Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls
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Product Description
When boys act out, get into fights, or become physically aggressive, we can’t avoid noticing their terrible behavior. But it is simple to miss the devious signs of aggression in girls–the dirty looks, the taunting notes, or the exclusion from the group-that send girls home crying.
In Odd Girl Out, Rachel Simmons focuses on these interactions and provides language for the indirect aggression that runs through the lives and friendships of girls. These exchanges take place within intimate circles–the importance of friends and the dread of losing them is key. Lacking the cultural consent to prompt their rage or to resolve their conflicts, girls prompt their aggression in covert but damaging ways. Every generation of women can tell tales of being bullied, but Odd Girl Out explores and clarifies these experiences for the first time.
Journalist Rachel Simmons sheds light on destructive patterns that need our attention. With advice for girls, parents, teachers, and even school administrators, Odd Girl Out is a groundbreaking work that every woman will agree is long overdue.
Amazon.com Review
There is small sugar but lots of flavor in journalist Rachel Simmons’s courageous and brilliant book that skewers the stereotype of girls as the kinder, gentler gender. Odd Girl Out starts with the premise that girls are socialized to be sweet with a double bind: they must value friendships; but they must not prompt the rage that might ruin them. Missing cultural permission to acknowledge conflict, girls renovate what Simmons calls “a hidden culture of silent and indirect aggression.”
The leader, who visited 30 schools and talked to 300 girls, catalogues chilling and heartbreaking acts of aggression, including the silent treatment, note-passing, glaring, gossiping, ganging up, fashion police, and being nice in private/mean in public. She decodes the vocabulary of these sneak attacks, explaining, for example, three ways to parse the meaning of “I’m stout.”
Simmons is a gifted writer who is skilled at describing destructive patterns and prescribing clear-cut strategies for parents, teachers, and girls to resist them. “The heart of resistance is truth telling,” advises Simmons. She guides readers to nurture emotional honesty in girls and to learn a language for public discussions of bullying. She offers innovative thoughts for changing the dynamics of the classroom, sample dialogues for talking to daughters, and exercises for girls and their friends to explore and resolve messy feelings and conflicts head-on.
One intriguing chapter contrasts truth telling in white middle class, African-American, Latino, and effective-class communities. Odd Girl Out is that rare book with the power to touch individual lives and transform the culture that constrains girls–and boys–from language the truth. –Barbara Mackoff
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Girls getting sex aren’t doing mean things.
Girls in like don’t reflect of malicious things; as a replacement for they are dreaming………
These simple rules are rarely recognizable, and not regularly followed in the annals of space history, on planet or otherwise, but. From the history of early England we know that women deprived are among the most ruthless of women, and independence only serves to encourage persons ruthless tendencies. Women are made to be “attached” not permanently and not automatically at the hip, but still attached. Persons that aren’t regularly end up like Carrie in the horror film of that name, much to the delight of persons who contrive to place her there. For women, romance and sex generally go hand in hand. If they don’t, it is not by choice but permanently a compromise, and most turn the guilt and rage in on themselves, and persons around them, to assuage their passion. The complexity of women is astonishing to most men who, understandably, avoid the attempt to try because they are so different. Many middle aged women turn to political dynamics because they are not getting the attention of earlier years where romance serves to keep alive the passions of sexuality. Men have long experimental that phenomenon in women but they tend to forget. History is dotted with women, not who used their sexual interest to alter the dynamics of history, but who used their sexual deprivation and resulting lack of sympathy to alter it. Intelligent men don’t play with the emotions of women unless they are certain the scenery of their sexuality or social constraints are sufficient not to intervene to complicate their public affairs, and turn what could be excellent experiences into terrible ones, no matter the intent. Sexual deprivation, chosen by women or not, may be one of the most treacherous psychological components of female chemistry since their scenery is attuned to it as a natural contrivance for building the relations they form. It is not a byproduct of the process as it may be for men. As an essential, blocking sexual pathways is much like uncaging a wild animal likely to go on rampage with the “traditional madness” females have long had the reputation of having recognizable by this provocation. Their rage is permanently deep seated and unpredictable since it is the rage within that is being contained lacking the benefit of an outlet. Many such women turn to artificial means of control in this instance – most of which appear to be addictions characteristic of men who throw themselves into work to ward off the effects of grief. The circumstances of grief in women that accompanies her loss of sexual access depends upon her understanding of the necessity of its consequence, the loss of a spouse, inability to locate a partner, divorce, separation, or her own perception of the need for denial. All of these have consequences for her, and for persons around her, possibly varying with age and her ability for self control. A women is regularly the living history of her sexual equilibrium, and uses the outlets available to prompt her emotional state. If she is aggressive, the being of lack of sympathy is likely; if not, she may be in pre- or post-aggressive mode, or she may have successfully reconciled the dissonance. Although women may prompt their hostilities differently than men, and regularly more subdued than men, they are equally expressive in how persons emotions register and play out in their lives which can regularly be more illusory in women than in men. Neither can be said to be reliably successful or predictable in their management of these complex effects on their sexual natures. This may be why society is much more comfortable with what appear to be committed, productive, and sexually compatible relationships to lower the possibility of conflict-ridden incidents that can disrupt society.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
This is a terrible book on an appealing theme. Anecdotes do not data make. This is terrible science, terrible social science, and I’m unconvinced by her analysis. There are additional theories about gossip, for example, cf Robin Dunbar books for one–gossip is excellent and helps to strengthen vital social networks. There are additional theories about female-female competition besides that it is pathological bullying (which it obviously can’t be since it is so common). While Simmons notices appealing things, she seems to have had some unfortunate blinkers on while considering what it is she has experimental.
Simmons should look more widely at the role of status-seeking in primates as well as in human cultures to better know what it is she is observing. Hrdy’s wonderful Mother Scenery would have agreed her a fantastic model for integrating unique observations with science and anecdote. Fellow journalist Natalie Angier’s wonderful books would have also agreed her additional perspectives. And Simmons would have done well to look at this theme of status-seeking in the context of behavioural economics and evolutionary psychology and anthropology, where there is already a fantastic and wide ranging literature on status seeking and interpersonal aggression and sex differences. I get the feeling she stumbled on a cool thought and was smart enough to write this book, but she is remarkably uniformed. This is not original territory and while her perspective is catchy, framed as it were in everyone’s most memorable stage of life, but ultimately it leads nowhere.
It’s dull. Repetetive. Did I say repetitive? And repetitive.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
I thought that the case studies in this book were sadly fascinating in their cruelty, but very right. (Just question any teacher who has girls in her classroom). I questioned a few women that I know, from different generations, if they had similar experiences to persons mentioned in the book. From the few (6 or 7) people that I talked to, the older (closer to the WWII generation) the woman was, the less likely she was to have veteran such incredible cruelty from girls. My own analysis is that once again we can thank the entertainment industry for the way it has reinforced the meanness that is in each of us, by regularly presenting catty and devious characters in publicity, TV, and movies. It can’t help but affect young people.
I noticed that the book has a bias, not permanently devious, against people of faith, or with “religious restrictions”. Predictable of books like this, there was also a strong secular feminist viewpoint, especially near the end.
But, in spite of the biases, the leader came to at least three conclusions that are 100% Biblical, although she didn’t report them as such. (Sometimes these conclusions were reinforced by psychologists who were able to see the truth when it hit them between the eyes!)
I. Sin comes naturally to us. (Romans 3: 9, Romans 6: 19, Romans 3: 23). (The actual word “sin” will not be establish in these pages).
II. It’s best to deal with people directly when there is a problem. Persons who do fare better. (Matthew 18: 15).
III. Aggression and relationship difficulties help us grow and become stronger. (Romans 8: 28, Genesis 50: 20, Isaiah 38: 17).
I reflect that this book is useful for parents and teachers. Page 239 in chapter 9 has some fantastic questions to open up communication between mothers and daughters, or teachers and students, about ways that girls show meanness. Chapter 9 also has some fantastic tips for helping adults know what to say to girls who are going through a bullying examination.
It makes me smile when I see all the effort that goes into studying human scenery, especially when the conclusions are largely on target with what the Bible says. Sadly, our culture is so Biblically ignorant, that these findings are new and surprising.
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5
The excellent news is that Rachel has written a book looking at a phenomenon that does occur in real life and has not been adequately explored. I certainly remember the two individuals in our grade school that were outcast by everyone. In retrospect, these individuals would not have been placed in a regular classroom situation today, to fail over and over, with ever more advancing age relative to their classmates. But, I resent the fact that Rachel represents these incidents as commonplace as a replacement for of the abberations that they are. She seems to place every girl on either one side or the additional of the bullying equation. It feels like just another way for girls and women to be place down. I don’t reflect the book was well-written, and did not flow well from beginning to end, just restated the premise again and again with more vignettes. I thought the best 2 pages in the book were very near the end when she discussed ways of intervening in a bullying situation, and would have liked more of the book to be devoted to this end.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
I saw this book on the Oprah show and it looked very appealing. But, the leader focuses way too much on her research methods rather than drawing conclusions from the research. She also spends too much time giving unnecessary details of each theme’s situation. Another annoying factor is that the leader constantly throws in references to the movie ‘Heathers’, as if we all should have seen & memorized it. The only value in this book is that it will remind you that you are not alone in your past or present feelings of isolation and/or loneliness.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5