Female bullying

In one thread alone, I've been the victim of horrible, oppressive bullying by Andreea, BardSkye, Dutchessmary, GailD, Kylabelle, Lavern08, Ol' Fashinoned Girl, Pkbzrod, Spruce, and SunshineonMe.

Oh, yeah: also SamiBear (on a learner's permit).

I pretty much thrive on it.

In school many of the other girls were awful to me. I was luckier than some that they just taunted me, but it was really difficult at the time. I think the hardest thing about female bullying is when girls pretend to be nice to your face and then make fun of everything you say behind your back. I would almost always rather someone be mean to my face.

A lot of them would hang out with me or come over to my house and then over the next week they would tell everyone else what was wrong with me or that I'd said something crazy. Usually they made fun of me because I had good grades, but they would exclude me, call me names, make fun of my family, make fun of my looks. By middle school I was purposely not doing well in some of my classes to get them to leave me alone, and it worked, though that was not the best move on my part.

Preteen girls can be surprisingly vicious, but if I could go back, I would tell myself not to worry about it. I ended up making awesome friends in middle school, and those other girls were jealous. One of them even told me so in high school. It wasn't worth making myself seem dumb to please others.

The most common form of female bullying takes the form of what is called Relational or Social bullying. The bully's objective is to gain power, status and control within the group of friends (clique) by targeting another girl and using rumor, gossip, shunning and excluding in order to break down and isolate the target from her peers. It's unbelievably vicious.

I'm in the middle of writing a book about bullying in SA schools. I have a couple of good case studies I can pass on to you if you like. Just PM me your email address, if you're comfortable with that, or I can cut and paste them into a PM. Whichever will work for you.

The book Queen Bees and Wannabees by Rosalind Wiseman is well worth a read and the movie Mean Girls, could also give you some good ideas.

Hope this helps.

I was badly bullied by both girls and boys.

The girls it was more verbal than it was with the boys. They called me names, made jokes about my looks, my name, my chances of ever getting a boyfriend... I was socially ostracised and encouraged to know about it. They'd invite me somewhere and humiliate me when I arrived. (only fell for that one once)

Out of the two, I think the damage from the girls was longer lasting, though the stuff the boys did was more terrifying while I experienced it.

A girl named Cheryl once threatened to cut my hair on the school bus when I was in high school. I sensed she didn't like me, and she always gave me the "once over" every time our paths crossed.

We were both taller than the other girls in our class, and I felt I could take her, if we ever got into a fight.

She was a very pretty girl, but she hated the fact that I had what she called "long, doll baby hair."

I was tempted to knock her teeth out, but she was sitting behind me with a pair of scissors in her hand, and I had enough sense to know that she had the upper hand (no pun intended) on me.

It made me really mad that I felt powerless to defend myself as another kid distracted her and changed the subject.

Oddly enough, I ran into her a few years later and she actually said, "Hey Girl, you wanna hang out sometime?"

The floozy seemed to forget all about the fact that she terrorized me during that bus ride.

I've long forgiven her, but I'll never forget the incident.

It's funny because I always felt like the "homely" girl back then, but once cutie-pie, Cheryl revealed how envious she was of me, I felt a little more confident in my appearance.

However, to this very day, I still get a little embarrassed and self-conscious whenever anyone compliments me on my hair or hairstyle.

I was bullied through middle school and part of high school, and the girls were so much meaner than the boys. They made fun of me for having short hair (oh, that was a big one), being quiet, liking to read, etc. I remember one day they stuffed the hood of my jacket with trash while I did an assignment. Occasionally, they'd make a chair disappear so I was left awkwardly standing at the only open desk. Classmates would refuse to pass me papers, pretend not to hear me when I spoke, and group off so I was the only one without a paper. I did group work alone for three years.

There was this sort of short, hideously unintelligent girl who used to give me a hard time. Admittedly, I was never much good at socializing. For whatever reason, at the beginning of the year, I had decided that she was going to be my friend. She responded to even the best of my attempts to talk to her with unabashed cruelty. She liked to use my shy nature against me. Silly witch.

One day I grew tired of her shit and decided I would make friends in the way that seemed most natural to me personally. I knew full well that I was free of blood borne pathogens, as I was a virgin with no history or drug abuse. I made two batches of cupcakes. I frosted one with chocolate frosting. I drew up about sixty mls of my own blood and whipped it into the vanilla frosting. The result was a pinkish mess with red clots. I frosted the other half of the cupcakes with it.

I went to school the next day and handed out cupcakes to anyone who asked for one, carefully selecting who would have a chocolate or "strawberry" cupcake. I claimed that the red lumps were just the berries themselves. I had only one strawberry left by the time my tormenter asked for one. When she took a bite, her mouth fell open and hung there a while. She must have known something was very wrong.

You get to decide for yourself rather or not you think the story is true.

There was this older girl at my first high school who was batshit insane. She was pretty, but her eyes were dead and she just looked like she could kill... I actually met another girl later, at my other high school, who also knew the girl and who was also taunted by her (and her baseball bat wielding boyfriend).

A few months into freshmen year I got into an argument with a 'friend', which had us tossing paper towels at each other in the bathroom. Really stupid crap. Next thing I know my 'friend' goes and gets this insane girl--who I'd never even seen before up to this point--to intimidate me. The crazy girl taunted me a few times in the cafeteria (throwing food once and another time she literally got in my face and told me she'd break my nose). The other freshmen girls decided to tell on her. The girl then came to me in peace, told me she would back off forever if I let the case go and tell the VP she's backing off.

She didn't bother me again after. But I think of that time fondly because all the other freshmen were super nice, and really did a lot to help me. Like some of the tougher girls hung out with me all that week to make sure that girl didn't come for me at lunch. And the girls who told on her. Even some of the boys had um encouraging words.