Who Gossips more? Men or women?

Traditionally women are regarded as gossips.

But I can tell you, men gossip a lot.

I mean the stuff I've heard in the locker-room ...

It's like society expects women to talk a lot.
It can be done fairly openly.

But men are still like a brotherhood.

Men will talk to each other, but they will never tell you what they talk about.

a reply to: halfoldman

Men will talk to each other, but they will never tell you what they talk about.

Never say never. Men gossip to women about their "locker room" stuff all the time.

Stereotypes like this are very "Cosmopolitan magazine circa 1972".

a reply to: Atsbhct

You think?

I'm not so convinced.

Maybe they know what to say to make it seem that way.

a reply to: halfoldman

I do think. Separating men and women in that way in 2016 is just a silly assumption.

I think woman gossip, while men fabricate and boast/brag.

a reply to: Atsbhct

So we both gossip equally then in 2016?
Point taken, but disputed.

a reply to: halfoldman

How would anyone ever know? It's impossible to tell, as everyone lies about gossiping, yet everyone does it.

a reply to: halfoldman

Men work. We toil and sweat in the fields and factories. We don't have time for chit-chat.

Women. Their jobs are supper and babies. And cleaning. So they have time to gab away as they do their nails and shop for hatpins and dresses and cooking pans.

a reply to: DBCowboy

Men: talk about weather as it relates to their field work and the going rate of seed corn.

Women: talk about Mellies hat pin as it relates to how much of a raging b**** she is and the going rate for babysitters.

But if everyone does it, shouldn't it be promoted as an art?

Send your kids to college to learn "Gossiping 101"!

It still has a stigma.
Either way one should be careful.

But I still think being exposed as a male gossip has different ramifications to being a female gossip.

I mean men can get violent and fight.

You can cause a dual or kill a man.

Still today.

There's a world I can't even write about or share.

Once that door closes behind you, that's sacrosanct.

Yes, gendered spaces like that still exist.

And I never made no promise or swore an oath.

But that's just how it still goes.

Are you really looking for a definitive answer? Why not look for the Holy Grail instead?

Honestly, as a woman, I notice that men do a lot more jaw-jacking on the job then women do, but this has been only my experience, and thus, only heresay from one person out of 7.5 billion.

I think everybody likes to talk, and if you're around friends and family and you feel free to talk, you will....and what better conversations than juicy gossip? Nobody's a saint here, we all do it, men AND women.

Now, if you want to know who's meaner and more vicious during a gossip session, I gotta go with the women. They can slice and dice others while smiling and saying "Well, bless your lil' heart".

But anyway overheard.
Two buddies working out, and they come into the locker-room:

"Is the satellite TV working?"
"No does it look like it's working? So stop asking stupid questions."
"There's no such thing as a stupid question. Your face looks stupid".

Or worse:

White employee: "Stop leaving stuff all the place for people to fall over".
Black employee: "You're just saying that because I'm a black man".
White employee: "No if you were a white man I'd tell you the same. You're a bit 'loskop' (careless)".

I thought, uh-oh, here comes a major racial incident.

But then I could see they were both smiling and just gunning each other.

I think women are far more vicious than men at the moment.
With their feminism and politics.

Men are having a laugh, but they take it all so seriously.

a reply to: DBCowboy

Oh right.
Mem gossip in bed. Lol

My ex was a real gossip. Always looking out the front window if he heard the neighbours make a noise. I kept calling him mrs kraititz that nosey old woman on bewitched. The blinds were permanently bent from where he would stick his fat fingers peeking through them.

a reply to: halfoldman

Although stereotyping often leaves statistically relevant demographies outside the sphere of reference, I understand what you are talking about, despite having spent little time in a locker room since proper adulthood.

My male friends can be quite full of bravado, unwilling to communicate deeper concepts and feelings unless the correct setting is involved. Normally, one has to be utterly alone with them, in order for them to share or respond to such things. But when they do... They do with style.

My husband gossips a LOT. He also spends a large a mount of time on the phone, and has crowded me out of the closet with his dammned shoe collection. The stereotype has some holes in it.

I noticed that in our town, it seems to be the men who gossip the most. I hate gossip so end up refusing to stop and chat with them for that reason. My husband has started to not tell me his gossip, because I tend to chide him for it.

Now, I don't know if it is just this area for some reason, or if it is the french culture, or what, but there are other correlations I note- like that in this town, the women work longer hours, often for higher salaries, than the men.
You get men driving neat cars their wives bought for them, having time to do sports like bicycling, and spend lots of time socializing.

My husband works long hours, but he has a job that is not difficult, and like the other men here, he does NO housework, cooking, childcare... our kids are grown now, but I don't think he ever gave a bottle or changed a diaper- even with three kids. This is typical here. The women are basically too busy to gossip, they have too many serious responsibilities to risk believing very dubious information about others and events in the area.

I have witnessed first hand the men talk in a group about how shameful it is when a woman in the community is not employed outside the home ("Oh he must be so ashamed of her! She does nothing! She is worth nothing!")
Even though some of them speaking are unemployed themselves!!!

It is really weird, it's like a mirror of the fifties : reversed.


For one, I think gossip is a natural and necessary part of communities.
It is how the community discusses and agrees upon the ethics of their community- what is good and bad, socially acceptable and not. These ethics are communicated to the children from the time they are young, both directly and indirectly. So it is important, for the cohesion of the community, that all the adults be on the same page in this.

When the men have little contact with the small children (as in the fifties in the US) it was more the women who did this.

I suspect that the reason men are doing it here is that women, though they be doing much of the household work, are actually so busy they are involved in organizing, cooking, managing.... but they don't actually spend much of what we call "quality" time with children. They have a "nounou" caretaker at four months, because she goes back to work, they start public school between two and three years. The mom comes home and is too busy to talk with the kids- the dad, however, has the time to sit and talk with them, to play with them, to punish or reward them. They end up passing along the local ethics more than the women.

So I suspect that is what actually determines who does the gossiping- not anything genetic in origin. It depends upon the culture.


I get bothered by how often the guys claim women in the community are secret nymphos having sex with everyone in the barn... with all the moral outrage, there seems to be a large part of wishful fantasizing.

Women gossip & backstab each other in the process.

Men embellish brags & boasts.

It doesn't get more clear than that

I actually found this Post really ... humorous.

I have never gossiped, i hate people who gossip because most people who gossip are extrovert and have nothing better to do than complain to every tom dick and harry about how deprived their lives are.

So don't try to gossip to me about your useless crap because... I DON'T CARE... i'll shun you, and wring you out to dry then tell you to grow the 'f'ck' up.

High School ended a long time ago, time to be an Adult now.

Just Sayin....