October 7, 2003
-
Today, I was called an Alpha female.
I'm not sure if I am proud, offended or merely indifferent.
I'm in a seminar for my department at OSU about "Foundations in Evolutionary Biology" or some such as that. That's not really important. What is important is that we have an interesting mix of people. It is primarily males, nearly all of whom are very opinionated alpha males. There are five of us females (out of 17) and this tends to be worriesome, as most of the girls are very, very quiet. And the professor today, the one who set up the seminar and unofficially guides the discussions, referred to our mix of people as testosterone driven and full of Alpha males. Then he turned around, looked at me and said "and of course alpha females too, kelly."
See, we have the opposite problem that most groups have. We simply can NOT shut up! Almost all of us know each other fairly well, we know one another's disciplines and we lack a lot of the shyness that tends to quiet such groups down. While a lot of the girls (well, the other four) seem to take that as a reason to not jump in...it exacerbates my natural tendency to be mouthy, opinionated and well, verbose. (I'm sure you never noticed those characteristics). But especially in the sciences, I'm not known for taking a back seat...If I go to the effort of reading the paper, I sure as hell want to horn in on the discussions about it.
But is being the "alpha" male (or female) always good? Top dog and what not, I suppose but it also implies an amount of aggression and well, at least for the female portion, Bitchiness.
So. How do I feel about this? the Jury is still out. I respect the professor very much so who called me that. It was not, I don't think, meant to be offensive. And the rest of the students took it well...
How would you feel about it?
Comments (6)
I think it's good that you speak your mind...especially in a male-dominated field. Most women do not do that. So, I say...GO YOU!!!!
Bitchiness is just a word people use for women who speak their mind. People equate agressiveness in women with bitchiness and in my opinion they do that in order to dismiss whatever it is she is saying, and to make her worry more about being perceived as a bitch so that she won't have as much time to challenge whatever it was she was going to challenge. Don't ever buy into the idea that being aggressive or speaking your mind makes you a bitch. That's plain silly.
I'm apt to think it was a very high compliment, if you've got a mind to believe in the validity and inevitability of heirarchical structures, that is.
As long as you wouldn't be that stupid bitch who decided to trail right on the edge of my car all the way up 43 today and then flick me off right before I turned all when I was driving the speed limit, you're O.K. No... honestly females that speak their minds are refershing. I don't think many males will think twice about being called the 'alpha' or 'aggressive'. You probably just feel somewhat weird about, because it doesn't fit what you think to be soceity's stereotype of behavior for females.
You know, I was thinking of something similar yesterday (which I think I'll journal about later today - yes, sending you a password) I think women, like men, should be who they are. Bitchy shouldn't enter into it. Could get into a whole rant on words and how they don't have negative ones like that for men, etc. but I won't.
I suppose my attitude about it might depend on the person, their attitude and the setting.
-rae
I've been called an alpha female my whole life...don't think much of it any more. I have asked the people to explain what they meant by it and the most common explanation I get is - a dominant, outspoken woman with agressive leadership tendancies. Ok. Fine with me. I never took it as anything other than another form of stereotyping, and since I'm not easily offended, it never really bothered me.
There is nothing with that at all.
Comments are closed.