these friendship threads - Wendy, Helen, School gate bitches...

[TealFanClub]

Am I missing something?

Yes you are missing something. Women change from ordinary mothers into evil beings at the school gates. The main thing they do is not make best friends with everyone they meet. Awful!

Missing something in what sense?

No idea what the "Helen" in your thread title is about?

THE school gates ones always makes me wonder, are they just women talking to their friends? Surely you cant be mates with everyone?

IME friendships are very dynamic things that alter as you get older..

I have no clue what you are asking. So I have to default to YABU.

Then again, I am Mumsnet-lite off work sick so perhaps a more regular reader will be in the know.

Is it a TAAT?

Surely if you think that every friendship you make is sabotaged by a Wendy/Esmerelda /pro Bitch oyu do need to start looking at... er ....yourself?

Its like remarrying thirty times, you would wonder

They're just short handed ways of discussing odd behaviour.

Sometimes you just don't gel with a group/person. If you are an uber polite, people pleaser then you are always going to be surprised/hurt by the actions of those who are not.

Sometimes it hurts. Sometimes it happens so much it can ostracize you from a group because you have overthought it or don't have the brass neck to just breeze back in.

If you can just brush it off as the dynamics of friendship then you are one of those people who aren't caught on the hop and occasionally floored by the changes. Good for you.

But to casually dismiss those who are more frail socially as being the problem is not nice.... maybe you Wendy people without realising. I am sure most Wendy's don't.

What's a Helen? Please explain for the non-school-gate goers.

I wish I was one of those lucky people who could swan up, wearing whatever I like, acting however I like and every little action of mine would be interpreted as saintly because I possess a magical 'penis'. That means that just the act of holding a child's hand and behaving normally would convey an aura of love and kindness to all.

Using women's names to describe nasty behaviour seems misogynist to me. The women at my 'school gates' are a mixture of personality types, just like people everywhere.

I stood at the school gate today and a woman moved her dog away whilst muttering "no dog you may catch something", then whispered to her friend that I'm "the friend of Wendy's ex husbands new girlfriend and must be a slag like her".

Some women need to grow up and keep their gossip away from the school. My ds is friends with her ds, why be such a bitch.

Using women's names to describe nasty behaviour seems misogynist to me.

How's that when the people being discussed are women?

Or should we all log on with a list of gender neutral names and a group noun, just in case we say 'she?

PC world in freefall...

Oh and I was ignoring the blatantly obvious misandry in your post!

So what do you call a nasty, unfriendly man? Still a Wendy or do those men not exist? You might call him a cunt (oops, gendered), a bit bitchy (there I go again). Gendered terms for nasty shit implies all the people that do it are women (or gay men for some bizarre reason).

No misandry here. I don't blame individual men for the patriarchy. DH tells me that when he takes DD in he gets treated differently to me/the Mums. I get told about behaviour, reading, speech, issues, he got told last time that "DD is very special...". And that men get off very lightly in terms of how much they are expected to do versus the women.

I call nasty unfriendly men dicks.

I suppose at Christmas time we could call them Grinches.

No at Christmas they're dicks with bells on

I don't like this thread. It seems mean spirited.

SOME women (not all) are difficult at school. In my experience it was a core group of SAHMs who were spreading nasty stuff about my family and child.

IMO there's a whole host of reasons for this. The primal bond between mother and child - emotions tend to be heightened. Some mothers are bored and are looking for drama. Etc.

Did it effect me? Not really. I work and I chose to avoid the drama. The one confrontation we did have I did not engage with her, and she got nowhere. I knew about what was said though and I have no issue empathising with those women who've had to deal with bitchwallops like that. Not everyone can blow it off.

It just people using short hand to express how they feel.
What's the problem?

But a "Wendy" isn't a nasty, unpleasant person. The term originated from an MN post about a woman (nicknamed Wendy for the thread) who made friends with the OP and joined her social circle and then subsequently seemed to exclude the OP from events with her friends.

I think we should pick another name for the "Helen's". No... erm... reason... but maybe call them Susans? Or Sarahs? Or something else that isn't my name ?

exactly Thursday.

It's inter-relational aggression. Women do this. This is not news. Have some empathy you lot.

Wendy comes from the Judy Blume book Blubber.

Helen is from the film Bridesmaids.

A Wendy alienates a person from their friendship group by turning people against that person.

A Helen uses one-upmanship to try and be the best friend of someone, but again alienating someone else in the process.

It's a shorthand way of explaining that kind of behaviour when you encounter it. And I suppose they've come into use on here because lots of people remember the book and have watched the film.

I did read the 'Helen' thread and felt sorry for my very lovely friends called Helen, WiIdfire.

Stop using the name wendy

I think we should pick another name for the "Helen's". No... erm... reason... but maybe call them Susans? Or Sarahs? Or something else that isn't my name?

I agree for the same reason

Fwiw- men who are nasty= arseholes (gender neutral)

And they don't have to be at the school gates, they can crop up anywhere.