The dyssocial sex

Science is discovering that women, not men, tend to be more dyssocial:

A recent study by the well-known Professor Robert Dunbar has shown ‘a very striking sex difference between male and female friendships.’  In the few days since Dunbar gave a talk on the results, a number of articles have written of the superficiality of male relationships; rather, they focused on Dunbar’s view that ‘women clearly have much more intense close friendships…very like romantic relationships…if they break, they break catastrophically.’  Whereas men are painted as superficial – ‘With guys it is out of sight out of mind. They just find four more guys to go drinking with.’  But, do the findings really indicate that women are friendlier or more sociable than men?

Now, of course, feminists will tell you that masculinity is inevitably oppressive and abusive, especially of the more supposedly feminine qualities of love, gentility and empathy.  But, this misconception is totally unfair.  As Moore and Gillette point out, in King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine, oppressive forms of patriarchy are simply based on the same juvenile fear of Lord of the Flies; the ‘mature masculine’ psychology, however, is ‘marked by calm, compassion, clarity of vision, and generativity.’

Indeed, science seems to agree, not only that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, but also that women seem predisposed to scorning.

I noticed a long time ago that while I still have pretty much the same friends that I did in high school, virtually no woman I knew hadn't changed out her entire set of friends more than once. There are exceptions, of course, but it does seem strange that the supposedly social sex tends to be less inclined to maintain lasting friendships.