Women Occasionally Mean, Unsupportive Of One Another

Breaking news: Women in the workforce, despite being generally regarded as frail and timid, are in fact too aggressive. Especially to other women. Sometimes.

Just the mention of women treating other women badly on the job seemingly shakes the women’s movement to its core.

Oh, feminism, how frail thou (seemingly) art. A gentle spring breeze might blow you away. Only last week, I failed to give a pregnant lady my seat on the T, and God killed a radical lesbian-separatist kitten. So much for sisterhood being powerful.

According to a story in yesterday's New York Times, women are not as prone to bullying their subordinates as men, which fits nicely with received notions of women being altruistic. But when they do go rogue, they pick on other women, which is nasty, and hurts feminism. Also, they are stone cold bitches. (And here we thought putting women in charge was going to magically reform our corporate culture and fix the recession and stuff.)

It’s probably no surprise that most of these bullies are men, as a survey by the Workplace Bullying Institute, an advocacy group, makes clear. But a good 40 percent of bullies are women. And at least the male bullies take an egalitarian approach, mowing down men and women pretty much in equal measure. The women appear to prefer their own kind, choosing other women as targets more than 70 percent of the time.

What is this "nationally representative" study, you may well ask? Was it peer-reviewed? Did it appear in some fancy science journal thing? And where on earth did they get those lovely round numbers?

Actually, it's by a bunch of seminar-peddling consultants, who can be found here, here and here. Or if you like, you can help them make the world a nicer place by getting lawyers involved. And if you're really into this anti-bullying stuff, this June, you can spend three days with them in the glorious environs of Bellingham, Washington, learning to be an anti-bullying lobbyist just like Doctors Gary and Ruth Namie of the Workplace Bullying Institute. Only not as good.

No one else in North America can train you on this topic like Gary and Ruth Namie can! You will learn to customize the components for your personal needs and upon completion of this course you will be certified to deliver a presentation introducing Workplace Bullying to a variety of audiences — public or business groups.

See? You, too can be certified to give other people a PowerPoint presentation on Workplace Bullying! And, since the Workplace Bullying Institute is a nonprofit, Gary and Ruth Namie are doing this for the poor downtrodden American worker. Out of the goodness of their hearts.

Fee: $3,600 (USD) per person

Oh. Right then.

Women Are So Much Better Than Everybody Else And Should Be In Charge Of Stuff

Is it possible that the last op-ed ever to appear in the Boston Globe could be a golden paean to the loving maternal arms of the Nanny State?

Apparently without a shred of irony, editorial-page editor Renee Loth has taken up her silvered quill and penned a rather quaint Victorian essay on the Virtues of Womankind. Specifically, the women of New Hampshire. It seems that in New Hampshire, serving on the state legislature has become one of those tainted women-jobs, like cleaning toilets and fixing hair. The result? Gas tax! Gay marriage! Liberals! Hooray!

Loth attributes a recent leftward shift in New Hampshire politics to the superior ethical powers of women, who are increasingly taking up the mantle of public service out of their vast selflessness, and deciding what's best for everybody else. I wish I were making this up.

This is the more interesting question about women in power. Sure, women should be heard more in government - and the law, and science, and journalism - as a matter of sheer equity. But it's not the quantity of women so much as the different quality that can bring real change.

That last sentence. It appears to mean something. But what? What?

Women see the world as a web of relationships. They are more communitarian and less individualistic. They are less ideological and more practical. It's hard to imagine a better set of qualities for solving the intricate problems that face our world.

Naturally, all this female-superiority talk is playing straight into the grubby hands of the live-free-or-die-ers. The commenters on the Globe board, most of whom appear to be a bunch of third-generation Xerox copies of Howie Carr's mugshot come magically to life, are loving the hell out of it. A sample:

Let me summarize the article: Men are stupid, Women are reshaping NH (and the world) for the better.

Reverse all of the subtle and no so subtle points in the article and you have outrage from the liberal media and feminazis. Bashing men is so 21st century!

Well, Renee Loth, if you set out to prove nutjob libertarian gazillionaire Peter Thiel right, you're doing a hell of a job. Clearly letting those women-people vote is the first step down a nasty slippery slope of some sort.

But don't worry. Mommy is waiting at the bottom to catch all her wayward children, and gather them up into a bright and glorious future.

Women: They Are So Very Compassionate

Psychology professionals agree: Women are too compassionate for their own good. That's because they're "biologically programmed to be caretakers." It's a fact: Women have tiny little mind-control mechanisms embedded deep inside their brains that force them to care hard at all times.

Which explains today's Condi Rice news.