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ArtemisForestFairy's avatar

males and females Are very different in how they solve problems. perhaps they need different systems to bring out the best in each? in ancient cultures we do see this. there are high status men and women, but they get there differently, they have different arenas, or locus of control. the phrase "the had that rocks the cradle rules the world". mothers, can be bullies to their children, or choose not to. there needs to be a feminine culture that supports her to be better than that. some kind of self examination. re inforcement of maybe a moral structure of virtue....have you heard of ash circles? i think this would be a good remedy.

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Eva Sylwester's avatar

Yeah, this absolutely motivates me to stick with being a self-employed freelance writer. No matter how hard it is sometimes, it is not like some office situations where you truly have no rights. You mentioned the role of discrimination against women in fueling this sense that women can do no wrong, and I concur that being a victim means never having to say you're sorry.

At what point will women's rights have advanced enough for women to acknowledge that they are human and their shit stinks too? I know things were really hard for the baby boom generation. My book Impossible Dreams contains an oral history interview with two baby boomer women who talked about how, in their lifetime, women couldn't have their own credit cards. I can understand how some women of that generation would have lasting hard feelings about that type of egregious mistreatment. Fortunately, I, a woman born in 1986, was able to fund Impossible Dreams on credit cards — a few years after I abandoned office work over a situation with a boomer woman where nothing I did was ever enough to compensate for her lifetime of suffering.

Do you foresee this problem of woman on woman bullying in the workplace improving at all after the baby boom generation finally fully retires?

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Nathalie Martinek PhD's avatar

You asked a good question - I still think bullying will prevail after boomer women leave because there are other tactics used to maintain dominance and status.

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Allan's avatar

Most Boomer women were raised by Misogynistic Men. I see a lot of these women seem to have become Misogynists themselves. They have very few Women friends. Are they not grooming the future generations to be just like them. Exactly like the Narcissist grooms there offspring to be exactly like them.

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Nathalie Martinek PhD's avatar

Exactly this Allen. They model what was modelled to them.

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Allan's avatar

Fair to say we are grooming our children to be the opposite of what their true potential could be. From a Oz perspective this seems to be ingrained in our society. It seems only the extraordinary Souls can brake free from this social Indoctrination

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Nathalie Martinek PhD's avatar

Doing my best to help my Aussie daughters resist the pull and seduction of modernity and using them as a tool to serve the state/institution. So far they've seen the games of the mean girls and are opting out.

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Allan's avatar

Thank you Nathalie for the important work you are doing. I gather the nastier someone is to others, the nastier they are to themselves. Like the more we Love others the more we can Love our amazing flawed Selves. 🙏

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Eva Sylwester's avatar

True -- and, now that I think about it a little more, millennials have plenty of aptitude for feeling sorry for themselves too. Any millennial of any gender can have all the credit cards they want, but we are often drowning in them because we graduated into the Great Recession and then got hit by the housing crisis and all the issues related to COVID as we drifted into middle age. I'm sure some millennial boss will use that as a justification to rough up their subordinates 30 years from now.

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Sheila Dean's avatar

I love this. I hope you write an entire book on it.

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Paula Wright's avatar

It's interesting. I worked in the NHS where female intrasexual competition & bullying is endemic: especially in nursing. I've found that when the networks of bullies are large & led by a queen bee that management feel it's best just to get rid of the victim. I've called this "management fatigue".

I can't dm you here to send you my what's app but you can dm me here if you like & I'll send it over.

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Paula Wright's avatar

I'm in the UK NST time. I've just recently interviewed Tanya Reynolds & Cory Clark on similar issues.

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