::Shebytches::

All week I've been waking up to CBC Radio One's Metro Morning. Every morning this week, I've heard them plug their movie and open forum on "femal social bullying." Every morning this week, I've yelled at my radio.

"Female social bullying" is the worrisome problem du jour. It's not regular bullying, like "Hey twerp! Gimme your lunch money or you're gonna get a pounding." No. That's easy bullying. That's bullying boy style. Female bullying is much more sinister. You know when all the popular girls start telling everyone that you're ugly and your clothes are stupid (which, let's face it, they probably are), that you had sex with the ugliest, fattest, pimpliest boy in school (who actually isn't that bad a guy) and that your vagina smells of rotting fish (how they'd know this is beyond you), that is "female social bullying" and, according to the CBC, it's a "growing problem."

This is where I get ticked off. First off, it isn't like this is a new problem. It's not as if suddenly girls have become these evil creatures who enjoy tormenting each other for the sheer pleasure of watching their victims squirm. This has been going on since time immemorial. My mom, who finished high school in the 1960s, remembers being tormented by this one chick who was richer than her. So this is not new and I don't know why they're suddenly treating it as some sort of revelation. Girls pick on each other. Not news.

Secondly, they've been making girls sound like amoral manipulators who play everyone for fools. It reminded me a bit of how the three classical monotheistic religions treat women as evil enchantresses who dupe men into eating apples, beheading prophets, having sex and generally falling from grace. It seems to be yet another villification of girls. Instead of focusing on causes and solutions, which would have been -- heaven forbid! -- constructive, all they concentrated on was the coldness of the evil tormentor, the suffering of the poor victims and their sad, sad stories of woe. "Oh, poor, poor, sweet girl! What have all those bad, bad girls done to you?"

[Granted, bullying is no laughing matter, but this all seemed a touch melodramatic and sensationalist for my taste, and I felt that this turned a potentially interesting story into a fear-mongering, heart-tugging ratings enhancer.]

I was not popular in high school. I hated every waking moment of high school. I was ostracized for four out of the five years (in Quebec high school is from grade 7 to grade 11). Not only did the popular girls hate me, but so did the unpopular girls. I spent most of my time at the "loser" table with my friend, Nadia, who was into black nail polish and heavy metal bands. We weren't losers; we just didn't fit in. So I understand the victims of "female social bullying." I really do. But nobody is helped if all you do is wring your hands and lament about how terrible these girl-bullies are.

We do no one any favours by distinguishing between "regular" bullying and "social" bullying, or even "male" bullying and "female" bullying. It's not as if boys don't use psychological warfare on each other. Think of gym class. Everyone has witnessed the nastiness of picking teams for gym ("I won't pick you because you're a wuss." Then there's when they won't pass the ball to guy X, even though he's wide open, because he somehow offended everyone by liking Shakespeare or something ridiculous like that. As for girls, I'm sure that if it were socially acceptable for girls to beat each other up for fun at the playground because "girls will be girls," and if fighting were allowed in women's hockey, girls would pound on each other after school instead of inflicting slow social death on their enemies.

All bullying stems from the same thing: power. A Little Dictator and his/her minions go around picking on easy targets to confirm his/her superiority in the schoolyard hierarchy. Sometimes the target is an old ally or a minion who somehow fell out of favour; they must be put in their place to ensure that the Little Dictator doesn't lose face. That's it; it's a power play. Whether it's a girl or a boy, whether it's physical or psychological, it all comes down to a quest for power. When targets cry or cave in, they've identified themselves as "weak" and they're seen as "deserving" to be picked on. If they ignore the bully (as many anti-bullying campaigns recommend), then they are ignoring the hierarchy and need to be "taught a lesson." And going to a teacher or the principal is generally not an option because all that'll happen is that the target will get an even heavier beating (and possibly be told not to be a tattle-tale, as my second grade teacher so succintly put it when I told her that Alain had kicked me in the head while I was down). The only thing a bully understands is bullying. The only way to counteract a bully is to stand up to him/her. You have to fight fire with fire.

I know that any child psychologist reading this would smack me upside the head with a cast-iron frying pan, but honestly, when your dad said, "You can't let him/her get away with it. You have to defend yourself," he was right. Bullies need to be dealt with on their own terms. Sure, the teacher will bust you for fighting or being a bitch, but at least you'll have come out with your dignity intact. (Mind you, if you're not the best fighter, you may want to latch on to some goons.) My boyfriend beat up his bully in junior high; he was never bugged again. I, on the other hand, just didn't give a crap and sat around and looked sullen (I didn't care that I wasn't invited to Val's Sweet Sixteen Party because I was way better than her). The important thing is that the Little Dictators can only hurt you if you let them. If you don't give a rat's ass and tell them that to their faces (you should see how mad they get!), the power relationship shifts; they no longer have power over you.

But see, these are my solutions. These are my dumbass solutions based on my personal experience. I've discovered, over time, that I'm going to meet bullies everywhere. In fact, most of the bullies I've met so far have been my bosses. If you don't figure out how to deal with them when you're younger, you're going to be an underling for the rest of your life. Remember the movie "Back to the Future?" Remember how Marty's dad stopped being Biff's bitch by standing up to Biff back when they were in High School? Yeah, well that crappy 80's-movie moment had more wisdom in it than any dumbass "poor, poor victim" discussions.

So until someone decides to have an intelligent discussion regarding bullying, I'm going to tune out. I don't need to hear how evil girls are and I don't need to hear how sad their victims are. What I want to hear is that someone has figured out a solution to how to get a bully to stop bullying. Until that happens, I'm not buying what you're selling. Girls are no more evil than boys. Bullying by breaking noses is no better than bullying through social isolation. It all sucks equally.

Oh, and about Val, she eventually decided to be friendly toward me and invited me to her seventeenth birthday party the next year. I went, but I gave her a cheap gift.