The Dude Effect and The Bitch Effect

Mob mentality is a pretty well documented phenomemonon.  I wonder though, how many studies have been done specifically on male vs female mob mentality, or as I would like to call it the dude effect and the bitch effect.

I’ve passed through my fair share of social groups, from choir nerds, to engineers, a fraternity, or simply an old group of friends.  One thing they all have in common is that despite various stereotypes they all act the same once you get enough of them together.  I think inherently all men enjoy essentially the same things, women, booze, boozing with women, having a penis, crass jokes, being hairy, long johns, firehats, you know the usual.  When you get a group together of men, no matter what type of individual they are, men just want to be men.  Often the behavior is dictated by the most dominant man, who often also could be the biggest douchebag, goofiest, ridiculous, or outgoing of the bunch.  A fraternity is the best example as that is essentially a group of men getting together to celibrate being men.  The result is lots of alcohol, objectification of women, and endless gay jokes.  I think we should embrace this for what it is.  It’s a beautiful thing, to bring men together, bro down, and just act like a bunch of dudes.

On the other hand there are women.  Women are inherently very competitive with each other.  Probably the whole limited number of eggs deal.  Either way, most groups of women are fraught with infighting and bickering.  They have to have very strict rules lest they be unfair.  Friendships turn into hatred at the flick of a wrist, and sometimes reverse that course just as quickly.  If they can come together long enough they similarly will follow the most dominant girl.  Unfortunately, as in the situation with men, dominance is not necessarily a sign of intelligence or a particularly good leadership quality.  To hopefully alleviate some backlash from women I won’t name specifically the traits I’m thinking of but if you look at sororities or various other women’s clubs I’m sure you can guess what I may say.

We’re all so predictable, yet we still can’t really understand each other.  Damnit.