To think female groups are hard work

[Peckhaminn]

I've found I perform much better one on one than in girl groups. All my life I've got along with men and find their banter much more enlightening and humorous than female banter.

I don't seem to stick well I'm girl groups, often the one push out or the one that's too 'open'. I just find men much easier than women and I was wondering if this is a common issue?

The boys at my school liked to pick someone they thought was fat and turn them into social pariah's whilst bullying them relentlessly. They were not the kinder children.

@LadyOfTheFliessssss

Did you have lots of boy friends in groups as well then?

If only your teacher could pass on his wisdom to the DoE. We could stop all bullying next week.

All we have to do is tell girls to stop being bitches.

Problem solved

Do we tell boys who bully the same? Or do you think bullying is unique to girls?

@LadyOfTheFliessssss - and I can’t unsee those behaviours you describe when they were directed at one of my male siblings, or when one of my male children described what was happening in a male friendship group at school. Just because men have a wider range of tools they can use to be cruel, it doesn’t mean they don’t make use of the full range of their nastiness.

If he hadn't said it, the bullying would have continued. It's as simple as that. It was a short, sharp and incredibly effective shock.

He definitely did not deserve to be sacked. He was a very good teacher, he cared about all of us and was trying to help not hurt, and I'm grateful to him for stepping in.

Again, I'm not sure if this is meant to be ironic but you're only proving my point.

Men can definitely be very cruel. I'm not disagreeing with you.

Yes we are disagreeing, because I am saying men can and do ostracise other men from groups and you seem to be trying to argue this is a uniquely female form of cruelty.

"Of course it isn't a straight division between the sexes as to who is bitchy and who isn't."

Where are you getting that from what I've said? I've specifically said more than once that I'm not referring to all women.

If you want to have an argument with someone, please don't make things up to argue about.

I highly doubt the bullying stopped because he chose to call the young girls 'bitches', which is what people find offensive.
No doubt it was the intervention from his position of authority that did that, and presumably that would have been equally successful had he delivered the message more professionally.
Personally I think he put himself very much on the back foot. How on earth could he hope to prevent that slur being used by the girls to one another after using it himself?

I find it very sad that the solution to bullying is apparently a man in a position of power calling a group of kids “bitches”, but then I believe that short sharp shocks do more harm than good. Still, it’s nice that your overriding memory of him is that he was very caring.

I’m not making anything up. You have specifically said you have never seen men behave like this and that you cannot unsee what you have seen in girl groups, and that there is something in the assertion that girl groups push people out, but boy groups are much easier!!

@LadyOfTheFliessssss - if you didn’t want to make generalisations, you should have just said that both male and female groups can and do behave like this, but that not all do. Simples…

Were you there?

It did stop the bullying, the girls all got on a lot better afterwards, and no one called each other a bitch as a result.

He had already spoken to us, but that was what worked. It did have to be something shocking to get through to us that it was completely unacceptable. A quiet, well mannered, patient teacher had finally had enough of what had been months of hell for the class and stopped it with a single unpleasant (but accurate) word.

It would have been significantly more harmful to us if it had continued. Being called a bitch once is nothing compared to spending months being bullied by your peers.

I said I'd never had a man tell me who I can and can't be friends with and I've heard it innumerable times from women. Which is true.

Again, while it may be easier for you to argue if you invent things to argue about, it isn't helpful or productive.

@LadyOfTheFliessssss - I think the problem with calling the behaviour bitchy is that it hurt a group of girls more than it would have hurt a group of boys to be called bitches. It is feminising the behaviour and calling it out as an unacceptable form of femininity, rather than just calling it out as cruel.

It is not helpful or productive to ignore the point you are generalising in a very unwholesome way about female behaviour. You quite clearly have drawn general and offensive conclusions about the majority of women. Saying there are exceptions is merely proving you have established a rule.

Wonder what the teacher would’ve done about boys calling girls bitches, which started to happen at my school once we all hit 11 or so. He’s already established that calling a girl as young as 9 a “bitch” is acceptable, so he can hardly punish the behaviour in the boys.

(I also highly doubt that these girls were simultaneously such nightmares that no amount of talking to would do, they just HAD to be called a slur, but also they immediately became lovely overnight and didn’t start using that slur against each other, what with it having been justified by being used by an authority figure.)

You can doubt it all you like. That's what happened.

It is alarming that it is so easy to cow a group of girls with a sexist insult if just telling them their behaviour is unacceptable and cruel doesn’t work.

Not in that particular incidence no. But I was at school in the 70s and 80s and heard teachers use sexist and ablist slurs as a substitute for discipline more times than enough, and on no occasion were any changes in behaviour a result of it. I can imagine the students responding to the displeasure of a respected teacher. His use of the word bitch? No. Unnecessary and unprofessional.

I think it's a lot more alarming than girls that young are trying to punish each other for existing or not toeing some imaginary line of acceptable behaviour.

I've no doubt that behaviour is still continuing in various iterations around the globe.

Are women socialised to be in competition with each other and that effect is seen even in children? I find that idea really concerning.

Maybe it was different at the school I went to. It was quite posh, so it was unusual in the extreme to hear any swearing at all. From a teacher who never ever lost his temper, it was very shocking. Obviously from the fact I remember it as clear as if it happened yesterday when it was thirty years ago.

I can only tell you what happened. Everyone was a lot nicer to each other after that. Maybe it would have been different if those kind of insults were bandied around regularly. But in that particular school, to those particular girls, it worked.

Do you think men are not socialised to be in competition with each other?

Do you think school sports are designed to teach children not to compete with each other?

That's true. Yeah they are.

I don't have the answers here. I wish I did.