There's an issue that needs to be addressed that I don't think has gotten enough attention: girl-on-girl hate and violence. We often discuss the problems with men directing violence against women, but what about the increasing occurrences of females directing violence against other females?? I think this problem has always been around under the surface, but lately it's becoming a wide-out-in-the-open problem. Ask anyone who has ever been a schoolteacher, and I'm sure they will tell you they have seen this firsthand. I saw it during the brief time when I was a schoolteacher, and I experienced it myself when I was in college. It seems that young girls are carrying more and more insecurity and anger these days, and they are all too eager to direct this insecurity and anger towards each other by calling each other "whores", "sluts" "bitches", and "ugly" instead of seeking out the roots of their feelings.
One example that comes to mind is the news stories that were on TV awhile back of girls in different schools across the country getting into nasty physical fights with each other over the pettiest of issues and then posting the videos of their beat-downs on the internet. Another good example comes from my own experiences. When I was in college, a girl whom I considered a friend suddenly turned on me with a vengeance. Out of nowhere, she suddenly began calling me an "anorexic UGLY whore with a loose cootch", "a disgusting slut that doesn't deserve to live", and a "fat whore with cellulite thighs" (how one can be both anorexic and fat is a mystery to me). I received anonymous death threats from her, I received fake instant messages from her pretending to be boys telling me how I was "so ugly that the sight of me made them sick", and she even went as far as to offer boys on campus sexual favors in exchange for having them send me emails telling me how ugly I was. (Doesn't that count as prostitution???) She seemed to obsess over insisting how ugly I was and how no boy wanted me. No matter how much I ignored her or tried to reason with her, this hatred towards me went on for years. It culminated with her stealing my grandfather's obituary photo from the newspaper a week after he died and using it to make a fake MySpace profile of him, using his full name AND including the names of a few of my other family members and posting slander all over it about how he was burning in hell for having had sex with all of his grandchildren, including his infant grandchild. She then used the imposter MySpace profile to send messages to my younger brother asking him, "Why did you move away to another state? Is it because your Grandpa *name omitted* touched you? Don't you want the world to know that he was a sick child molester who was balls-deep in your whore sister's ass?" Anyway, I'll spare you the extra gruesome details. But my point is, what causes girls to be so hateful and violent towards one another? Here we are lamenting over the way that men treat us, and then we go and treat each other the exact same way if not worse!! I think there are some very troubled young girls and women in our society today, and we need to begin taking a close look at the underlying issues that are causing such competition among girls. (And I use the word competition, because I think that is quite possibly what is fueling this animosity. Why else would a girl go to such lengths to make another girl believe that she is "ugly" and that the boys don't like her?) Men can be cruel, but women can definitely be A LOT crueler...to some scary extremes!! How can we expect the men to treat us with respect if we are already treating each other 10 times worse??
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Quick hit... quite often I have seen female-female animosity dismissed as a result of teh patriarchy, almost like women are not naturally capable of being mean without men.
I don't think it's that women aren't capable of being mean or hating each other without men. It's that a lot of times there's hatred between women born of superficial competition and competition for male attention, and that's the result of our culture's patriarchy, and it's women contributing negatively to our culture's patriarchy.
Yes. This is what I think about when mothers and vocal proponents of the exact same horrible traditions for their daughters that themselves were subjected to.
But anyway, as far as female on female violence, it deserves attention for sure. But I think one thing that stands out is that we really do seem to celebrate male violence in our culture and sometimes I feel like people mourn the loss of it; and that makes it seem like a more formidable problem to go after.
I've talked to a lot of guy friends from my generation about this and they actually felt emasculated growing up because they were not allowed to fight. They longed for "the days" when boys could just go out back, have a brawl and then supposedly all would be settled.
Also one guy told a story about allowing his girlfriend keep him from joining another boy in a fight against some other boys. So his friend fought alone and wound up in the hospital. The guy said the guilt haunts him to this day because he should have been there. Nothing about telling an adult or getting his friend out of the predicament--but that he should have been there to fight too and wishes that he had wound up in the hospital instead.
These are the types of things that I think have simply been explored more with male violence. There seems to be a lot of camaraderie around it too with the military being sort of one end of the spectrum.
So I sort of have a grasp of the psychology. With women, I really don't know. I have some ideas but I haven't had the experience to talk to gals about violence in such a way. But there is this machismo around it in our culture that is really off putting when trying to understand the framing of violence.
"There seems to be a lot of camaraderie around it too with the military being sort of one end of the spectrum."
Because there is. You can see it in nonhuman primates as well...
This assumes that the only thing that women compete over is men. Yet this type of behavior can manifest itself in any type of competition, even where there is none.
The problem is that they do not have a healthy outlook on competition, that they've never seen consequences for their actions and they've largely been given a pass. The problem is not that two people are competing for something. There will always be competitions the issue is whether or not people can engage in them in a healthy manner.
"Even where there is none" sounds the same as "superficial competition" to me. And if women's prescribed roles are inherently superficial, or viewed as superficial by society, they'll have nothing else to compete over except the superficial.
Because there have never been women who have competed with each other for a spot in medical school, competed with each other over a position on a sports team, or in any other aspect of life other than over men?
That is complete an utter nonsense.
OK, first of all, I think you're misunderstanding both me and MarySophia. "Superficial competition and competition for male attention" are TWO THINGS. Women compete over men AS WELL AS over superficial things. For example, some women compete over minute details of parenthood (I'm a better mom because I... breastfeed, drive an SUV, enroll my kids in more extracurriculars, etc). Some compete over who looks the best (which is partially competition over men, but not entirely).
Secondly, participation in med school and sports teams are not traditionally women's roles. Those are things feminists had to fight to be able to do, so it doesn't fit neatly into the patriarchal structure that I'm talking about. Even so, male-dominated pursuits are often framed as being more frivolous when women do it. IIRC during Wimbledon this year, three of the world's top five female players didn't get to play on the center court because they weren't sexy enough. Other women, some sitting low in the top 40-60, played center court because they were prettier (dubbed "Battle of the Babes"). It isn't rare for TPTB to center women's sports on looks rather than athleticism. In the Olympics, women vollyball players have to wear uncomfortable, performance-hindering bikinis instead of t-shirts and shorts like the male players wear, and the coverage focuses again on their bodies and not their skills. In the workplace, almost every variety of woman-woman competition or disagreement is compared to a "catfight" at some time or another, no matter how mature or legitimate. These things aren't inherently frivolous, but they're viewed that way because they're being done by women.
Read, *then* respond.
I didn't mean to imply that women only compete over was men. First of all, I don't think competing with should or does always lead to hate. Secondly, my first line was meant to state that women hate each other over other things, but it's when we hate each other because one is thinner, or prettier, or gets male attention, that it is part of patriarchy.
I think part of the problem is that it isn't considered acceptable for women to be physically violent to each other, so instead there is a kind of passive-aggressive cattiness that becomes emotionally violent instead. There is, however, a long standing tradition of men taking out their aggressions violently on each other, which has worked its way into cultural motifs and entertainment. But with the growth of violence supposedly as entertainment has come a resulting impact on women that is neither completely, traditionally "feminine" nor "masculine".
I'm not sure I'm following this. Female-on-female violence is of course a problem, and is of course pervasive- just like male-on-male violence. Male violence against women gets more attention in feminist circles because it displays undesirable cultural values. However, of course all violence is an issue.
Male violence against women gets more attention in feminist circles because it displays undesirable cultural values.
I don't buy that argument. It rarely displays a cultural value, quite the opposite shows something which is almost universally condemned by society.
The fact that female->female violence and female->male violence is not addressed is far more indicative of the cultural values at play. Particularly the view that women can't fully engage in criminal acts. The same cultural values which results in women being far less likely to be convicted, and when they are convicted, far more likely to receive a lenient sentence.
Don't forget same sex DV/IPV
http://www.lambda.org/DV_background.htm
Suzana Rose, Ph.D of National Violence Against Women Prevention Research Center, University of Missouri at St. Louis, reports
"Sexual abuse by a woman partner has been reported by up to 50% of lesbians (12)."
"Psychological abuse has been reported as occurring at least one time by 24% to 90% of lesbians (1,5,6,11,14)."
http://www.musc.edu/vawprevention/lesbianrx/factsheet.shtml
Research with males and females find rates of abuse comparable to that in heterosexual couples, suggesting more than hetero gender dynamics at work. The nature of the abuse makes it difficult to report, and the problem is often ignored even among women's groups, due to some common myths about sexism and member of the LGBTQQ community, such as a woman wouldn't do that to another.
Also see the pdf online for "Domestic Violence in Lesbian, Gay, Transgender, and Bisexual Communities Trainers Manual" by The NYS Office for the Prevention of Domestic Violence
My friend Shannon thinks it's because women have traditionally not been allowed to compete for jobs or office or athletically or in any way on their own merits, but have only been allowed to compete for men. Thus the backstabbing, undermining tendency to tear down each other in the eyes of men
(once again, I did not read Sartre and de Beauvoir to not pretentiously drop into conversations)
Check it... This goes back to Simone de Beauvoir 's The Second Sex* and female narcissism.
Even though de Beauvoir never wrote that females are existentially inferior, the implications of her writing are clear... she viewed women as existentially inferior to men
There are inanimate objects (aka being-in-itself) like rocks, and then there are conscious objects, (aka being-for-itself) like people. One way a conscious object can affirm the fact it is conscious is to use another object as a inanimate object (like a person uses a hammer).
An even more profound declaration of
consciousness is to use another consciousness (like a person uses a person like a hammer) for your own purposes.
So, since men are more capable of using other beings as objects due to their increased physicality** (assault, rape) they are more capable of realizing themselves existentially.
Women, being less capable as acting existentailly, act as objects to get men to do what they want. This reliance of men to realize their own goals leads to female narcissism (you have to make yourself pretty to make a man do what you want, which leads to narcissism)
So when women back stab, they are acting as objects that devalue the value of other non-conscious female objects.
So... Shannon seems to limit female behavior to tradition, de Beauvoir takes it a huge jump forward and (implicitly) links female narcissism to female existential inferiority.
*One of my favorite quotes about reading source documents comes from Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations..."Only one person has read the whole thing... and they are lying. But trust me...
**Many second-rate philosophical historians say de Beauvoir adopted Sartre existent philosophy whole cloth... I think that is garbage... de Beauvoir clearly thinks that the ability to use a conscious object as a being-in-itself determines existential act while Sartre believed that the ability to attempt to use a conscious being as an object was the determining factor of an existential act.
So a person today, who has all manner of benefits and opportunities is allowed to be a bastard because twenty years before they were born they would not have had these benefits? Or is it because a criminal might do something to them, therefore they get to victimize others?
It sounds to me like a poor excuse, and I have never met anyone who felt that was a reasonable justification for their actions. It seems to me far more likely that they do it because it gets them what they want and they've never been called out on it. A rational response to their situation and their own lack of empathy.
Men can be cruel, but women can definitely be A LOT crueler...to some scary extremes
You're either giving women too much credit, or men not enough credit. Which is it? For example in the news lately there was a poor dude hog tied and put in an animal pen with dog(?)shit as part of a military haze...And there were some male firefighters harassing females using sick psychological tactics along the level of the things the gal did to you in your story.
mmmm, I was gonna say the same thing about that line too.
Woman on women violence is a problem for certain, and should be addressed like all violence, but I think it's a mistake to say that women can be A LOT crueler.
Some women are crueler than most men, some men are crueler than most women. I don't think the capacity for that kind of thing has a lot to do with gender.
The girl in the OP's story was horrible, but I hear stories about ppl of all genders doing disturbing stuff like that.
Overall, I just dislike the idea of comparing levels of cruelty between genders rather than between individuals.
you are so right. girls have been way nastier to me than guys, and it gets dismissed as "normal" teen girl behavior. WTF?
There is some research out there that states, for whatever reason, females develop emotional intelligence earlier than their male counterparts, and most women have a higher emotional intelligence than their male counterparts.
Which can be a good thing, or, in the case of emotional violence, a bad thing.
If you accept the above as true, even provisionally for the sake of conversation, you start to add some structure to the conversation of girl-on-girl violence.
Do women have a leg up when it comes to emotional violence, just as men do when it comes to physical violence?
And are they more willing to use that advantage?
Are women more 'nasty' while men are more coldly indifferent?
P.S. It is another conversation all together whether this is a nature or nurture phenom.