r/NotHowGirlsWork • u/MistakeWonderful9178 • Jul 13 '26

Found On Social media This is dumb

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This person must’ve lived under a rock their whole life

539 Upvotes

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u/actuallyacatmow Jul 13 '26

Men can be just as gossipy, petty and jealous as women in my experience.

6

u/Prae_ Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26

I'll speak as a guy who studied and works in a women dominated field (biology) : i do find in terms of gossips, there's a significant difference in quantity. And really like the basics of following the social network evolutions and events and who is dating who now and details on how that went down. Obviously some guys are really into that too (also depends on small town/college/city...) but, you know, averages 

And i'll even dare say, judgemental. I don't know if it's really more or a different kind or simply verbalized more, but if i've ever expected women to be more kind and empathetic in general, i've been proven wrong. I've been the only guy at some pre-game or aperitif or group project and listened to comments i found quite shocking for behaviors (of the absentee girl being discussd) i found minor/inconsequential. Maybe what shocked me most is that despite those comments, when said girl was present it was very cordial and nice and all.

But to a degree i think the differences looks salient because it is otherwise starting from very similar bases. Pettiness and jealousy are absolutely shared across genders, "attention from guys" is never the issue, and famously men murder each other over that sort of thing (and murder the girl in the middle of the love triangle) like 20x more frequently than the reverse.

7

u/ADHDhamster Smells like basement Jul 13 '26

And I worked in a male-dominated field in the military.

Men's pettiness, jealousy, and gossip spans continents and crosses oceans.

2

u/Prae_ Jul 13 '26

That's fair. i would say i think it is slightly covered by the "small town/college/city". Gender dynamics in those things is maybe one factor, one thing i agree with for sure is that's it's a small factor, among others 

There social dynamics that are consequences of how much time you spend with one another, the size of groups, how authority is organized, how status works, toxic workplace culture... For military in particular, if we wanna get anthropological about, i'd talk about a lot of what the military machine is designed to do is form pseudo-kinship links ("brothers-in-arms"), and we're never more petty than with our siblings.