Relational Aggression

[tansie79]

Why do females use this from a very young age? I've read books on the ways to help my daughter deal with it but can't find anything about why it's evolved. I've read it starts as young as in the early years at 3 and carries on throughout life. Why do girls / women use relational aggression against each other and why do so many people (like some teachers) see it as "just girls being girls" and acceptable when it can turn into bullying so quickly, but I'm seeing it go subtly under the radar from teachers, parents etc.

Patriarchy.

Girls are subordinated from an early age and are not free. The anger has to go somewhere and as it's not allowed to hit its target, it goes to other members of the subordinated group. It's called horizontal hostility in feminism and other liberatory movements. If the oppressed are fighting amongst themselves they'll never go after their oppressors.

"females" is an odd way to refer to women and girls. I've usually only seen it used like that by MRA types.

Not all women or girls use relational aggression. Its used by people who think in terms of hierarchy rather than community or co-operation.
Relational aggression is a form of displacement activity. They cant attack individuals further up the hierarchy or the hierarchy itself, so they regain a facsimile of control by picking on someone lower down the pecking order.

Focus on teaching co-operative skills, emotional intelligence and thinking strategies.

Thanks for the replies, I find what you both say about the reasons behind relational aggression fascinating. Are there any books that I could buy about Feminism that explain what you both have mentioned? I'm sorry if my way of writing is basic I have ASD and struggle with my communication when writing as well. I would really like to learn more about these concepts and about Feminism in general so any book recommendations would be appreciated, thanks.

Driechdrizzle - sorry I don't know what MRA types mean? I'm sorry if saying females was wrong, what word would you use instead and could you explain why female isn't the approach word for women and girls please? Also what MRA types means? Thanks, I'm starting my learning here with a blank page, I would love to learn about Feminism and any resources like book recommendations would be very helpful.

Magnetic Resonance Angiography?

Actually I think there is a patriarchal insistence that this is a women’s issue and that we therefore cannot ever be proper friends with each other or work together or be leaders the workplace (women bosses and offices being depicted as bitchy). It’s a way of undermining us and keeping us in our place - which is ironically, in the patriarchy, to be occupied with doing lots of caring, support and emotional labour. I.e the opposite of the idea of us as relationally aggressive.

Of course, relational aggression exists but in both men and women. Men gossip and use psychological power over people as well. Currently observing my own son in friendships - it’s rife and more in use now they are growing up and being physical with each other is less tolerated.

But culturally we never mention it as an issue among men - even with the new emphasis on coercive control in terms of domestic violence. What on earth is that if not relational aggression - backed up with a fear of the potential of physical aggression to?

females is an adjective, it can refer to a female of any species

Women and girls is the appropriate term for women and girls

MRA is men's rights activist.

The book I'm thinking about today is Germaine Greer's The Whole Woman, so you could start there. She's an excellent writer and analyst.

Not all women or girls use relational aggression

NAWGALT

From wiki:
Relational aggression or alternative aggression is a type of aggression in which harm is caused by damaging someone's relationships or social status.

Seriously though, IME, men in male-dominated workplaces are just as capable of this sort of behaviour as the girls and women those men would deride as 'bitchy'. I suppose the difference is that with men it's perhaps more likely to escalate into physical aggression than with girls.

Some people feel the need to be 'top dog' socially (I'm very wary of using terms like 'Alpha' as I think that type of MRA thinking is overly simplistic as it's US-centric and ignores the class element that we have in the UK) and off the top of my head I can think of people like Rees-Mogg and Boris who want to be at the top of the pile in a different way to say, blokes on a construction site or men and women in office jobs.

I don't know whether there's any massive difference overall between men and women who engage in this sort of behaviour.

No Sawdust, you have demonstrated you havent understood my answer.

Humans have 2 modes; hierarchical and community/co-operation.
Patriarchy is a hierarchical system. Hierarchy is not the default system for humans, its the one we are supposed to switch to when we are in danger or under stress. We are then supposed to revert back to community mode.

Hierarchy is not the default system for humans, its the one we are supposed to switch to when we are in danger or under stress. We are then supposed to revert back to community mode.

I admit I have no idea what you're talking about. Humans had a default system ? You don't have a reference manual to share, do you?

Patriarchy

Girls are subordinated from an early age and are not free. The anger has to go somewhere and as it's not allowed to hit its target, it goes to other members of the subordinated group. It's called horizontal hostility in feminism and other liberatory movements. If the oppressed are fighting amongst themselves they'll never go after their oppressors

There's always some excuse isn't there?

I think this is one of a group of things that are probably really connected to male vs female psychology/biology. And clearly I mean, as a group, in the sociological sense or scientific sense, not that there is some clear line where men don't do it at all and women do it all the time.

One of the cross cultural differences between human males and females seems to be that women are more concerned with maintaining social ties and structures and have more complex social networks, compared to men. If I recall correctly this also is true of the other more social primates.

I can think of a few reasons that might be behind this, I suspect there are a number of reasons: female humans tend to be less physically aggressive and so are less likely to work out social hierarchies and dominance questions physically; they are typically involved in pregnancy and infant care which require fairly cooperative communal involvement; and in humans females tend to develop complex language at an earlier age than males and even in teen years and adulthood use language in more complex ways, including to establish hierarchy.

Whatever the reason, I tend to think of this as somewhat analogous to the male propensity to violence, it's a tendency in how women express their will to dominate.

As far as how to learn to live with it, I think it can really help girls to understand what is going on. My eldest dd really struggled with these kinds of interactions. She wasn't inclined to be dominant and tended to take people's statements at face value, so she didn't really recognise when other girls were doing it, and was really confused if she was the target. And also at times she could get sucked into the activity and be hurtful to other girls who were being the target. Recognising what was going on helped her to see that some people weren't really being friends, and helped her to avoid behaving that way herself.

I also don't quite see the need to see hostility as a kind of substitute for hitting out at oppression, even indirectly or as a substitute. Yes, people will do that sort of thing, but human beings also simply seem to have a drive to dominate others and get to the top, whatever that is supposed to be,

The idea that without being oppressed this sort of thing would stop seems fanciful to me.

I have to agree with the posters who say that this isn't a women and girls only thing - in fact, as far as 'pecking orders' go, I've had much more problem with men 'taking me down a peg or two' than women - and yet we're all encouraged to say that women bosses are difficult, or that there's gossiping and bitchiness in an office full of women.

I have sons, and they have just as much of a problem with in-groups and out groups and psychological bullying as the girls seem to.

I feel like this is an attempt to divide and conquer, whilst putting women and girls down.

I think there's a huge amount of confirmation bias in what people see in children/ teens' behaviour. People expect girls to be bitchy and practise "relational aggression" so they notice it when it happens; they expect boys to be physical and practise "physical aggression" so they notice that when it happens and miss more subtle forms of psychological aggression.

My experience of parenting a DS and watching his interactions with his friends is that all the behaviour patterns people claim are "girl behaviours" - friendship triangles where one corner gets pushed out in favour of an intense one-on-one BFF relationship; "wendying" (where a new kid comes into an established friendship group and pushes one of the pre-established members out); saying unkind things behind people's backs; misunderstandings and "tears at bedtimes"; Chinese whispers leading to falling out - all these things go on in all boys' friendship groups too.

The good bits happen too - I'm always chuffed (contrary to the stereotypes) as to the amount of emotional support DS and his friends give one another, and the way they listen to each other.

BarbaraStrozzi
Very interesting and good to get some perspective. I have two girls, still small and already a family member will say when they fight,or don't want to share, that it's, "sister rivalry", and another family member when seeing my girls and their cousin who is a girl playing together that they have figure out the pecking order. Drives me nuts.

Well, I have girls and boys, and I would say the girls social hierarchies are more intense and complicated than the boys. I'm not sure why that's more likely to be confirmation bias than someone who is committed to them being the same thinking that they are.

I have two girls, still small and already a family member will say when they fight,or don't want to share, that it's, "sister rivalry", and another family member when seeing my girls and their cousin who is a girl playing together that they have figure out the pecking order. Drives me nuts.

If they were a girl and a boy the family member would say "sibling rivalry", if two boys "brotherly rivalry". And if the cousins were made of of both sexes then the family member would probably still be talking about the pecking order (because I think the comment is simply about where two groups with established pecking orders come together they establish a new pecking order). Because you're hearing the comments where all the children are the same sex you're assuming it is sex-based. But I've boys and a girl and would hear the same. So I think it is people-based. (That's not based on any study of psychology or sociology, just what I've observed with my kids and as part of a "both sexes" family).

3timeslucky
I'm not so sure, I think it can be stereotyping and it starts from a young age.I haven't heard of "Relational Aggression" and I find the op interesting because of the things that have already been said to me about my two girls.

I think we all suffer from confirmation bias Goose but I do see a lot of the archetypically "feminine" behaviours in DS's group as well as the archetypically "masculine" rough and tumble behaviours. I think 3Times is right - it's largely people-based rather than boy- or girl-based.

I do think girls come under a huge amount of pressure to be "well behaved" socially and physically, which means that bad behaviour (which all children exhibit) becomes covert, under-the-radar stuff just because of socialisation. (Boys also come under a huge amount of pressure of the "give a dog a bad name" sort; e.g. one piece of boisterousness in class leading to that child "having his card marked" ever after.)

I get really annoyed at the way this is painted as a girl issue when I see it all the time with boys and especially by boys against girls.

I think we all suffer from confirmation bias Goose but I do see a lot of the archetypically "feminine" behaviours in DS's group as well as the archetypically "masculine" rough and tumble behaviours.

Well, yes, I think you see all the behaviours in both groups, and individual kids fall in all kinds of places in terms of their behaviour.

It's more a matter of whether there is a gap in the behaviour of the group as a whole, like with most sociological sorts of questions. If there is a tendency for there to be some differences it can also tend to be magnified by the way culture responds to that tendency.

My experience has been that this sort of behaviour really has the clearest sex based gap in the teen years.

As far as it goes though, I think there are some objective things we can point to. One is that men are more physically aggressive, pretty much across cultures, and if women are less so it would tend to mean they will express hierarchical power in other ways instead. Boys' language development is on a different curve, including later puberty, and something of a gap seems to remain even in adults. And I think there are some good studies about the way women use language in female groups compared to men and their social groupings more generally that suggests they behave somewhat differently.

Sometimes you hear people talk about women's social groups being more cooperative or democratic or less hierarchical, but I'm not sure that's quite the case, I think often the relations are just less obvious. It looks like everyone is hashing stuff out together and maybe in a way they are. But if you charted the relationships and power relationships out on some sort of link analysis chart, they would be there, negotiated largely through language.

But we're back to my old favourite, the d value. Big spread within each population, relatively small difference between the average behaviour = small d value.

The question is whether generalisations about two populations with small d values (i.e. huge overlap in behaviours) are at all useful to anyone.

What sort of practical outcomes would one recommend for such groups given the small d values? I would suggest "none at all". Given the huge spread of behaviours between individuals, it's not relevant to employment prospects, it's not relevant to how one educates boys and girls, it's not relevant to their political representation, it's not relevant to their promotion prospects...

So why do we all invest so much time banging on about these stereotypes when, at the level of how we treat individual members of the human race, they tell us sweet FA?

I don't know that it makes any difference. It's just one of those things people notice and wonder about.

I suppose the biggest practical element I've experienced on a larger scale is differences in the way female vs male dominated organisations work, and their strengths and weaknesses, and how you can manage those, or adapt to them if you can't change them.