The other evening I visited a book group that had read The Mother Daughter Show—something I’m always happy to do. After the usual preliminaries, one of the women (as usual, all the members were women) began a comment by saying, “I thought your book was really well written. I mean really, really well written.”
I thanked her, but something about her tone alerted me to the probability that there was a “but” coming. And there was.
“But I had a hard time with all the cattiness.”
I felt a wave of disappointment. Not because she had an objection to the book—I understand that not every reader is going to love everything about my book. But in my own mind, my characters aren’t catty. They may not always act admirably, but I’ve tried to provide understandable motivations for their actions, and my hope is that readers will sympathize with them while recognizing their flaws. “Catty” just doesn’t sound like an adjective you’d apply to someone you found sympathetic.
I murmured some response, but later I found myself mulling over the remark. I wished I’d asked the woman to be more specific—not just in pinpointing what behavior by my characters she’d found catty, but also what she meant by the word.
It seems to me it’s an adjective that’s applied exclusively to conflicts between women. But do we use it to describe all conflicts between women, maybe because we’re uncomfortable with the very idea of women fighting? Or do we mean a certain kind of behavior? Do we ever describe men as being catty? (Let’s be clear here: I mean heterosexual men.) And are there any adjectives that we use specifically to describe conflicts between men?
All of these questions began swirling around in my brain. Not being able to track down the woman who made the “cattiness” remark, I added the questions I’ve posed above to the Reading Guide on my website. Maybe they’ll come up at the next book group I visit.
I also looked up “catty” in the dictionary, and I was surprised to find that there was no gender reference. The definitions were given as “1. Subtly cruel or malicious; spiteful,” and “2. Catlike; stealthy.” As a cat lover, I can go with “stealthy,” but I do feel I should register an objection, on behalf of the feline population, to the linkage of “cat” and the first definition, which of course is the more common usage. I’ve seen my three cats go after each other, and there’s nothing subtle about it—or particularly cruel or spiteful, for that matter. They just fight. Of course, they’re all boys. And somehow, we do seem to associate the word “cat” with women. Think “catfight.” Or “cathouse.”
So let’s get back to the gender angle. Clearly, the woman at the book group meant something specific to women. The question is, what?
I don’t think women have any monopoly on cruelty, spite, or malice. I’m inclined to focus on the word “subtle.” Actually, I’m inclined to more or less junk the dictionary definition and offer one of my own: to me, “catty” connotes behavior that is two-faced or insidious. For instance, when someone turns around and begins to tear into an ostensible friend as soon as she (or possibly he) leaves the room. My hunch is that this is what a lot of people mean, and that they think of women as being far more likely to engage in such behavior than men. (There’s historical precedent for this. Today, while doing research for a historical novel, I came across this passage in a magazine article from 1807: “As to the belles, when any opportunity is given to them to declare their sentiments, they will commence a brisk cannonading against the dress, reputation, and awkward behavior of others, and tear in pieces without mercy the whole circle of their dearest friends.”)
Generalizations based on gender are of course fraught with risk. Neither women nor men are monolithic groups. But, admitting that my observations are totally unscientific, I have noticed some differences between the way males and females engage in conflict.
When my son was perhaps twelve, I overheard him and his friends playing video games in the basement. They were loudly and continuously berating each other, calling each other “stupid idiots” and similar epithets. I raced upstairs to alert my husband, and asked him whether we shouldn’t intervene. “That’s just the way boys talk to each other,” he shrugged.
On the other hand, when my daughter was about ten, she got a letter from two supposed friends of hers, laden with all sorts of obscure verbiage. They seemed to be telling her they didn’t want to be friends with her any more, but it was impossible to figure out why.
I don’t want to place too much weight on these two incidents, but it does strike me that women tend to be more indirect in their confrontations. For instance, in The Mother Daughter Show, some women who object to a script another woman has written decide to simply replace it with a different version without telling her, on the grounds that it will be “kinder” not to confront her directly. And at that book group I was at the other night, a woman told a story about an annual sale at her kids’ school that was co-opted by another group of women in a similar manner. (And while I wouldn’t call the woman who made the “cattiness” remark catty, there’s no doubt she was trying to soften her criticism by being indirect.)
If in fact women do engage in these kinds of subterfuges and machinations, I would suggest that it stems from an aversion to conflict. We may say it’s “kinder” not to confront someone directly, but more likely we’re trying to be kind to ourselves. After all, when that person ultimately finds out that we’ve secretly betrayed her, she’s likely to feel worse than she would if we’d been more open about our disagreements. It’s no fun to be stabbed in the front, but there’s a reason “stabbed in the back” sounds worse.
I consider myself a pretty conflict-averse person, and yet I’ve found myself embroiled in a few unpleasant tiffs over the years—and they’ve all been with other women. But I don’t think that’s because women are more likely to have conflicts, direct or indirect (and I’ve experienced both). I think it’s because I’m more likely to interact with other women.
And there’s a reason for that. The fact is, my positive, rewarding interactions with other women have far outweighed the negative ones. My close friends are almost all women, and those friendships have helped sustain me. That’s what I prefer to focus on, and that’s what I tried to bring out in The Mother Daughter Show—that it’s not the petty differences between women that are important, but the bonds of love and friendship that persist despite those differences. If only there were a gender-specific word to describe them.