Bullies Can Be Girls
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Posted by Barbara Pytel Mar 9, 2007 |
Yes, bullies can be girls and they can be very mean. While boys can tease outwardly, girls tend to be very manipulative, distroy others with gossip, and gain social status.
Rachel Simmons, author of Odd Girl Out, is very graffic in her examples of how girls bully other girls. Simmons own experiences have shown that girls can do horrible things to each other. Since most harassment research has been on boys, she embarked in her own direction researching girls.
What Simmons found was that girls hurt and bully their friends. Girls use three types of bullying:
- Social Bullying (damaging a reputation by gossip)
- Indirect Bullying (claiming it was not their intent to hurt)
- Relational Bullying (using friends to get power)
Odd Girl Out is an excellent example of how the female bullying network functions. It is a must for every middle school teacher. It has also been recently learned that bully targets are not always the soft-spoken and shy. They can be very reactive, explosive children. There are also long-term effects of bullying.
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Copyright article 2007 Barbara Pytel. All Rights Reserved.