Hello Blogville, I have been seeing some renewed activities from a few Blogville veterans lately and that just spurred me on to write about something that has been weighing on my mind for a while now.
I’m going to
be writing about an age old problem that women from every facet of life seem to
experience at some point in their lives. I went to an all-girls school and I
have seen first class how bullying by another female can be quite demoralising
for the bullied. Some girls just hate you for the heck of just hating you. I
remember, following an act of kindness to some random girl in secondary school,
her clique of friends approached me to thank me and to say that they didn’t
realise I was so nice. Before then, they perceived me to be snobbish despite
never having spoken to me before. I was taken aback by their revelation as I
saw myself as the complete opposite. Yes, I was usually well kitted out but
that didn’t stop me from seeing myself as awkward and lacking in confidence.
Plus, growing up with five brothers meant I didn’t easily mix with other girls
and was generally shy around them. Apparently, many of my school mates took
that to being snobbish and I recall encountering a lot of hate from class mates
and other girls in the school.
Why am I writing about this? A few weeks ago, I saw some
headlines while scrolling through my FB newsfeed. The first headline was between
two
The other headline
that stood out to me is the one below along with the comment that caught my
attention. I am not in support of a woman choosing to be a Stripper, but I'm fully aware of her freewill to be one. The last time I checked, there were both male and female Strippers.
How come the men never get called names the same way
we women just love calling ourselves bitches and hoes? Isn’t it bad enough that
songs performed by men are full of derogatory comments and attitudes towards
women? Must we make propagating such attitudes easier, when we ought to be
standing shoulder to shoulder in fighting these stereotypes?
While doing a bit of research for this article, I found a
2013 article in Psychology Today which tried to give an explanation for why
women hate on each other so much. Apparently, we are more sensitive than men to
social exclusion, so we exclude any third party who tries to threaten us in
this way. Basically a case of ‘I will get you before you get me’. They also
found that “women who are mean-spirited about other women were often raised by
a mother who probably didn't like herself and didn't feel warmly toward women,
in general, either”. They also found that the majority of female criticism actually
stems from feeling inadequate in an area of life a woman highly values. So
often times she's not being critical of other women because she thinks less of
them; she is covetous of what they have instead.
Women need to stop hating on each other so much. We have
such a monumental battles to fight in our everyday lives, like breaking the
glass ceiling, reclaiming the conversation about our bodies and kicking out the
idealistic view of beauty and sexuality. We need not add the sister hating to
the long list of our current battles!
