Self-Awareness is the Cure for Female Rivalry

Third-wave thinker, political consultant, and author Naomi Wolf published a recent column in Harper’s Bazaar regarding the subject of female rivalry.  In particular, she uses the example of an upcoming movie, Black Swan, that tells the story of two competing ballerinas, played by Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis. I found the column most fascinating, particularly in how it asserts that preteen cruelty is just the beginning of destructive behaviors waged between women based on competition.  The recent tragedy of LGBT suicides among young adults has made me realize that the same basic elements for violence are present in older adults, only that they are expressed and channeled differently based on age.  These are, of course, no less cruel or sadistic, just found in a slightly different formulation.

Women tend to mix up love and longing with hostility, to be attracted to what they wish to condemn or destroy.

As a man, I know I can’t completely relate to that statement, though I am quite familiar with the concept of sour grapes.  If I were much less self-aware and Feminist, I’m fairly certain that women I couldn’t attain could be easily dismissed and slandered as bitches or whores.  It’s an interesting facet of who we are as humans that not having so quickly turns to all-out hate and resentment.  Though I have seen anger and jealousy flash across the face of the man who sees a woman he wants with someone else, I’ve seen this same phenomenon present with women, albeit magnified, with more participants, and on a much larger playing field. Men fight their wars alone, but women often engage the enemy in packs.

Having discussed the visual evidence, Wolf then takes a stab at the cause. The passage below is one of the most thought-provoking of the entire article.

In any vividly felt female rivalry, there can be an element of identification and attraction within the overall sense of hostility between women. It may be part of why close female friendships can become so risky emotionally that aggression or betrayal is the only “safe” redirection of energies. In Black Swan, the lesbian subtext of this relationship between the battling dancers surfaces directly. The element of attraction in same-sex rivalry is worth exploring. Data from the front lines of psychology shows that while straight men respond to straight stimuli and gay men to gay stimuli, women of whatever orientation tend to the bisexual in their physiological responses, though this arousal does not always register on the level of conscious awareness. How many times in the tensions between ostensibly straight women has an untenable attraction been redirected into a safe resentment?

Some years ago, my girlfriend at the time and I were talking about bisexuality.  “There’s something you need to know”, she’d pronounce, a smile on her face, “all girls are bi!”  To some degree, she may very well be right.  I’m hardly the most objective person to determine whether same is true in men, though I will say that I don’t find myself automatically attracted to every man who crosses my path, or who is present every friendship I make.  My male friendships rarely become quasi-romantic.  If I do find a man who appeals to my senses, but isn’t compatible, I can’t say that I feel a desire to wage pitched battle or respond deceitfully.  I cut my losses and move on.

This process may be what Wolf is saying ought to be adopted by women.  But what she is saying for certain is that radical self-awareness solves a variety of problems.  Women can repress the knowledge of the solution that lies within them, or they can risk the discomfort of close examination, which almost always lends itself to exponential growth once adopted.  The enemy, then, is ignorance, not any other external scapegoat.  Scapegoating and projecting seems to be the tactic of choice for many women, but Wolf emphasizes that it needn’t be this way. We expect those in the world around us to look inside beyond the easy answers or the way things have always been done, but we have to be just as willing to change for the sake of health, too.