To think that women being unpleasant to other women is not automatically internalised misogyny?

[Carla786]

I see this a lot on FWR and in other places.
It certainly can be, but it seems a cop-out to say it is always the cause. It's not anti-feminist to say that women can be cruel to each other for other reasons, just as men can : intrasexual competition, insecurity, narcissism etc

AIBU?

Some women just have unpleasant personalities, same as some men do.

My experience of state school in the 80s was different. There was definitely a heirarchy.
At the top of which were the prettiest girls in the most fashionable clothes who were the most popular with the boys.

At the bottom were the fat girls, the conventionally unattractive girls, the swots, the posh and the teachers children.
Interestingly, in a WC school, at the time of the miners strike and the prominance of class based politics, being intelligent or MC was a social disadvantage. And girls would deliberately exaggerate regional accents and 'dumb down' on pain of being bullied for being 'a snob'.
There was without doubt girl on girl bullying. Almost exclusively over competition for boys. Nothing was more terrifying as a 13 year old than one of the popular 5th year boys fancying you, as this would invariably lead to being unable to use the toilet on pain of low level physical stuff, pushing, poking and being called a slag from behind a cloud of cigarette smoke. I don't recall any serious violence from girls though.
While at the time, this low level harassment meant girls were frightening, and boys (who fancied you) were your saviours with their half hearted 'leave her alone, she's alright' that you paid for later, with hindsight, those 'mean' girls actually counted in single figures, I can name them all 40 years on. I also know now and from their adult lives (small town) they were actually pretty troubled.
The vast majority of girls were not mean at all. Some of the most important women in my life were amongst them and the rest were just ordinary nice enough young women.

Really? You just so happened to access the full version of that meta analysis a while ago, and found the 148 studies it looked at to be lacking?

I can't help but think you're trying to tie yourself in knots, desperately clawing for a way in which women as a demographic are 'bitchier' than men, even if it's super duper subtle - so subtle they didn't measure it in any study! But still so important it might change everything!

But the fact is, men are clearly more aggressive, both indirectly it seems as well directly, as clearly illustrated by rates of verbal, financial, emotional, and physical intimate partner abuse, the way they treat each other in boarding schools and fraternities etc, child abuse, child murder, sexual abuse, and violent criminal convictions.

I did not claim I read the underlying 148 studies. I did not use the word bitchier, please don't put things in quotes as if you are quoting me.

I remember also finding the abstract, if it was the same study, interesting for its definition of what is aggressive behaviour. It struck me that it was desperate to prove that girls are as aggressive as boys by classifying both words and physical actions as equally aggressive. It seems to me extremely difficult to classify when words are aggressive unless it is obvious at face value. And so much verbal communication is not. And since girls perform better than boys at communication (though the difference can be small depending on the study, and reduces with age), it stands to reason that there will be more subtle verbal communications in girls than boys.

That study was far from the slam dunk for female aggression equalling male aggression that some people claim it to be. You are arguing with me when I actually agree with you!

I'd be very wary of an 'analysis' of this within a context whereby women's non verbal communication is as heavily policed as it is in our society, and the expectation for us to appear pleasant and encouraging at all times is so high. There must be few women who haven't been told to 'smile love' or some variant if their default expression was insufficiently pleasing to a male stranger, in a way men never are. And there is no male equivalent to 'resting bitch face' is there?
Men are judged on their actions. Women on their appearance. I'd be greatly surprised if the greater scrutiny of women didn't lead to a conclusion we are more edept in this regard, because you see what you look at.

Fair enough! I tend to put that word in quotes as I dislike using it myself, but it seems to be what many commenters on this thread are trying to argue.

I'm confused - the study I linked (and the excerpt I quoted) clearly said that boys were more aggressive than girls overall, with more physical aggression and similar indirect aggression, so I'm not sure what your last comment was trying to say?

You talked about how there was a whole raft of behaviours that 'females' use to control 'men' and other females that wasn't being studied, and I'm genuinely not sure how you know they didn't study those things, or what argument you were trying to make?

The argument I'm trying to make its that is only possible to measure physical aggression and outright attacking verbal aggression and that anything else is a matter of opinion as to whether it counts as aggression or not.

And that it's my believe that women account for a lot more subtle and hidden behaviour that some might term aggression than men do, depending on where you draw the line about what "aggression" means.

Women, on the whole, are, I think, cleverer than men about it!

You mean women are more likely to display aggression as passive aggression than overtly? I'm sure you're right. It's a natural response to social conditioning that teaches us to be nice, so we veil and dilute our not very nice responses to remain within the boundaries of what's considered acceptable for us. Its also a survival mechanism that comes from being at a physical disadvantage.
I'm not sure though what this tells us though. I mean it's not like men are not also passively aggressive when they fear the consequences of outright aggression. Their insults disguised as banter, the boasting designed to keep other men in their place. The DARVO many employ when their partners have issues with their behaviour.
PA is not a sex based behaviour that women are especially good at. It's a behaviour found in both sexes when it feels like the safest way to fight. It's just become linked to women because it's often the only form of aggression it's safe to indulge in.

Well, it's not much use if it's so subtle that no one notices it. But are you trying to say you disagree with the study, and think women are more indirectly aggressive (AKA nasty) than men? Because if so, I disagree.

I think perhaps you're making assumptions about the sort of indirect aggression that men use.

Men are, in my experience, are nearly as likely to denigrate their fellows and undermine them under the guise of 'it's just a joke', give them the cold shoulder and ice them out, or display subtle disapproval through their tone or expression.

Men are also excellent at subtly undermining their girlfriends/wives through negging, passive aggression, complimenting other women for things their partner doesn't do, and other subtle looks, noises, or comments etc.

One only has to read half an hour's worth of Mumsnet to know that men engage in just as much indirect aggression or subtle manipulation as women, if not more. What are groomers? Serial rapists? Male bosses who make things difficult for women in their industry? Red flag boyfriends, who gaslight their partners?

I think men as a demographic just like to play dumb, and pretend that they're direct, honest, straight-shooters, while only those nasty, deceitful, two-faced women would be so subtly manipulative. But in reality, they're just as bad, if not worse.

One only has to read half an hour's worth of Mumsnet

I'm not sure Mumsnet is an unbiased source 🤣

For goodness' sake, it was a flippant remark, and it irks me that you're making a throwaway 'haha' on that one regard, and choosing to ignore everything else of substance that I said. My comment as a whole, and my point, was very clear.

Men seem just as likely to engage in indirect aggression in a huge variety of (subtle) ways. As studies have shown, in fact.

If you think that adult men aren't just as good as women at indirect aggression, because....you just have a 'feeling' about it, then I think you're falling for sexist stereotypes and seeing what you want to see (or perhaps what society tells you you should see).

Please use some emojis if you are making jokes. It was impossible to tell in context that you weren't being serious.

We are all entitled to hold the feelings that avoid with our lived experienced. Mine come from a long lifetime of being an uncharacteristically assertive woman. I'm aware that I have a very diffeent viewpoint from most of my sex.

I'm not sure why making a lighthearted remark meant that you decided to not address the rest of my comment.

Alright then, you have feelings. That's nice. But I think that in the face of 148+ empirical studies that have little reason to look for one outcome over the other, we can probably dismiss your feelings as not being based in reality, but rather being a result of the patriarchal social lens you view your experiences through, and your own biases.

Oh, I seeeeee, you're 'not like those other girls', huh? Mm. I understand perfectly, now.

I actually disagree. MN is a site where 75% of users are women, so the stories you read here will be predominantly women's stories. However having a lot of women's stories all in one place doesn't make them any less true. Rather it just collates a lot of evidence all in one place, so we get to hear of much more than we might in our own personal lives, and can identify patterns from a wider source.
It would only be bias if we thought women were coming here to lie and exaggerate in order to give a misleading picture of male behaviour.
I also feel the reputation for Pro woman bias on the site is greatly exaggerated. Undoubtedly women will see each others perspectives, support and sympathise. But those who do so with tunnel pro woman bias are a minority, and more than balanced by some trends in behaviour that are actually the opposite and show women are held to very high standards indeed.

I do agree - while my remark about Mumsnet was flippant, the site does have many women second-guessing themselves thanks to the exceedingly subtle indirect aggression that men in their lives are directing towards them.

Of course, there are many other examples of men displaying subtle indirect aggression in daily life, in addition to the many studies that have concluded there is little to no gender difference in the usage of indirect aggression.

But of course, it's impossible to accept that women aren't nastier than men. Going right back through history, there seems to be a real push to paint women as deceitful, manipulative, two-faced, and snake-tongued, and while they are in many cases, so are men to a fairly equal extent. Men are just more outright aggressive than women as well, so their indirect aggression gets glossed over, downplayed, or justified.

It really isn't.

'Men are afraid women will laugh at them. Women are afraid men will kill them'.

QED.

Absolutely this. In the bottom line, it probably matters less what prompted the nastiness than maintaining our own boundaries and giving the unpleasant people a wide berth. (Edited to add the disclaimer that I'm talking here precisely within this context, not about forms of prejudice like racism). Bullying is ugly. But unless the bully happens to be your line manager, for example, women's nastiness is generally easier to avoid than men's. If a woman happens to be in the way of a man with serious intent to do her harm, she's in far more danger than she ever would be from a woman.

As for the protestation 'I can't even criticise a woman without being accused of misogyny', this, IMO, is deliberately disingenuous. For example:

'Rachel Reeves is an incompetent chancellor whose decisions have serious implications for businesses and the economy' = legitimate criticism.

Whereas 'Rachel from accounts?' That is misogyny.

Most people are perfectly capable of reading the difference.

I wonder if anyone's done an academic study into the dynamics of girls' friendship groups?

Picking up on your points, I think one reason for your different experience might be the huge divide between pre- and post-80s Britain. Even the poshest girls in my school only had possibly 2 outfits other than their school uniform. I had my 'best' clothes for church and maybe one precious item bought from either M & S or wow, Chelsea Girl, which had a branch in the small industrial town. No online shopping, we never went to London etc etc, so there really was no opportunity for the designer label status culture which came in in the 80s. There was no reason for clothes snobbery (on school trips - we had a very strict uniform otherwise) at all.

I'm sorry if this sounds like the Monty Python Yorkshiremen sketch!

Also, your school was co-ed. I'm not making a simple-minded argument against co-ed but in both my single-sex school and my son's and daughter's single sex schools, the absence of the male gaze (and the female gaze!) took a lot of pressure off. I know, because I heard of the experiences of my friends whose children had become very aware of sexual politics/attraction/pretty privilege etc pretty much from Year 7. I may get flamed for saying it, but where the opposite sex is present, the Darwinian struggles for approval and status are definitely activated.

Bullying - it was mild, in my experience. I didn't have the local accent AND i had a stutter when I went to grammar school, so did get teased and called 'posh'. I knew I wasn't posh and I didn't much care about that jibe. Those girls changed and became friends eventually. There was one girl who would beat people up, but she was a rare bird in my school.

I also think that because it was a northern industrial town we were a fairly unsophisticated (some would have said 'provincial') bunch and were innocent of the kinds of snobbery and sneering which might have been prevalent in the more affluent areas of SE England, for example.

I saw no point in feminism at school. I didn't get it because I'd never experienced it, with all girl schoolmates and strong women teachers.

Oh boy, when I got to university and out into the world....THEN I got it.

But I still think the imported High School/Prom culture imported from the US is a factor in making school group dynamics and women's relationships in general more toxic.

Yes, I can certainly relate to the clothes thing. We had one school uniform and a couple of out of school outfits. Our things were dirt cheap, but they had to be the right things. Labels were more important for the boys. The Adidas trainers worn until they were dropping apart rather than be seen dead in a cheap pair from Shoefayre (social suicide!) But for girls, provided it was tight or ra ra and burgundy we were usually OK.
The male gaze and competition for male approval were absolutely key. The prettier you were percieved to be the higher your risk of falling foul of the girl bullies.
The boys I thought of as being largely benign, nice even (I was considered pretty) and had a stint of believing I got on better with them. There were however at least three rapes I'm aware of in my year group, a female teacher was violently attacked and a boy lost an eye in a fight. No girls did these things.
Like you I had little use for feminism either but for different reasons. If you play the game right, look and sound the part, the rewards of allying with men rather than women can be considerable, if transient, so I did. I wasn't mean, but I'd titter and giggle with the boys who were (please like me!) and when I first came across the pick me trope, that was (a rather delayed) light bulb moment.
I've never thought of the impact of the imported mean girl trope before. Its an interesting idea.

What? No they don't. They majority of male murder victims get murdered by other men.

Really? With all the threads on her where women have a gaslighting manipulative POS partner and then ask if they, themselves, did something wrong to make him behave like that?

Statistics show that men are not only more physically abusive but also verbally, and financially.

Whereas 'Rachel from accounts?' That is misogyny.

No it isnt. It is a piss take on a sitcom that was being referred to all over the place called "Colin from Accounts".

It happened because she claimed on her CV to have worked as an economist when her role was actually much lower and more akin to heading up Accounts.

She was laughed at because of what she did and said, in much the same way Starmer was ridiculed saying over and over that he was the son of a toolmaker. Not for being a woman.

This may be tangential, but if you want to see misogyny, just see how Jacinda Ardern was (and still is!) treated as former PM of New Zealand, as well as Helen Clark, versus multiple male Prime Ministers.

While one could feasibly criticise any politician quite harshly, depending on one's politics, the male PMs tend to get called weak, useless cunts, rich bastards, and told they look like a thumb (the latest one, Luxon). Whereas the female PMs tend to get called hysterical, useless bitches, ugly cunts, mannish...and be sent rape and death threats, the former of which the male PMs definitely don't get.

There is a degree of vitriol and hatred that female PMs get that the males just don't, in NZ at least.

What I found really interesting in most of the groups , was that more effort was put in/there was more competition about being in x group and holding their position there , than for male attention.

And no, I didn’t grow up in a bad US sitcom as another PP put it. In fact, it wasn’t even a western country.

Iny experience the hatred and insults for male and female MPs in the UK is equal, most of them are just called liars, traitors and incompetent. I've never heard a woman MP called hysterical, just a useless bitch, whereas her male counterpart would be called a useless twat or a dickhead.