Female on Female Hate

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

Nollywood Actresses in the picture to the right. It’s not the feud that caught my attention but the comment from a lady calling them both ‘old bitches’. Whatever for? What exactly warrants such name calling for people she’s never met and possibly never will? Yet, I see we women call each other names so flippantly like someone who has an axe to grind.

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!