Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Agression in Girls (Paperback)

Have you ever seen any of the questions they ask these young people in that research? They have to classify on how many isolated occasions they are bullied during a day, a week, a month and the answers to that are all put in graphs. Bullying is generally classified by types such as physical bullying, exclusion, namecalling and so on.

The problem with this method is that it assumes a whole number of things it should not assume! For a start, a lot of bullying does not happen in single isolated incidents but in an endless stream of small continual pinpricks, the sum of which cause a person unbelievable distress, but when a (young) person tries to explain what is going on they sound petty. "It was just a joke"

What about hate campains, where everything is under the surface, where one person gets bumped into twenty times a day, stepped on, 'actidentally' pushed down the stairs, 'accidentally' hit over the head with a bag several times a day by different people, every single time followed by a 'oops, sorry about that'? What about the systematic putting down of someone through a whole range of little things, but by a (so-called) close friend, something that would not even be classified as bullying by the victim, even though it can be very abusive? How would that fit into any of these neat little boxes?

The problem is that a lot of the bullying is so subtle that the victim is never quite sure whether they are imagining things and when they do stand up for themselves, they often get classed by teachers as a problem kid, rather than as a victim of harrassment by the rest of the group.

Another problem with this research is that it assumes that the
split between bully and victim is very clear cut. I work in the performing arts with young people, specialising in socio economically disadvantaged areas, where bullying is a big issue and I can tell you from experience that this is definately not the case. An entire gruop, including the school administration, the teachers, the parents, they are ALL part of this bullying culture, either by tolerating it or by actively pursuing it. If one kid makes a nasty joke, isn't there a whole class to cheer him or her on? And the cheerers, how many of those cheer because they fear they may be next?

There are many teachers who function by picking on one kid and using and abusing this kid on a continual basis to keep a class quiet. What appears on a graph? Not much bullying going on, is there, just one annoying kid throwing around accusations, not to be taken seriously. None of the other kids back him up, do they? But what is that teacher teaching those kids?

It was about time that a scientist took the effort to go back to square one and look at what is actually going on in schools, to redefine bullying, based on what they see rather than assume and that is exactly what Rachel Simmons did.

So why does she not work with these precious little numbers? Because what she has to say does not fit into little numbers. Because she actually listened to these girls and did not tell them to squeeze their experiences into what she had decided was happening to them.

I think this book is fantastic. I am working on a big project next year, using theatre techniques to combat bullying cultures and have done a lot of research so far. This is the single most useful book I have found. It reads easily, the anekdotes are good, and every step of the way I can hear myself think - yes, I recognise that - but she managed to put it in words and in context.

She defines girl-bullying as different from boy bullying and you can agree with these gender theories or not, what remains is that her book gives incredibly powerfull descriptions of an aspect of bullying that needs to be explored.

Lastly, responding to one of the other reviews: Rachel Simmons is in my opinion not stating that girls should go out and hit people, expressing their agression. What I read is that they, unlike boys, are denied an outlet for their agression by society, which I believe is very true. It is considered unacceptable for a girl to vent agression, as is accaptable for boys. That does not mean it is right for boys to vent their agression through hitting, or that girls should be allowed to, Simmons is just stating the reasons for girls taking their agression underground.
We need to find NEW accaptable ways for young people to vent their agression, ways that do not hurt others.

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