Today I read an article in the July issue of Elle, True Confessions: Why Women Gossip. The author discussed women and sharing, or over-sharing as the case often is with ladies. For the most part, I agreed with much of what she wrote – there are an abundance of women that are guilty of revealing far too much personal information about themselves. I learned not to overshare years ago, after being burned once or twice (actually it was more like a dozen times, I tend to learn by banging my head against the wall repeatedly). Nothing teaches you a lesson better than getting screwed over by your own mouth. So for the most part I keep personal matters to myself, (although my sister and husband are privy to pretty much every facet of my life, but family doesn’t count, right?).
The article attempted to explain some of the reasons why females feel compelled to overshare, and cited numerous studies, including one that found women who shared released higher levels of progesterone, which can reduce stress (conversely, studies have also found that excessive sharing of problems can lead to anxiety and depression. There’s always a yin and yang with these ‘studies’). The author also briefly touched upon the connection between oversharing and gossip. To me the two are hopelessly intertwined. Those times that I got burned by telling someone too much information? Yeah, those were a result of the person I confided in turning around and gossiping to someone else.
All in all, while the article wasn’t exactly groundbreaking, I found it interesting. However, I don’t think the phenomenon is limited to women. Men are just as guilty.
During my employment as a recruiter, I found the men in the office were just as likely to participate in the rumor mill as the women. Hell, often times they were the ones to get the gossip going in the first place. But once that was done, all they had to do was sit back and wait. The difference between men and women, in my opinion, is that dudes know women are more venomous about gossip, therefore all they have to do to get the ball rolling is mention a choice tidbit of information, after which they can sit back and watch the fireworks. They were like the match that lit the office fire, and the ladies fanned the flames. Of course, not all the men participated in the nonsense, but then again neither did all the women.
The misconception that females are the ones to overshare and gossip, while men don’t, is simply untrue. The difference is that they don’t do it as long as we do. Women dissect gossip. Guys are very wham bam about it. You could view this in one of two ways, a) guys are more concise in their gossip, or b) they aren’t as detail-oriented as women.
Last week my husband and I sat in the living room in our ‘talk position’, me on the loveseat, him on the couch, facing each other. At some point we really need to change our arrangement, because the leather is indented in only these two spots. If we’re going to have butt prints, they should at least be uniform and on each cushion. Anyway, he was relaying a conversation he had with a friend, in which they discussed a third party, also a friend. During this conversation, they determined that the third person had told each of them a different story about something, the reason for the discrepancy was likely because the wives of the other two guys are close. Without going into the details of the conversation, here’s my response to what my husband told me:
Me: Oh my God, why did you say that? He’s totally going to tell his wife!
Husband: No he won’t.
Me: Oh yes he will.
Hubs: No, he isn’t going to say anything because (redacted).
Me: Do you tell me everything?
Hubs: (wide eyes of disbelief, trying to determine of I’m asking a trick question) Of course baby! I tell you every little thing!
Me: Exactly. And he’s going to tell his wife.
Oh yes, you can bet your bottom dollar he told his wife, because dudes gossip, especially with their partners. My husband laughs and shakes his head whenever he hears me on the phone with my sister or mom, chatting about this and that. I’m not sure why, because he does it too. I always know when my husband is about to tell me something about another person, because he lowers his voice to a whisper. Now, if we were in public, and the other person was there, then that would make perfect sense. But he does it at home when the only ears around are mine and the dogs. I guess it’s his subconscious telling him…huh, I thought I had some proverb about gossip and the devil floating around the back of my brain, but I guess not. Anyway, countless times my husband has come home and told me some bit of information that floored me, because those revelations came from other guys. They talk about their lives, their wives, and each other. Just like women. The difference between their gossip sessions and ours is time. They swap info and move onto other topics. Women tell the tale and then break down every single detail, examining it piece by piece.
***
Google saves the day:
It isn’t what they say about you, it’s what they whisper. ~Errol Flynn
Hahaha interesting…I definitely pay attention to gossip at work more than Boyfriend, but he also gets the scoop from me without asking. Hmmm..
Well, if he always has the scoop, then he must be paying some attention.
I’ve got an oversharing problem.
Anyway, there’s a chatroom for the film forum I post at and people occasionally get upset about things said about them in the room when they aren’t around (because it used to be you could search back). They’d say “say it to my face” and such. I think there’s a real value to talking behind people’s back because sometimes steam needs to get released and it’s more constructive than going around punching people in the face. It’s just a question of intent I suppose, is it to vent or to hurt.
It amuses me to no end when someone on the internet uses the ‘say it to my face’ argument. I joined a fiction competition a couple years in a row that had a very active member forum, and there was a lot of drama like that…so silly. Say it to my face, fictionwriter9961! Ummmm, okay.
In my experience, guys will gossip about a lot of things, but they are tight-lipped about their own relationships. Women, on the other hand, will gossip about a lot of things, particularly their own relationships.
Your mileage may vary, but my experience has been pretty much across the board.
I agree that women talk about themselves with eachother wayyy more than men do, but I still say that men talk about everyone else more than women do.
Just my observations…
Or maybe my husband is just an old Jewish woman living inside a middle-aged male body… ??
Mmmm, I dunno. I tend to follow the rule that, if it’s good or highly amusing, then sharing is okay (so long as my man found it funny too), but if it’s serious stuff, like an argument or misunderstanding, then I keep it to myself.
People remember the bad stuff. I could tell twenty stories about how awesome my husband is, but if I told one bad one, that would cancel the others out.
I think (in my personal experience, anyway) that men gossip as much if not more than women.
My husband is a HUGE yenta. He gets way more enjoyment out of dishing the dirt on other people than I ever have. I like to hear positive things about people way more than I want to hear bad things. I mean, that’s not to say that I don’t get a little bit of satisfaction when Karma makes it’s way around to someone reallyyyyyy deserving, but overall, I don’t like to share negative things about people and I don’t really want to hear them, either.
Dan, on the other hand, lives for it. And so do most of his friends. They’re ridiculous when they’re on the phone… it’s like an episode of Gossip Girl gone horribly wrong.
And then he turns around and tells it allllll to me, whether I want to hear it or not.
Which I really don’t.
Gossip Girl gone horribly wrong…sounds like a winning tagline to me!
You are not kidding about guys! I used to work as a clerk for a trucking company that had all male drivers. They would all congregate in the drivers room while doing their paperwork and you would have thought it was a school yard the way they talked about everybody and everything. I find that women can be nastier with their gossip but men are worse about repeating things they were specifically told “in confidence.”
Yeah, I think the key difference is the nastiness/cattiness in female gossip. That’s really funny about the truck drivers…did they gossip on the CB too?
Oh my gosh, yes! We had those Nextel direct connect radios (memba them?) and at least a few times a year there would be a big stink because somebody would say something about somebody else on the radio but accidentally say it to that person instead of whoever they thought they were talking to. Oops!
Drama on the radio, hee!
Not only is my husband a gossip, he holds a grudge like almost no one I have ever met. The only thing that saves him is he is from Maine, and they are notoriously quiet people. But with me he is all yakyakyak and THAT PERSON IS ON THE LIST.
I have always overshared, and having a blog doesn’t help. But I have learned discretion the hard way in terms of my own stuff.
However, I have managed, every so often, to hurt others with my words. I come from a long line of filter impaired women. I have to work really hard at thinking before speaking. The thought happens HERE and comes out THERE before the filter has a chance to do its job. I did this just recently and am lucky to still have a friend. I am using that experience to constantly remind myself to STOP AND THINK before talking. It is HARD.
Ugh, I’ve done that too. Sometimes things just slip out, and the moment they do, I’m like ‘holy hell, did I really just say that?’
The guys at my former job were THE WORST about gossip. Never checked facts either. Not about their own stuff, but about the stuff they heard about someone else. I heard numerous rumors about myself, but not from them…they wouldn’t let on that they thought that! So I let it go.
The officemate, who became a good friend of mine, took about 4 years to decide I was friend material (we weren’t officemates yet), because she was hearing venomous untrue gossip about me trying to steal everyone else’s boyfriend and being a general tramp.
Men. Go figure.
Waaaa? How silly, and unprofessional. *Sigh* office life is very similar to high school.
I hate gossip so much and I absolutely agree that men do it as much as women. And yep, it’s usually to their wives. Wives for them are like a candy parade of gossip-ness. I think the husbands feel they aren’t really gossiping, they’re just “sharing” with their wives and therefore off the hook. But I also think that they like having a wife so they don’t feel like they are gossiping and yet still get to gossip, because men LOVE IT. They don’t like it when women do it. But they love to do it themselves.
Yeah, men want the scoop as much as women!