently. For example, often times a man will stab his opponent in the front, a woman will often stab her opponent in the back. O yes, come after me! Hate me for my perspective on this!
I think the best microcosm to understand these interpersonal relationships is at the High School level. Look at the difference between the stabbings. At least in the world I grew up in, the boys stab with their fists, and they do this one on one in a physical confrontation. The girls, on the otherhand, they stab with their words, with ruthless rumors, and they crush their opponents by ganging up on them, not in direct physical confrontations, but with a type of violence which does more psychic damage than a fist.
I can see a difference. And we can all, I imagine, discern between good leadership and bad leadership, and this good/bad distinction doesn't necessarily cut down gender lines. "People are people so why should it be..."
