Reddit reviews Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls

Total garbage.

Odd Girl Out

"There is little sugar but lots of spice in journalist Rachel Simmons's brave and brilliant book that skewers the stereotype of girls as the kinder, gentler gender. Odd Girl Out begins with the premise that girls are socialized to be sweet with a double bind: they must value friendships; but they must not express the anger that might destroy them. Lacking cultural permission to acknowledge conflict, girls develop what Simmons calls "a hidden culture of silent and indirect aggression."

That wasn't my intention. As a woman, I can say that I don't think men are superior to women. They have their own shortcomings which I tend to notice more on the business end instead of the personal. But women are raised, perhaps not by their parents but definitely in a society, to have an unhealthy relationship with other women. It begins when females are young. I suggest reading "Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls" by Rachel Simmons. It details the effects of female bullying and contrasts them to the effects of male bullying. Males might give each other a black eye but girls give the silent treatment, call each other fat, talk behind each other's backs and gang up on each other. Studies have been done on it and to think that some of these acts of aggression don't continue into adulthood is to fool yourself. I've seen women hold other women back professionally, fire people because they are too successful and in truth, I was a victim of being spoken about by coworkers just a few years ago. The only thing I can attribute it to was a promotion that someone else felt entitled to. It was hurtful, lies were spread about me, but I recognized it for what it was. A lot of women don't know how to say, "Fuck off" so they do things like that to take their aggression out on whoever ticks them off. Instead of confronting the situation, they use bullying.

There's a really great book called Odd Girl Out that explores how, because girls lack cultural permission to directly express anger/competitiveness within friendships, they are socialized to express these feelings through indirect/relational aggression (aka the 'passive-aggressive' type of behavior you're referring to, and the type of bullying people are claiming occured in T-ara).

I agree that that behavior is more common among girls than guys, but my problem with EYK's statement is that they say girls are just generally catty rather than considering the factors that cause girls to typically express anger differently than guys. It's caused by social expectations on women, not an inherent female quality.