To think cliques, usually means a group of friends

[marymarkle]

I am friendly to everyone is not horrible to me. And if you are at a group such as a parent and toddler group, of course you say hello to everyone and try and include them a bit.
But sometimes I just want to talk to actual friends, and that is fine too. So if I meet friends at the school gate, of course I will talk to them. Or if I invite people to my house for a coffee, I will invite friends. Sometimes I chat to someone I click with and will invite them to something too.
But chatting to friends is not a clique. And I do think it is misogyny. I have never heard a group of men talking in a pub, or at a school sports match, being described as a clique. They are a group of friends.

I tend to agree.

There were two major cliques at our secondary school amongst the girls - academics vs aesthetics (to be honest, both sides had an abundance of both traits).

I was in the academics, and I stil kind of about my friends reminiscing about 'the others'

But we were a year group of 120. Of course we didn't all have the same friends and go to the same parties. Both sets of girls were equally popular with the boys, both had their share of shyer kids.

I think it can be a very narcissistic thing to obsess about whether people are friends with you or not.

No no one has accused me of being part of a clique. But I see it on here all the time. Accusations of cliques because women talk to their friends. If I am talking at the school gate to some actual friends, of course I am going to say hello or chat to anyone who chats to me, but no I am under no obligation to invite anyone to come and join our chat.
Similarly I went with a group of existing friends to a dance class for a bit. I chatted to others there as well. But if we did go for a drink afterwards, (we didn't always) we went only as a group of friends. Because we were actual friends.
Friends are allowed to be exclusionary, not rude of course. But they are allowed to talk together or go out by themselves.
It is different when it is a group set up especially to support people such as a parent and toddlers group.

Clique implies that the group actively excludes people who are not in it

But that is what friends do. When I invite a couple of friends round to share a bottle of wine, I am actively deciding who I want to invite and who I do not. If I ring a friend and say do you fancy going to the cinema, I am actively choosing one friend and thereby actively excluding another.
I don't just do a post on social media saying - hey who fancies coming round for some wine this evening?

Look at my example above. You can invite who you want to your own house. But in a public place such as a toddler group or school playground, to actively refuse to talk to talk to people because they are not part of your specific group of friends is cliquey.

I've never understood why so many people get all worked up over other 'school gate' mums? Why does it matter what a small group of people you see for a few minutes a day think of you?

I never understood what people mean by “clique”, but from what has been said here it seems that
A clique is a group of friends within a wider group, whose members would be rude and demonstratively refuse to chat/say hello to anyone outside the friendship group.

So a group of friends within a larger group is a clique when they are deliberately rude/not doing even small talk to the outsiders. When a group of friends is not rude to outsiders they are not a clique. However sometimes an outsider from a wider group may be wanting the same close/intimate treatment as the friends give to each other, and when not included (as she is not a close friend), incorrectly labels the group as a clique.

I have never heard a group of men talking in a pub, or at a school sports match, being described as a clique

Maybe because they are mire inclusive and happy to jolly along with those around them as opposed to female groups who tend to bitch about others not in the group

I have 3 groups of friends - long time, work and school mums. I keep them separate now, the one time I introduced a work friend to a long time friend I was ‘wendied’ (before I even knew what being wendied meant!) so prefer to keep it this way. Does that make me ‘cliquey’?