That's an interesting question! I think Emily Fox Seaton is right, we're expected to "be nice" - culturally (at least in the US?) women are expected to not cause conflict and to get along, to smooth things over.

So, even if you dislike someone intensely, there's a veneer of politeness, maybe?

There's a book by Deborah Tannen on gender difference in communication (very interesting, well worth the read! I think it's "You Just Don't Understand!")

She makes the point that (again, for people in the US) - men and women are operating with very, very different base assumptions.

She says that we all have two competing social needs - independence and connection, and we're like porcupines in the cold. We need connection, so we huddle together - but then it's prickly and we want independence, so we spread out (and back and forth).

Men tend to value "independence" more, and women "connection" more.

She gives so many really great examples of how men, in conversations, will tend to make themselves "stand out" - they're essentially competing for attention and jockeying for position, and will play UP differences between themselves. Whereas, women will DOWNPLAY their differences to not stand out, to sort of equalize everyone in the group and create harmony.

Examples are things like: men tend to tell more jokes (standing out, getting attention), talk for longer than women, and my favorite... when she does talks, the men tend to ask questions that are more about pointing out how she's wrong (and show how smart they are), versus women who ask questions that support her and give her the chance to discuss her work more!!!

It's absolutely fascinating to me. And weird, and frustrating!

What was interesting - I used to have a really close guy friend who loved to talk about this stuff (communication, self-improvement, etc). I let him borrow my copy of the book - and we both had the same reaction, "Huh! I had NO IDEA the other gender thinks this way!" - granted we both in our 20s at the time, but we both thought that what she wrote about our own gender sounded correct, but literally had no idea about the other gender. That was a fun discussion

It's interesting, anyway!