For the second weekend in a row, I went somewhere with a female friend who met another female friend of mine and later confided to me that the second female friend was hot.  The women in this instance were completely different than the ones from the weekend before.

Guys don’t do this.  If I took my friend Jake to meet my friend Chad, Jake wouldn’t say to me later “Man, your bud Chad is smokin’.”

Okay wait, that did happen once. But generally guys who aren’t “special” in that way don’t comment about other guys.  Women do it all the time.

It made me think about how society teaches women to see other women the way men do.  Social theorists call this “the male gaze.” It forces a kind of split in female psychology, causing them to see other women from a man’s perspective.  That in turn affects the way women dress and act, encouraging them to be molded into an identity mandated by patriarchal society.

This made me think about my own participation in a patriarchal society, and how I unconsciously help perpetuate patterns of behavior that reinforce repressive social norms.

And after thinking about this, my head began to hurt.  So I started to think about what would happen if my female friends got involved in a catfight.  Are there understood, unspoken rules that govern such situations?  For example, how do they balance the delicate ratio of slap to tickle?  I think it needs to be done carefully, so there isn’t the awkward moment where one of the fighters has to actually stand up, stop the action, and say “There’s been far too much slapping.  There needs to be a heavier emphasis on tickling.”