Female Aggressive Relationships within Play (Putallaz)

The most significant recent research done on female aggression has come from Martha Putallaz and Karen Bierman. The main theories are that girls are more socially aggressive and less physically aggressive than boys, that abused girls grow up to be abusive, and that girls have less opportunity to work out aggression as part of team-building because of the different ways in which boys and girls playing (and particularly playing sports) are viewed and socially accepted.

Prevailing theory suggests that girls prefer social aggression such as gossip, name-calling, and making threats, rather than the physical violence of hitting and fighting exhibited by boys. Girls learn at early ages how to wound with words, and how to withhold favors such as attendance at a party or friendship, or even to invoke the infamous silent treatment unless the victim conforms to the requested behavior of the threatmaker. Although the wisdom of the ages suggested that sticks and stones might break our bones while names would never hurt us, current social research advises otherwise. The damaging effects female aggression cause can be summed up in a sarcastic remark made by the Seinfeld sitcom character Elaine. Instead of giving wedgies in locker rooms as the boys do, she says, “We just tease each other until one of us develops an eating disorder.”

Socialization patterns differ significantly with male and female children, of course, with girls tending to be raised as more finely attuned to the needs of others, and quite possibly to how they can help fulfill those needs. This probably lends itself both to less physical or overt aggression and, simultaneously, to a deeper understanding of how to be socially aggressive—in essence, where the buttons are that can be pushed to harm, insult, or threaten another person.

Socially competent girls (those who are “popular”) tend to be victimized less than those considered underdogs, and the reinforcement of this behavior makes the socialization process stronger as time goes on. While race and social status can be factors in which girls will be considered popular in what social contexts, they may not be the strongest indicators. When young girls play house (or other make-believe games), behavior as early as age 3 suggests which girls will be victims, which will be aggressors, and which will refuse to become aggressors or succumb to social threats. This differentiation seems personality based and dependent on the socialization of parents and early educators, as well as the quantity and quality of interaction with peers.

However, girls who are socially popular also tend to be more aggressive with one of the major forms of social bullying in which girls participate: gossip. Popular girls tend to gossip more, and their gossip is more evaluative of their targets, judging the choices made in clothing, friends, partners, and other social criteria. In short, popular girls may be less targeted, but they do more targeting.

At the same time, girls who are victims tend not to engage in victimizing when it is purely social violence directed toward them. “Picked-on” girls rarely fight back verbally or socially. Yet girls who are the victims of sexual or emotional abuse are likely to become violent; sexual abuse is the greatest indicator of delinquency and of violence (social and physical) by women, toward either women or men, and by adults to children. By the same token, girls who are physically pushed or slapped by a male or female are more likely to retaliate physically than to fight with words.

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