Commenter Freddiemac asks me whether the vicious pack behavior displayed by girls is nature or nurture. Given its universality, and how young it appears, I'd bet mostly nature with an able assist from the surrounding culture. I expect this also explains the visceral pleasure that most women get from gossip, which most men really don't seem to enjoy nearly so much--the perhaps sad truth is that I feel closer to my female friends when we have gotten through a really good round of "what's wrong with everyone else". Though I don't actually find what seems to be the male equivalent, "who's winning the cocktail party?", any more attractive.
But saying "nature" doesn't tell us the thing is inevitable. Lots of behaviors are natural, like rape and murdering strangers, that we struggle mightily to overcome--and mostly succeed. Even if my gender has a preprogrammed tendency to self-define through the people we can exclude from the group, we can rise above that. Feminists who use the phrase "anti-feminist" to describe anyone who disagrees with them are choosing to view the world as composed of two mutually exclusive groups: feminists, us; and the bad people who have not joined the group and are therefore our sworn enemies. They are choosing, too, the nastiness that tends to result from giving into our baser primate instincts.
Murdering strangers is natural?!?!
Murder and rape are hardly natural.
Some people (and animals) might murder or rape and feel no remorse, but it's a bad idea to extrapolate from such a small subset.
I get angry and frustrated with people sometimes, but I never feel like I need to "struggle mightily to overcome" a natural temptation to murder them.
Though I don't actually find what seems to be the male equivalent, "who's winning the cocktail party?", any more attractive.
If that term means "who's scoring with the most women?", it's not really the male equivalent to gossip for the simple reason that men seldom talk that way among themselves, at least once they're past high school age. It's a general belief that those who talk the most, do the least.
Throughout history, most people had little to no problem with burning people alive, breaking them on the wheel, enslaving their virgins, slaughtering all that lives and breaths and sowing the earth with salt, &c. The murder rate in hunter gatherer groups is something like 4xs the homicide rate in developed countries.
So yeah... rape and murder are pretty normal for the human race.
Civilization rules!
Murdering strangers is natural?!?!
If large groups of people in different continents with different cultural backgrounds, and sometimes even the same nominal skin color and formerly stable social structures, will readily abandon reason in order to slaughter each other simply for being the wrong racial or tribal sign...then yes, I think we can safely say that the murdering of strangers is a natural human condition. See also: Nazi Germany, Nanking, Darfur, former Yugoslavia, recent Kenya, KKK lynchings, streets of inner-city LA, etc.
Rule of law and a culture that ingrains it deep into the psyche, thereby permanently clamping man's natural behavior within socially tenable boundaries, are themselves not natural -- they are valuable and fragile luxuries that often don't get as much respect as they deserve.
A side question on this topic:
Both men and women display herd mentalities when placed in group situations. When isolated by gender, men and women's groups have different dynamics, or so I'm told. I've been told that women's sports teams are much more likely to prey upon themselves, whereas men's teams are more likely to have greater team unity. Do you find that this is true?
What does "winning the cocktail party" mean? As a man (white collar, mid-30s) I have no idea what that refers to. Perhaps it's something that occurs on the NY-DC axis?
Once again, I think an interesting insight in to gender dynamics is found in Self-Made Man by Norah Vincent.
It is certainly her observation, having lived as both man and woman (the former only temporarily; it was the whole point of the book), that men seem to naturally understand the idea of group solidarity ("bros before hos" and whatnot), even if women seem to talk about it more.
Chris-
Yes.
Topic-
I think it is a natural desire with but the description of it has flaws. If so why doesn't the behavior hold true for mixed genders and age? I mean the closest thing to what your describing is High School. Once everybody escapes the educationally wasteful, socially weird and interesting time that is 4 years of secondary education. We all seem to even out after a few years. I don't know though, I am known for being both oblivious and keen with people, I may be a bad judge.
As for Feminism how is it different from certain conservative or liberal circles? The behavior seems the same: exclude and demean those whose views run counter to your own.
"...vicious pack behavior displayed by girls..."
Megan, l invite you to join me and to take a walk around a city street or a suburban mall or an amusement park or a national park.
Occasionally we will come upon groups of young men or groups of young women. Trust me, we have nothing to fear from the groups of young women....
Bring on the charge of the love brigade...
I, too, am curious on what is meant by "winning the cocktail party". I cannot identify any such behaviour in myself or my male friends. I do not claim that it doesn't exist, I am just not sure what is being described.
Here is another man who has no clue what the phrase "winning the cocktail party" means.
"Winning the cocktail party"is the equivalent of "Frank Sinatra entering a room." The guy all the men get along with, and all the girls want to bed. The center of the party, the alpha male. At least thats my best guess, because I thought the stereotypical guy thing was bragging about the number bras that hit the floor of their bedroom as well.
Instant meta-analysis:
Secular Calvinists find redemption in libertarianism.
I think sports is a better example of the male herd mentality. There are few things that unite (or divide) guys better than sports.
RE "winning the cocktail party":
I haven't heard the term before, but I suspect that it is a reference to the conversational one-upmanship that men tend to engage in - you tell a funny ancedote, I'll tell a funnier one; you name drop a band, I'll name drop a more obscure one; you provide an opinion on a subject, I'll provide a more thought out and elegantly stated one; and so on.
Megan's sample may be biased on this since men tend to do this most aggressively when there's a woman (or someone else worth impressing your awesomeness upon) around; it's entirely for public consumption - among good friends, a lot of the same info does go back and forth, but it's not a competition to see who can come up with the best stuff.
A someone tangential question that perhaps Megan can comment at some point: I've seen a lot of admittedly mostly anecdotal evidence that women often have harder time than men getting along with one another in the workplace, especially in situations where one is in position of authority with respect to another. It appears that female managers treat their female subordinates worse than male subordinates (or perhaps they are simply perceived this way?). Is this true and if yes, what drives this?
"It appears that female managers treat their female subordinates worse than male subordinates (or perhaps they are simply perceived this way?)."
IME (warning: I'm not a woman) it's not that female managers treat female subordinates worse, it's that female subordinates have almost no tolerance for being treated _as_ subordinates by another woman and will accept worse treatment from men than from other women.
Also, IME men gossip all the time. Mens gossip tends to be lower key and indirect and dispersed over conversations about other things (and there's a reluctance to show eagerness at hearing a new choice nugget) but it's there.
Well, there is a truly vicious struggle to be the alpha girl at the karaoke machine at my 6 yo daughter's extended day after school. and I'm told by a father of a second grade girl that the text messages the second graders are sending are really destructive and mean. There's been, already, time for a fair amount of nurture, but I'm betting on nature.
On the naturalness of killing strangers, see:
Jared Diamond, "Vengeance is Ours," in the New Yorker
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/04/21/080421fa_fact_diamond?printable=true
Steven Pinker, "A History of Violence," in the New Republic
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/pinker07/pinker07_index.html
or
http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/media/2007_03_19_New%20Republic.pdf
"It is certainly her observation, having lived as both man and woman, that men seem to naturally understand the idea of group solidarity even if women seem to talk about it more."
I think that this is because a big part of the male formative experience has to do with understanding one's role in a social hierarchy of men - for example, a particular boy's role on a sports team. Boys learn early on that there is a heavy price to be paid for rejecting your role and demanding parity with those who have earned a higher place. The proper means to augment your status in the hierarchy is to earn or achieve something on behalf or for the betterment of the group - if the kid in the nine-hole starts hitting .400 and driving in lots of runs, he is received differently by the group and afforded higher status.
Also, humor is a big part of the cocktail party game, and women simply aren't funny. Most humor involves male pain and humiliation, and we live in a society in which women's pain and humiliation usually isn't considered humorous.
I mean the closest thing to what your describing is High School. Once everybody escapes the educationally wasteful, socially weird and interesting time that is 4 years of secondary education. We all seem to even out after a few years. I don't know though, I am known for being both oblivious and keen with people, I may be a bad judge.
There are social situations that deeply resemble high school; people in such situations often "revert" to older social roles. Basically anywhere where people are forced together in a relatively small group under the relatively tyrannical authority of someone else. Law or graduate school is a classic example. I wouldn't be surprised if programming shops have a lot of the same dynamic. The one I worked in many years back did but it was so disfunctional I wouldn't want to generalize too much from it. A friend of mine told me that military schools for officers (not academies, which are for young people, but the advanced schools for already serving officers) tend to push people into that role and a fair bit of high school behavior resurfaces, only to disappear when the people return to their positions of responsibility.
Politics isn't the only thing that makes for strange bedfellows. A common enemy is an incentive that can keep a group or alliance together where other incentives fail. I believe that without the "common enemy" element of feminism we wouldn't have a feminist movement, but thousands of them, all squabbling amongst each other.
As for murdering being natural, I'm not buying it. There is a natural aversion in human to killing other humans, and this aversion seems to be pretty universal. Of course, given the right circumstances, the right pressures, anybody can be pushed to overcome this aversion and kill another human being. Part of military training is intended to create the circumstances needed to push soldiers past this aversion. Which, in it self, raises some ethical questions.