It is a problem that starts very young. I personally know a fifth grader who has so much stress from the "mean girls" at her school that the skin on her finger tips is falling off. She literally has to take steroids in attempts to grow the skin back. The school also failed to acknowledge the girl was having a problem at school until her father called. Her mother had called several times too, but they brushed her off as merely an over concerned mom. To me this is absolutely horrifying. What can schools, parents, and or teachers do to try and stop the maliciousness amongst girls, and why is the school sexist against mothers advocating for their children?
I would like to know what you guys think about this. Does this all boil down to gender divisions and what girls are taught to do? Is it innate; are girls just truly meaner than boys?
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I've actually thought about this too, and I fully agree. Girls do seem to be more malicious verbally (not all), while guys are more physical. However,guys tend to just do it for fun whereas the "drama" between girls sometimes goes to a much larger extent.
As for what is the root cause of this, I have no clue. Maybe, girls have more emotions than boys and have a need to express it.When they're upset, they can't let things "slide" as well as boys do.
Another possible reason is that for so many years girls have gotten away with bullying. When one thinks of bullying, the first image that comes to mind is that of a guy (not a girl). In the past, teachers only break up physical fights that happen between guys; they have no clue about the drama that's happening between girls. Since girls have been able to slip away with this, the problems have just grown. Only now are some schools and teachers starting to recognize this a serious problem.
Again, I think why girls are more meaner than guys just boils down to the emotional changes they have to endure through adolescence. This is just a possible reason. (I did not mean to offend any girls and if I did, I'm really sorry.)
8)
Don't worry Darrell, I think you're fine. This is kind of a touchy subject.
I agree, and I also think that girls are MUCH more subtle with bullying- and that's really what it is, bullying. For example, if you watch the movie "Mean Girls", you see a seemingly small but effective form of backstabbing (and I'm paraphrasing here): The 'popular' girls in the are walking down the hall and they see somebody they know.
To a girl's face: Ohmygod, I love your jeans!
After she's walked by: Those were the ugliest pants I've ever seen.
And of course, that's a lot less noticeable, then, say, a punch in the face.
I also think that if teenagers are supposedly 'angry at the world' or whatever, and girls mature faster and start earlier, then they're more angry/hurtful earlier? That could be a reason, when you develop.
I think that to some extend you guys are right, but we are stereotyping a little. We also have to take into account the nice people, what one considers bullying to be, how comfortable one is with that person, in which country/culture we are talking about, your upbringing etc.
Taylor, I don't know how comfortable that girl was with you, was she your friend or some random person that happened to look through your cell? Maybe she thought it was OK to look through your phone. Maybe it she didn't do that to hurt someone's feelings or to cause drama. I only know your point-of-view, it's important to look in her's as well.
It also depends on your mentality. If you look at negatives, then you will think about visciousness. If you look at the positives, you will appreciate that you are not like that person, or will acknowledge their problems. (DIvorced parents, healt problems, low self-esteem etc.)
I DO NOT think that Mean Girls is a good example for this. Movies tend to be VERY Stereotypical.
Taylor, this was a great pick! I've also recently been thinking about this. I noticed it alot in Middle School, and I see it in high school as well.
I have afew theories that I thought maybe could help explain this.
1. Girls have tightly nit friends. I think within groups of friends there is more room for...drawing conclusion (I'm not sure how to phrase this). When the smallest thing is said, girls draw the statement to a conclusion even if the comment was just meant as a joke.
2. Girls feel as if they have more to prove. I'm not sure where this would step from but I think just about anbody can say that girls pay more attention to fashion, how they look, etc..
3. Kinda going off of #2. Some girls may feel that if they don't have some of the necessities to (niciest shoes, coolest jeans) to survive in the "girl world" they feel insecure. Insecurity, can definately result in anger and fights.
4. I did some googling, and a website said that everything comes to our cave-living ancestors. Since males were hunters and faced life-death situations more often, they were forced to bond with eachother... or die. Females took on the motherly role and did the cooking, cleaning, and cared for the kids. There was no need for them to interact with one another Thus, such tight relationships did not form. Hence, females don't share the sense of comradeship with one another, as much as males do. I'm not saying that one gender isn't better friends with the other, just that it's different between them. The site says that it just isn't in female jeans to get along the ways males do.
We all have good and bad in us. It really comes down to what we choose to act upon that truly defines who we are. Are we someone that chooses to do bad or chooses to do good? Sometimes, some of us can't help it because we have never been taught right from wrong. As our experience grows, we learn right from wrong. We learn and we judge what is mean and what is nice. Sometimes, we judge whether or not someone is mean differently than others, though.
But why are girls supposedly "more vicious" than boys? Girls are more vicious in the sense that they gossip. And you have no idea how much I despise gossip. Although I really do not like when a girl talks behind another girl's back, I know that I do it too. In the back of my mind I know that doing something like that isn't right...then why do it? It seems that everyone needs to vent their feelings somehow. I think that most girls prefer doing so through hurtful actions and most of the time, words. Guys prefer more physical action like a punch or a shove. It's just something that is what it is. Why? Just an innate trait? Honestly...I have no idea.
Okay guys I love the comments, but to bring up another point, do you think it could possibly be genetic? Males produce testosterone, which has been proven to link between men and their more violent tendencies, so does estrogen make girls try to hurt others through words?
Well, I think girls tend to hurt emotionally while guys hurt physically. I mean, you have the typical stereotype of a bully: a male jerk who beats people up and takes their money. A girl bully is way different: someone who gossips excessively (not that everyone who gossips is a bully. i mean reallly mean gossiping, about stuff that probably isn't true.)It's someone who's a back stabber, someone who has no respect for other people's feelings and who is just malicious in general.
Say, for example, that there was a bat mitzvah that everyone in your grade was invited to except for two girls. obviously the person having the bat mitzvah wanted to make the other girls angry, for reasons like revenge or jealousy. obviously this kind of thing doesn't happen a lot, but it's a big example of something that girls are more likely to do than guys.
Well, i just started to read Darrell's post and realized i said pretty much the same thing. Whoops.
Wow, great comment. I TOTALLY believe it has to do with estrogen production, because (let's make this school-friendly, you know what i mean) produce more estrogen they tend to get snappier and meaner.
And Alex, the quote was
"Oh my god! I love your skirt! Where did you get it?"
Then later, "That was the ugliest f-ing skirt I've ever seen."
I think that girls and boys are equally mean; they just express it in different ways. I fell that boys tend to be a little more direct when it comes to being mean, whereas girls tend to be more subtle/passive in how they strike back, which probably does more damage emotionally, but in general, i think the intent is the same, but the way girls do it is more effective.
I guess since everyone has pretty much addressed the point that girls are meaner than guys...which we kinda are...I'll address the whole schools thing.
As I have noticed throughout my whole life being in schools, they aren't actually looking after you as much as they say they are. They will notice you when you bring attention to yourself and others. When girls are mean to eachother, most of the time it isn't to have a million people see how humiliated you are. Though that may happen every once and a while, that's the point. It happens so rarely to a huge extent that we think it is the only thing that happens. Girls are just downright mean to eachother, but it doesn't show. Everything is done in the shadows of life, basically. If someone is messing with your head, it can't be seen unless you tell someone and most people won't in fear of more to come.
Schools are looking at the exterior not the interior of people. As sad as it seems though, girls can't be stopped. Even if you just get us to the point where all we are doing is gossiping...that is still a powerful weapon. I guess girls will be girls and boys will be boys.
Girls are way more concerned with their image than guys. What other people think of them matters more to girls. I'm not saying that guys don't care, but girls spend MUCH more time thinking about it. For if their image is flawed, then they will be the hot topic of all the gossip around the school. That's not a situation that anyone wants to be in. This is kinda sad but true. I think that this issue also has a lot to do with the groups and stereotypes that people are categorized into, which is overally dislplayed in mean girls. I won't bore you by listing all the social groups, but each has their own traits and qualities. I'm not sure if this happens to anyone else, but often times when I tell people I'm in academy, they say things like "Whoah, you must be genious person!" When really this isn't the case at all. When people are judged by what group they are in, much anger can occur. This most definitley causes some of cattiness that girls have.
Alright, I agree with the comments all of you have made, but I also think we need to realize how authorities see the difference. Fistfights in school tend to result in suspension for all of the people directly involved. Verbal abuse is usually done away from adults so that the abuser can get the full effect on the abusee. Men typically preform physical brawls when conflict arises because the testosterone levels spike when high intensity action occurs. I might also add that it is proven that men enjoy watching the occasional fight due the the testosterone inside our blood. I have seen girls fight physically, in fact, I saw two freshman girls, I happend to know both, punch and wrestle each other in the hallway in front of the upper classmen cafeteria. Although, I happend to be at the scene before the punching started and I caught some verbal fighting. Men fight verbally too, but not to be sexist in any terms, we use words that challenge the other guy's honor. I would assume that girls say things to hurt for other reasons, but that is my lack of field expertise. Both girls and guys have an essence of meanness in them, the meanness is just expressed differently.
I've noticed I agree with a lot of the stuff that people are mentioning, and I think this was a really great post to bring up Taylor. I think that girls are just better at holding grudges. The term 'forgive and forget' doesn't usually apply to most of our situations, unless you're really tight friends with the person and/or it was a misunderstanding.
A couple of my guy friends (and I've heard it from other sources as well) say that guys lay out their issues with the other guy; they're pretty open about the fact that they're angry at someone. In fact, one of them said that you pretty much get in a fight and you're done. They just need that expelling of the energy and anger and they're best friends again.
Now, I'm definitely not trying to speak for all guys (because I'm not a guy myself, obviously) so if I said something that's not accurate feel free to correct me.
I think that girls feel like expressing their anger is unacceptable, and they just let it build up without saying anything directly to the person. I don't know many girls who will go up to another girl and say "I'm really really angry at you. You're being a total jerk." Even if they did, the situation STILL wouldn't get resolved, because every other girl in the area would have to get involved somehow and take sides. I don't know if its in our genetic code, but girls love to be involved and they find a way to connect themselves with any event. As far as I can tell, we all love drama. Maybe some of you don't love it in the sense that you crave it or anything (I hope not) but its pretty interesting what goes down and I know that I personally like to know at least whats going on.
It's definitely true that schools are more likely to respond to physical bullying than other kinds, which probably adds to the problem. People have talked about how boys are generally more physical than girls. But when school begins, they quickly learn that you simply cannot get away with punching anyone who makes you angry. Verbal attacks are harder for teachers to prevent and are often taken less seriously. This kind of bullying is almost encouraged: think how often young children are told to "use your words!"
On top of that, we don't really consider hurting someone emotionally to be as serious as hurting them physically. Imagine if someone was suspended for continually talking behind another student's back and making fun of them--it would sound ridiculous. Yet if one student punched another, suspension would be considered an appropriate punishment. When we decide how serious bullying is, the focus should be not on what the bully specifically does but how it hurts their victim.
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