How Girls Bully - How to help teach our daughters to protect themselves from girl violence

[Bonobo]

Recently, more and more cases of teen suicides spurred on by girl on girl violence have been in the news.
Anyone with teen daughters can tell you that girl on girl violence can be an insidious and highly destructive thing and can literally destroy people.

Unlike boy on boy violence which is usually characterized by a short incident that can just as quickly be resolved, girl on girl violence often involves deep psychological torment and bullying on a highly emotional level. It can be motivated by jealousy, desire for attention, feeling of dominance, competition or a way of rising in the girl's social pecking order.

Often it involves the practice of "slut shaming" in which girls who are perceived as making themselves too pretty or sometimes too "available" to boys are attacked.



It is important that men, as fathers, be involved in helping to teach our daughters that sexuality is a natural behavior and should not be something shameful. Neither is it helpful to just tell the victims that they are the unfortunate victims of girls who have simply internalized the twisted mentality of the Patriarchy. I think that it is harmful to perpetuate the idea that girl's private parts must be kept under lock and key to keep them from being soiled by dirty boys. Both boys and girls are sexual creatures and that, as long as sexuality is practiced responsibly, there is nothing wrong with it.

Here is a good start about girl on girl violence if you are interested in the issue and have a daughter (or friend or grandaughter, cousin, etc.) that may be experiencing it.

http://teenadvice.about.com/od/violencebullying/a/girlbullies.htm
http://childcare.about.com/cs/behaviors/a/meanness.htm
http://stephhicks68.hubpages.com/hub/Girl-Bullies

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[lumberjack_jeff]

1. Rates of teen suicide are far too high.

I think schools do a better job addressing bullying than they used to, but more is needed.

[4th law of robotics]

2. A timely post

Although boys kill themselves far more frequently than girls there are still too many girls killing themselves. And male bullying is usually pretty easily to identify and stop (we don't, but if we chose to it would be simple as it's typically overt and physical).

Female bullying is far more insidious. It's easy to break up a fist fight. How do you break up month/year long campaigns of psychological abuse that often never contain any physical component? Of course the first step would be to acknowledge that girls can be just as vicious and cruel as boys and that bullying isn't a male-only domain. This is something a large group of people have based their careers around denying. So that could be problematic.

Neither is it helpful to just tell the victims that they are the unfortunate victims of girls who have simply internalized the twisted mentality of the Patriarchy.

May as well blame demonic possession. Both are equally based in reality.