Do guys and gals bully differently?

Both genders can be bullies, but their methods tend to be different. Learn more about female bullying, from the schoolyard to the workplace, in this episode of Stuff Mom Never Told You.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff mom never told you?
From House top works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. This is Kristen, This is Molly. So Molly,

(00:21):
have you ever been the target of bullying? Bullying? Um? No,
I haven't, And I'll give you my secret for for
how to avoid being bully. Whenever I meet someone, I
immediately size up whether I could take them in a
fight and then punched him in the face. You don't
even have to do that, Chris, and I have to
do is like have this look in your eyes that

(00:41):
basically like just says to the person, you're not gonna
mess with me. You know that. I think about when
when you and I met on our first day of
employment here and all stuff works. Maybe, yeah, didn't I
give you a little bit of a look. I was
a little terrified, like, don't cross me, but I can
snap you. So it sounds like you might be the bully.
It's possible. It's possible. No, I'm so sweet, Um, but

(01:05):
I do immediately size up people about whether I could
take them in a fight or not. And so I
think that you know, I think that's kind of actually not.
I mean, we're gonna go into like tips to avoid
being a bully, but I think it's not a bad tip.
I mean, you should probably try and do it with
less violence in your heart. But um, you know, pulleys
tend to pick people that they know they can get
away with bullying. And if you meet people and just

(01:25):
give them a look like don't cross me, then they
might not cross you, or maybe just demonstrate confidence. That's
probably a nice way to put it. Um, But a
lot of times I think we tend to think of
the typical stereotypical bully as you know, the big big kid,
the big boy on the playground. Yeah that you know,
all the little kiss down. Yeah. I was. When I

(01:49):
was researching bullies for this podcast, Kristen, I found a
quote in Psychology Today that said, um that a typical
bullies line is give me the jump rope or I'll
kill you. Okay, So I'm just saying that's the kind
of like meanness we associate with bullies, like just blue force.
I was happy to know that kids were still jump roping,
I know, but like, yes, brute force on the playground,

(02:12):
like the playground is mine, and we think of bullies
typically as males. Yeah. In two thousand eight, the Boston
Globe had a list of the most intimidating pop culture bullies,
and girls took up only three of the slaw three
of fifteen went to girls. Now, they did pick some
pretty pretty good email bullies. We've got Nellie Olson from

(02:33):
Little House in the Prairie was blonde curls. She scared
the crap out of me when I was little. I
felt so bad for Laura Ingles. We got Regina George
from Mean Girls, such a good bully, yes, and conservative
commentator and culture but let's go back. Let's just skip
over an culture and go back to Regina George from you,

(02:53):
because rarely do we ever think about m Lindsay Lohan
changing our cultural conversation for the better. But I think
this movie Mean Girls really did bring to light the
the subject the title of the movie, that girls could
be really mean Mean girls friend of Me comes to mind. Yes,

(03:14):
you know, the kind of backstabbing teenage girl motif. And uh,
the thing is it, it isn't that far from reality.
Well that's because it was based on a nonfiction book
written by Rosalind Wiseman queen bees and wannabes, helping her
daughter survive clicks, gossip, boyfriends, and other realities of adolescence.

(03:35):
So what you might have chalked up to is just
writer Tina Fay's crazy imagination and bringing mean girls to
the screen was probably based on a real teenager. There
was this New York Times article where, um, the writer
of the article went to the high school and met
the girl who basically laid out rules for her her
posse in terms of what they wore each day, much

(03:56):
like Regina George did in the movie Monday was black
panther skirt. And we do have some research to back
up this gender equality among bullying, if you will, if
that's a good thing. We've got finished researcher cos b
York Histick York. Uh. He found that girls are no

(04:18):
less aggressive then boys, but the girls just bully a
little bit differently. Whereas boys will tend to inflict more
physical aggressions such as the playground fighting threats over jump probes,
girls play subtle mind games. Yeah, this is I don't
know if this is something to be proud of. Uh.

(04:38):
The article kind of frames it in terms of this
higher emotional intelligence that girls have that they actually know,
like how to wound their enemy a little bit better. Yeah. Well,
while boys might crush your face, girls will merely crush
your soul. Yeah, and which one, which one lasts longer.
The soul cannot be healed by a mean girl. But

(05:00):
I thought this was interesting. Until the age of four,
um kids will show the same types of aggression and bullying.
But we had a little study from Brigham Young University
that found it after age four, girls start learning how
to do this psychological manipulation. Such a young age, I know,

(05:21):
you can't. They haven't even been to kindergarten yet, and
they're learning how to tell secrets about other kids so
that those kids don't like the girl that they don't like.
And even thinking back to kindergarten, Molly, I can remember
a couple of specific girls who, you know, it's even
at such a young age, or a little little bullying.

(05:41):
You're playing games, they're kind of mind games stuff. You know.
They never like pushed me down because I was the
tallest kid in my class always, but and you had
that look in your eyes, and I had the fist
look in my eyes. The congres gaze. But no they
you know, even then girls were. But see that The
thing is is I I think in some ways girls
are you know, I don't want to to bash males,

(06:04):
but you know they almost have this intelligence to say,
no one can really catch me if I'm just playing
mind games. Yeah, you can't. See how can you crushing
in action? How can you prove a mind game? Um?
Whereas you know if you if a boy punches another boy,
someone's gonna get caught, probably if anyone is paying attention,
which they should be. And there's even a different term

(06:26):
to denote this specific type of adolescent girl two girls
girl on girl bullying. Uh, and they call it relational aggression. Yes,
and that's because you know, the playground bully whose mail
he may just go after a weak kid. He doesn't
know him, you know, doesn't care about him that much.
Relational implies that these girls go after their closest friends. Yeah,

(06:49):
because you lure them in, you find out all their secrets.
You know, you have the slumber party where everyone tells
their most embarrassing story and then lo and behold, somehow
your crush finds out about your most embarrassing story because
the mean girl because girls deal in that currency of
you know, secret secrets. Like at the slumber party. You know,

(07:10):
you can just see some girls like minds the wheels turning, like,
oh this is juicy. It's like that awful game which
I thankfully never was a part of UM, where you
would secretly like bring girl into the you know, the bedroom.
You'd like have her hide somewhere, you'd like bring the
rest of the group in, not knowing that she was siding,

(07:30):
and like like, okay, so what about Stacy Man, She's
a real loser. Seems Stacy would be in the closet crying.
Was with my friends, we never actually even hid. We
thought we were such good friends that would be okay,
just to go around in a circle and tell everyone
one thing we didn't like about each other, the reverse
compliment game. Girls never do this, yeah do you never? Never?

(07:52):
You think it'll bring you closer, but it won't. Know.
I've been, We've I've come close to playing that game
UM at certain times, and I just you know, I
don't want to hear it. Just tell me, tell me
how much you like me, build me up. Well, they're
trying to improve you. But see that's the thing is
I think This is another form of kind of the
mind game, where you know, girls will learn exactly how

(08:12):
they can they can stab you in your heart. But
one thing that boy and girl bullies share is kind
of the reason why are they're bullying. Both of them
both will do it in order to gain some kind
of social status. But one thing that boy and girl
bullies have in common is the reason why they are

(08:35):
being so aggressive, and that's to gain social status. But
the interesting thing is that while boy bullies will tend
to be lower on the social hierarchy, girl bullies tend
to be among the most popular. Right Regina George, you've
got to remain the queen of your click, and you
do that by exiling any threats. So in the movie,

(08:57):
when Lindsay Lohan moves to town and everyone starts us
to like her and think, oh, she's so fun, then
Regina George had to throw her out to dis her
behind her back, and they play games. They're all little
ponds in Regina George's world. Well, you're giving girls such
a bad name right now. But that's the thing is
I think that you know, when you're friends with a

(09:19):
group of girls and this sort of stuff goes on
where you know, they're kind of a little bit you know,
they're putting down your clothing, they're not in buying you
to every single event they do. You don't tend to
think that it's bullying. You tend to think that's just
the way girls behave. But the fact of the matter
is it is bullying. Girls can be just as bad
a bully as the guy who says, give me your jump, Roper,
I'll kill you psychology today, And of course it's not

(09:43):
you know, it's not all girls. You know, there's one,
uh you pointed out in the article that you actually
wrote for this about on how stuff works that you know,
parents really should remind daughters that you know, your friends
aren't gonna be manipulative and mean to you. Yeah, it's
hard to remember. I think when you're in middle school
in high school and all you know, if you're at

(10:04):
a new school, all you want is to be accepted.
It's want to be like to have someone to go
the malt with. But I mean, if the person you
go to the mall with is constantly saying you're a
little fat for that, or you know, that's really ugly,
are you really going to buy that you did that
voice a little too well? Kristen, are you the bully
of the homeschool? I bullied my classmates so much you

(10:28):
arranged some stuffed animals around and are just give me
a lunch money? Uh? Yeah, Um, but you've got our
mind girls that that is not appropriate friend behavior. I mean,
it's still as it sounds, your friends will not tear
you down in the in the hopes of improving you
the way of backwards compliment circle hopes to do. But

(10:49):
the thing is, we might associate all this mean girls
stuff with high school middle school. You know, all this
like backstabbing does sound like very very Do you've a i'll, however,
follows you into the workplace? Yes? And uh. In fact,
you know, when you first started googling bullying, all you

(11:10):
find is this woman on woman bullying in the workplace.
And I think they give it that sort of salacious
title to kind of draw you in, like, oh, you're
gonna see women jello wrestling or something, but um, that's
what they call it. Wow, women on women All right, Um,
but this phenomenon comes us from the Workplace Bullying Institute.
They released a survey in two thousand seven that showed

(11:32):
that of us workers have been bullied on the job.
And this doesn't mean that like you know, the office
bully corners you by the coke machine is like give
me your lunch money. It's more like you may not
get invited to a meeting you really should have been
sitting in on or like whenever you say something in
a meeting, like you glare at the person, you roll
their eyes at your eyes at whatever they say. Email

(11:54):
responses just kind of being overlooked in general. And uh,
this survey did find that males in the office tend
to bully more than females. Um Uh. Specifically, sixty percent
of the bullies and the survey were male. But the

(12:14):
aspect of this survey that reporters really honed in on
was the fact that females, while males in the workplace
will go bully, both males and females women in the
workplace tend to seventy of the time tend to go
after other women. That's staggering. Yeah, I mean the percentages
of you and I getting a longer stacked against us.

(12:35):
I know. So why is this Christian? Now? The thing
that's kind of sticky is now we're going to have
to get into some of the worst gender stereotypes. And
I think that's why people don't really know how to
talk about this is because it basically involves saying, you know,
we think that girls are sweet and nice and nurturing
and all these things that we associate as typical female behaviors,
and bullying just goes against all of those. So it's

(12:57):
very hard to phrase it in a way that doesn't seem,
you know, kind of offensive to modern ears. Okay, first
thing that sounds a little a little screwy to our
to our enlightened selves is that perhaps these women pick
other women because they know that women won't fight back.
They learned that lesson in high school where they got
a lot, they got away with being a mean girl,
and they know that, you know, the woman in the

(13:18):
workplace is is not going to fight back, and maybe
it's easier to as a woman, Maybe it's easier to
bully other women instead of other men, because you know,
going back to all those studies that show that these
even young girl bullies, you have this kind of way too.
We can get inside each other's heads and know what
gets to each other. I mean, I doubt that you can.

(13:41):
You know, the kind of the more emotional bullying that
women tend to do to other women would have the
same effect on a guy. You know, if you like
spread gossip about him, then he's just gonna be probably
gonna thrive on it, probably glad someone's talking about it. Um.
And speaking of women who get you know, get into
each other's head, we know that women are kind of

(14:02):
sensitive to criticism, so maybe this kind of works both ways. Maybe, Um,
you know, you become a bully because someone criticized you're working.
You're like, oh, I hate being criticized. But maybe it's
not Maybe these women aren't even bullying so much as
trying to offer criticism and the women take it the
wrong way. Right, Because this also my go back to

(14:22):
um different studies that we've talked about about the perceptions
differences in perception between women in positions of authority and
men and positions of authority. So maybe the results from
the survey from the Workplace Bullying Institute are kind of
skewed because certain studies have shown that women in positions
of power are perceived as more hostile than men in

(14:45):
the same position. You know, I think you're completely right, Christian,
because when I was reading a lot of commentary about
these results, you know, people were saying, these women are
you know, darned if they do and darned if they don't.
If they take on sort of the typical women you
know identified role of being nurturing and being sort of soft,
then they're perceived as you know, you can walk all
over them in the workplace. They're gonna lose that way.

(15:06):
If they take on the more male identified aggressive role
of being you know, a leader with an iron fist,
then they're going to be thought of as you know,
too manly and too you know, hostile word that rhymes
with which you can probably be thinking of right now.
They really have no leadership style that's going to win
them kudos. And uh yet yet, and research has has

(15:29):
pointed to this sort of to this challenging place that
women in authority in the workplace have to navigate as
perhaps one reason why they might bully other women because
you know, right now, while we do have more women
than ever before in you know, CEO sea level positions,

(15:52):
it's still you know, not as common for for a
woman be able to to be able to climb the ladder,
and perhaps you know, women at the top might feel
a little more threatened by other go getters. Yeah, it's
very much uncharted territory, and so I could I couldn't
understand being a you know, the only woman who has
a position of leadership and a company, and you're like, well,
I don't necessarily want to help all these women who

(16:13):
might be coming up to replace me because I just
got this job and no one helped me get it,
So why do I need to be nice to them? Um,
you know, I think that those are the like again,
it sounds awful to modern years, so we wouldn't all
just be like, you know, helping each other. But then again,
males aren't necessarily helping each other, you know, jump up
to vice president. But I do think also that, um,
let's say you are the only woman in position of

(16:35):
power and you're surrounded by all these nails. I'm thinking
that you're probably gonna be feeling a little bit worried,
maybe a little bit not up to the task. And
there's a pretty interesting study that shows that that might
be a reason why people bully each other. Right, This
pair of researchers at the University of Southern California and
Los Angeles and from the University of California and Berkeley

(16:56):
found that this combination of being really empowered in the
work and yet also feeling somewhat insecure about having that
power being in that position of leadership equaled more bullying.
I know, this is really interesting. They had these volunteers
think about times in which they had power but felt incompetent,
like like Kristen was saying, and they had to figure
out how they were going to um I guess negatively

(17:20):
and reinforce or punish these these people who were taking
like a reading test, I guess a comprehension test, and
you know, the researchers were like, you can pick a
buzz that they'll here and it'll be anywhere from you know, uh,
ten decibels two hundred thirty decibels, which is just deafening.
So they asked the people who felt most incompetent but
also had these positions of power what the punishment should be,

(17:43):
and they would pick these wildly loud punishments like seventy
one decibels on average, whereas everyone else was picking very
quiet punishments. You know, they didn't want to hurt others
and they were more benevolent in their power, or they
didn't have any power and thus didn't really enforce any
But the way the the researchers got those kind of
incompetent yet empowered UH participants to lower the volume without

(18:06):
you know, just asking them a little bit of flattery.
Once they started to compliment their leadership style kind of reinforced,
you know, there their competence, which is a valid tip
because you know, most bullies, according to the Workplace Bullying Institute,
are going to be your boss, male or female. It's

(18:28):
just if you haven't have a female boss, then maybe
you'll notice the bullying a little bit more. But yeah,
but I think that, you know, if we do have
a woman who doesn't feel empowered or secure in her job,
then maybe she would be tending to pick loud punishments
acquiring to the study just to reinforce, hey, I'm in charge. Yeah,
so if you are an underling, should be just flatter
our way into the boss's good graces. Apparently, apparently because

(18:52):
the other tips at the Workplace Bullying Institute offers for
dealing with workplace bullys we Christ and I have deemed
somewhat unhelpful. Yeah, it would kind of all seem like
it would lead to you probably losing your job, which
I mean, you know, it's not like a workplace bully
makes work a fun place to go. I think you'd
tend to be looking for a way out anyway. But um,

(19:14):
these tips they give you are things like, you know,
go to the doctor to make sure your personal health
is okay, and yes, bullies can be a threat stress
related diseases. But then you're supposed to go to your
boss and say, hey, this person has got to be
fired because you know they're cutting your productivity. And I
think that you know, if you went to most bosses
with these sort of wimpy lines like you have an

(19:35):
employer responsibility to take care of this person that's being
mean to me, and you'd be laughed at. And in
this economy, I don't know if a lot of people
would put themselves out in the line to say, oh,
I can't get along with this person. Sure, And well,
I mean, it does seem like these tips are for
really extreme bullying, like it refers to psychological harassment, psychological violence,
and emotional abuse. And perhaps in those extreme situations you

(19:58):
might have so more leverage. But if you feel like
you are just the target of repeated snarky emails and
mean looks. You can't go complain that, you know, hey, sorry,
Linda is really looking at me in the wrong way.
You know they're going to tell you to, you know,
grow up. Yeah, but I mean, you know, I do
think that while I don't know, I can't see going

(20:21):
to my boss and saying, hey, this person is being
mean to me, because it mean sounds like what you're
not supposed to do. I do think it's gonna tell
you to call the ambulance moment um, But I do
think it's good to put a name on it. I
think it's good not to think, oh, I have a
difficult coworker. I think it's good to say, like, hey,
I'm being bullied because that will sort of empower you

(20:41):
to maybe find workarounds and demonstrate that self confidence. Yeah.
I know, I'm a competent worker and you're bullying me
for no reason and you know, hindering me from getting
my job done, like we said, Like we said, the beginning,
bullies will go after people who they don't think are
going to fight back, and maybe just by demonstrating a

(21:03):
little bit of a willingness to fight back, you can
start to nip things in the bud get sseed on
the emails you're supposed to get s seed on. But
what about what I would consider to be the really
the hardest type of bullying to deal with, which is
that relational aggression that really starts to happen a lot
in adolescence. I mean, there's so much going on. You know,
there's not an hr REP that you can go to

(21:26):
in middle school or high school. I mean, I guess
school counselors. Chool counselors are a good place to start
because a lot of these um tips for more high
school middle school people. Um, you really have to It's
all about the environment that you're in. And so that's
why going to your boss is sort of I mean,
it sounds unrealistic to us, but you know, maybe your

(21:47):
boss is creating a workforce in which aggression is valued,
and maybe you have to go to bus and say, hey,
you're cultivating a really unhealthy environment here saying with a
school counselor like hey, you know, let's say you know
it all happen online, Like cyber bowling is a really
big thing right now, You've got to bring it to
the counselor's attention so that someone in authority can step

(22:07):
in and say this is not acceptable behavior. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
There have been countless UM cases that have been coming
up over the past couple of years about you know,
girls getting you know, just dreamed on Facebook, sending out
pictures they shouldn't and then those pictures getting broadcast to
all of their classmates. My favorite and slash least favorite

(22:29):
buzzword of two thousand nine, a lot of sexting going on,
and then those sex I'm being forwarded and I'm kind
of making a joke out of it, but it's not
a joke at all. You think about um. Back to
mean girls, they had that book, burn Book, the burn Book,
but now a lot of girls keep their burn books
online and you can read all about how much everyone

(22:51):
hates you on the internet. And the Internet is relentless.
I can say that as someone who works on it.
So the National Association for School Psychologists recommends, you know,
for parents, recommends encouraging your team to get involved in
really solid friendships and social groups. Maybe uh, there's some

(23:12):
kind of athletic team or youth group or some kind
of an organization to where, you know, maybe the team
doesn't feel quite so well like they have a network
of people to rely on. Yeah, so you have more
than one group of friends. You know, if one group
is being too cattie for the day, then you go
work on your school newspaper and you build your self
esteem in other ways than through a girl who's gonna

(23:34):
put you down. And they do have says that show
that girls you know that have some sense of pride
in either their schoolwork or athletics or extracurricular activities are
less prone to, um, you know, completely hate themselves because
their friends are evil. Yeah, and and don't have people friends. Yeah,
And I think that I kind of, uh that helped

(23:56):
me a lot in high school. I had sort of
a you know, just sort of smattering of different kind
of groups to to bounce around too. And thinking about
it now, probably you know, did did help with those
situations because there would be weeks you know, sometimes you
just don't get along as well with with certain people
and you need a little bit of a break. Yeah,
you should never I think this is a good model

(24:17):
for life. Never put all your eggs in one basket,
don't help all your friends in one click, diversify, diversify
your stock portfolio, and uh and more extreme cases, of course, um,
counseling can be helpful, and even just you know, journaling
some stuff out, just getting don't bottle up those you know,
feelings of of being bullied, right. You know a lot

(24:41):
of these these tip sheets say just to tell someone
talk to me adult about it. Because while you really
don't want your parents going into the school and something
all your problems for you, because that can get embarrassing.
They can help you problem solved. You know, you can
just say, let's bounce around some ideas about how to
deal with this. Now, that's one of those things that
kind of seems easy to say, like, you know, stand tall,

(25:02):
be brave, don't let anyone push you around. Um, you know,
build up that self competence. These are things that are
really easy to say for you friends. Yeah, because that's
really easy to do, Kristen. I mean, that's just one
of the great challenges of life that we're just throwing
out at people right now. Psych not too hard to
do at all. So what do you guys do when

(25:22):
you get bullied? Because I think that it's very easy
to read all these tips, but we need real, real
life experience. Yeah, and I'm also interested to hear um,
people who have from people who have been able to
deal with successfully deal with workplace bullys, because Kristen has
a problem. Very curious about this and I'm looking at
it right now. Yeah, I usually and bullying Kristen in

(25:46):
regards to the podcast, Uh so yeah. Send us an
email Mom Stuff at how stuff works dot com. And
in the meantime, Molly, let's read some listener mail. So
our first email today is from Danielle, and she writes
in response to the podcast that does birth order determine
your personality? She writes, I have the typical middle child syndrome.

(26:10):
I felt alone a lot when I was growing up
because my older sister and younger brother always left me
out of their games and just rejected me. I learned
to just ignore sometimes, but it really hurt every time
they turned me away. I was really shy with others
when I was living at home before college, and I
think I narrowed it down to because I was scared
of rejection that I always felt with my siblings. Now
that I've come on my shell, the more time I
sped away from home, I have always wondered if I

(26:32):
would have been different unless shy, if I was not
the middle child. Also, my parents always listened to more
to my older sister and gave into what my little
brother wanted instead of what I wanted. Whenever I ran
about them to my boyfriend, I just sound like the
typical middle child, and this podcast just fit. I just
wanted to share my story and give loved all the
middle children out there. So love to middle children who

(26:52):
got dumped on a little bit in that podcast. All right, Well,
I've got one here from Lily about our uh fun
podcast on placenta's yuh. She says, Traditionally, I have spent
my summers with my mother's family in Taiwan, where we
visit hundreds of extended family members. On one of these strips,

(27:13):
we met my mother's cousin who turned her daughter's placenta
into an official stamp. In Taiwan, instead of a signature,
a stamp is used on official documents. Each stamp is
marked with one's name, a special crest, sip symbol, or insignia.
The handle of the stamp is usually would or marble.
But my mother's cousin had sent her daughter's placenta to

(27:33):
be encased in plastic and sent it to be made
into the handle of her daughter's stamp. While this placenta
stamp isn't as interesting as placenta Teddy Bears, although I
don't know about that, Lily, it's another eccentric use for placenta.
I'd love a placenta placentis day up. Oh my, there

(27:53):
you go. Can you just imagine like being at the
bank and be like, okay, I'll sign this placenta sent
to Sam Up. It's a pretty interesting stuff. Guys. If
you have anything to comment on any of our podcast again,
the email address is mom Stuff at how stuff works
dot com. We also are busy bees during the week
blogging away at how to stuff, which is at how

(28:15):
stuff works dot com. As is the article our male
Bullys and female Bullies different written by Molly, written by me.
I didn't want to say it in case I didn't
want to, didn't want a brig didn't want to seem
like a bully, bit bully. But to read more for
me and other bullies, you can of course go to
how stuff works dot com for more on this and

(28:38):
thousands of other topics because at how stuff works dot com.
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