This headline appeared in the Oregonian on Wednesday, February 14, 2007:
As violence among girls loses stigma, schools see rise in problem
When I saw this headline, the first thing that came to my mind--followed by a horde of other things--was, "How out of touch are these people, anyway?" The article addresses the issue of increased physical violence between girls in schools, but like so many analyses of this issue, confuses the tip of the iceberg for the whole thing.
Some background: Historically, girls and women have been taught that they must always be nice to other people. (Note that, in this case, "nice" is not strictly synonymous with "kind.") This pressure to avoid direct confrontation has led vicious and rampant passive and relational forms of aggression, particularly among young women. These forms of aggression, in which the aggressor--often a close friend of the victim--wields relational power to diminish the social standing of the victim, either to punish her for some real or perceived transgression, or to achieve higher social status by pushing her lower in a given social hierarchy. Long- and short-term effects on the victim can include feelings of inadequacy, trouble maintaining relationships, inability to trust others, feelings of alienation, deviant or promiscuous sexual behavior, depression, and in severe cases, even suicide. Sadly, as this type of violence is difficult for other people to detect and as the most dangerous perpetrators usually have the most acute social skills, these incidents have been widely unnoticed and unpunished in schools and other institutional situations.
Contrast this with young male relationships. When boys have a disagreement, they settle it, more often than do girls, using physical violence. Schools have historically taken a hard line against physical violence. It is in many ways, however, less damaging to the victims than relational aggression; in fact, I know countless boys who, having had a vicious physical fight with another boy, consider the disagreement settled and continue their friendship with no hard feelings. Case in point: When David Bowie stole his best friend's girlfriend at age 14, the friend, in his anger, put out one of Bowie's eyes. The two are close friends to this day.
I'm not strictly advocating physical violence, but simply pointing out that it might be a step up from relational aggression as a way for girls to settle their differences. Ultimately, of course, the goal is to teach all students, male or female, the importance of verbal conflict management. That, however, is a learned skill, and while children are learning it, they can more easily bear physical bruises than the emotional scars of malicious social ostracization.
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This is a well-written, thoughtful and thought-provoking argument. I'm subscribing to your blog.
Being a boy the relationships that high school girls and young women keep always baffled me. I saw the violence and the viciousness, but nothing could be done. The administration can't be alerted to the problem because it is a word against word situation and the necessary veneer of friendship has to be maintained so it can't be dealt with directly.
It seems to me that part of the problem is women seem to compete with eachother and men seem to compete for a prize. Men have their eyes on the goal and women have their eyes on the competition. Don't believe me? Just watch any mulit-partner dating show. When it is a couple women and one man the women more often than not almost ignore the man and attack the other women. With the opposite situation the men will take little digs at each other, but also focus on the woman. If they are competing directly with eachother it is to get closer to the woman, not just knock the other guys down.
Guys also generally don't hold grudges as long and don't continue to associate with people who piss them off, where as girls will hang out with people they don't like at all for status.
Res ipsa loquitur.
memor mori, mahalo.