To the Editor:
“The
Myth of Mean Girls,” by Mike Males and Meda-Chesney Lind (Op-Ed,
April 2), tries to correct what it sees as the false impression that
girls are mean. It cites statistics related to physical violence as
proof. This is ridiculous to anyone who is female or who has raised a
daughter.
Female meanness has always been based on spite, gossip,
rumor-spreading, ostracizing, getting groups to target one girl in
particular, making fun and a host of other actions that can still make
grown women feel a chill or worse at memories of this behavior.
The electronic media make it worse. Nastiness spreads faster, groups are
larger, and targets are more likely to suffer in silence. Ignoring this
will only perpetuate this type of bullying, which is rampant.
Pretending that it doesn’t exist by citing irrelevant statistics
compounds the problem.
Joan McClusky
New York, April 4, 2010
To
the Editor:
Mike Males and Meda-Chesney Lind do not seem to
understand that girls and women do not usually commit direct, male-style
acts of violence. Therefore, the female-perpetrator rates for violent
aggression have not increased.
Female-female aggression is
indirect and involves slandering, taunting and ostracizing one
vulnerable female target, which is what happened in the South Hadley,
Mass., tragedy. Often, envy of a girl’s beauty or brains, but just as
often, the slightest difference (whether someone is new, an immigrant
from another country, or school) will be seized upon by a female clique
and treated as a high crime, an opportunity to tribally bond with one
another—and as permission to torment the chosen outsider.
Phyllis Chesler
New York, April 2, 2010
The
writer is the author of “Woman’s Inhumanity to Woman.”
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 