When Women Shit Test Other Women

Get a group of up to a dozen men or so together and you’re going to end up with a pretty simple social hierarchy pretty quickly. One man will establish himself as AMOG. Anywhere from one to three others will be what you might call “lieutenants.” There might be up to one or two omegas. Every guy knows what I’m talking about – that guy in the group who’s a total loser – and obnoxious as all hell – but he’s our total loser, so he’s OK. The hierarchy will almost always settle itself out very quickly. I’ve seen it happen within hours in groups of men where no more than any two had even met each other before. The status quo will basically remain the same until and unless another man decides to challenge for dominance – but even then, the challenge is usually quick and decisive.

Groups of women are totally different. Women obsess over relative status. Their social groups form incredibly complex status hierarchies, and they don’t stay constant. They’ll shift from day to day, hour to hour and even minute to minute. The hierarchies also don’t follow anything a man would recognize as standard logical rules. For instance, in standard logic if A > B and B > C then A > C. Not so in women’s social hierarchies. Woman A can have higher status than woman B, with woman B having higher status than woman C… and yet in some cases woman C can still have higher status than woman A.

To most men the complex rules that govern all of this are entirely incomprehensible. But there are two basic rules that are the overwhelming drivers: a woman’s looks, the relative status of her partner and displayed wealth. You can see these effects at work very clearly in a stereotypical high school setting where you have your very small click of alpha females who are typically among the most attractive girls in the school, dating the high status guys (football quarterback, etc) and decked out in the designer clothes that daddy paid for. But beyond these rules a whole host of more subtle issues also play a role. Gossip gives women a way to lower the status of women around them, relative to themselves. Acquiring new status items to show off – the latest designer handbag, etc. Talking about whatever great achievement their partner or their child just had.

And, in some cases, women will actually even shit test each other. I’ve seen this happen to my wife on multiple occasions, but today I’ll share just one story.

A few years ago on my birthday we came back into town (this was during our brief out of state hiatus). We staid at my parents’ place. My wife and mother both offered to bake cakes that year, but I specifically requested not to have one. I had gone a good while without eating much junk food and didn’t want to fall off the wagon. I’ve got a crazy sweet tooth (damn you mom for passing that on), and once I get started it’s hard for me to stop. So no cake. Then Wilson and Emo Bear show up. Emo, very definitely trying to show up both my wife and mother, has baked a cake and brought it along. Make no bones about it: this was a female shit testing another female. Or, really, two other females: my wife and my mother.

This was before I had a clue about Game. Nevertheless, in this case I was the right one to handle it (despite the test being aimed at them), and I aced it. I looked her straight in the eye and very calmly (and publicly) told her thank you for the cake, but I’d specifically asked for there not to be one. Smack, shit test shut down.

In most cases, however, when a woman shit tests another woman her partner (or brother or father or son or whatever) really can’t step in to handle it. The targeted woman must handle it herself, or she will (at best) just be the victim of another shit test later. A good example of this happened to us a few years ago, also during our out-of-state hiatus. Hermione and I were attending a well known SEC school at the time. Clark and his wife attended another well known SEC school that happened to be a fairly big rival of our school (not the main rival, but a big rivalry). They came to visit us one fall so that we could all go to the game together (it was a home game for us that year), talk shit at each other and generally have a good time. They stayed in our guest room (the five hour drive was enough to make a day trip unpleasant). In the morning, Clark’s wife got up, invaded my wife’s kitchen and started making breakfast for everyone. In and of itself, not too bad (although invasive to another woman’s turf). But then comes the rest of the morning of very subtle, “Oh look how great I am because I martyred myself and made breakfast in a stranger’s kitchen” attitude.

Unlike the cake incident, this is not my battle. There is no good way for me to interfere without lowering my wife’s status – so I don’t, I stay out of it. But Hermione doesn’t really know how to respond to this, either. A woman can’t really respond to a shit test like a man can. When a man shuts it down hard he’s alpha. When a woman shuts it down hard she’s a bitch. The only appropriate “response” I can think of would have been for her to get up earlier and start breakfast before the other woman had a chance… but that’s not very helpful after the deed’s been done.

I have noticed, however, that this kind of shit testing of other women comes most often from women who suffer from FWS. As Roissy has noted, being in love with an alpha male makes even the bitchiest of women act like beta males. Thus, there’s some truth to the chauvinistic old cliche that a man should control his wife if she’s acting out in public. It’s not so much that he should take her home and beat her for being a shrew as that if he’s sufficiently alpha in his relationship then she will be substantially less shrewish outside of the home as well as in it.