Yes, indeed there is. Back in the 60s, the joke went something like "what are the most common words spoken on the job by a liberal arts graduate?" Answer: "Do you want fries with that?"
With only a 2 year associate degree from a community college, I'm convinced it's easier for me to stay employed at good pay than so many I know with advanced degrees, especially those with degrees in the humanities instead of technology. Overqualification is a very real problem and employers will not hire because they believe the highly degreed candidate is using their job as a stop gap until something better comes along. They prefer employees who have to stretch to qualify for the job since they believe the lower degreed candidate is "hungrier" and thus more likely to stay. I've had good paying jobs that "required" 4 year degrees for over 20 years now and rarely have much trouble finding them. Too many I know with advanced humanities degrees are in very poor paying jobs. So many ads I've seen requiring a masters in the social sciences pay $12K - $18K a year.
> well, I just have no clue about their world, where such a myth
> probably doesn't circulate.
I didn't see any of that exchange, but my guess is that none of those feminists had advanced degrees and they knew few who did.
> Disagreements among women, though, seem to be taken as an
> attack on someone's identity -- sense of self.
Yes, women seem more likely to take something personally than men do. But I've known many men who do and many women who don't, so it's not universal.
> (The Carol Gilligan, Mary Belenky et al. psychologists
> explain this in terms of girls being raised mostly by women,
> the difficulty of separation, etc.)
Growing up with the teasing of brothers, father, and other kids taught me how to hand it back and avoid taking things too personally. Reminds me of the female electrician I ran across while I was a phone installer. She was in tears because of the way the men on the construction site treated her. I told her she just had to laugh, tell the men what fools they were, and she'd be fine. But as long as they knew they could get her upset, they'd only increase their level of teasing. But she simply couldn't handle it and quit the job after only a few days.
I suspect the love of provoking a negative reaction *is* nearly universal amongst men. Like a cat with a mouse, they obviously get pleasure from it and think it's fun. I know of no women who do. Maybe it's hormonal.
--tully