Columnist
‘Don’t tell anyone but… men gossip just as much as women!’
Shhh! Don’t tell anyone but… men gossip just as much as women and, whisper it, are much more bitchy. The autumn means more work events, and what I’ve noticed is that it’s the fellas who want all the ‘hot goss’ over cold beer.
Many of my most recent conversations with men have begun ‘So, just keep this between us, but…’ followed by a ruthless character assassination.
Bitching is perceived to be a woman’s preferred weapon of choice and yet I have only one female friend who needs to go to the vets to get her claws done; and I’d say that to her face too – both of them! But the gossip about bitchy gossip is that it’s actually a male trait.
Research by Ariel University in Israel, published in the Journal of Gender Studies, found that ‘women and men engage in exactly the same amount of gossiping activity’ with only one significant difference – that women’s is encoded with more positivity.
In the workplace, blokes are much more likely to gripe about colleagues. Researchers quizzed 2,200 people and found that both sexes are equally likely to share office tittle-tattle but while women tend to talk supportively about teammates, men prefer to run rivals down.
Psychologists maintain blokes are hardwired to denigrate other males to boost their confidence. And yet it’s women who get labelled ‘fish wives’. Such linguistic sexism is sewn into our psyche. A man who is good at his job is ‘leadership material’ while a female ‘go-getter’ is the person men send to go get coffee. An ambitious woman is derided as a ‘ball-breaker’ and women ‘nag’ while men give ‘constructive criticism’.
A promiscuous bloke is a ‘stud’, ‘Romeo’ or ‘Lothario’, while a woman with the same sexual appetite is a ‘slut’, ‘tramp’ or ‘moll’. And men still expect women to be so virginal. ‘Am I the first man to make love to you?’ a bloke asks, to which the woman replies, ‘Of course… I don’t know why you men keep asking the same, silly question?’
I don’t repeat goss
