Innocent
Banned
The methods used by female bullies have been called indirect aggression, relational aggression, social exclusion tactics, and informational warfare. The object of this behaviour is to gain gratification by claiming power in ways which are not overt and can’t be addressed. Whereas boys show aggression and establish their power status most usually by demonstrations of physical prowess, girls secrete theirs through exchanges of confidences, passing information through gossiping, keeping and betraying secrets, and analysing and passing judgement on others’ actions. There are anthropological and cultural reasons why this is so, but these are buried, or should be, in tribal history. The covert nature of this behaviour means that it can be subverted by those who are gifted with an understanding of the process, for their own purposes. These are the female bullies – insecure but shrewd tacticians whose aims are short-term and who place strategy before empathy. They have cold cognition, but little emotional investment in anything but their own security.
• Girls are more socially adept than boys at an early age, and show superior skills in communication. They form sophisticated and tightly-knit friendship groups, and their identity is based on, and verified by their acceptance in their group. When their position is threatened within that group, it can have a devastating effect on their self-belief, as it strikes at those very skills on which they pride themselves.
• 'Bullying' was once seen as 'boys will be boys' and that message has now been discredited. But we haven't yet thought about, and worked out how to deal with the less physical and more sophisticated ways in which girls and women can exclude each others, socially, and are apt to believe that this is just a 'falling out' – 'girls will be bitches'?? How reductive is that?
• There has been no major research in the UK on social exclusion and relational aggression as a form of bullying or harassment or abuse. The YWCA called on the government last year to set up a working party to investigate some initial and small-scale research which points very clearly to this existence of this covert form of peer-group aggression in schools, but it happens in the workplace, too.
• Failing to recognise and publicise the forms that feminine aggression takes, and the bearing that this has on our lives is unhelpful for all of us. Empowering women starts with understanding the mechanics of female behaviour, and the ways in which we play out our power games, which would give us a chance to confront our rationale. We must now establish real gender equality by accounting the destructive and secretive aggressive behaviour of girls, and asking why this happens and how it happens and why we allow it to. Girls and women are more frequently targeted than boys in bullying, harassment and abuse. This is because, unlike most boys, we’re targeted by both genders. Should we be doing this to ourselves? Why don’t we just admit that we’re as capable of aggression as men? Why is anger and its associated emotional responses, the only gendered emotion?
• Girls are more socially adept than boys at an early age, and show superior skills in communication. They form sophisticated and tightly-knit friendship groups, and their identity is based on, and verified by their acceptance in their group. When their position is threatened within that group, it can have a devastating effect on their self-belief, as it strikes at those very skills on which they pride themselves.
• 'Bullying' was once seen as 'boys will be boys' and that message has now been discredited. But we haven't yet thought about, and worked out how to deal with the less physical and more sophisticated ways in which girls and women can exclude each others, socially, and are apt to believe that this is just a 'falling out' – 'girls will be bitches'?? How reductive is that?
• There has been no major research in the UK on social exclusion and relational aggression as a form of bullying or harassment or abuse. The YWCA called on the government last year to set up a working party to investigate some initial and small-scale research which points very clearly to this existence of this covert form of peer-group aggression in schools, but it happens in the workplace, too.
• Failing to recognise and publicise the forms that feminine aggression takes, and the bearing that this has on our lives is unhelpful for all of us. Empowering women starts with understanding the mechanics of female behaviour, and the ways in which we play out our power games, which would give us a chance to confront our rationale. We must now establish real gender equality by accounting the destructive and secretive aggressive behaviour of girls, and asking why this happens and how it happens and why we allow it to. Girls and women are more frequently targeted than boys in bullying, harassment and abuse. This is because, unlike most boys, we’re targeted by both genders. Should we be doing this to ourselves? Why don’t we just admit that we’re as capable of aggression as men? Why is anger and its associated emotional responses, the only gendered emotion?
