Why Accusing Women of "Being Mean to Other Women" Is Bullsh*t (2024)

A troubling, commonly held belief on the Internetis that the worst thing you can do is insult another woman, bring another woman down, or pit one woman against another. Be mean to another woman, start conflict in their ranks, and you are committing a cardinal sin, just like when you refused to talk to someone on the playground when you were 4 or told Tammy behind Christina's back in second grade that Christina, like, really needs to shave her legs. You were a"mean girl"then, andsay something remotely negative about another woman today and you're "hurting feminism" now.

Most recently, in very high-profile fashion, we saw an accusation of this nature hurled at Nicki Minaj by Queen of Squads Taylor Swift,after Nicki started tweeting about how her videos for "Anaconda" and "Feeling Myself" had not been nominated for Video of the Yearat the VMAs, hinting at bias in the media and society at large against curvy black women.

Though Nicki didn't name Taylor in any of her tweets, Taylor tweeted in response toNicki, "It's unlike you to pit women against each other."Whatever Nicki's intention was — to start a flame war with Taylor Swift, to start a dialogue about why her two videos were really overlooked — with that tweet, Taylor ignited the flame war that is now widely being described as a "feud" between the two of them. Nicki went on to sayTaylor was missing the point — that this wasn't about her coming after Taylor or pitting one woman against another,but rather bigger problems in entertainment (racism, sexism, sizeism). By diverting the conversation to playground "don't pit women against each other" bullsh*t, thosereal, troubling issues become subjugated.

As an editor of women's media for some years now, I've just about trained myself to never write something that could be perceived as remotely negative about other women. Few things set off armies of people who hate you in a comment section or on Twitter faster than a women's website with something negative to say about another woman (or, as is the case in 2015, squads of women). In fact, before delving further into this essay, I feel like I have to say some nice things about Taylor. Yes, I shake my booty to her songs after a couple appletinis, and there was a period of about eight days where the only song that existed in my world was "Style." I follow her on social media and would really like to float on blow-up swans in an ostentatious pool with her and her squad. That sounds like all of my Instagram #goals realized.

And I don't think Taylor intended to accuse a fellow pop star of something as lame and childish as pitting women against each other. But the girl spends a lot of time on the Internet (don't we all), and she has probably absorbed this as the de facto thing to say when women disagree with each other, and conversations become heated and uncomfortable. Instead of actually having the debate, weaccuse a woman of creating conflict in the sisterhood in attempt to divert the angry mob from the real thing they actually don't agree on. Because everyone can agree that women being mean to each other is badand counterproductive to feminism, right?

We're understandably sensitive to perceived ire from fellow women. Study after study shows we are more likely to be hard on each other than men, who are just more likely to beat each other up. (Search "men being mean to other men" and "women being mean to other women," and you'll see that no one gives a damn about how nice men are to each other.) Researchers have found that women bosses are more likely to receive pushback from their employees, who also expect a level of friendship they don't expect from male bosses.A 2014 study out of the University of Ottawafound that women are more likely to act "bitchily" toward women dressed in sexy clothing. Womenare also more likely to exclude one anotherthan men. These social constructs are only reinforced by popular culture, which gave us Mean Girls, Bride Wars, and yes, Taylor's "Bad Blood" video (where two girl squads fight each other) and song (reportedly based on Taylor's falloutwith Katy Perry).

So of course we don't want to see women being mean to other women;as a gender conscious of its collective power and what we want to do with that power, we don't want toreinforce frustrating stereotypes about how women can't be taken seriously because they can't get along with each other. It's as though showing that we can't get along with one another somehow validates the mocking "meow" uttered by your office's resident condescending That Guy, who overheard adisagreement between two women in a conference room. We have to fight hard enough to get ahead for the historically limited positions of power both in our workplaces and in our government that women hold. The last thing we want to do is fight harder against each other for them, as though to say these places of power are limited, rather than our opportunities limitless. But we also can't act like every woman has had the same lifeexperiences or opportunities,as if there is one type of woman,because we know otherfactors like race come into play.

Women being mean to one another is not the problem;it's just become the Internet's de facto distraction from having a real conversation about things that are actually troubling in the world.Nor does women being nice to one another define feminism or guarantee its future. Besides, niceness does not equate to agreeing with each other all the time, which is what it's been misconstrued to mean on the Internet. And too often disagreements — often the beginning of productive debates that can enlighten large swaths of people to opposing viewpoints or vastly different life experiences — are perceived as impoliteness.

Accusing other women of being mean to their own kindsilences our disagreements, our debates, and we never would have made it this far — to where a woman has the support of millions when she stands up for her music video artistry on Twitter — without them.

Amy Odell is the author ofTales From the Back Row, which you can buy throughAmazon, Barnes & Noble, and iTunes. You can also follow her on Twitterand Instagram.