Do Men or Women Make Better Friends?

Cats.

Cats make the best friends.

I've never had much luck with human friends, male or female...

ishtar'sgate,

I have both male and female friends. But, guess who I felt was my dearest friend until he passed away a few years ago-my grandfather. He always had my back and accepted me just the way I was, even when he didn't agree with my choices. Grandma was pretty much in that category too.

Oh, and my cats-they really are my closest friends. They do many bad things, though.

ishtar'sgate said:

Men I knew tended to overlook their friend's shortcomings more often than women did and had their backs more. At first I thought it might be where I was living and working at the time except, thinking back, it didn't seem to matter if I were in the city or country. Of the people I knew either socially or in a work situation that difference was there. Naturally there were exceptions but overall I found this to be true. I can't for the life of me think why and it's bugging me.

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It may be something as simple as survival of the species (evolution/mother nature/creation). I acknowledge my information is old, limited, and second hand, but I recall my college 101 professor telling us that early male humans developed strong ties with one another necessary for group hunting and united defense against predators. At home in the caves, women needed to cooperate with each other but were in more competition with their friends.

Oversimplified of the reading and our prof's lecture, but her gist was one behavior wasn't better than the other; it was merely the facts of a species dealing with getting by over millions of years.

Really? From my experience, it depends solely on the person, or people involved. If we're going to take evol pysch into this, it really depends on a variety of factors greater than competition, especially when sexual dimorphism is involved. Males are usually always in greater competition than females for mates, so that's really not the answer.

And, no, cats are not the best. Dogs are. Do cats treat your entrance into the house like the second coming of Jesus? No. Do humans wait for you by the window, and turn their head's, refusing to move an inch when they think you might be near just to lick your hand? No.

Dogs, by far, make the best friends.

The media focuses much more heavily on male-male friendship. Female-female friendship is considered weird and niche, and it's a struggle just to get a film to have two women who talk to each other about something other than a man. Female-male friendship is rarely shown, as usually if there's a female-male pairing, it will be romantic. People who don't fit those binaries are pretty much non-existent in friend stories.

So people tend to devalue female friendship, because they've been taught to devalue it. This doesn't mean it's actually true. You might have bad luck with friends of a certain sex as an individual, but that doesn't mean those people are inherently worse as friends, or that the way they display friendship is not as valid and meaningful. And the media isn't going to show you the alternatives you might be missing, because it's all about the bromance.

I don't think you have nearly enough statistical evidence to show that in any global context either one makes a better friend.

It may be true as seen by you in your circle of acquantances but seems of little significance beyond that circle.

Did you ask the friends concerned for their reactions or how they would behave in certain situations, or is this apparent 'better performance' an assumption based on thoughts and observations?

Just curious.

In my opinion, the quality of a friendship has infinitely more to do with the character of the individuals than it does with their sex. I think men and women have an equally fair chance of being loyal and trustworthy as they do of being self-seeking douchebags.

Bufty said:

I don't think you have nearly enough statistical evidence to show that in any global context either one makes a better friend.

It may be true as seen by you in your circle of acquantances but seems of little significance beyond that circle.

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This.

For instance, my observational experience has been the opposite -- I feel like most of the female/female friendships I have observed are far, far closer than most of the male/male ones. I don't think this says anything other than I have a very small, not-statistically-significant sample size and a biased viewpoint (since I am in the society I am observing).

ishtar'sgate said:

Men I knew tended to overlook their friend's shortcomings more often than women did and had their backs more. [...] Naturally there were exceptions but overall I found this to be true. I can't for the life of me think why and it's bugging me.

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Because it's not true.

ETA: What Cella said above me.

I (male) have always had closer friendships with women. My male friendships are almost always based on a mutual need (interesting in light of Chase's reply above) or a mutually shared situation. When the need is resolved or the situation changes, my male friendships usually dissolve. On the other hand, me and several female friends have weathered all sorts of storms and changes.

But that's me and my personality. This is certainly not true of all males by any means.

Brightdreamer said:

Cats.

Cats make the best friends.

I've never had much luck with human friends, male or female...

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Ignoring the most obvious answer above, I'd say it's dependent more on the person than on their gender. I know both m-m and f-f that are extremely close, and rather shallow.

Do left-handed or right-handed people make better friends? - That question makes about as much sense to me.

You know I'm tempted to go all feminist on you now - the myth of the lack of female solidarity is patriarchal propaganda, designed to keep women from uniting against the structures that oppress them, etc, etc. (and it's something I'm actually fairly deeply convinced of) - but that's probably not the answer you are looking for.

So I just ask you to consider a couple of things:

1) There is such a thing as confirmation bias. We tend to only see the things we are trained to see.

2) Male friendship has been celebrated in all media since the dawn of time. If you want to attract some fans you need to bring in the bromance.. Female friendship in contrast rarely makes it into the mainstream narratives. Just look at how many movies fail the Bechdel test (two women, speaking to each other, not about men). Most mainstream narratives are only interested in women in as far as they relate to men (the mother, the love interest, the fridged wife or daughter to be revenged) - of course there's no place for female friendship in such a narrative.

3) These things affect us on a subconscious level. You might think you're unaffected, but you can hardly know for sure. Personally, I think it's extremly unlikely that anyone can ever completely transcend their socialization. It doesn't work with racism, it doesn't work with classism, and there's no reason to assume that it would work with sexism.

4) Internalized misogyny sometimes makes some women undervalue female friendship, because no validation another women could give them could possibly count as much as the kind of validation they could get from a man. It's very tragic. Doesn't mean that these women won't make for excellent friends once somebody kindly provides a bit of a reality check. A lot of girls go through a "I get along better with boys"-phase, but most eventually grow out of it.

5) If you care about truth, resist the temptation to generalize from a couple of personal anecdotes. See Point 1.) confirmation bias. Society promotes certain biases and blind spots and you are quite unlikely to be free of them.

That said, sharing anecdotes - while being an inadequate means of pursuing truth - is certainly fun, so here are some of mine:

I never got the impression that men are less judgmental of each other. To the contrary, they seem to be often quite blatantly obsessed with rank and hierarchies and their social standing within groups (all that alpha, beta, omega bullshit). Interactions between men often have a thinly veiled whiff of competitiveness about them, even among friends. I'm talking constant dick-measuring contests. Frankly, I find it exhausting to watch (but of course men are encouraged to go about it more blatantly, which can also be refreshing - the need to be subtle about it more often found among women can certainly be exhausting too).

Now, the constant dick-measuring is usually framed in a playful manner, but that's often a bit of a charade. I remember when my brother went through a tough time, self-esteem-wise, and took his frequent defeats in such contests and the subsequent jokes about him quite to heart. At least judging from the number of times he complained to me about it. But of course he would never say anything along those lines to his friends, because an inability to take jokes would only have further weakened his position among them (And those are good friends, actually; I'm quite fond of them too, I've known them since kindergarten. Still they were quite toxic for my brother for a while.)

I think men are raised to expect their egos bruised in interaction with each other once in a while. They also don't really expect each other to fulfill their emotional needs. That makes male friendships a lot more low-maintenance and takes a lot of pressure from them. But that pressure has to go somewhere, doesn't it, so it's placed on male-female relationships instead. They tear each other down for fun and then we have to build them up again. Maybe if men were more considerate of each other. we wouldn't always have to walk on eggshells around them.

I generally get on well with men. I love my brother and I enjoy hanging out with him and his friends (who seem to tolerate me just fine, by the way, in spite of my whole "being-quite-vocal-about-feminism"-stick). By and large, I've so far had fairly uncomplicated and pleasant relationships with male classmates and coworkers. My life would be so much poorer without male friends.

It would be absolutely impossible without my female friends.

Because I rely on them so much more. Men are fun when I'm in the mood for fun. Women are there when shit gets real. They can stand me when I can't stand myself. They don't just keep my secrets - they actually want to know them in the first place. Even the really unsexy ones, the faintly disturbing TMI-stuff. They give me a reality check when I need it, they keep me real and they build me up again when life drags me down. I don't need be witty with them, or intellectual, or cool. I don't need to put on a show. I can be boring old me, whiny, petty, insecure. The only men I have that kind of relationship with are my dad and my brother. But generally that's not what I'm looking for with men.

Male friends are pleasure. Female friends are a neccessity.

For me. Not in general, certainly.

Can't judge an entire gender group like that without falling into stereotypes, IMO. I'm seconding the personality bit. There are a ton of guys I get on well with (I'm female, btw). There are also a ton of guys whose mouths I'd love to nail gun shut. Same with women.


Though I will argue that 'I get along better with boys' is not a phase. I am one of those women. Have been my entire life, and I sincerely doubt it's changing any time soon. I dislike sharing secrets--it's a secret for a reason--and I'm seldom looking for emotional support when I ask about a problem. I want to know how to fix it. Admittedly, I'm at the deep end of the cold fish spectrum, but the one thing I genuinely prefer about men is that they tend to be less emotional. I can't deal with crying people, or people who are there solely for emotional support. My personality is all wrong for it, and it's exhausting for me. Doesn't mean I can't offer it, but I'd really rather you come to me for solutions instead.

I wrote this in my Big Idea piece on Scalzi's blog, it seems salient now. Other than that I can't comment as I get far too rage-tastic when people suggest friendships between women are less honest, loyal and true. It's totally and complete BS. And in fact one of the main reasons I wrote THE FRIDAY SOCIETY was to counter the stereotype of female relationships by showing a trio of girls who are friends, aren't frenemies, get along, are supportive, helpful and have a great time together. Anyway I don't think it's really safe for me to participate too actively in this thread :

"Relationships between women [as represented in the media] are evidently supposed to be catty, manipulative, and just all-around unpleasant. By contrast, there is a beauty to men’s bromance. It is held up as an important and wonderful thing, whether it be a Fellowship surrounding, say, a piece of jewelry, or someone to whom you can say I Love You, Man. But the female bond is derided, considered a necessary evil. Something to mock. It’s actually why I believe so many women love bromance books and films. We so rarely see our own friend relationships represented as high-quality and fulfilling, that we relate better to watching the way male relationships are represented. That’s not good.”

Little Anonymous Me said:

Though I will argue that 'I get along better with boys' is not a phase. I am one of those women. Have been my entire life, and I sincerely doubt it's changing any time soon. I dislike sharing secrets--it's a secret for a reason--and I'm seldom looking for emotional support when I ask about a problem. I want to know how to fix it. Admittedly, I'm at the deep end of the cold fish spectrum, but the one thing I genuinely prefer about men is that they tend to be less emotional. I can't deal with crying people, or people who are there solely for emotional support. My personality is all wrong for it, and it's exhausting for me. Doesn't mean I can't offer it, but I'd really rather you come to me for solutions instead.

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I can't count how many women I've met who've told me exactly the same thing. Which is actually why I'm so doubtful about the whole "getting a long better with men"-thing.

Moi, I really like the oversharing-aspect of stereotypically female bonding (maybe the one area of my life where I'm most stereotypically feminine; also because I'll always love a good story and secrets often make for compelling stories, especially the ugly ones - of course I wouldn't use it for my fiction; the "keeping the secret"-part is also important, obviously), but I know so many women who only do that out of a sense obligation, because they feel it's somehow part of the female-friendship protocol and are utterly relieved when they can skip that step.

So basically the whole "better be friends with boys, because I don't want to deal with the drama"-thing is one big misunderstanding, if you ask me. So many cold fish women tragically prevented from becoming stoic silent BFFs due to silly social expectations.

IMO, it's all a matter of how the different sexes are socialized (keeping in mind that this socialization doesn't always 'take'). Women tend to have been taught to be more sensitive to feelings and more subtle in their social interactions. If, like me, you're completely oblivious to subtle social cues, this can make it much easier to socialize with groups of men, since they've been conditioned to be more blunt and less sensitive. With groups of women I always feel like I'm walking on eggshells, because invariably something I say is going to be too blunt and hurt someone's delicate feelings, or I'm going to miss something they want because they hint at it instead of saying it outright. Of course, there are individual exceptions to this (like me).

I don't think individual one-on-one relationships can be generalized, though. It's group interactions where the socialization can really make a difference. Once you get people alone they often act very differently. So I wouldn't say that sex makes any difference in the closer relationships.

Little Anonymous Me said:

I dislike sharing secrets--it's a secret for a reason--and I'm seldom looking for emotional support when I ask about a problem. I want to know how to fix it. Admittedly, I'm at the deep end of the cold fish spectrum, but the one thing I genuinely prefer about men is that they tend to be less emotional. I can't deal with crying people, or people who are there solely for emotional support. My personality is all wrong for it, and it's exhausting for me. Doesn't mean I can't offer it, but I'd really rather you come to me for solutions instead.

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You could be describing me in this. Especially the part about being unable to listen without offering solutions. But I've never found that men are any less emotional than women once you get them away from the other guys they're trying to impress with their manliness. My closest female friend as a teenager literally never cried once in the 4 years we hung out almost every day. My closest male friend during the same period probably broke down in tears in front of me half a dozen times (always for totally understandable reasons, I felt, but female friend had reasons too).

I can't stand melodramatic people, but I've encountered plenty of both sexes.

sohalt said:

I can't count how many women I've met who've told me exactly the same thing. Which is actually why I'm so doubtful about the whole "getting a long better with men"-thing.

Moi, I really like the oversharing-aspect of stereotypically female bonding (maybe the one area of my life where I'm most stereotypically feminine; also because I'll always love a good story and secrets often make for compelling stories, especially the ugly ones - of course I wouldn't use it for my fiction; the "keeping the secret"-part is also important, obviously), but I know so many women who only do that out of a sense obligation, because they feel it's somehow part of the female-friendship protocol and are utterly relieved when they can skip that step.

So basically the whole "better be friends with boys, because I don't want to deal with the drama"-thing is one big misunderstanding, if you ask me. So many cold fish women tragically prevented from becoming stoic silent BFFs due to silly social expectations.

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I'm not misunderstanding my own feelings or life experiences. The part of feminine friendship you enjoy the most--I don't. Not a bit. And I resent it when people push their secrets onto me in some half-assed attempt to feel 'closer.' So yes, due in part (or largely in part, I don't care much for semantics) to society, I will always prefer men. Because they don't tend to do that. They don't needle and whine and annoy me when I say I don't want to talk about it. They shut up and change the subject.


Now, when I meet a woman who does the same thing, I'm over the moon. (Guys are crappy shopping buddies.) However, there just aren't that many (whether that is due to being male or society is a debate that I took an entire psych class for). So I happily truck along with my Y chromosome buddies, who don't spend hours trying to convince me that sharing my feelings will indeed make me feel better, regardless of whether it actually would or not.


Getting into how society molds us into silly stereotypes would make my post far too long to be readable. Suffice it to say, yes there are women biased towards male friends, and no, we aren't all repressed raging misogynists. We just like people of the more stoic variety.

I've never understood the whole "women over share and gossip" thing. If anything, it's mostly the guys I hang out with who over share and gossip. Gay and straight. About their hook-ups and who slept with who and who they'd sleep with and etc...

Girls seem, IMO, to be more conservative about the information they share. Though, conversely, they do seem to generally be more sensitive to blunt honesty and a bit more clingy as well. But these are anecdotal generalizations. I have no gender or sexual preference for friendships. I'm honestly just happy when I get a close friend. Period.

For me, this question is like asking do "Asian or Hispanics make better friends." It's a pretty stupid question.

thebloodfiend said:

I've never understood the whole "women over share and gossip" thing. If anything, it's mostly the guys I hang out with who over share and gossip. Gay and straight. About their hook-ups and who slept with who and who they'd sleep with and etc...

Girls seem, IMO, to be more conservative about the information they share. Though, conversely, they do seem to generally be more sensitive to blunt honesty and a bit more clingy as well. But these are anecdotal generalizations. I have no gender or sexual preference for friendships. I'm honestly just happy when I get a close friend. Period.

For me, this question is like asking do "Asian or Hispanics make better friends." It's a pretty stupid question.

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I mean, I know guys like that, but most of my guy friends don't really talk about their sex lives. Whereas, I'll be hanging out with some of my female friends, and I learn all sorts of things about their breast and period issues.

Liosse de Velishaf said:

I mean, I know guys like that, but most of my guy friends don't really talk about their sex lives. Whereas, I'll be hanging out with some of my female friends, and I learn all sorts of things about their breast and period issues.

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Just goes to show how different people are.

I consider it strange to discuss those kinds of things. Period. I simply don't care. Granted, I do like gossiping. But oversharing is a huge turn off. If you got laid last night, I really, really don't want to know. Nor do I care. Now I have had girls ask me for tampons and complain about the inconvenience of being female. With the exception of one oversharing female friend (who will tell me if she's watching porn while we're texting, don't ask why ) guys tend to overshare about sex with me much more than girls. The breast thing is odd. I've never had a conversation about breasts with a girl, though I've had one about condoms and who among our friend group was sexually active. But I have had a strange conversation about female nipple hair with a gay guy. I miss having my group of female friends. Or really, just a group of friends period. Now I'm just stuck with friends who don't like each other.

ETA: I would consider this post oversharing, fyi. But I'm oversharing to illustrate a point.

... one out of twenty five people are good joes or janes.
The other twenty four are fit for the scrap heap.

Yep, socialization is the key.

There are definitely distinct protocols for conventional male and conventional female bonding and a lot of women apparently actually feel more comfortable with the male protocol and therefor stick to boys instead of searching each other.

I think you should of course totally ditch any protocol that doesn't suit your needs, but I'm going to mount a bit of defense for the female standard protocol anyway. (Not everything is completely damaging and fucked up about a typically feminine socializiation).

1) the expectations to actually take your friends' feelings into account without them constantly having to remind you of their existence.

Yeah, that "having to pick up on subtle cues"-thing can be a bit of a drag. I wasn't exactly born with that gift either. Frankly, I almost suspect most women aren't. It's something you have to learn the hard way, making a lot of embarrassing and possibly painful mistakes on the way (but you can't learn from mistakes if you don't feel the consequences). It takes a lot of effort. But it's so, so worth it. (Especially if you consider yourself a writer. Writing is so much more powerful, if you also know how to make use of the space between the lines).

It's just such an incredibly useful skill to have, not just for the purpose of a girl's night out. Firstly, because even people with a reputation of being blunt and straightforward shouldn't always be taken at face value. (What use it is to you if he's honest with you, when he's not honest with himself? ).

Secondly, the whole "implicit vs explicit communication"-divide is not just gendered, but also generally cultural. Even if it were true that men are universally blunter than women (which I find questionable), the Anglo-American idea of bluntness is still rather different from the Austrian idea of bluntness is still very different from the German idea of bluntness is still very different from the Japanese idea of bluntness, etc.

I was taught in college that the Japanese have a so called high-context culture, where most of the meaning has to be inferred from context. So if you feel you can't be BFFs with girls, because of the walking on eggshells problem, that probably also means that you can't be BFFs with someone who was raised in Japan. (Now I just wait for someone who's actually from Japan chime in and tell me that's a total misrepresentation. It was
a very introductory level cultural studies course, so I wouldn't be too surprised about getting it wrong. So, maybe sticking to something I have a bit better insight into: Germans couldn't be friends with Austrians either according to that paradigm, because Germans tend to be a bit blunter too. And that's actually a reason sometimes cited by people for certain Anti-German resentiments where I come from and I think it's utterly ridiculous).

Learning to switch between more explicit and more implicit communicative styles is not just a matter of gender relations, but also of intercultural competence. Why would anyone miss out on a chance to train that kind of skill? If you only ever talk to people who speak the first language you happened to learn, you'll really limit yourself in the worst kind of way.

And I say this as someone who usually errs on the side of bluntness. I pride myself in having made quite a bit of progress in that regard since my days of teenage-misfit-doom, but I'm still often too self-absorbed to pay enough attention and therefor continue making my fair share of faux-pas. But that's the thing, with gender relations as well as with intercultural competence - it's really, really not about never making mistakes. It's about how you deal with those mistakes once you become aware of them / allow yourself to become aware of them. (And that's actually not that hard, even if people won't tell you directly. But they might complain about someone else who does something that bothers them and if you actually listen to them and think about it, you might realize that it's something you're occassionally guilty of yourself. And then you say, Sorry, I sometimes do that too, don't I? - and they will of course deny it, so that you can save face, and you will train yourself not to do that thing again and voilà, the issue is resolved, instead of becoming something the other person constantly has to nag you about or grudgingly tolerates about you, a festering sore of simmering resentiments. And of course everything would have been easier, if the other person had told you outright, but see, some people have a really, really bad experience with telling other people what bothers them about them, and it's a huge source of anxiety for them, so they postpone it till the last possible moment, when they really can't stand it any more and if you learn to catch that kind of thing before they are actually driven that far, that will improve so many of your relationships, so, so much.)

2) the sharing secrets thing.
I can see why so many people feel uncomfortable with that. I think it's totally possible to get round that expectation though. As I said, I have a couple of female friends who don't like that either, and I totally respect that. You don't have to if you don't want too. I happen to like the female-bonding protocol, but I won't insist on it, just because you happen to be female and if I can switch to male-bonding protocol for a guy, I can certainly also do that for you.

I think everyone should strive for a certain flexibility in that regard.

Little Anonymous Me said:

I'm not misunderstanding my own feelings or life experiences. The part of feminine friendship you enjoy the most--I don't. Not a bit. And I resent it when people push their secrets onto me in some half-assed attempt to feel 'closer.' So yes, due in part (or largely in part, I don't care much for semantics) to society, I will always prefer men. Because they don't tend to do that. They don't needle and whine and annoy me when I say I don't want to talk about it. They shut up and change the subject.

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Oh, I would never doubt your interpretaton of your own feelings, and I'm sorry for not making that sufficiently clear in my post. (That's actually female bonding 101 - never invalidate another person's feelings, and that just goes to show that even someone like me who likes that stuff often gets it wrong).

But you seem to assume that just because I enjoy sharing secrets I would automatically want to push that on you and that's the kind of misunderstanding I wanted to clear up. I don't share my secrets with men when I have the impression that they are not interested in that kind of exchange, and that doesn't stop me from trying to befriend them, so why would I force that on you, if you give off the same vibes?

For me, it usually works like that: I meet someone I feel sympatico about and make some tentative move towards sharing somewhat more intimate information. The other person doesn't reciprocate, changes the topic to something more neutral and I get the hint and we continue bonding over work and arguing politics.

Of course I've also had the experience of girls getting pushy about the secret-sharing (and just because I tend to like that kind of thing, doesn't mean I'd enjoy it under all circumstances, and I certainly don't enjoy anyone being pushy about it), but the last time that happened to me was in high school. Granted, there are enough women who never grow out of high school, but I generally find them easy enough to avoid, because that kind of immaturity usually telegraphs itself early enough.