Conference turris::womannotes-v2

I have a harder time with critisism from men than from women (contrary
to the article). I think this is because my father was much more critical,
and I had a harder time standing up to him than to my mother.

I also remember those games with friends - "I have a new best friend and it's
not you".  I think most of us grow out of that stage as we get older. 

Muggsie
    

    I FULLY AGREE that this happens! Probably too much. I know because it 
    happened to me in high school. To make a long and painful story short,
    my "best" friend got mad at me for some reason , which I can't figure,
    maybe she was jealous of something, and decided to tell everyone my
    most personal secrets *AND* made up plenty of her own. She was doing 
    this while pretending to still be  my friend. Needless to say I was
    very hurt and of course she had managed to blemish my reputation.
    This behavior, I believe now, is a byproduct of dysfunctional families.
    At the time this happened I started trusting NO ONE and it has (still)
    taken years for me to trust people again. I can count the number of
    people I truly trust on one hand (thumbs don't count!).
    Also,I think this behavior may have something to do with being brought up
    to beleive (as I was at the time) that you are 'nothing' without a man,
    so for her to get rid of some 'competition' was understandable to her
    way of thinking. This was many years ago and I hope that
    female-upbringing is changing. Thats just my opinion of why she could
    be so mean and hurtful.
                                                                          

    This archivist is at a loss to give pointers to anything on how
    girls/women exhibit negative behavior and how boys/men exhibit negative
    behavior, as in .0.
    
    John mentions things discussion in H_R and Psychology, but perhaps
    he's talking about CoDa, ACoA, and dysfunctional families - 
    
    If you can find where else this was discussed, please put in a pointer.
    
    -Jody
    

    Jody, John-
    
    Archival from =wn=V1: 
    
    -discussed this in topic 321, "Women who don't like other women?"
     
    -discussed positive aspects in topic 628, "Female bonding".
                         
    DougO

    
    	re -1
    
    	Actually, that's not true, as I've heard that those "extra large
    combs" that some of the Jr high and high school girls carry in
    their back pocket's can make very effective weapons. I've also heard
    that they're used as such, especially in the tougher, "inner city"
    schools.
    
    	Joe Jas
    

    Joe Jas,
    
    You mean in circumstances in which a boy would pull a switchblade
    or other knife?
    
    						Ann B.

Let me provide some background for why this topic interests me.  
To do so, I'll start with some real-life examples I'm familiar 
with:

EXAMPLE 1 - From my mother's generation:  In the midst of a major 
family battle, tempers flaring and emotions bared, mother turns 
to teen-age daughter (who is a recognized leader among her peers, 
makes excellent grades, is active in church and civic 
organizations, and shows every sign of becoming a responsible 
citizen), and declares, "You've never done _anything_ to make me 
proud of you."  (ZAP!)

EXAMPLE 2 - From my generation:  Mother of four nearly-adult 
children is finalizing a bitter divorce from their father.  
Custody is not an issue, although who will live with each parent 
is.  The two girls decide to stay with Mom; the two boys choose 
to move in with Dad.  Mom tells the boys, "You've made your 
choice, and you'll have to live with it.  You're not welcome in 
my house ever again."  (ZAP!)

EXAMPLE 3 - From my daughter's generation:  Two girls, good 
friends for the last six years, hold the top two positions in 
their high school graduating class.  As the lead shifts back and 
forth with each grading period, one of the girls starts telling 
her classmates and teachers that the other has cheated on major 
assignments and has turned in papers written by someone else.  
(ZAP!)

The zapper in each of these examples is normally a loving, 
caring, and sensitive individual, generally very careful about 
saying hurtful things.  Yet in a pressure situation, she has 
"gone for the jugular," when a more appropriate response would 
have expressed her hurt feelings while preserving the feelings of 
the zappee.  What happened?

I'd like to think that along with consciousness raising and 
assertiveness training, the women's movement has also taught us 
how to stand up for ourselves while allowing our opponents their 
own rights.  Historically, consciousness raising took place 
between examples one and two, yet in the second generation we're 
still seeing inappropriate (read ineffective) responses to 
conflict.  (Disclaimer time: I know; I've purposely chosen 
examples of inappropriate responses.  There are many possible 
examples of women making appropriate responses that could be 
offered.  __I'm not saying ALL women in EVERY instance respond 
inappropriately.__)

But I do know that too often to make me comfortable I see women 
responding inappropriately to conflict.  TOO OFTEN TO MAKE ME 
COMFORTABLE _I_ RESPOND INAPPROPRIATELY TO CONFLICT!  

(Another disclaimer:  My discussion so far has NOT used a male 
comparison.  I'm not saying men are any better at this than 
women.  I'm not saying they're worse.  I'm not being sexist by 
the omission.  I'm merely more interested AT THIS POINT in what 
women need to do to fight their battles more effectively.)

Your thoughts are welcome.
    
K.

P.S.  Regarding dysfunctional families, with the divorce rate for 
first-marriages now standing at 60%, and the rate for 
second-marriages even higher, it would appear to me that 
dysfunctional families are the type the majority of us are 
dealing with.  I personally don't want to use the excuse, "I came 
from a dysfunctional family," for my failures at home and at 
work.  I _do_ want to learn how to work through those less-than-
perfect experiences to become a functional human being today.
    

    From my experience as a teacher of preschool through 8th grade children
    in music classes, both boys and girls engage in all the nasty behaviors
    described in the base note.
    
    Boys are somewhat more likely to deck one another; girls are somewhat
    more likely to shift allegiances and form cliques.  But each sex
    has its way of forming a 'pecking order', especially in grades 3-8.
    I think many girls would like to express their anger more directly
    than they do, and I think that is the root of the perception in
    the basenote.   Girls are bombarded with messages that there are
    no socially acceptable ways to express anger or power.
                                    
    There are also a number of children of both sexes who won't fight or
    verbally abuse others.  Some are happy and just refuse to engage in
    petty competitiveness.  Others are quiet and fearful, or don't want to
    get into trouble. 
    
    Most boys *and* girls seem happiest when accepted by one or two friends,
    and desperately want to sit with/walk with/be in a group with someone
    they are comfortable with.  From grades 2-6, most seem to choose
    same-sex friends.  Sad to say, many children seem to instinctively exclude
    anyone who is different, especially children who don't seem to know
    what is going on, who don't share or play well together, or who
    look, sound or behave differently than others.

    The other night WONDER YEARS dealt with this issue.  I'm not a frequent
    watcher of the program so I don't remember all the names, but it
    seems that the boy who is the main character had broken up with
    a girl and was now very interested in her best friend.  She caught
    them making "eyes" at each other in class and told her friend all
    sorts of terrible things about him and things he'd said about other
    people.  She also told his best friend, and others, things he'd
    said about them when they were joking with each other.  Anyway,
    it brought back memories of growing up and the rotten things we
    did to each other....girls as well as boys.  
    
    I think it's part of the maturing process, or it was then ('50s
    - '60s) and we outgrew it. Today, it's acceptable for girls to partake
    in competitive sports and be on the boys team, which, in the long
    run will help alot of the competitiveness some women feel toward
    women.
    
    P.
    

	I've never experienced this with women or with men.  I
	think it's a myth (that women show this tendency more than men).

    i've noticed it in both, but more heavily among females.
    
    i liked the theory that girls hone their social skills while younger,
    while boys are more likely to be physically beating each other up.
    
    but of course, that is a gross sexist generalization, and nowadays
    anybody can punch out whoever s/he/it desires.
    
    
    
    ;^) ;^) ;^)
    
    jonathan
    
    oh cool, zulus ticket give-away on the radio...oops, wrong conference.

    Re .13, Unfortunately, I don't think it's a myth, Karen.  I wish
    it was, but I've seen too much of it.  When I was in school in the
    50s and 60s I noticed this type of behavior between girls, and with
    boys when they were dealing with girls.  Maybe because the boys
    realized it wasn't acceptable to just have a fight with a girl,
    they resorted to the same behavior when dealing with them.
    
    Also, as Holly said in .11, it isn't all kids.  When I read her
    line "There are also a number of children of both sexes who won't
    fight or verbally abuse others.  Some are happy and just refuse
    to engage in petty competitiveness.  Others are quiet and fearful...",
    I realized that to begin with, when I was in grade school, I was
    one of the quiet and fearful ones, one of the outsiders that kids
    who felt like being mean saw as easy targets.  But, I also realized
    that my daughter is one of the happy ones who just refuses to become
    involved in mean and petty behavior, and I'm really happy about
    that.  It seems like progress!
    
    One incident my daughter told me about last year, in the 8th grade,
    was when one of her best friends got "dumped" by a boy she was crazy
    about.  Melissa (my daughter) was friends with the boy, too, and
    continued to be.  Her girlfriend got very upset with her and called
    her a traitor to keep on being his friend, and told her that she
    didn't want Melissa to speak to him again!  Melissa told her that
    she thought that was silly, that he was a nice kid who just didn't
    want to date her anymore, and she was keeping him as a friend, and
    thought her girlfriend should, too.  She said she wasn't playing
    those games and thought they should all just be friends.  Her
    girlfriend didn't speak to her for 2 days, and then came back and
    told her that she had thought about it and that she thought melissa
    was right, and that she was sorry.  She also said to my daughter,
    "You're a really nice person, Melissa."  So, at least there are
    some teenage girls who don't want to play those mean games.
    
    I do think that just plain fighting is getting more common for girls
    now, too, though.  I think that's worse.  I'd rather deal with mental
    head games and mean words, than have somebody beat me up.  When
    my ex-boyfriends daughter went to high school in Marlboro, MA she
    came home with some pretty scary stories of tough girls ganging
    up on other girls and beating them up.  I don't ever remember that
    from school, but then I went to a very small school in the 60's.
     None of us were very tough (thank god)!
    
    Lorna
    

      Oh, I don't know about girls having an edge on evil words and
      social suicide. My husband managed to shred my self worth and
      crush my heart without ever laying a hand on me in anger. He knew
      how to use words like finely honed weapons. There were times I'd
      have prefered being hit. liesl

Anyone recall the ubiquitous law-school drama?  

A black male runs into the lecture hall at full speed, a while male 
follows him.  The while male pulls a knife, slashes at the black
male, then both run out of the hall. (Elapsed time = ~ 4 seconds)

As a finale, each class member writes an objective account of
what happened. 80% Report that the black male pulled the knife.

Gee, could this have anything to do with this topic?

 Meigs 

>    Note 501.12 

>    ... Today, it's acceptable for girls to partake
>    in competitive sports and be on the boys team, 

reword that last line?

     in competitive sports and be on the team, 
    

    To clarify....
    
    .....acceptable for girls to partake in competitive sports and be
    on teams that once were made up of only boys.
    
    Okay?
    
    P.
    

    Mike,
    
    In re "not paying attention or lying":  Most people are *terrible*
    eyewitnesses.  If I had to rely on the testimony of a minister
    with 20/20 vision, or that of a piece of painted metal the size
    of an "o", I'd go for the latter, every time.  (I've learned that
    I, too, am a terrible eyewitness, by the way.)
    
    The eyewitness sample I first learned about had two grad students
    rush into the lecture hall, and run around a bit.  One of them waves
    a banana.  The instructor claps his hands once, and the two
    `intruders' run out.  The most common report had three intruders,
    all of them masked (!), one or more of them armed (That's the
    banana.), and at least one had fired his gun (the handclap), perhaps
    several times!
    
    I have here a note telling me to find a book by Elizabeth Loftis,
    about eyewitness tests.  Maybe you'd like to try to remember to
    look for it too.
    
    							Ann B.

    Re .17, I'm not sure what this incident has to do with this topic.
    Just because a person remembers, that back in school, girls were
    more likely to play mean head games (such as excluding certain girls
    for shallow reasons or switching alliances for silly reasons) than
    were boys, who were more likely to just have fist fights over things,
    is not, to me, the same thing as people assuming that blacks commit
    more violence than whites.
    
    Lorna
    

I think the point being made is that we _all_ filter our information to fit our
expectations. Feminists, mysoginists, engineers, people. You name it.

Of course, it wouldn't hurt to have this reminder is every topic, though it
would chew up disk space.
	Mez

    Re .25, but does this mean that every observation or opinion that
    anybody ever makes is worthless, since afterall, the person is
    obviously subconsciously filtering the information to fit their
    expectations?  If this is always the case, then what is the sense
    of anybody ever discussing anything, either in notesfiles or in
    person?
    
    Lorna
    

    
    Lorna,
    
    I don't think that acknowledging the role our expecations play makes
    our observations worthless, but it does help to put them in
    perspective.  For example, as a white, middle-class woman, I know
    that I am influenced by MY OWN racism and classism.  To me this
    doesn't mean that I should stop trying to work on my racist and
    classist assumptions.  In fact, to me it means that I must often
    stop and ask myself hard questions.  Am I relating to this man
    differently because he is not white or to this woman because I think 
    she makes less money than I do?   I think it's much healthier for me 
    to acknowledge the ways that the filters of race and class color my 
    vision than to assume that I am capable of seeing how things "really are,"
    and that others' vision must be imperfect.
                
    Justine
           

Lorna,

The "banana" dramas demonstate that what we see and remember
is shaped by what we expect.  I find it disturbing that 
a number of noters in this string treat the "little girls are 
mean" notion as though it were a known fact. It's a known cliche, 
not a known fact. Different animals. 

Our culture has suffered greatly from the "known" cliches about
gender-specific behavior ... examining some of them in this file 
has been interesting for many of us. 

Perhaps little girls are mean litle prissy bitches! But since the
cliche says so, and there is Nothing except anecdotal evidence to 
support it, one should, by default, suspect it and suspect one's 
own spontaneous memories. 

When I "page" through my memories of 5th grade -- imagining 
each kid I can remember and trying to recall what nastiness they 
committed against another class member -- I see both little girls and
little boys being mean (happily, it was a minority). But neither sex
gets the trophy for meanness in my 5th grade class -- which is interesting 
because the teacher was a sadist who encouraged her pets to publicly 
ridicule her non-pets.

>    Just because a person remembers, that back in school, girls were
>    more likely to play mean head games (such as excluding certain girls
>    for shallow reasons or switching alliances for silly reasons) than
>    were boys, who were more likely to just have fist fights over things,

Re girls =head game, boys=fist fights ... I'm sure plenty of us have 
witnessed the public choosing of teams and seen team captains of both 
sexes publicly bemoan their fate because they didn't want any of the 
unselected students.  
   

    re .28, I've never witnessed a boy's gym class so I don't know what
    they do, but I'm well aware that girls bemoan getting unathletic
    girls on their teams.  But, I'm not sure what this has to do with
    the topic either.
    
    If I were all-knowing and could experience everything that every
    school child in America has ever experienced, then I might realize
    that just as many boys as girls play back-stabbing types of games,
    and that just as many girls as boys solve their differences by fist
    fights.  But, I only have my own experiences to fall back on.  I
    know that my experiences would seem to indicate that girls play
    mean, sneaky games with other girls more often that boys do with
    each other, and that boys tend to have physical fights more often
    with each other.  That's the way it was in my school.  It is possible
    that my small school, in the 50's and 60's, was not representative
    of the population of school children as a whole.  
    
    I didn't say that all girls play mean head games and I didn't say
    that boys never do.  I didn't say that all boys get into physical
    fights and that girls never do.  What I did say, is that from my
    experience a larger percentage of girls tend to operate with head
    games and a larger percentage of boys tend to have physical fights.
     I fail to see why I would filter these observations because of
    any particular thing about myself.  What do I get out of believing
    one way or another?  It's not as though I were comparing races or
    social classes, and being prejudiced against those unlike myself.
    
    I can't help but wonder if some women who can never recall these
    head games, were perhaps so popular that they were never victims
    and so refuse to acknowledge these goings on exist.  Just because
    this sort of thing never happened to you doesn't mean it didn't
    happen to anyone else.  It, also, sometimes seems to me that some
    feminists are so intent on believing that there is no difference
    between men and women, that they refuse to recognize even the most
    blatant differences.  I think there are some major differences between
    the boys and girls act in school.  It doesn't mean I think one sex
    is better than the other.
    
    Lorna
     

 I agree with you Lorna. Very well spoken (written;-)

 Sometimes I wonder about why it is that every generalization seems to be 
discounted. I mean, really. It seems that even if you have statistics to 
prove your assertion, there will be those that will claim that the data is
skewed or invalid or whatever.

 The Doctah

    I'm about 6 years older than Lorna, and my memories of school
    encounters are quite similar to hers. I was the goat of a number
    of 'mean' girls and only one 'mean' boy (and looking back on it,
    he was a slender, bookish boy who had once been my  best friend.)
    As a chubby, quiet, bookish, glasses wearing girl who spoke her
    mind and very badly wanted friends I got fried often enough by
    other girls to make me very wary of forming friend by the
    time I got into high school.
    
    sigh
    
    Bonnie

Lorna, you seem to be bothered by what I said, and I consider it pretty much a
platitude, so I'm confused about what could be so upsetting about it.

I absolutely don't mean to discount your experience. I absolutely don't mean to
discount my experience. Obviously I think sharing via notes is worthwhile. On
this particular issue I don't have a lot to say, either way.

And I really do believe that we influence our own perceptions of reality. I'm
not a disciple of the scientific method, or the primacy of experience, though
each provide interesting data points.

And I'm a feminist. (I'm not quite sure what that proves, but there was a
statement in there about feminists I couldn't identify with.)

So, how're we doing?
	Mez

	Since I was picked on by everyone (but I am not paranoid just
	was small and wore glasses from age 4), girls and boys were
	equally mean physically and mentally.  I fought back both in
	fist-i-cuffs and with words/deeds.

	I do not think that the problem is that girls have a perchance
	for meanness rather it is a reflection on the treatment that
	they observe other girls/women receiving or how they are treated.

	There is also the problem that there is a difference in how
	female experience life vs how males experience life.  The male
	experience has been regarded as the norm for centuries and any
	thing that did not "fit" that norm was abnormal/psychotic.  
	This is a lose/lose situtation for females - if our behavoir is
	female-like then it is abnormal - if our behavior is male-like
	then we aren't being female enough.  

	This is all to say that it maybe that that female respond
	to conflict in a manner different than males and that it
	is not better or worse but just different.

	More to the point of this topic IMHO it is more likey that
	there are personality types (sets of people who share behavioral
	traits) that are being described - meanness, petty, whatever -
	and that they should be recognized as such and treated as 
	being either male or female traits much less  judging the
	goodness or badness of these traits.

	_peggy

RE: .15

>    Re .13, Unfortunately, I don't think it's a myth, Karen.  I wish
>    it was, but I've seen too much of it.  When I was in school in the
>    50s and 60s I noticed this type of behavior between girls, and with
>    boys when they were dealing with girls.  Maybe because the boys
>    realized it wasn't acceptable to just have a fight with a girl,
>    they resorted to the same behavior when dealing with them.

Lorna, I said that I thought that the myth was women showed this tendency
more than men.  You responded that you've seen both girls and boys, but
boys only did it because it wasn't acceptable to fight with girls.  So
boys do it too, and are just as capable of it as girls are.

I think it's obviously socialized behavior, and perhaps boys don't do it
as much because some of their mean behavior was played out in fist fights.

I would also like to state that most girls spend more time socializing with
other girls than with boys, therefore their familiarity with the meanness
portrayed by boys could be limited.  If the opposite is true for boys
(boys socializing more with boys), than how can the perceptions of those
separate groups be compared?  Once the two groups start socializing together
more frequently, they are often out to impress each other and by the time
that stage is over they've all matured a lot.