Lest we get too caught up in believing that biochemistry is destiny, this article by Toronto Star scrivener Leslie Scrivener reminds us that women can be as brutally competitive as men, despite our being more open to the bonding, calming effects of oxytocin.
Link: TheStar.com - The cult of the mean girl
... there's a war out there — the combatants are women, the weapons are words and treachery, and battle has been waged since one Neanderthal woman narrowed her eyes suspiciously at another as their husbands went off to hunt wild boar for dinner.
Scrivener quotes Rosalind Wiseman, author of Queen Bees & wannabees, as well as Cheryl Dellasega, author of Mean Girls Grown Up, Phyllis Chesler, author of Woman's Inhumanity to Woman, Leora Tanenbaum, who wrote Catfight: Rivalries among Women — From Diets to Dating, From the Board Room to the Delivery Room, and Susan Murphy and Pat Heim, authors of In the Company of Women: Indirect Aggression Among Women — Why We Hurt Each Other & How to Stop.
All of them document the ways women are socialized to compete with and castigate each other, often in uniquely feminie ways.
Scrivener closes by saying that most women have more "tend and befriend" female relationships than mean-women ones.
