I’m watching this video on how real reality TV catfights can be?

Reflecting on my limited experience, I’ve realized that there are many ways that what was said in the video is true. Whereas men would just roll up their sleeves and take/give the punches, women act a lot more cattily.

We women tend to work in groups, taking things a lot more personally than men do and making a lot of mean, snide remarks. Men would dislike other men and just be more direct about it. Women have a tendency to be a lot more passive aggressive, attacking on the back or on the side, never really coming up with an explanation on why we like or dislike someone.

The video tries to explain why women act the way they do. An explanation is that women take things a lot more personally. We want to get involved in each other’s personal lives and if the other’s way of living is not really our cup of tea, we cannot help but be irked about it, talking and gossiping about it with other people.

Men on the other hand, just don’t care.

If Trader hates the way another person lives his life, he just ensures he doesn’t really bump into this guy as much. Trader is happy in his merry way working and relaxing in the weekend with his set of friends whom he does like.

Women care. We do have a lot of opinion. And we cannot help but talk about it, and be mean about it. As if doing so would change the other way people live their lives. 🙂

Instead of taking that person aside and ask them to change their behavior, we instead chose to do nothing about it, hiding in the shadows and feeling better when we get our feelings out. The funny thing is that talking about things with other people doesn’t really resolve issues. In fact, it worsens it. It pits one person against the other.

I remember during our Residential Program at HKUST, there was a lot of bad blood between myself and other groupmates. They were my assigned groupies for the rest of the program so I remember literally crying on why God would ever group me with these stubborn people I’m clearly incompatible with!

Thankfully, our group turned out okay.

How? Why?

I remember that on the second day of our terrible program when claws came out and there was really a lot of disagreements between us, one groupmate and I decided to clear the air and talk about it.

He was like, “Here are the things tha I don’t like about you…” and I was like, “Okay, I understand and will work on them… and here now are the things I dislike about you…”

We both realized that though we disagreed with each other’s opinion, we had nothing against each other. Things were not personal.

The same rule was followed all throughout MBA. That way, even though the disagreements became fierce and some of my groupies’ temper blew out, we always reminded ourselves: it’s not personal. All this would pass too and we were all together moving towards the same goal.

This had been helpful with several misunderstandings in the last few days.

I replied back to a classmate’s email albeit a bit coldly because admittedly my mind was somewhere else while drafting the email. Consequently, despite my correspondent’s best intentions, it was as if I didn’t care and I was one-upping that person.

That person wrote back a strong retort in response. That person thought I had BCC’d other people in the hopes of making me look good and that person bad.

Because we both understand that there is nothing personal in our dealings and I’ve been super true with this person, we quickly realized it was just a mere misunderstanding and settled it without any huge repercussions.

But what if this person talked about this with another person saying, “That Bonita? She’s such a bitch. She was super cold to me when I only wanted to help… blah blah blah…”

All of a sudden, what was supposed to be a misunderstanding had turned into a more serious manner because he/she is talking badly about someone else. That creates disharmony within the community turning people against each other.

Sadly, the source of the ire?

Maybe just a misunderstanding…

So we all hope. We’re all idealistic in thinking that the world we work in is black and white. That we may always have our disagreements but there are a gentleman’s way of dealing with things.

But then again, maybe this is just a naive and idealistic way of dealing with things.

That said, I am who I am. And I stand true to how I deal with things.

I just hope that others would do the same.

Then the world would be a better, nicer place to be in.

Happy Easter!