All these studies assume that psycho-competitive environments are both inevitable and good, which really wears me out.

I hate serious competition because I know that if I let myself I will go into win-at-any-cost mode, and then I'll win, and it will cost. (Well, occasionally I lose and am crushed, but I'm awfully good at winning at any cost when I actually get started.)

From the article, it seems that women are fine at competing against women, but not against men, which should only serve to emphasize the socialization point.

Because if you can claim that women just aren't good at competition, you can also claim that women don't want to compete.

Not to mention that "choking" is a terrible attempt at explaining performance differences among top scientists. One of the main distiguishing factors of academic life is that it's supposed to be a more leisurely pace (research takes a while), so it's not going to be subject to instant perform-or-fail pressures like a sports match or maze-completing contest.

The whole thing is moronic. It strikes me as a really open question as to whether people are competing in corporate environments in the way we usually believe. IIRC, there's a fair bit of evidence that we're really bad at predicting who will do a good job. So, what, exactly, are the competing at? Who the boss feels more comfortable around? Moreover, you'd think there would be better data out there: admissions to top schools, honors within schools and at graduate schools, grades at schools, etc. The problem, of course, is that women actually perform pretty well in those situations (IIRC).

Not to mention that "choking" is a terrible attempt at explaining performance differences among top scientists.

Great point.

2: Well, yeah, women don't want to deal with the hissy fits after beating a guy soundly.

You guys do mope a lot.

Speaking of Larry Summers, Harvard Plans to Name Its First Female President.

And surprisingly, she meets the traditional college-presidential requirement of having three last names. Drew Gilpin Faust is perfect for the job.

That's not funny, Bridgeplate.

Do you have a keyboard shortcut for that, now?

For me, if the competition isn't that important, I'm not going to try that hard against a guy because he's got more to lose - I lost to a girl! And if he loses to me, how on earth will he buy me drinks afterwards?

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, Chads and Trixies, we've just come full circle!

I enjoy typing it out.

It's a good thing I don't comment much anymore. I would hate to overstimulate you.

Haha.

That vacant look, numb from pleasure. I must be going.

Anyone see pole? It's 'bout ten-feet long...

s/b "my pole"

I don't know why I even try anymore. (Probably because I'm not a girl.)

Speaking of hissy fits, on the off chance that anyone cares, I hereby retract the rather hostile tone of my post the other day on the great Edwards blogger controversy and re-commit myself to the righteous path of civil discourse.

Oy. Even the dismal science doesn't deserve Landsburg as some sort of spokesman.

Ogged's socialization thesis, that these impulses occur in both men and women but are differently socialized, accounting for the difference in incidence between men and women, makes sense to me. I've always been non-competitive, at least in casual environments where the competition crops up almost spontaneously. People who compete continuously, who have to compete wherever they are, like the guys in Liars Poker—this is said to be Michael Jordan's character too—have no use for me nor I for them. Formal competitions, particularly team-based ones where you train together to cooperate with one another, are another story and I've often enjoyed them.

JAC beat me to it, but yeah, I can think of a few reasons for the situation of women in science that are a hell of a lot more likely than "choking."

One of the main distiguishing factors of academic life is that it's supposed to be a more leisurely pace

Slower than tennis, yes. Less competitive? The science and math biz certainly isn't, and putting out a paper is (and is supposed to be) an invitation for one and all to show exactly how you goofed.

The real problem is that while women may be able to put up high quarterback ratings, they aren't relaible game managers. Also, no intangibles.

I could feel the part of me that not only wanted to make the shot, but also wanted the other guy to literally die

I don't know what to make of this. I think of myself as an intensely competative person but I have never had that feeling. The closest I've gotten is times when I get pissed off and stop caring about the person I'm competing against. Generally, however, I will compete intensely as long as it's clear that both I and the person I'm competing against have bought into the framework of competition, but if that breaks, I stop trying to compete and, generally, try to figure out how to de-escalate and/or remove myself from the situation.

In other words, I echo idp in 22.

The real problem is that while women may be able to put up high quarterback ratings, they aren't relaible game managers. Also, no intangibles.

Brilliant.

24: nobody `chokes' putting out a paper, though. Which was the point, methinks. Competative comes in different flavours.

Protection problems can derail a promising career.

nobody `chokes' putting out a paper, though

They do, though. Lots of papers never quite make it to publishability. (Books too.) This is how people fail to get tenure -- not that they don't research or write, but that they can't close.

Coffee's for closers only, you know.

but that they can't close

But aren't you making the metaphor do a lot of work here? The inability to finish projects doesn't seem, psychologically, like the same thing as choking in a competitive game.

It would be interesting to do such a study with women who had had a single sex education versus women who had had a coed education. I think I was a lot more competitive with other women--and in general--when I was at a girls' school. When I was in a mostly male environment I reacted against the competitiveness and also felt bad competing against girls.

And I don't see how science isn't competitive. It's really competitive to *get* there. Dude, grading curves + problem sets and exams? There's nothing quite as demoralizing as walking into the first day of an upper division course and realizing you can count of the people who will get the As and it's only going to be a mad scramble for the Bs.

29: I've seen them choke while giving them and I know my heart-rate was in the hummingbird range at times. I don't see why some people wouldn't do a slow-motion "choke" earlier on.

I'm not contending it's sex-linked, just pointing out that science is, in some senses, a very high-risk occupation, where one is mostly chasing "not significant at the .05 level" and a real goof leads to public flaying.

I'm sure there's a rigorous documented explanation of what "choking" is, but I've always thought of it as someone playing quite well, even winningly well, but then being unable to deliver a coup de grace. This is maybe a tennis-related thought.

Anyway, I wasn't endorsing Landsburg, just commenting on the reality of "choking" in scholarly careers.

This socialization against competitiveness explains a lot of the behavior we see in academic environments. I've noticed over the course of my law school career that there are literally no women who want to duke it out over ideas in class or in public spaces--some will do so in writing (such as over out ever-inflammatory student listserv) but never in speech. There's a lot of academic development that comes from engaging in intellectual one-upsmanship in discussion, in places like law schools and philosophy departments (which, as I recall, have pathetically low numbers of female students). It breaks down along minority lines too; I've noticed that even the minority men don't engage in the kind of "duking it out" that I'm talking about. It's sad that we have constructed this social milieu where white dudes can get all up in your face about their opinions, but everyone else has to play nice.

I, for my part, am trying to balance this out by being as much of an asshole as I can muster.

26: I dunno, I can definitely relate. I first learned the joy of competition while rowing in my first close race and realizing that if I weren't trying to row my opponent to death in a boat, I would instead be crushing his skull with a rock. It was rather primal.

Since then, the most I've ever enjoyed doing science is when I'm racing to scoop another lab. The imagined victory dance over the body of my opponent can fuel a lot of late nights of data analysis.

I think a lot of the choking comments above are misreading Landsburg. I don't think he is saying choking is important in science. I think his point is that the contrast between the NAS numbers and the corporate numbers is because choking under pressure matters more in business than in science. (Which maybe is what 29 was saying as well.)

That doesn't stop the article from being moronic.

The female scientists I've known had no problem with competitiveness (but I guess that would only make sense...). A greater barrier would seem to be that academic science, at least in my experience, is STILL such an appallingly degenerate old-boy's club that even as a homo I find it a little difficult to operate in socially. And then there's the issue that any woman (or man, for that matter) who wants to take parenthood seriously would have to be high to pursue a career in research w/in academics.

I dunno that I've ever wanted anyone to die, but I don't understand where this "science isn't competitive" comes from. It does seem to be a common theme, however. I can even remember some blog where a biologist in one sentence said that she wasn't going to go into industry because it was too competitve and she preferred the more cooperative nature of academia, and in the next sentence bitched about how some people at some other school just started doing research in the area that she was working in, which was completely unfair because she'd been working in it for years.

Also related: the superiority of short-track speed skating vs. long-track.

In the underlying study (which I only glanced at), one of the rationales offered was that if both women and men believed that men were more likely to do well in maze games, then it would make sense for women to not incur the cost of a competition in which they were likely to lose. The study was done at an Israeli engineering school. To the extent that I'm willing to buy results like this (and, as a guy, I TOTALLY am), I'm only willing to buy them if the test subjects are American women. In my limited experience, we crush the rest of the world in treating women as equals (not that we don't still have big problems, etc.). Further, if there were a place I would most expect women to be taught that they were likely to do worse than men, it would be in an engineering school. See cerebrocrat at 39. Run the study again at Harvard in the English Dept. or the Law School or HBS, and then tell me what happened.

Competitivewise, I once saw a 6' college age volleyball player spike a ball on a 6-year-old in a family game.

He didn't understand what was wrong with that.

42: Since when do you hang out with ogged?

Remember, SCMT, I represent mainstream America on this blog.

40: I doubt many people are saying that science research isn't competitive, I know I didn't mean that. I just meant that it isn't a field where your ability is judged entirely by being able to perform some tricky feat or make a snap decision (usually lucky) in a few seconds/minutes. Research is more of a long-game in general, so it has little to do with "choking" from competitive pressure in the typical sense.

Biohazard makes a good point about presenting papers at conferences or committees, but I didn't think that some poor question handling on the spot would often make or break a career if the ideas were there.

The whole thing is so candy-ass. We so little understand how and why this shit works--I swear to cripes I'm turning into a conservative despite myself. Fortunately, after 70+ years of domination, "conservative" means "Democrat."

What we're terming "willingness to compete" might not be a factor in racing to get lab results, or in presenting at conferences, but much earlier in the process: scoring letters of recommendation, forming a close relationship with an advisor or mentor who is distant, jumping through administrative hoops, getting noticed. (Sort of like business.) I don't think the lab is the right place to look for competitiveness; look for it in the funding applications and the chasing down of the elusive advisor.

I hate serious competition because I know that if I let myself I will go into win-at-any-cost mode, and then I'll win, and it will cost. (Well, occasionally I lose and am crushed, but I'm awfully good at winning at any cost when I actually get started.)

This is familiar. I'm very competitive, and it is not a social asset: I find that women, and men who are close friends, don't mind me much, but men who I haven't completely bonded with have a tendency to get into a heated discussion with me once, and then never say two words to me ever again. This is maddening professionally, because I end up walking a line between trying not to put people off, and on the other hand being too meek to get anything done. (Talking to opposing counsel is wonderfully refreshing because of not needing to defer all the goddam time.)

But what do you think is wrong, exactly? Do you think you might be coached to not provoke this reaction? I know such a gender specific response shouldn't be, but given that it is, I wonder what could be done, short of just changing society. I wouldn't want to be one of the guys who didn't speak to you, but I'm afraid I might be.

By the way, LB, that Marcotte thing? Never speaking to you again.

Do you think you might be coached to not provoke this reaction?

I don't know if you've noticed this, but every goddam time there's an argument about here, someone makes a comment about how 'measured' and 'reasonable' my tone is. I have spent a hell of a lot of effort developing a measured, reasonable tone, which means snapping at any possible point of agreement like a trout at a mayfly.

Still, in person, men other than close friends do not appear to enjoy it when I argue with them (and even with close friends, if I slip out of fully controlled reasonableness at all, it breaks down quickly). I may be cutting myself too much slack here, but I don't think I'm the one who needs the training.

Part of what I like so much about discussing things on the Internet is that it's easier to find people who will put up with the way I like to talk about things.

I'll claim to be one who chokes on publishing stuff. I've literally got essays that I could just put in a fucking envelope and send out, and ideas I could propose to different magazines, but the thought of doing so makes me feel sick. Which is one of the reasons I started the blog, to make myself write.

The funny thing is, I think of myself as pretty competitive, and I don't think that most of the people I know would say I shy away from competition. What Ogged said in the post about shame is absolutely true to my experience. I not only feel deeply ashamed of anything that might begin to sound like bragging (that is, if it's something I'm serious about), but I also feel ashamed of so many other stupid things--letting people down, even about small things like being late; wanting praise and recognition; needing encouragement; not knowing exactly how to do things.

BAH. Now I feel depressed.

Further, coaching me not to provoke that reaction? Is literally coaching me not to compete -- that's exactly the socialization we're talking about. My gender socialization got a little screwed up somewhere, so I don't have this internalized as strongly as most women do -- most women know without thinking about it how not to provoke that reaction.

Further, coaching me not to provoke that reaction? Is literally coaching me not to compete -- that's exactly the socialization we're talking about.

That's precisely it - and perfectly put.

51: Yeah, that's part of why I'm not so reasonable and moderate--part of my bitchiness is trying to say, Very Firmly, that whatever it is is *not* something I'm going to feel bad about, and especially an attempt to get past my desire to be liked when I feel like something matters.

At the same time, I have, in fact, made a lot of effort, here especially, perhaps, to be more "moderate" and "reasonable." And to dominate conversations less. I dunno, I prefer the result, but thinking about it now doesn't make me feel all that great. I do think that my own blog has become a little less interesting since the heyday of the bitchy ranting.

51: Ack. Sorry.

But yeah, my response to 49 was---maybe the men need the coaching?

A female housemate that I spent a lot of time discussing the news with once surprised the hell out of me with an outburst along the lines of, "You always have a response to everything I say!" And I had thought our conversations were mightily enjoyable and healthy, precisely because of their length and the longevity of the back-and-forth (I mean, I thought she gave as good as she got.) It was surprising me to that she found it exhausting and found me overly aggressive--it was surprising to me that she saw it as a real competition at all. A male classmate essentially introduced himself ot me with a "God, you're fucking argumentative," when I wasn't even arguing with him, but someone else entirely, in the hallway. And then on the other tougher friends and colleagues often complain that I fold too easily, try too hard to find agreement and harmony, and am generally too nice. I kinda feel like you can't please anyone.

LB: you even get this reaction among lawyers? I'd think that if there was any field within which arguing with your co-workers is expected, that would be it.

And re: 53 - there are some very rare people out there who will win arguments and leaving the other side thinking that they won, even though every point of contention has been resolved in the first person's favor. I don't know how they do it, but I sure wish I did.

Shit, clearly I'd lose a comment-typing competition. "I was surprised to *find* that she found it" and
"And then on the other *hand* tougher friends and colleagues."

52: Word.

Further thoughts, prompted by LB's 53:

Maybe the reason why aggressive or competitive women are often perceived as "bitches" or "hostile" or whatever is partly about sexism, sure; but also partly about how fucking hard it is for us to overcome our own inhibitions about being competitive. And, maybe even more importantly, the simple result of our not knowing how to compete without being hostile, since no one ever taught us how to manage the "I want you to literally die" feeling. God knows healthy competition isn't something I've got any experience of: I wasn't sporty as a kid, and I was always the smartest one in the room. How the hell are you supposed to learn to compete if you never get/have to?

This might be a bit off topic but as a former lawyer, I saw only too well how a female attorney's arguments were quickly characterized as 'emotional,' while a male colleague's would be described as 'passionate.' Which is why so many of the most successful female attorneys I know are described as - wait for it - cold.

But that's just my experience. (And why I switched to transactional.)

59: Quiz bowl.

Though now that I think about it, even the It's Academic and debate teams in my high school were dominated by the guys, so maybe not.

I was on debate and the math team both. Debate, though, I didn't stick with--I remember losing a debate very badly because I hadn't (been?) prepared properly, and just wanting to die, and never going back. Which, of course, is precisely the kind of thing that team sports (for instance) are supposed to help you learn how to handle.

The other thing is though, I'm not convinced that being competitive is all that wonderful either. I mean when I step back and think about my values, I value finding points of agreement. I value synthesis and harmony. Maybe that's b/c I've been told to b/c I'm a girl, but I think not---I was raised by a very strong woman who has no problem being insistent on her opinion, and always expected that I loudly voice mine, and with a lot of exposure to very harmonious and nurturing men. I think 59 really gets it--the problem is not that I don't have a competitive streak, it's that I do have one, and I don't know how to shut it down without shutting myself down nearly as well as other people seem to.

Re 59 - interesting because I was someone who was schooled in athletic competition - I GET the "I want to kill the other side" emotion - but handling competition in that arena didn't prepare me to deal with it in other arenas, i.e. casual competitions, workplace arguments, etc.

How the hell are you supposed to learn to compete if you never get/have to?

I think this is some of it. I don't doubt that a lot of it is sexism. Some of it is also that having people not like you if you're hypercompetitive--cost of doing business. Nobody likes that guy. That may not be clear b/c, per normal, you still need to kiss the asses you need to kiss to get where you're going.

Exactly. Plus what I discovered is that if you're the girl who's out with the guys and you're the one holding your own in terms of arguments, bar sports, etc., you had better be the tomboy lesbian. If you're the straight chick, good luck. The lines are much more blurred.

(I have a friend who's a hedge fund trader and she swears the fact that she's a former college athlete/tomboy lesbian has been an asset. If she'd been a straight chick, or even a femmy dyke, well, she probably wouldn't have been hired.)

67: I think it can be pulled off, but much better in the younger-sister-mascot mode, where one's sort of desexualized. Which has its own problems. . ..

67: Great. Another reason I should've just been a dyke.

Younger sister/mascot = tomboy lesbian.

Or, just slightly in the one down position. Being the younger sister/mascot means you never outshine the big brother's team.

Or get to lead, which is probably why I never took on that role.

70: Yes, they may think of you that way, or atleast act like they think of you that way. And being constantly surrounded by a crowd of men treat who you like that when that isn't actually who you are is not always a good thing. Plus, a la 71: you're still stuck playing to the dominant paradigm's values. See 49. In fact, this whole conversation is on the dominant paradigm's terms. No one hypes studies about how good or bad men are at hard to measure non-competitive teamwork, or about the the gender gap in child-rearing acomplishment or nursing or teaching. When people are wringing their hands about the gender gap in college admissions, now that the playing field is slightly even, no one loudly wonders if men are somehow innately bad at creative synthesis or overly socialized against agreement and cooperation. See 2.

I bet straight men experience all kinds of discomforts when they try to take on activities that are traditionally female group activities, but those activities are so innately looked down upon that we don't even consider the challenge. (Come to think of it, most traditional female group activities are simply collapsing, rather than equalizing. Where are the Ladies Aid societies and the coed quilting circles and the Eleanor Roosevelt style busy bodies?) How many men would happier in the nonprofit world if they weren't socialized against it? Any truth to that at all, guys? But that side of the discussion hardly even gets touched b/c our value system is so rigidly aligned the other way. Equality is more than women feeling free to take on the traditionall masucline sphere--we won't get it until men are free to take on the traditionally femine sphere, and we won't get a healthy society until that sphere is valued fairly.

And of course I have a strong desire to say

/end bitter rant

b/c I'm self-deprecrating like that.

Some of it is also that having people not like you if you're hypercompetitive

Thing is, you don't have to be hypercompetitive if you're a woman to get yourself disliked. You just have to leave out the soothing lotion and the gentle massage when you disagree with someone. I've pointed out what I saw as problems in copy in meetings and the writers have acted stunned. Of course this is partly because I'm the nitwit design person, as well as a woman, so that adds to the indignity.

I have a friend who's a hedge fund trader and she swears the fact that she's a former college athlete/tomboy lesbian has been an asset.

As seen by the acceptance of Kima on The Wire.

75 is me. That's what I get for deleting my cookies.

Landsburg has misread the maze study finding that women's performance did not increase significantly (where significantly has a specific technical meaning) in mixed tournaments as a finding that women's performance does not increase at all in mixed tournaments which is wrong. This is a common layman's error but a professor of economics should know better.

Another piece of all of this are the different rules in different settings, especially when one person thinks they're talking about an abstract issue and the other person experiences it as a personal attack.

If I think I'm having a friendly debate with you about ideas (cf. 56), and you think that it's "mean" of me to disagree with you, then there's no way you're going to be happy with how the conversation goes. If I think I have to tiptoe around you and phrase every comment in the most conciliatory, bending-over-backward-to-pretend-that-you-know-what-you're-talking about fashion, I'm going to be exhausted. And I'm going to be angry at you, although I may not be permitted to show it.

The very best workplaces I've had are the places where the people in authority clearly established that the goal was good work, and hearty debate and constructive criticism (not personal attack) in service to better work. But absent this shared understanding...gah.

Landsburg is a dick, though, and a lousy popular science writer. He's great at doing Slate's "vaguely contrarian, by which I mean anti-liberal, essays pulled out of my ass" schtick, though. It's a shame Krugman isn't still writing for them -- his Everyday Economist columns were brilliant, certainly the best popular economics writing I've ever encountered.

77: They (the media) usually gets it wrong in reverse. They almost always confuse statistically significant with real-world significance. I really don't care if eating uncooked goat testicles adds a femtosecond to my lifespan no matter how solid the experimental evidence might be.

47: I don't think the lab is the right place to look for competitiveness

If the number of people (mostly guys) caught faking scientific data is any indication, the lab is just another gladiatorial arena. Lots of books by and about boffins also show that. It's your mind against the universe and all those other minds and being the person who confirms someone else's important finding is one hell of a bitter triumph.

(Not that I'm ever competitive or anything about making a point, tho'.)

One of the things that was frustrating about my last job, I now realize, was that my (male) boss simultaneously respected my forthrightness and willingness to address things directly and felt very uncomfortable with it.

It's a shame I'm sleeping on a night-shift schedule nowadays, and only get around to Unfogged after midnight.

I'm not sure my experience accords with others' on this thread at much. The women seem to be saying that when they argue things they get treated more poorly than when men argue things. But in my experience, the kinds of reactions that are being related in this thread are reactions given to women *or* men who argue about things. Whatever socialization happens doesn't really make people accept arguments from men more readily, it just makes men less sensitive to the adverse reactions, and perhaps it makes them able to take a more contrarian position without having to seem contrarian. Or something like that.

I've had several people tell me that I have an unusually diplomatic and productive approach to arguments. When I was growing up, I had to defend myself in arguments against my parents a lot, because they'd constantly be criticizing me about everything. So I was forced to get good at it. But I think that my family was very unusual in that the abuse that went on was all verbal, and that it was intellectual; there weren't any outright insults--you were defeated (and scorned) when you lost an argument. And sometimes, if you won you'd get an apology and an "I love you." For most families, beating someone in an argument will just get you even more abuse, so people learn to manipulate others without winning the argument outright.

I didn't have any sisters, or I might be able to say how they turned out in comparison to me and my brothers.

Wow. This is the only time of day when you can go to Wal-mart and come back and not have any new comments to read at Unfogged.

These hosers are just too proud to comment on Friday night.

Oh, is it Friday? I sort of forgot about that. That, and Superbowl sunday. At least I haven't forgotten my birthday, yet.

82: Yep.

The women seem to be saying that when they argue things they get treated more poorly than when men argue things. But in my experience, the kinds of reactions that are being related in this thread are reactions given to women *or* men who argue about things. Whatever socialization happens doesn't really make people accept arguments from men more readily, it just makes men less sensitive to the adverse reactions, and perhaps it makes them able to take a more contrarian position without having to seem contrarian. Or something like that.

My experience differs.

I'd be tempted to endorse the paragraph in 83 you've objected to, and my 22 was saying something similar, that the impulse to avoid contentious people is general and not gendered outside of formal situations—I agree precisely how much easier it's been sometimes to deal with opposing counsel—but we both know it's not true.

As I remember confessing, to your irritation at the time of the Jessica Biel reactions, that women's heated reactions, anger, even when I didn't know them, even when it's just words on the internet, make me want to vomit. I'm an extreme case, and yes, I'd be much more at fault, much more the one who needs coaching than you'd be. But I'd feel so bad about arguing with a woman irl that I'd be upset at the memory of it.

Now, I'm wrong personally, and this is something that should be addressed socially, to the degree that it contributes to the syndrome you've experienced. So the question is, am I off the map, or do most guys have a milder version of what's extreme in me?

do most guys have a milder version of what's extreme in me

I do not have this at all; I will argue with pretty much anyone if pressed (although I am, like most people, reluctant to argue with a superior, but at some point I do so, and have been known to be self-destructively confrontational).

There is much truth to 83. As there is to 59. There is a lot going on here. There is a general distaste for confrontation among many people. There are sexist assumptions by men about how women should be deferential, there are sexist assumptions by women that they deserve to be cut slack in an argument. And of course, there is the question of what is the proper norm for argument--should everyone argue like a stereotypical man, like a stereotypical woman? someplace in the middle?

What I think is not--and cannot--be *generally* true that every time a man objects to the tactics a woman uses in argument that it is all about misogyny. Could be. But it could also be about a woman giving herself a pass about being cruel or viscious because she is a woman. It could be lots of things. It seems to me that this is one of thoese areas where the simple view is not only wrong, but highly counterproductive.

LB re: 51 and 53. I think bp hits it in 59. There's absolutely sexism, but part of the socialization is that most women don't get taught how to be competitive within a finite game in a way that lets your opponents know you are still cooperative in the infinite game (i.e., completely buying into the boundaries and framework of the finite competition).

NickS at 26 is a really important comment I think. His experience matches mine completely. I am ultra-competitive within games, or friendly arguments, but as soon as the competitiveness crosses over into "real life", I'm very uncomfortable. I've run into people like those described in Liar's Poker, and they often make my skin crawl. Because everything is a game to them, and getting over is all they think about in every social situation, whether that paradigm has consensus buy-in or not. But men definitely get more of a pass on this than women do.

I recall in college, I had a regular dinner group for the friday fish fry with a bunch of white boys where we would discuss philosophy, economics and science all over the map. While the discussions would often get very heated, we were always friends and friendly. We would drag people we liked into the meal with us and have a grand old time, and sometimes they would become regulars. One day, one of my friends invited his new girlfriend. We had a grand old time and everybody liked her, but we found out later that she had been mortified at how competitive we were with each other, and had no interest in coming back.

She clearly didn't cross the line we were operating under, but the mode we were in made her distinctly uncomfortable, because we were all about getting at our best approximation of the truth of things and showing off our many coloured peacock tail brains, while paying no attention whatsoever to the emotional response to what we discussing. As far as we were concerned that was irrelevant, unless somebody wanted to bring it up specifically and let it be dissected along with all the other information.

I also watch this dynamic with my wife, who is very competitive. She's not as good at staying within the finite game as I am, but she definitely can do it, and she's almost more likely to run into trouble with other women than with men, although men who hew to more traditional gender roles still take massive umbrage. The people who have the most trouble with this mode from her are women, when she's arguing/competing with a man. There's a social protective expectation that she's violating. I.e. men don't worry as much about social cues, and women are expected to watch for this stuff and figure out ways to keep those men from doing any real damage surreptitiously. By joining the competition forthrightly, she's violating that expectation, even when it's not actually causing any social problem except with the observers.

I find this to be fascinating to think about, and I'd love to hear more from people like LB and BP about their experience and how it fits or doesn't fit what I'm saying here. It's very hard to get a clear picture of what's going on, because separating some neutral sense of the socialization differences from sexism is impossible. Not to mention the different socialization different men and women have. Like most things, the variance among men or women is probably as great or greater than the average difference between the two.

Now, I'm wrong personally, and this is something that should be addressed socially, to the degree that it contributes to the syndrome you've experienced. So the question is, am I off the map, or do most guys have a milder version of what's extreme in me?

I think many (could be most, I'm not sure) men do have a version of this, and it's exactly what leads to the socialization we're talking about -- if you're a woman, being contentious at all, even if you do it in a civilized fashion, seems to disturb men a lot.

What I think is not--and cannot--be *generally* true that every time a man objects to the tactics a woman uses in argument that it is all about misogyny.

Given that we're RL friends, which means that you can generally tolerate the way I talk about stuff, I'd agree that you've got somewhere between very little and none of the gendered aversion to a woman being competitive or contentious that I'm talking about. But the quoted sentence misses the point -- of course women can be objectively rude, no social dynamic operates in all situations, absolutes are always false, and for that reason what you said is obviously true. That doesn't operate one way or the other with respect to the validity of the generalization that women are very likely to get negative reactions for being competitive, and so get socialized to avoid it.

I think many (could be most, I'm not sure) men do have a version of this, and it's exactly what leads to the socialization we're talking about -- if you're a woman, being contentious at all, even if you do it in a civilized fashion, seems to disturb men a lot.

I don't know who you hang out with; I rarely see this anymore, and I'm not even a member of GA. The only times I can remember seeing it is in discussions about gender issues. There I see it a fair bit.

92: I don't mean to categorically dismiss your experience here, but it's not the sort of thing that your nose gets rubbed in involuntarily unless you are a competitive woman. Are the women you know as competitive/aggressive as the men? If not, do you know whether they're just innately like that, or if they're keeping a tight lid on themselves because of the social repurcussions when they don't?

Are the women you know as competitive/aggressive as the men?

The women I'm thinking of are more competitive than most men I know. And some of them rub people the wrong way--some of them rub me the wrong way--but they haven't had any career related problems about it. (Specifically, I think of a woman who was pretty clearly identified as "The Bitch" in a ceremonial skit. I was there when she saw it; she agreed with the identification, and didn't care at all.)

Perhaps worth noting that most of the women that I'm thinking of were former jocks. Also worth noting--and this may suggest that there are big differences in the social groups you and I experience--in my experience, people don't behave competitively or aggressively; they just are competitive or aggressive. To the extent that there are people who, in specific situations, ramp it up a couple notch--well, that's "Psycho Richard."

83: I think that my family was very unusual in that the abuse that went on was all verbal, and that it was intellectual; there weren't any outright insults--you were defeated (and scorned) when you lost an argument. And sometimes, if you won you'd get an apology and an "I love you."

We grew up in the same family. It's hard for a ten-year-old to do battle with an accomplished adult at the top of his game at every dinner, it's good training if one survives it, tho'. It was only about forty years later that I realized just how insanely competitive my father was, I thought that was the natural order of things.

Eh, there's no way to argue about your perceptions of the people around you, but if I understand what you're saying, I don't think the existence of a couple of counterexamples that manage to bull through the pressure not to be competitive says that the pressure doesn't exist.

Just for a thought experiment: the 'Bitch'. If you can think of a man in a similar position who got publicly identified as a 'Bastard" or an 'Asshole', think about his behavior, and whether he didn't have to go a lot further than she did to get identified as a problem.

one about professional tennis players, and one about engineering students completing mazes. Let's throw out the tennis players, since almost all quantification of sports is bunk

Even more reason to disregard this: right now, all the top male singles players have coaches. The top female singles players don't, for the most part. Williams has a coach, but her coach is her mom, which is just not the same as being coached by an all-time tennis great.

I just thought you all should learn a little more about tennis.

That's weird. I wonder why the difference.

96 is onto something. No doubt women can be genuinely bitchy and genuinely shrill. My sense is that a man who walks into his boss' office and makes a case for a raise is far less likely to be thought of as an asshole than would a woman who does the same.

90: There's absolutely sexism, but part of the socialization is that most women don't get taught how to be competitive within a finite game in a way that lets your opponents know you are still cooperative in the infinite game (i.e., completely buying into the boundaries and framework of the finite competition).

I think this is true, and part of how it operates is that women get pressure not to compete hard against men even in rule-bound games. A while back there was a discussion about single-sex versus co-ed soccer for pre-teen kids, at an age where there isn't any real physical disparity between the sexes. People who'd had some experience recommended single-sex soccer for girls, saying that girls tended to come out of an experience with single sex soccer aggressive and competitive, and with co-ed soccer sidelined and marginalized.

re:

here's absolutely sexism, but part of the socialization is that most women don't get taught how to be competitive within a finite game in a way that lets your opponents know you are still cooperative in the infinite game (i.e., completely buying into the boundaries and framework of the finite competition).

I have to admit, I am wary about getting into competitive situations with some women I know, as I know they won't 'play nice'.* In the sense that they don't compete in the way that I am used to with other men or the vast majority of other women I know. I'm sure part of that is precisely the lack of socialization in how to compete well (which no doubt at root derives from a sexist social dynamic).

I do wonder whether the negative feedback a lot of women get when they are intellectually assertive and self-confident in their opinions is partly a generational thing? I would hope (and it seems to be my experience) that it's something that's getting better and which is less of an issue for say, today's undergraduates, than it was 20 years ago.

* there is one woman I really don't like sparring in my kick-boxing class, to take one trivial example, because if it's not going well for her then I know she will genuinely try to hurt me and I also know that if I were to respond in even remotely the same way, she'd immediately cry foul. Outside of a competitive context, I think she's great -- smart and funny.

Just for a thought experiment: the 'Bitch'. If you can think of a man in a similar position who got publicly identified as a 'Bastard" or an 'Asshole', think about his behavior, and whether he didn't have to go a lot further than she did to get identified as a problem.

Yeah, unfortunately, this one is a counterexample all the way down. I know she thinks of herself as having the mirror temperament of a specific man, whose temperament she believes has caused problems for him, and that she worries that she may have those problems down the line. To date that hasn't happened, but she's younger than him, so maybe that problem lies in her future.

That said, as I think I've mentioned before, I'm inclined to trust your judgment on this sort of thing. I'm trying to figure out why the various women I'm thinking of don't seem to fit into the model. Part of it might be occupation: I don't really think of any of them as competitive or aggressive; they just want what they want, expect to get it, and have done so for the most part. But specific instance competition doesn't really well describe their worlds. None of them are particularly feminine; I think there is a problem relating to that, and that is, I acknowledge, a bad thing. (I'm not sure that would apply to you, though, from your self-description.) Also, insofar as we're talking about non-work interactions, I can see the interaction happening as you describe it. I think such male-female interactions have a flavor of flirting, and I'm reasonably sure that I've been put off certain women by aggressive argumentation. (Very probably also a bad thing.) I don't think of any of the women as flirtatious (though they must be, in the right circs.), and, in agreement with Moira, one's a lesbian. Finally, as you say, there's a good chance I'm just missing this, both because I don't the have the same incentives to notice as a woman would have and by random chance as regards the women of whom I'm thinking.

Yeah, this is all really hard stuff to pin down, because it's subtle and so much of it happens in people's heads. And of course, saying that the root of it is sexism doesn't mean that women generally adapt to the pressures I'm talking about in the most functional manner possible; I certainly don't.

While I've run into professional trouble related to this stuff, it's not through being uncomplicatedly too aggressive at all; I'm not smooth about being gracefully deferential while getting my points across, which leaves me either in there swinging (that is, the way I talk around here), or kind of withdrawn. I'd be better off professionally if I were consistently aggressive, but the avoidance I get when I am ends up snapping me into withdrawing into just doing what I'm told, which does not work well at all. I get cranky about this stuff because it plays into my professional and personal flaws.

None of them are particularly feminine

Do you mean this in terms of appearance or behavior or both? "Feminine" is a pretty broad (heh) term.

re: 103

FWIW, I think lots of guys feel these pressures too. I generally don't mind arguments or purposeful confrontation but it's still a struggle in most places I've worked [leaving aside academia] to balance the desire to win arguments -- because I'm right dammit* -- and the desire not to be a dick, or to not ride roughshod over other people's views, to be a nice person,etc. So one still finds oneself letting arguments go -- even when you're right -- or trying to coddle other people's egos and generally not just going for what you think is right all of the time.

And striking the right balance is hard, even leaving aside the additional problems women have with this stuff.

* and, false modesty aside and not including academia, in almost every place I've worked I've been the smartest and best informed person in the room by quite some distance, so the vast majority of the time I i) am right, and ii) able to win the argument if it comes to that.

103's second paragraph describes my work interactions pretty well, except that I'm better with the graceful deference with some people than with others.

I think it is possible to overthink these things. A lot of people are quite dim, even those holding down demanding jobs, and they do just fine. Cultivate a thick skin and bluff it out. Your competence is likely more than obvious to everyone.

Personally, I'm practising my office smile.

The "smooth about being gracefully deferential" is an interesting comparison. While I'm not sure that's exactly what would be most useful, have you ever completed a transaction, by accident or design, where you felt you did this? Conversely, have you ever watched somehow else do it well and tried to analyze how exactly it was done?

It's occurred to me that three of the most important relationships of my adult life have been with "difficult" women, who were often feared and disliked because of heated arguments, and their tendency to hold their ground. My most important mentors, in my practice job and my publishing one, were just like that. Being on the receiving end of that contention was not pleasant, but I must have gotten past it, since I was the closest colleague of both after a while. I'll be having dinner with one, still a very close friend in a couple of weeks. So there's the impulse, and then what you do with it, clearly not the same thing. The third is my wife.

I think lots of guys feel these pressures too.

Absolutely, but women are operating within narrower limits of acceptable perceived aggression and they're worse at modulating their aggression in order not to offend.

One other thing that's worth mentioning is that a lot of male "bonding" activities which are themselves arenas for competition nevertheless offer men a chance to mitigate the effects of their aggression by making each other feel like they're all ultimately on "the same side." You're much less likely to think poorly of the asshole on your team than of the asshole on the other team. These forms of mitigation usually aren't available to women. Not to mention the fact that sometimes the bonding happens precisely by defining one's "side" as that of men, etc.

Yes, to all of 109.

I would hope (and it seems to be my experience) that it's something that's getting better and which is less of an issue for say, today's undergraduates, than it was 20 years ago.

You'd think so, but leblanc's descriptions of her silent law school classmates are not encouraging.

Yeah, to 109. I'm moving from talking about differential pressures that I'm absolutely sure exist, to vague senses that I'm not particularly confident about relating to how they operate. But part of the difference, I think (again, really not sure about this) is not necessarily that women get more social detriment from entering into conflict, but that we get less social reward from winning.

I'm not saying that it's unmixed or anything, but I have the sense that in male-on-male social confrontation (anything competitive, friendly or not), there's some ongoing advantage to being the guy who won the last one. Being a dick about it is bad, but if it was a fair argument or whatever, and you turned out to be right, you get bragging rights, increased deference on the subject in future -- to get all faux-primatological, you move up in the dominance hierarchy. "Bragging rights" means something positive.

At least from my perspective, I don't get that. When I win something, what I get (other than the immediate win -- keeping a wrong argument out of a brief or something) is pretty much all negative; no increased respect and probably avoidance. When I'm trying to maintain a relationship, I feel that I have to put a lot of effort into not visibly winning arguments; if I need to make something happen, the Jedi mind trick ("This is your idea. It's always been your idea. Actually, you talked me into it.") is much less damaging that straightforwardly making and winning a case for doing it my way.

Now again, men do this sort of thing too with difficult superiors, but I think the intensity is different. I can't think of when I've won anything against a man where I didn't feel at least some pressure to immediately apologize for winning and start trying to heal the relationship; victory over anyone I'm going to have to deal with again is always an interpersonal negative.

I still like winning, but I'm never expecting to get anything but punishment out of it.

if it was a fair argument or whatever, and you turned out to be right, you get bragging rights, increased deference on the subject in future

Unless it's about a war. Or you're a DFH, of one flavor or another.

113 -- And this is because real men would never think a war might not go well.

112: But what would a neutral observer see when you win? A man winning gets some bragging rights, etc. but they also see an increased the determination on the part of the others to take him down the next chance they get no matter how nice he is about the win.

My guess is it's all about calibrations re aggression, competition, and cooperation. Men get theirs calibrated from birth in their particular cultures and they really can screw up when dropped into a different one. The whole women at higher levels in the work-place thing is relatively new and the calibrations aren't as seamless yet. It's sure different from the sixties, tho'. There's much less overall angst, near as I can tell.

112: But what would a neutral observer see when you win? A man winning gets some bragging rights, etc. but they also see an increased the determination on the part of the others to take him down the next chance they get no matter how nice he is about the win.

Obviously, not being a neutral observer, I can't tell what a neutral observer would see. From my perspective, though, I don't see more forceful competition as a result of a win -- my impression (which may, of course, be flawed given that I'm personally involved) is that men react with avoidance, freezing me out of possible future competition. More forceful competition would be great.

re: 112 and

When I win something, what I get (other than the immediate win -- keeping a wrong argument out of a brief or something) is pretty much all negative; no increased respect and probably avoidance.

LB, deeply uncharitable* thoughts I had reading the above comment is first, that your workmates sound like pathetic assholes and second, that you're a lawyer so the it's not beyond the bounds of possibility that some of your workmates may in fact be assholes.

Uncharitable, I know, but in the academic field I know best, any guy who didn't like having a woman apply an intellectual smackdown to him would be shit out of luck, given that in philosophy the dishing out of hardcore public smackdowns is pretty much the sine qua non of the discipline and given that a huge percentage of bad-ass philosophers, in my experience, are women.

* I am half kidding, but only half kidding. One of the things you and leblanc (re: 111) have in common is that you're both lawyers.

ttaM lives in the British Isles, which is an outlier with regard to lady philosophers. Anything he says should be ignored.

re: 118

Actually, reading threads that discuss gender relations I do sometimes wonder whether the UK is an outlier in wider ways. I rarely recognize the social relations being described, or if I do, I recognize them as being similar but different in various key ways.

Philosophers do tend to be very good at arguing nastily without taking it personally. As a data point, though: according to one poll at my university, philosophy is the most male-dominated of the humanities disciplines (for undergrads), and if you look professionally within the discipline to the most cock-swinging area of them all, metaphysics, the proportion of women shrinks. (There's probably more historical forces at work here, but women are in aesthetics and ethics.)

And it's not that uncommon for philosophy department lounges to be frathausen, and for women to feel intimidated or isolated. But in support of Ttam's point, the women who do overcome it and get heard aren't generally regarded as shrill with a few notable exceptions.

At my current university there's been a bit of a scandal because no women were admitted to the graduate class this past year. None at all. However, generally, most years the admissions seem fairly evenly spread between the sexes.

At my undergraduate school there were at least as many women as men in philosophy (at undergrad level) but that may have simply reflected the fact that the humanities 'population', in general, at that university was slanted heavily female. Among the faculty at that school, however, it was at least 75% male.

I wish I'd been here for this comment thread.

This weekend I'm at an undergraduate conference for undergraduate women in mathematics. And it's fantastic. (I attended eight years ago as an undergraduate, now I'm back as a panel member.) These undergrads are first-rate mathematically, but I've been through the meat grinder that is grad school, and I know those who go for it will come into a boatload of gender-problems.

There are a ton of complex issues surrounding all this that I need to digest and blog about.

122: please do (blog about it)

Just want to back up what M. LeBlanc said about law school--though I'm not technically a law student, I've taken/audited a half-dozen classes at a fairly elite school, and the "aggressively arguing with the professor" gender disparity has been very obvious. I have a strong, though anecdotal and intuitive, feeling that this sort of mixing-it-up is generally the path towards close relationships with faculty, recommendations, clerkships, etc. (And obviously there's a large gender disparity in, at least, USSC clerkships.)

Also, re: 40 -- short-track speedskating is, in fact, superior.

92: I see this in men all the time. Obviously there are men who are not competitive, and who are uncomfortable with the ways the world tries to socialize them to be "manly." But IME, guys like that can be resentful and kinda solitary around other men--but they often expect women to support them and be on their "side," and when a woman isn't, they get *really* shrill and hostile. It's the kind of prototypical "nice guy" scene, and it's really fucked up.

Re. Britain, I wonder. My impression, based mostly on my pretty feminist-friendly British friend and his girlfriends over the years, and also on my college year there a jillion years ago, is that young women there often tend to be *more* femmey in the reading-girly-magazines way, and much fewer of them are explicitly feminist. OTOH, there's also, I think, a kind of acceptance of inter-gender joshing than there is here. I've never been able to really figure out how things work over there.

Speaking of undergraduate conferences, we just reviewed submissions for ours this afternoon. While drinking 40s. Wheeee!

I have a strong, though anecdotal and intuitive, feeling that this sort of mixing-it-up is generally the path towards close relationships with faculty,

Absolutely. My favorite students are the ones who know how to argue within the proper bounds, and these students are almost inevitably men. This bothers me a lot, but there it is. Women students who want to form relationships with profs (or, at least, with me) tend to ask for advice and mentoring, rather than challenging: they put themselves in the one-down role, whereas men students will constantly challenge the hierarchy and try to present themselves as equals. I'm sure the effect of this kind of thing is HUGE in terms of later success, and I certainly see it in myself, and how I relate to people I admire or want favors from.

125: I think you meant to point to another comment. Otherwise, I have no idea what you're saying.

No, 92 was right. I was responding to your having said that you haven't seen men (over)reacting to women being contentious.

Ah, got it. I still don't the description of that other set of guys. But whatever, as I said, this may be a function of subgroups, etc.

100: About soccer. I think it goes both ways, though. My co-workers have two sons in soccer, ages 6 and 8, and they find that one of them for some reason will not compete strongly with the female players.

OMG, 125 nails my ex-boss *exactly*. I suspect part of it may have been that he wanted sensitivity points for having played a part in hiring a woman (in a very male-dominated field) and expected to trade on that for the rest of my tenure at that company. Which, well, credit for not being an asshole and actively blocking my hire (he was promoted to manager later on), but that doesn't mean I'm not allowed to disagree with you for the several years to follow.

Most of my male colleagues have been reasonable and haven't seemed particularly annoyed or threatened when I've been assertive. But there always seem to be three or four guys in each work environment whom I rub the wrong way. It's not even that I perceive myself as acting competitive; they just seem uncomfortable with a woman asserting that she has technical knowledge. And it's a hassle when it's someone in another department, but it can become a real problem when it's someone on my team, or, worse, a manager.

As for the dynamic of deference -- it's the guys who are the least secure or have the most issues with women who seem to need the deference. Naturally, they're the ones whose feelings I'm least inclined to defer to because it's the 21st century and time to grow up and accept women as equals.

90 -- since posting my comment I have reflected on the fact that I am both quite competitive and conflict-averse which may be an odd mix of personality traits (though, I would suspect, a combination that's more common in the blogosphere than in the world as a whole).

in a workplace environment I find that I am both helped and hindered by the fact that I am not interested in the same symbols of status as many people. When I argue I want to establish that I'm smarter, but I don't care about arguing that I'm higher status. This makes it easier for me to argue with people without hurting feelings, but makes me less likely to argue for raises, for example.

133: Yeah, there are interesting wrinkles to all of this. I care really, really deeply about accuracy of information and defensible decisionmaking. I don't much care who gets credit or is seen to supply the information, and in fact spend a fair amount of time semi-surreptitiously getting co-workers to make points so I'm not.

(That's partly an adaptive trait, in that I know it makes things more paltable if they emerge from the group rather than from one loudmouth, but also really just an indication that I want the information to get out there and I know that some people REALLY DO like being the source. So, fine, let them.)

Magpie, I take it by your LJ title that you're some flavor of Unix geek? It's funny, at a previous job, my boss was pretty widely (and rightly) loathed, but she did, by accident or design, do an okay job putting women into technical roles. (The junior DBA and the Solaris guru, IIRC.) Two women out of a technical staff of seven is, sadly enough, pretty good.

palatable

135: Yup. And my last workplace, the one with the boss I had friction with, was the best so far at hiring women. (2 out of 7). At my current company and the one previous to my last job, it's more like 2 out of 15.

re: 125

There may be less explicit self-identification as feminist, but I suspect there's less agonizing too over whether it's OK to be bad-ass or not and a fair bit more just going ahead and doing it. Reflex/natural feminism, iyswim.

I may be wrong of course, it's not like I have the magic key or universal experience of British life or anything.

Wow. I never would have expected a flameless thread on this topic. Is Unfogged growing up?

re 139: I'm shocked, too.

I think this article mainly shows that Slate is a fast-follower for TNR's strategy of jumping down the rathole of facile, cheap shot articles that are supposed to be brave for taking on conventional wisdom. This is some pretty shaky research to hang these sweeping observations on. Landsburg is an asshole, we all know that. But there's something wrong with a publication that will run crap like this with a tease, like "Studies show [women] choke under pressure." There's no way that's a fair summary of two studies, which partially contradict each other anyway.