Are Women Too Nice?

Yesterday, I was provided with a fascinating insight into the difference between men and women.



An article I had written on education had been sent to two experts in the field, one male, one female, for peer review.  The subject was a state-wide plan to improve students' "soft skills" by hiring 1,000 "creative types" to patrol K-12 classrooms and make sure, Barney the Purple Dinsoaur-style, that kids were using their imaginations.  I cruelly mocked the proposal as the "Whiteface Mime Full Employment Act of 2009."


"Sogby-Orono Consolidated School District is hiring!"

When the reviews came back, the man's only comment was "Good article--comma in second sentence should be semicolon."  The woman, on the other hand, had obviously been up late agonizing over the tone and content of the piece.  She had crossed out the line about the mimes, as well as several related jabs that turned it into a recurring leitmotif.  (I didn't go to college for nothing.)


"Instead of saying 'Delores is a big, fat slob,' say 'Delores had metabolism issues.'"

When I asked the woman in an email exchange why she recommended the deletions, she said she thought they might be viewed as too critical and hurt someone's feelings.
I was, to put it mildly, dumbfounded.  "Isn't that the whole point?" I tapped back at her.

This is not the first time I've noticed this phenomenon.  A female cartoonist whose work I've admired is known for her fine line drawings, and I suggested that we collaborate on a piece for a Sunday newspaper.  In it, I made fun--equal opportunity style--of every institution of higher learning in the City of Boston, an exhausting task; she provided the images.  In her own work, however, the last panel is almost always a happy ending; the set-up may create conflict, but the punch-line is gentle, a slap on the wrist instead of a whack with a metal-edged ruler by Sister Mary Joseph Arimathea.



My experiences lead to an inevitable conclusion; women, as much as I hate to admit it, are simply nicer than men.  Which is too bad.



There are, of course, exceptions.  There was Alice Roosevelt Longworth, who said "If you haven't got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me."  There was Flannery O'Connor, who wrote a short story, Good Country People, about a man who lures a rural bookworm into a hayloft and steals her wooden leg.  There is Dorothy Parker, who in her "Constant Reader" column, reviewed A.A. Milne's House at Pooh Corner and wrote of the sickly-sweet children's book, "Tonstant Weader fwowed up."


Mary McCarthy

For the most part, women seem to reserve their most venomous words for each other.  Mary McCarthy said of Stalinist fellow-traveler Lillian Hellman that "Every word she's ever said is a lie, and that includes 'a', 'an' and 'the'."  Sweet old Barbara Bush referred to Geraldine Ferraro, her husband's vice-presidential opponent, as "that four million dollar--I can't say it, but it rhymes with 'rich'."



Without that undercurrent of malice, always threatening to rock the boat, life can turn into one big game of Candyland.  It's a no-lose proposition, like the T-ball leagues where everybody gets a trophy just for showing up, even if they didn't.  That's why I often urge my wife to honk at a driver in front of us who's composing a text message to his next sales call as the light turns green.  Go ahead, I say, lean on the horn--you'll feel better.


A doily, in case you've never seen one.

People speak of a decline in civility, but I know better.  The idealized image of the past, when men were men and women were frail, doily-like creatures who blushed if a harsh word were spoken at a tea dance, is a myth.  My mother, for example, had both a polite social face and a stilleto-like tongue that she used to carve people up after the pleasantries were done with and she was in the privacy of her own home.

Her highest-octane malice was reserved for romantic rivals of my two older sisters.  Of one young lady, said to be pretty, her assessment was "Yeah--pretty ugly and pretty apt to stay that way."


    One (1) peck

Of another, who had declined a second helping at a dinner and flattered herself that she "ate like a bird," my mother said "Yeah--peck by peck."  (A peck, for metric-o-nomes, is a quarter of a bushel.)


You think you're sooo cool.

And of a third young lady, who had bested one of my sisters in competition for one of those prizes of youth, like head cheerleader or homecoming queen, that seem so important when you're young, and so laughable when you're older, she had this to say.  "She looks like the Good Lord made her ugly and hit her with a stick."

God how I miss her.