SIsterhood

[mei]

I took a class back in my undergraduate in 'Evolutionary Psychology' and I remember my TA at the time remarking how "they" dont know why women are friends. He furthered by saying how it made sense for men to be friends from an evolutionary standpoint because men needed each other to hunt things down and bring back to their families, contrasting

Comments

[aslant]

I think in the workplace, women have been conditioned (in a sexist and capitalist paradigm) to view women as competition, which is such bullshit. And it's definitely exacerbated when women view their status only in relationship to men, which in my experience is the case with many women who only have male friends.

But also, I'm not sure I agree with your professor...having just read Sarah Blaffer Hrdy's excellent book Mothers and Others, there is plenty of evidence and research to support the value of and need for intra-female friendships and bonds. The cooperative instinct for group survival, food access success, and childraising is so paramount to human psychology, forming reciprocal social bonds is important for ALL tribe members, not just the men. It sounds like your professor's viewpoint may have been overly influenced by the school of thought that retroactively assigns nuclear family patterns...Hrdy talks about this a lot, it's kind of crazy how much conflicting research was ignored or passed over because several schools of