{"id":697,"date":"2015-05-07T09:00:56","date_gmt":"2015-05-07T13:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/annelitwin.com\/?p=697"},"modified":"2015-05-07T09:00:56","modified_gmt":"2015-05-07T13:00:56","slug":"deep-patterns-from-the-middle-school-lunchroom-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/blog-posts\/deep-patterns-from-the-middle-school-lunchroom-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Deep Patterns from the Middle School Lunchroom &#8211; Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t<![CDATA[&nbsp;\nScholars suggest that we must understand that \u201cmean girl\u201d behavior,\u00a0also described as indirect aggression and relational aggression, happens\u00a0in the context of a patriarchal system that values boys more than girls\u00a0and limits the behavioral options for girls. Girls feel powerless when they\u00a0are told they must be orderly and nice. Boys are allowed to be rowdy and\u00a0get called upon by the teacher without raising their hands, while girls\u00a0have to follow the rules. And girls feel pressure to gain the approval of\u00a0adults by meeting their gendered expectations. While the studies show\u00a0some differences by class and race about what these expectations are,\u00a0there is consistency in the limited avenues open to girls to feel powerful\u00a0without being labeled \u201cdeviant.\u201d Researchers point out that every child\u00a0wants three things out of life: connection, recognition, and power. Girls\u2019\u00a0power is diminished by societal injunctions to be passive bystanders: they\u00a0must hide their \u201cnot nice\u201d feelings of anger, they must soften and silence\u00a0their voices, and they still need the attention of boys to have self-worth.\nScholars note that to feel powerful, girls become active participants\u00a0in horizontal violence, which Paolo Freire says is a manifestation of\u00a0oppression or restriction. Researchers of adolescent girls explain that\u00a0\u201cgirls\u2019 meanness to other girls is a result of their struggle to make sense\u00a0of or to reject their secondary status in the world and to find ways to\u00a0have power.\u201d\nOne of the rules for how to be nice and nonthreatening is to not\u00a0show anger. Girls are expected to be \u201csweet, caring, precious, and tender\u201d\u00a0and to have \u201cno bad thoughts or feelings.\u201d So while boys can vent their\u00a0anger outwardly, girls cannot. If boys show strong feelings, they are called\u00a0\u201cassertive\u201d and \u201ccompetitive,\u201d while girls who do the same are called\u00a0\u201cbossy\u201d and \u201cconfrontational.\u201d Rachel Simmons, in her study of girls in ten\u00a0different schools, diverse by race, social class, and geography, points out\u00a0that girls don\u2019t feel angry in fundamentally different ways than boys, but\u00a0many girls show anger differently because they have learned they must\u00a0do so to gain the approval of adults. Girls learn to \u201cfly under the radar\u201d\u00a0of adults by expressing their natural feelings of aggression indirectly and\u00a0subtly, while keeping up the appearance of being nice.\nSimmons found a hidden culture of girls\u2019 aggression in which\u00a0bullying is epidemic, distinctive, and destructive. Because open conflict\u00a0is not acceptable behavior for girls, girls fight with body language and\u00a0relationships instead of fists and knives. Friendship is a weapon, and anger\u00a0is rarely articulated. Various researchers note that alternative aggression\u00a0starts in preschool, and so do the first signs of sex differences. In the\u00a0middle school years, a second socialization begins that sets a template\u00a0in place for adult behavior. In middle school and earlier, girls are very\u00a0conscious of the swirling underbelly of alternative aggression, and their\u00a0part in it, as they try to figure out the rules for relational success. Have\u00a0a conversation with any girl between the ages of nine and thirteen, and\u00a0she will tell you all about it in great detail. By high school, scholars agree,\u00a0girls have learned to take indirect aggression for granted. By adulthood,\u00a0women are more likely to become unconscious of their own participation\u00a0in alternative aggression.\n&nbsp;\nAn excerpt from my book,\u00a0<em>New Rules for Women<\/em>, available at Amazon (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/dp\/0982056982\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/dp\/0982056982\/<\/a>).]]>\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t<![CDATA[]]>\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[116,169,222,225,248,418,612],"class_list":["post-697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog-posts","category-excerpt","tag-competition","tag-emotions","tag-friendship-rules","tag-gender","tag-girls","tag-new-rules","tag-women"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}