This is something that I have said for years. Girls are the embodiment of Evil.
During my thousands of years of existence, I have seen children/teen/adult males and females, and have noticed that the genders handle stress/strife/relationships in different ways. Let's take friendships, for example.
Boys tend to hang out with whoever happens to be near them. Yes, boys have friends they gravitate to more often, yes, boys will even form a "best friend" relationship with another boy. But, by and large, boys will not cut another boy out of the group just to me mean. There will, on occasion, be some poor fellow who is just "different" from the group and will not be invited to play with the larger boy collective, but there is generally a few other nonconventional boys who he can hang out with.
Girls, on the other hand, form cliques at a very young age. Their goal is to gather sycophantic friends around them. The group, then, makes it a point to ostracize other girls not in the group. Or, the group will expel a member who has upset someone. I have even seen girls talk to other non-group girls into not being "so-and-so's" friend because the group was mad at her for some stupid reason. I actually had one girl come crying to me, saying that I just didn't understand what it was like having to fight for friends every day.
Boys generally include other boys; girls generally exclude other girls.
In terms of handling issues, boys and girls approach this differently as well. When two boys get angry at each other, they will physically fight, each throwing a few punches before the other boys pull them apart. Once that is done, within 15 minutes, the matter has been resolved, and the boys are friends again. Girls, however, get mad at each other, and the anger seethes within them for weeks. The insulted party will sulk and plot and plan, gathering her little minions around her who also get in on the action. They pick and poke and insult and backstab the girl who angered them for weeks. Very often the adults around them are not even aware that there is an issue at hand, or that the girls are "fighting", because girls do it in such a sneaky and underhanded way.
This is exactly what my poor 17 year old niece is having to endure at the moment.
My niece has always been very active and involved in groups and causes since she was in elementary school. She likes being busy and she likes doing things to help other people. Well, since her freshman year in high school, she joined the dance team at her school since she didn't make it to cheerleader, and she was fine with that. She helped out with yearbook, she joined clubs, she mentored junior high aged girls through an organization, she pushes for recycling at her school, she has appeared in 3 of her school plays, etc.
Her first three years in high school were fun for her.
Now that she is a senior, she decided that she wanted to try some new things. She ran in a local pageant and won. She was crowned Miss Insert Small Town Name Here. So, she qualifies for scholarship money, and she has parades to attend, etc. This causes her some grief, because a "friend"of hers came in 4th place. Well, this friend was caught drinking at a party and had some very tacky photos of herself up on her MySpace. The pageant people caught wind of this, and stripped her of her position on the court. This "friend" then started telling people that it was my niece who turned her in and got a few girls to start being ugly to my niece.
Then, my niece decided to try out for cheerleader again, just to see of she had it in her to make the squad. She made cheerleader and also made Captain because of her tumbling ability/leadership skills. Well, 2 girls were mad at that because they wanted to be captain and had been on the squad for 2 years already. They have been making my poor niece's life hell. They have sent her nasty text messages. Their mothers have sent my sister nasty emails. They have been putting trash on and around my nieces vehicle which she has to push aside every day after school before she can leave.
There have been multiple incidents already, and I am not going to list them all, but my poor niece has taken hit after hit. As of today, Monday, the main instigator is being suspended from all cheerleader activities for 1 week due to the latest thing she pulled against my niece, and now my niece is convinced that the instigator will get the other cheerleaders to turn against her.
I think what bothers me the most about all of this is that, before my trouble began a year and a half ago, I was in a position to be able to do something to help her out. Until I get my current troubles settled, though, I am powerless to move a finger to help out, and I just have to sit here and watch her struggle and wilt just a little more every time a new assault comes her way. And it sucks watching this happen.
My sister has taken steps already to make people aware, my niece is well known and liked by the school administrators, so it's not as if there aren't other people who can help. In fact, one of the football players last week cussed out the girl thrown off of the pageant court (and is also a cheerleader), telling her, "Stop talking about (My Niece) already! You're nothing but a fucking drama whore!" in the hallway between classes. Now, if the football guys are starting to grow tired of it all, you know the girls are going at my niece nonstop. That says quite a bit about the situation.
As I said earlier, girls are very sneaky and underhanded in how they go about bullying other girls, so I'm not sure how effective adult help/boy help is going to be here. My niece is one tough kid, though, and she is weathering it well, but I fear her senior year is not the fun-filled experience she was hoping for.
She came by yesterday for my birthday, and I gave her the benefit of my accumulated years of experience. I told her, "Now, Sweetums (my nickname for her), if you start feeling stressed at what's going on around you, just remember what your uncle said. Fuck those bitches."
My sister gasped and shook her head at me, but my niece laughed. I think she'll remember.
