"Every response that led to paying work was from a man."
Susannah Breslin on being laid off (via Instapundit):
A commenter (Lydia Netzer) to Breslin's post ponders why women didn't help as much when Breslin was given a pink-slip:
Perhaps this is a case where men's skills for taking action come in handy. Many times, women complain that men want to find a solution and do something when faced with a problem. Women often want to talk about it, but talking is not always the answer, especially in the face of unemployment.
After my post went live, I linked to it on Facebook and Twitter. I emailed the link to men and women. Men responded by introducing me to someone who was in a position to hire me, by sending me links to job listings that could be a fit, or by directing me to opportunities that resulted in paying work.
Women responded emotionally — with support or sympathy. Men responded proactively. Women responded passively — or not at all. Every response that led to paying work was from a man.
A commenter (Lydia Netzer) to Breslin's post ponders why women didn't help as much when Breslin was given a pink-slip:
Love this post. I especially was interested in the part about men do / women feel. I hope you elaborate on that in the future. Women secretly don’t want to help you succeed? Women don’t know what to do to help? Women aren’t in a position to help?
Perhaps this is a case where men's skills for taking action come in handy. Many times, women complain that men want to find a solution and do something when faced with a problem. Women often want to talk about it, but talking is not always the answer, especially in the face of unemployment.
posted by Helen at 4:14 PM
27 Comments:
That whole post sums things up nicely.
I keyed in on the same point Lydia Netzer did. It reminded me of one of those humorous lists that circuates around the internet periodically, "Mens Rules for Women."
Number 8 read something like this; "Don't come to us with your problems unless you actually want to solve them. Sympathy is what your girlfriends are for."
It seems like Susannah's male respondents take her at her word that she is looking for help finding a job and offer said help. The female respondents assume she is looking for sympathy.
This is unsurprising given that the only real misogyny in the world is by woman against other women (e.g. leftist women against Sarah Palin, etc.).
Men almost never exhibit misogyny against women. They exhibit the opposite of misogyny, which is pedestalization.
Feminists have hence expanded the definition of 'misogyny' to include 'not submitting to enslavement when ordered by a woman.'
"Many times, women complain that men want to find a solution and do something when faced with a problem. Women often want to talk about it, but talking is not always the answer, especially in the face of unemployment."
Too true. It's my reflex to want to solve a problem. It's utterly frustrating to get a response like, "Yes, but..."
I then have to tell my female friends that if all you want is a sounding board, tell it to your girlfriends, your pastor or your shrink.
(Well, maybe I don't always verbalize it...)
Sounds like a case of men do, women feel to me.
Interesting link to a story about competition between women, located right beneath the Tip #1: Men Help. Women Don't.
I've noticed this all my life. For every male jerk a woman deals with in the workplace, there's a hundred women who would gladly see her thrown under a bus.
ZorroPrimo -
Absolutely right. In the twenty-six years that I spent working for corporations of various sizes, I never heard a man say that he didn't want to work for a woman, but I heard lots of women say it. Just to clarify, I heard men say "I won't work for her", but not "I won't work for a woman". Women told me that women wanted to get ahead, and were willing to keep others down in order to do it.
Ern: Ever read a book called "The Woman Racket" by Steve Moxon? I just got it from Amazon, and it looks particularly on-track. Just curious.
There's a discussion of how women hate to work for female bosses. That really rang true with me, as I have known dozens (seriously, dozens) of women who vowed to never work for a female boss. That made me think.
Ern, Zorro -
Your comments are very interesting to me. I've worked with female supervisors and peers in a variety of settings. Never did I have a problem with the idea of working for or with women, and have had some good experiences there. I've also had bad experiences, and like you said, there have been certain women that I couldn't work for or with. There have been plenty of men in that category as well.
It remains one of the strangest things in the world, to me, and yet I can demonstrate it pretty much at will, any day of the week. It mystifies me that women complain that men want to find a solution.
It's not so mystifying when you realise that if a solution is supplied, the women won't have anything to complain about and thus lose one of the tools in their manipulation toolbox.
dunkelzahn4prez -
I'd say that the women for whom I've worked were about as good as the men for whom I've worked. I'm dealing with a small sample, particularly in the case of the women, but I'd go further and say that 25% of the women for whom I've worked would have been in the top quartile of all those for whom I've worked, and the same for the other three quartiles. No difference in quality whatsoever.
Zorroprimo -
Haven't read it. Hadn't even heard of it until now. I'll check the libraries around here (in deepest, darkest Iowa), and, if none has it, I'll probably buy it.
SGT Ted said...
It's not so mystifying when you realise that if a solution is supplied, the women won't have anything to complain about and thus lose one of the tools in their manipulation toolbox.
You could be on to something there. Another way to frame it might be "if a solution is supplied, the women won't have anything to emote about and thus lose the chance to receive emotional responses like sympathy or commiseration.
For every male jerk a woman deals with in the workplace, there's a hundred women who would gladly see her thrown under a bus.
Back in the 1970s Parade magazine published the results of a study/survey of women in the work place. They said the same thing then. Basically, they coulnd't trust women the way they did men.
I've looked for this study on the Web serveral times but haven't been able to find it. That's one of the great problems with the Internet. A lot of stuff that happened more than 15-20 years ago just doesn't exist.
Nurses often don't get along well with women doctors. I think that is less of a problem now as women doctors are more comfortable and less likely to be taken for nurses (Or think they will be taken for nurses), but it was a big problem 25 years ago. There is still a problem with women supervisors, according to the stories I hear.
Ern: Just a little background on The Woman Racket. Steve Moxon is a British civil servant whose first book blew open the immigration policy scandal in the UK that forced the resignation of the Cabinet Minister for Immigration, so he's got serious face in the British press. He's been working on this book for over ten years, which is all about how the sexes relate to each other at work, at play, etc., and it's all based on the relatively new science of evolutionary psychology. Leading scientists at Cambridge have supported his explanation of evo-psy and female hypergamy in the animal kingdom.
A few peer reviews have claimed he goes a bit off track at times, but the gist of his thesis is how female hypergamy operates socially and professionally. I've only scratched the surface of the book, but it completely recasts the gender argument in a whole new light. I'm eager to finish it. In a nutshell, it claims that the whole feminist utopian dream is a biological impossibility and can only lead to economic and social ruin (the obvious capping force being society overtaken by non-feminist cultures...hint, hint).
Just a heads up.
It mystifies me that women complain that men want to find a solution.
Be mystified no more.
Allow me to explain this aspect of female psychology :
Women see the world in terms of opportunities via which to gain sympathy and attention from others.
If a crisis exists, women see it as a way to get attention for themselves.
If men solve the problem, the chance to get attention goes away, which women don't like.
Hence, women don't want a solution to problems.
In fact, a very large part of female psychology is to deliberately create messes for men to clean up. A man who is smart enough to not clean up a woman's disasters immediately becomes irresistably attractive to the woman.
Pickup artists study this and other aspects of female psychology, to create desired outcomes in their interactions with women.
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kmg, i found and kept the relationship with my wife precisely because i refuse to deal with her messes, unless we`ve agreed to make a poor choice together, in which case i`1l do my part to fix the situation.
it takes guts to do it the first time, for fear of losing what is dear, but after that it`s a matter of course.
when my wife and i first moved in together i had to tell her about some of her daughter`s behaviour, and she jumped up and said i shouuld leave if that`s how i felt.
i said that i would leave if she wanted me to, but it wasn`t going to change how her daughter was acting and how it was potentially going to threaten our relationship.
she finally dropped her defense and admitted that, even though she loved her daughter, she didn`t like who she was becoming.
i have learned to listen and not add a comment toward a solution when my wife complains about things in her day, but i have noticed recently that she is using some of my stuff (NLP) with her kids at work and that makes me smile.
my wife isn`t stupid though, she`s a woman through and through, but she`s also an intelligent professional person, trained to listen and reason...and has shown me a few things about how to deal with situations, especially regsarding my children and their mother.
SURPRISE! SOME MEN DIFFER FROM SOME WOMEN. ...more surprises: that is not always the case.
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In my 50 years I've barely had any woman help me in any way unless I was in a relationship with them.
Women have a general all around 'fuck you, I don't have to do anything for you' and I encounter it daily in my professional life.. which is why I always work around women because they are nothing more than parasites and obstacles in the corporate world- toxic and worthless.
Men are proactive- women care more about feelings? Isn't that just a polite way of saying "does nothing?"
Only slightly off-topic: A female writer for Mad Men posted a column in Huffington Post titled "Why You're Not Married."
It went viral. And it pissed off every feminist in the country.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tracy-mcmillan/why-youre-not-married_b_822088.html
Question of the day: Why would this article piss off a feminist?
In light of all the Kay Hymowitz bullshowzah, it makes for VERY funny reading!
read the article....snorted my coffee.
"you`re a bitch!"
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah!
and it struck me that when a female friend said she lost her job, i took her resume to my wife, who passed it to her boss who hired the girl on the spot.......and the girl has never thanked me, which would have been really nice to hear.......
and the answer to the question of the day is....yep.
@dr.alistair said...and it struck me that when a female friend said she lost her job, i took her resume to my wife, who passed it to her boss who hired the girl on the spot.......and the girl has never thanked me, which would have been really nice to hear......
_____________
I hear you.
Reminds me of a single mother who complained in a letter to the editor that there was no help for a single mother. Heated debate, with ironically those most opposed to government intervention the most willing to help. Some pointed her to groups, some to possible employment.
For my part, I bought her a finance book, and she never thanked me.
It was here:
http://www.sj-r.com/letters/x1551225957/Letter-Where-is-the-help-for-a-single-mother
Coincidentally, Amy also blogged about it here:
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2010/09/30/hey_wheres_her.html
I haven't responded to this post because there isn't enough hard drive space out there to contain my rant. All I will say is that I seem to get at least one phone call or email a day from friends/acquaintances/businesspeople/peoplethatdonevenknowme that starts off with the same sentence beginning, "I need you to.......". Is this just happening to me or does this happen to other people as well?
Even though these people aren't even asking politely but making a demand for me to do something for them for free and immediately, the answer is always "no, not going to happen." Sometimes I have to say it 5 or more times, 5 or more different ways. It's getting crazy out there. I'm willing to help but not this way.
cham, what it think you are refering to is the push to voluneerism which is conditioning people to doing work for free, and while some charity work is admirable, it is becoming common to see this sort of thing working into the school curriculum and into the workplace also.
i give of my time in a self-directed way, choosing to coach kids soccer and to run music nights at the children`s aid drop-in center where my wife works, but if my boss or teacher made volunteering part of what i had to do in order to work or learn, i would have a serious problem.
i was offered a chance to become part of a sports rehab facility two years ago, and part of the "team activity" was charity work under the banner of the facility on week-ends. i pointed out to the director that i was already involved in volunteering in the community, and that my week-ends were my only time to see my children as i was seperated from their mother.
his response was that i probably wasn`t going to a suitable candidate for their facility if that was going to be my "attitude".
no, you are right. i`m not a slave to promoting your facility with no benifit to me whatsoever.
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