Why Are Women So Catty?

A friend of mine, let's call her "Jenny," was pleased after meeting two other girl friends of mine at a show recently.

"They're not catty, like most girls are," Jenny said. "Most girls are so stand-offish, especially at first, but they were really nice."

Cattiness is usually thought of as a general distrust or subtle maliciousness--usually from women towards other women. You'd be hard pressed to find a (straight) man whose behavior that could accurately be described as catty. There's nothing subtle about men's dislike or distrust for each other.

"Hello, I'm Jeremy. Nice to meet you."

"What the fuck are you looking at, asshole? Are you looking for an ass-whooping?"

In her book, "Sex on the Brain," Deborah Blum discusses specifically the question of male and female aggressive behavior. When discussing the behavior of chimpanzees¹ in a study by primatologist and professor of psychology at Emory University Frans de Waal, Blum notes that

Females don't really fight over access to power, at least not in the sense of seeking pure dominance. Their quarrels usually have to do with access to food or the protection of the young against others. Sometimes there's dislike or even intense rivalry over a particular relationship. And if another female doesn't come through--eats more than her share of the food, or even inadvertently endangers a youngster--de Waal describes the females as "vindictive and irreconcilable." They're angry for days, or even longer; they slap and push and won't come to an ex-friend's aid. And, while it's uncommon, females do appear sometimes to completely lose their tempers, fighting to crippling injury or worse. A trespass, a failure of a trusted friendship, is apparently much harder for females to forgive. . . .

...[I]t may be that they nurse grudges a whole lot better. If your life, your children's lives, and your family's survival depends on trusting relationships, you take those relationships seriously. In that context, it may be natural for females to stay angry longer and to be less forgiving of transgressions than males, who care more for perfect strategy than perfect relationships.

However, with males,

Picking a fight can actually be a way for [them] to relate to one another, check each other out, and take a first step towards friendship," de Waal notes. And this kind of bonding is alien to most women, who see confrontation as causing painful, hard-to-mend rifts in their feminine fabric of connections.

Alright, so we're not chimpanzees². The idea, however, seems to make sense. One of my best friends, before our first official meeting, noticed me mowing the lawn at the age of thirteen with my shirt off.

"When I first saw you, I wanted to kick your ass." He said. "I was like 'who does this guy think he is, running around with his shirt off?' "

Blum's mention of de Waal's work reminds of of other, similar female behavior. Female friends always seem ready to stab each other in the back, and even if they "make up," they tend to hold a grudge, and never seem to fully trust each other.

Imagine the exemplary conversation:

"Hi Stacy, what have you been up to?"

"Oh, not much, Brian and I have just been spending a lot of time together."

"Oh. That's cool." (You fucking bitch. You knew I liked him first, and you went out with him when I had mono. Then you slept with him you skanky slut. I want to kill you.)

"Yeah, he's really sweet." (I know I stole Brian from you, you vindictive cow. I did it on purpose--I didn't even really like him. He's not that cute and he's not that good in bed. But remember that time in fourth grade when we were caught talking in class and you let me take the blame for it? Ms. Nicks made me stay after class cleaning erasers while you kissed Jimmy McNichols under the bleachers. I want to stab your eyes out.)

Women seem to be, in general, seem to have evolved to be more comfortable with holding grudges and remaining cautiously distrustful towards the members of their sex, rather than the more straight-forward male approach of sizing each other up openly and establishing hierarchical roles through ass-whoopings. Cattiness never worked for me³--it seems less honest, and the behavior that ensues after a catty introduction is usually less than optimal. Of course, less women tend to compete in fight-to-the-death cage matches, so who knows which way is actually better.

¹Just to be clear, you may have come from a damned monkey, but I sure as hell didn't.

² Even though they are, genetically, the most similar living animal.

³ Of course, I am an extremely straight male.