You may believe that a feminine woman should just stay quiet and perhaps just sacrifice her own needs to avoid being around these women. Not true.
I have said before that a feminine woman needs to have a masculine part to her as well; and this is a situation in which you need to go in to more masculine mode to stand up to women like this.
A story
I’ll give you an example. In my own life, I’ve experienced being in a workplace full of women several times. This time last year I was working as a perfume ambassador. Whilst in some places, women in this type of occupation would be quite feminine (and there were a couple where I worked), there were a few very masculine and butch women.
On my first day, I encountered a young woman who also worked as a perfume ambassador, just for a different agent. I adore people, so I cheerfully introduced myself and intended to make a friend. Before I noticed the energy she was putting out. She had no interest in befriending me, in fact she immediately asserted herself as a manager, but made her position sound higher than what it really was. Because I was new there, I was easy to fool.
We shall call her ‘B’.
Immediately, B was asserting herself upon me and I was following her commands, although I actually wasn’t obligated to follower her commands. But she was still very oppressive, and I made the mistake of getting stuck in a ‘master-servant’ type role with her, which was very uncomfortable.
B’s intentions showed up more when I needed her expertise to guide me to where to find items, where other products were located, etc. She would never be concise and accurate. She was always deliberately vague, so much so that I had no idea where she was pointing me to. She wanted me to keep asking her, and ultimately, look foolish. I unfortunately let myself fall in to this role with her repeatedly.
She also knew I was never taught to use a register, and that it wasn’t a part of my job to be able to use one; yet she would tell me to put things through the register in front of a customer, and walk away without offering assistance.
During these incidents, I had to ask her repeatedly for directions and she would roll her eyes at me when I couldn’t follow her instructions. I kept on with this situation because I didn’t really want to believe that she could be so deliberately manipulative.
I noticed also, that her behavior got worse when my man came to visit me at work. He did this often, and was always very affectionate, protective and loving. He often picked me up from my shifts. Sometimes he would bring me a drink or food for my lunch break, and other times he just came briefly, to see how I was. I began to sense that every time he did come to see me, she would pull another woman aside, and talk about me and point at myself and David.
Over time, I noticed that the other women who I thought I had made friends with stopped wanting to talk to me. I felt left out and excluded. I ended up in tears in the ladies’ room, and found it hard to work. I found it hard to push on in this environment, and the energy was very bad.
One day her and another colleague were talking, and she confessed that she had never been on a date (she is 24, nearly 25) or had a man interested in her. I felt bad for ‘B’, and thus continued indicating that I was still open to her, and open to befriending her in some way, as I am with most people.
Until one day I met another colleague from a different department who told me how she was in tears one day after work because of the way ‘B’ had been treating her. I was forced to acknowledge that ‘B’ was preying on seemingly ‘weaker’ and softer women, who were more feminine, and more vulnerable, as this new colleague I met was very feminine.
And this is the trouble with being a very feminine woman. Whilst the majority of men will love you for it, and not want to hurt you in any way, there will be women who will want to put you down. Women, I find, tend to be different around other very feminine women. I’ve met women who love this and feel at home with other feminine women, but I’ve also come across women who smell femininity from a mile away and proceed to trample all over it. I personally love women, and celebrate femininity.
You’re probably wondering how I ended up dealing with ‘B’. One morning, I noticed that one woman whom had always been nice to me stopped talking to me completely and starting being very snarky. I had a sneaking suspicion it had something to do with B. So I took the liberty of confronting my friend and asked. Indeed, B had told her, among other things, a blatant lie about me.
So I went up to B and confronted her in front of every employee, stating to her that she shall come to me from now on, to tell things to my face, rather than telling fibs behind my back. I proceeded to ask her why she was doing it, and I hadn’t seen myself cause fear in another woman for a long time, but I had to do it to liberate myself and to show her that I wasn’t going to tolerate her behavior.
The point of my story is to show that there are scenarios in which a feminine woman must assert herself and go in to more of a masculine mode. It’s all part of being a dynamic and whole woman who is able to bring out different sides of herself when it is needed.
You need to raise your level of masculinity, become even more masculine than them, to bring things back to a little more fairness.
When confronted with jealous women, or even other aggressive women who disrespect you or your womanliness, it is important to stand your ground, rather than shy away from it. I learned this lesson, as I let the situation go on a lot longer than I should have!
