Girls Are Horrible!

(It strikes me that this topic might well strike a nerve. Please please don't feel obliged, if so, to dredge up any of your bad experiences to quench my voyeuristic interest.)

There's a card playing game based on this concept... it's called Lunch Money.

I know the guy who created Lunch Money! Many of my good friends from high school helped play-test it. I've got it somewhere around the house...

When I was a fourth grader there was a group of sixth grade girls who tormented me. Once they gave me a bag of dog food and they would chase me around the neighborhood on their bikes yelling insults. My mother finally intervened and spoke to the school principal who had us all in for a conference. I can't say it helped much.

I don't think this is anything new. It seems exactly like what occurred when I was at high school, and what occurs at every large institution involving children up to the age of 16. It's totally ridiculous to think you can throw hundreds of children together, without any other age group to moderate them, and expect the results to be socially acceptable. Why does no-one ever say this?

To me, it's obvious that the problem isn't the children, but the idea of the modern school. There's no way you'll be able to train children not to bully without placing them alongside older people who can model better behaviour for them.

Maybe this occurs to me because I like old people.

Faddish media angle - I think you're right there - i.e. 'Bad Girls' TV programme - maybe there's always been this prurient interest in 'naughty girls': Willy's instructions to Colette about how turn of the century school girls behaved, 50s 'educational' films, 60s drop- out media ('Go Ask Alice'), etc, etc.

The awful thing is, these people think they're 'exposing the truth', when this 'brutal reality' genre is caught up in exactly the same painful myths as the 'conservative' media.

For example: sure, I was tortured by other girls, but I also received a deeply physical PLATONIC affection that boys totally miss out on. This very reassuring physical affection can actually be quite 'weird' in social terms.

I was watching a super-realist documentary about an Australian small town the other night; everyone interviewed was going nowhere. The only redeeming feature was the bond between two thirteen year old girls, whose lives were shit - I mean, they'd lost their virginity at twelve - but they lay on the bed together touching each other's feet - nothing sexual - this is the kind of thing that you can't talk about.

Maryannae watched Cunamulla - one of the girls is now suing the filmmaker...

Hmm - girls used to have a fondness for kicking me in the balls...it never stopped me from tweaking their bra straps though...

Girls are awful to each other. This is an upetting truth that should be acknowledged. Mayann seems to be saying (? I'm not sure I understood) that the people acknowledging this are ignoring, or possibly jeopardising the good relationships that girls share.

I don't think that's the case. Surely they can point out that some girl-girl interactions are nasty and destructive without making out that they all are.

The best thing I remember about being a school girl was the friendships I made, but it would've been nice for someone in authority to say "yes the majority of the people you are forced to associate with are psychotic little bitches, just try and avoid them" instead of having to work this out myself through painful experience while authority figures suggested I was lacking because I "didn't fit in".

So I say this topic should be more widely discussed in schools and by children especially.

mate, I'm not saying that there's anything that's off limits to discussion, incl. girl-girl cruelty, i'm saying nothing SHOULD be off limits to discussion, including nice friendly platonic stuff that bores everyone to death

good point re authority figures actually acknowledging that psychotic behaviour exists, though, cobber. Trouble is, they get off on the same types of torture themselves I guess.

Yeah, it was Cunnamulla, thanks for reminding me.

I mean, check out the ways that people are punished at high school. Mostly by ridicule (tell the class what you were saying, stand up, stand at the back of the room, sounds fascinating etc) or exclusion (detention, expulsion.) Just like what the 12 year old girls do to each other.

I guess the difference is, the 12 year old girls are punishing each other for things you don't recognise as 'crimes.'

But you know, I got screamed at and made to walk home by a teacher cause I argued with him about making another kid cry, and ridiculed by a teacher for reading a certain poet in science class cause I'd finished. I don't mean poor me, I mean, it's going on at every level and the kids copy the teachers.

So maybe my idea about exposing kids to 'adult influence' is pretty lame.

It's interesting that when you don't resort to physical punishment (as the girls don't, and as schools no longer do), there's a certain array of common tactics you use to keep people in line. Or is that just obvious?

It should all be based around money, like it is when you're an adult. Do your mindnumbing repetitive job all day, kids, and when you get home we'll have a wide screen TV with DVD playing Sex and the City waiting for you. If you don't behave, you'll have to ... go to the public library or something.

Its frustrating because education is so often promoted as the big solution to all sorts of social and environmental ills, but actually most people remember education as this horrible time they spent trying to figure out what the cool skirt length was, how much hair spray was too much etc.

Maybe it'd be better to cancel school from about 12 to 17 and let everyone work all that stuff out while doing mindless jobs and watching Sex and the City on tv, and then reconvene it when they've got to an age to start wondering if that's all there is to life. Those who are happy to believe that's all there is to life wouldn't have to go back.

A new lower class sedated by tv. Hurrah!

why do ideas often start out sounding good and equitable and turn out to be full of hidden elitism and nastiness?

Maybe its because I'm a girl and I learnt too well the lessons of the playground. "let's play ponies?"

I've seen all those articles and toyed with the idea of writing one; it seems the girls' behaviour has become more pronounced since I was in Junior High (shudder). They were talking about one Queen Bee making rules that other girls *have* to follow or they get the silent treatment, abusive text messages and the like. The bullying always took forms that meant it was one girl's word against the other's when discipline came into play.

I had a very rough time at Junior High simply because a group of girls decided to take against me and I refused to give them 'respect' when cornered and asked to do so. Me: 'what for? You're not smart, you can't dress for shit, you talk about boring things, you can't even go to the toilet by yourselves and I guarantee within two years you'll have all pressured each other to have sex with some guy who's going to work in a gas station for the rest of his life. And you threaten to hit me all the time but never actually do it. So, respect for what?'

But like some people have said upthread, middle schools are tops for creepy adults running around demanding unearned respect from the kids they're in charge of and possibly the girls just imitate it. But I wasn't much different to the adults: 'Respect for what? Earn some.'

I can think of about 3 teachers I had EVER who didn't have serious control/respect/authority issues which resulted in major losing of the plot (and unfair decisions, or punishments) several times a year. Aswell as this, every school has a significant number of teachers who display a pretty open contempt for their job and their pupils. It's got to transfer somewhere.

I must say girl on girl bullying is something I know nothing about, having gone to an all boys school.

whenever I read articles like the one linked to above, I'm struck by the pettiness of the bullyers. Having some stupid rule where you won't talk to someone who doesn't wear a skirt on fridays - well that's brilliant, isn't it? You're always better off not having stupid friends like that, it encourages you to listen to the Smiths or Belle & Sebastian, and basically you'll be all the better for it in later life.

I've not come across anything exactly like what's in the article, but the ridicule/exclusion model is perfectly in place, and I just assumed everyone used it, not just girls. It probably depends on who you hang out with... I am the sort to sit down, shut up, and give the least amount of effort possible to something that is idiotic to avoid useless wastes of energy (social rules, schoolwork, etc.), and my friends are generally like this too.

The point about teachers doing the exact same thing is true. It goes for most adults. And then they go whine about kids doing it to each other, damn hypocrites.

Yesterday afternoon both girls were drying my hair for a while. First one started, the one with the pale pale skin and matte eyes like thumbprints who should be called Amanda. Then the other one with the pouty expression, narrow shoulders, and slight pretty figure. She should be called Ariana. I had this uncontrollable urge to giggle, probably from embarrassment at the attention I was receiving. But they were just doing their work. Using their hands instead of brushes. Moving nonstop.