Essay: Differences Between Male and Female Bullying

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Home >English homework help >Essay: Differences Between Male and Female Bullying

The role of popular girls in bullying and

intimidating boys and other popular girls in

secondary school

Siobhan Dytham* The University of Warwick, Coventry, UK

Despite a large amount of research focusing on bullying and exclusion in secondary schools, there is

far less research focusing on cross-gender bullying and ‘popular’ students who experience bullying.

This research provides an analysis of interactions between male and female students (aged 13–14) in a school in England. The data provides multiple examples, both in the form of observations and

group interviews, of girls teasing, intimidating and bullying boys and other popular girls. The analy-

sis also considers teachers’ reactions to this behaviour, highlighting that it is often unnoticed. This

paper raises this as an area for concern and suggests that future research should explore this further,

both gaining more in-depth knowledge of female bullying and intimidation of boys and popular

girls, and exploring ways of working with teachers and schools to support students.

Keywords: gender; secondary education; social relationships; inclusion and exclusion

Introduction

A vast amount of research has demonstrated that being popular at school relates to

‘appropriate’ gender performance (Lees, 1993; Adler & Adler, 1998; Martino, 1999;

Jackson, 2002; Paechter, 2005; Ringrose, 2008; Warrington & Younger, 2011).

Appropriate femininity, at least in middle-class contexts, often involves girls being

seen as ‘nice’ (Hey, 1997; Read, 2010), but much research has also reported the

‘meanness’ and ‘bitchiness’ that girls adopt to exclude others and police the bound-

aries of their group and femininity (Merton, 1997; Jackson et al., 2010). The popu-

larity hierarchy, and the hierarchy of femininities that exist within schools, are

constructed and policed by girls who scrutinise the sexuality, bodies and behaviours

of their peers (Currie et al., 2006; Jackson et al., 2010). This type of behaviour was

traditionally associated with boys, but ethnographic work has been key in shedding

light on girls’ bullying and ‘meanness’, showing that this is actually a common feature

in girls’ relations (Hey, 1997; Goodwin, 2006; George, 2007). Girls have been shown

to use explicit, aggressive and in some cases ‘pornified language’ (Garcia-G�omez, 2011) to shame, attack and humiliate other girls.

Yet, despite this, it can often be considered that girls do not bully like boys, or that

what they do is lesser or ‘not as bad’ (O’Brien, 2011). To date there has been a

*Corresponding author. The University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK. E-mail:

[email protected]; Twitter: @SiobhanDytham.

© 2018 The Authors. British Educational Research Journal published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Educational Research Association. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

British Educational Research Journal Vol. 44, No. 2, April 2018, pp. 212–229

DOI: 10.1002/berj.3324

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

tendency in gender and education research to focus on patterns of gender which con-

form to and reinforce expected gender dynamics and behaviours, rather than provid-

ing analyses of behaviours which seem to counter or disrupt this (Francis & Paechter,

2015). As a result, girls’ ‘voices are frequently missing from research about aggression

and violence in schools’ (Waldron, 2011: 1299).

This paper will consider the interactions of girls described as ‘popular’ with other

potentially powerful groups in secondary schools, namely boys and other ‘popular’

girls. We begin with a discussion of the literature relating to girls’ bullying, control

and intimidation behaviours in schools, before discussing an analysis of ‘popular’ girls

in a secondary school in central England.

Female bullying and dominance

There has been a vast amount of work that has offered a critique of essentialist, beha-

vioural and developmental models of bullying (Walton, 2011; Rawlings, 2017). In

addition to these critiques, it is noted that dominant frameworks of bullying have

relied on a modernist and individualist framework, where the actions and psychology

of individual ‘bullies’ and ‘victims’ are the focus, rather than interrelationships and

collective constructions. There has since been a large amount of research which has

adopted social constructionist and poststructuralist frameworks to offer such analyses

of bullying (see Ellwood & Davies, 2010; Ryan & Morgan, 2011; Rawlings, 2017),

which demonstrate the collective and socially constructed nature of bullying. Bullying

is highly contextual and fluid, therefore in this paper, students’ own understandings

of these terms are prioritised, by considering cases that students themselves have

referred to as bullying or mean, or evidence of students being scared or intimidated.

Moving beyond modernist and individualised conceptions of bullying, this research

involves group discussions and observations, to allow for an analysis which moves

beyond individualised bully and victim experiences to discuss the bullying and domi-

nant behaviour of popular girls in a UK school.

Girls’ social groups are hierarchical, and girls use manipulation, bullying and teas-

ing to control and exclude others to maintain this hierarchy and the boundaries of

their groups (Lees, 1993; Merton, 1997; George, 2007; Jackson et al., 2010). Hey

(1997) discusses the process of ‘othering’, whereby girls construct peers negatively

and as different from themselves as a way to police the borders of their group and

strengthen their own belonging to it. In Garcia-G�omez’s (2011) study, girls used ‘othering’ to present certain girls as ‘lesbians’, and described them as bad for being

so, in order to strengthen their own claim to being a heterosexual female. It can also

be used by girls to label others as ‘sluts’ and thus avoid being labelled as such them-

selves (Raby, 2009). This technique is common amongst girls who have been ostra-

cised from a group themselves and therefore try to position another girl from the

group as ‘other’ in order to reclaim their own place, or to justify their own margina-

lised or different position. For example, pupils labelled ‘square’ often described the

behaviour of other girls as ‘babyish’ and immature, in order to present it as negative

and undesirable (Renold, 2010).

A further technique adopted by girls is to construct a sense of ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ in

order to police group boundaries and appropriate forms of femininity (Payne, 2007).

Popular girls bullying and intimidating 213

However, these techniques are not simply used to police those who transgress ide-

alised femininity and heterosexuality, and even girls who are considered popular and

have adopted emphasised femininity can become the subject of abuse and bullying.

As Adler and Alder (1995) suggest, high-status members within peer groups subju-

gate other members of the group to ensure that their own positions are not chal-

lenged. This highlights the fact that popular individuals do not own power, even

though they are often the most powerful; it is constructed through their social rela-

tions with others (Currie et al., 2006).

As well as bullying and control within gender groups, some research has also con-

sidered cross-gender experiences. There is a wealth of research demonstrating the

role that (hegemonic) masculinity can play in the demonisation of girls and femininity

(Martino, 1999; Redman et al., 2002; Chambers et al., 2004; Reay, 2010). Equally,

there is some evidence to suggest that some girls can bully and humiliate boys. Hey

et al. (2001) showed that in peer groups, girls often discuss and make jokes about

boys and divide them into those deemed ‘sad’ and ‘sexy’, which positions them as

subjects able to make decisions about boys’ levels of success in becoming a heterosex-

ually attractive subject. Furthermore, some ‘high-status’ girls hold powerful positions

within the peer group, even more so than boys, who have to make themselves attrac-

tive (both in physical appearance and behaviour) to get the much-sought-after atten-

tion of these elite girls (Hey et al., 2001). For example, the girls showed that the boys

who were able to make them laugh without disrupting their learning were preferred

and given immense prestige, thus encouraging other boys to adopt and perform these

desired traits. But, despite some research in this area, there is still a relative gap in the

literature around these issues and considering the role of (‘elite’) girls and their poten-

tial to tease, intimidate or bully boys.

Although much research has argued that emphasised femininity is the dominant

means of achieving popularity, this is not always the case, and recent research has

demonstrated the existence of more traditionally ‘masculine’ traits in women and

girls. One example of an alternative type of femininity is the so-called ‘ladette’, a term

which was created in the 1990s by the British media (Jackson, 2006a). ‘Behaviours

exhibited by some girls in schools, and which are portrayed by the media as “ladette”

behaviours, include acting hard, smoking, swearing, fighting occasionally, drinking,

disrupting lessons, being cheeky and/or rude to teachers, being open about (hetero-

sexual) sex, and being loud’ (Jackson, 2006b: 353). It is argued that boys become

‘laddish’ in order to escape being ostracised by their peers and avoid being considered

an academic achiever, and this type of behaviour has more recently also been

observed in girls as part of this ‘ladette’ femininity (Francis, 2009). In an interview in

Francis’s (1999: 367) study, a boy said that ‘girls are now behaving in “macho” ways

as well’. As discussed earlier, three key characteristics of emphasised femininity are

being seen to be ‘kind’, ‘nice’ and ‘good’ (Hey, 1997; Read, 2010). This is particu-

larly true for white middle-class girls, but is often rejected by working-class girls and

some ethnic-minority girls, who strive for a different kind of femininity (Read, 2010).

For many working-class girls, being ‘nice’ is actually detrimental to their more valued

form of femininity and popularity, as it signifies an absence of the toughness and atti-

tude they aspire to (Reay, 2010). As such, other research has actually found ‘mean-

ness’ to be a key factor in popularity rather than niceness (for example, Currie et al.,

214 Siobhan Dytham

2006), and whilst some studies have suggested that violent girls are demonised (Jack-

son, 2006b), others have found that overtly aggressive girls were considered to be

more likeable than overtly aggressive boys (Mayeux, 2011), and that fighting was an

important method of girls gaining power and respect from others (Waldron, 2011).

Whilst these more ‘masculine’ forms of femininity have been identified and dis-

cussed, it is important to note that although there is much discussion about ‘hege-

monic masculinity’, it is argued that a concept of ‘hegemonic femininity’ cannot and

does not exist. Instead of a ‘hegemonic femininity’, Connell (1987) proposes ‘empha-

sized femininity’, which is the form of femininity that is seen to pair with and accom-

modate hegemonic masculinity. Paechter (2012) argues that not only can hegemonic

femininities not exist by definition, but there is no empirical evidence for these as she

argues that ‘masculine behaviour among girls and young women is not usually associ-

ated with the most powerful positions’ (Paechter, 2012: 232) and cites ‘tomboys’

(Paechter & Clark, 2007) as an example. Furthermore, when considering the ‘ladette’

it is important to highlight that although these girls are adopting many behaviours

which run counter to traditional or emphasised femininity, some key aspects seem to

remain. Firstly, they are still expected to be heterosexual, and being popular and liked

by the boys remains an important aspect of this type of femininity (Garcia-G�omez, 2011). Secondly, the ‘ladette’ culture is constructed by both teachers and adults as

problematic and a ‘gender failure’ (Jackson, 2006a). Girls who adopted this type of

femininity were described by teachers as ‘real bitches’ and ‘a bad influence’ (Reay,

2010). Furthermore, violence amongst boys is accepted and to a certain extent

expected by peers and wider society, as it is seen as ‘heroic masculinity’ (Ringrose &

Renold, 2010). However, this is not the case for girls, who were perceived negatively

for being violent (Jackson, 2006a). Therefore, there is a real need for further research

into female bullying and dominance, particularly with girls who are considered ‘popu-

lar’, in order to understand how girls balance, adopt and resist these constructions of

their behaviours.

This paper provides an analysis of the interactions between male and female stu-

dents (aged 13–14) in a secondary school located in central England. The data pro- vide multiple examples, both in the form of observations and group interviews, of

girls teasing, intimidating and bullying boys and other popular girls. This paper will

discuss this in more detail, and consider teachers’ reactions to this type of behaviour.

The conclusion will then draw out key points of learning and consider the relevance

of this for practice in schools, as well as highlighting areas for further research.

Methods

This research took place over a nine-month period in a co-educational (mixed-sex)

secondary school in central England. The school is situated in a suburban neighbour-

hood, located just outside a city. The area has one of the highest youth unemploy-

ment rates in the country. Although some areas around the city have high proportions

of ethnic-minority residents, the area around the school is a predominantly white,

working-class area. Average household income in the area is much lower than the

national average, and the area has a high level of children living in poverty.

Popular girls bullying and intimidating 215

The school is an ‘Academy Converter’, which educates pupils from ages 11 to 18.

‘Academies’ are schools which receive public money from the government but, unlike

other state-funded schools, do not have to follow the national curriculum. State

schools can apply to convert to an Academy, as in the case of this school. The pupils

at the school are predominantly white and working class. The percentage of pupils eli-

gible for free school meals is considerably higher than average, and the percentage of

pupils from minority ethnic groups is below average. The school is much smaller than

average, with just under 600 pupils on roll (which is in the bottom 20% of schools

nationally). The school also has a smaller percentage of female pupils than average.

At the time of the study, the percentage of girls at the school was between 45% and

47% (compared with a national average of 49.6%).

This research primarily involved 12 girls and 5 boys aged 13–14 (year 9 in the Eng- lish education system). The research focuses on ‘popular’ girls’ interactions with

other students, particularly boys and other popular girls. Popularity is a ‘highly sub-

jective and nebulous construction’ (Francis et al., 2010: 319), which is highly context

dependent, varying due to location and youth cultures (Garner et al., 2006; Brown,

2011; Sim & Yeo, 2012), as well as wider social divides such as gender, ethnicity and

class (Francis & Archer, 2005; Closson, 2008; Francis, 2009). Therefore, identifying

‘popular’ students in any given context is highly problematic. The most common

methods to identify popular students for research are identification by researchers,

identification by teachers and identification by peers. In this research, a combination

of all three approaches was used. The first three to four weeks were spent conducting

general observations at the school, to get a sense of the school environment and note

any students who seemed dominant in lessons, who seemed to talk to others and

seemed that they would be comfortable in a group discussion. This was to allow for

initial researcher identification of potentially ‘popular’ students. The research was

also discussed with teachers, and they were asked if there were any particular students

they would suggest approaching to participate. These recommendations were then

considered in conjunction with researcher identification, since it has been noted that

teachers do not always know or recognise the social status of the students in their class

(Aho, 1998). Popularity status was also identified by peers. Peers were given the

names of all students in their year group on small cards and were asked to group them

into social groups. Although there were differences in the ways that some students

were grouped, the girls involved in this research were grouped together and referred

to as ‘popular girls’ by all students. This research focuses specifically on students who

were described as popular and powerful by their peers, acknowledging that in interac-

tions with other people, such as teachers, or in different contexts, these students may

not be considered powerful.

The students involved in this research participated in group interviews in self-

selected friendship groups of between four and six students. These weekly discussions

involved 19 students (7 male and 12 female) in four different groups, and took place

in hour-long sessions. At the beginning of the research period these were conducted

as semi-structured group interviews, with the researcher providing questions or tasks

for students to discuss. Then, as the students and researcher became more familiar

with each other, they became far less structured and more student-led, taking a

‘group discussion’ approach (Gugglberger et al., 2015), where students would

216 Siobhan Dytham

discuss issues and experiences that were of relevance to them, including events that

had happened during the day at school, their thoughts and feelings about other stu-

dents in the school, and their relationships with friends and family outside of school.

More than 50 hours of discussions were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim,

using Jefferson’s (2004) notation to denote key features.

The second method of data collection was observations of lessons and areas around

the school during breaks and lunchtimes (such as the canteen and playing fields).

Ethnographic observation is paired with a closer analysis of interactions in group

interview transcripts to add complexity to observations and provide broader context

and understanding of group interview interactions (Hamo, 2004). The researcher sat

at the back of classrooms or on benches in outside areas and observed students’ inter-

actions with other students and teachers. Handwritten notes were made at the time of

observation. These were then typed, and more detail was added, at the end of each

school day. Over the course of nine months, a large quantity of data was collected.

This was initially grouped and organised using NVivo, so that interactions involving

certain students or taking place in certain locations could be found easily. The data

were then grouped into broad themes, based on the content or focus of conversations

or events. This involved groups such as ‘family’, ‘lessons’ or ‘violence/aggression’. For

the analysis in this paper, all cases involving girls talking about or engaging in violence,

exclusion or aggression (both physical and relational) were focused on in more detail.

An important basis for this analysis is that people use language to do things. People

use language to construct versions of the social world, thus ‘accounts construct real-

ity’ (Potter & Wetherell, 1987: 34). Language performs functions, not in a mechanis-

tic or deterministic way but, for example, being used to persuade or make requests.

Language can also position a person negatively, or be used to position yourself posi-

tively. Instead of treating participants’ discussions as reports of what they think or

did/do, the discussions are considered to be ‘a situated display of identities’

(Roulston, 2001: 298). Therefore, this analysis will focus on how students and teach-

ers position self and others as they interact. Transcripts were initially read and

grouped into broad categories based on topics being discussed by students. The tran-

scripts were then read more closely, leading to more specific groupings. At this point

the main themes had been created and a close analysis of transcripts was undertaken,

paying attention to what was being achieved in talk and how students positioned

themselves and others (Potter & Wetherell, 1987).

After a discussion of popular girls and female dominance, the paper will focus on

the analysis of popular (as identified by peers) girls’ interactions with other popular

girls, then the analysis of popular girls’ interactions with boys. Popular girls and boys

are some of the most powerful groups in secondary schools, and the fact that popular

girls are involved in bullying and intimidating these groups has been the focus of little

research. This paper will present an analysis of such cases, before considering areas

for further research in the conclusion.

Popular girls and female dominance

In conversations with students, specific personality traits were used to discuss,

describe and distinguish the popular girls. The popular girls were considered by

Popular girls bullying and intimidating 217

themselves and others to be ‘confident’ and ‘loud’. Female confidence and loudness

has led to the emergence of the term ‘ladette’ to describe girls who are felt to have

more traditionally ‘masculine’ traits such as loudness, aggression, swearing, smoking

and binge drinking (Dobson, 2014).

The assumption that violence or dominance are masculine and only of relevance

amongst boys diminishes the actions of girls and positions them as trivial and non-

threatening (Solomon, 2006). Equally, although it has been found elsewhere that

‘toughness did not have the same meaning for femininity, where being heterosexually

attractive, accepting subordination to hegemonic masculinity and having as many

friends as possible were keys to popularity’ (Eliasson et al., 2007: 602). Here, ‘tough-

ness’ was seen to be an important aspect of the popular girls’ interactions with others,

and did not detract from their popularity. Instead, the popular girls in this school

actively positioned themselves as tough. The girls made verbal threats of physical vio-

lence, which give a sense of aggression and potential violence. Equally, stories emerge

which are told in various forms by different groups. An example is the story of Madi-

son asking Isabel for a fight. Isabel claims that this event did not happen, but that

Madison continues to tell this story because she tells others that Isabel would not fight

her.

Ellie no it’s just Madison makes out she’s big saying that she asked for a fight but she didn’t

Isabel I know she didn’t ask for a fight (.) and then she acts [like she said it

Becca [then she acts like

Becca Isabel said no and it makes her seem better and she’s not

Siobhan so it makes it look like

Becca like faggish

Isabel yeah like a little faggot

Studen (little laugh)

Isabel I’m gonna knock yous out in a minute

This event may or may not have happened, and other students may consider it to

have happened differently. What is important here is the fighting talk. In both verbal

threats and the offer of a fight, the girls are positioning themselves as confident and

competent aggressors who would be willing and able to fight. They deny Madison’s

position of toughness by saying that she ‘makes out she’s big’ and ‘she acts like. . .’ both of which suggest a false or fake presentation. Equally, they acknowledge that

asking for a fight ‘makes her seem better’ as it positions her as tough. It would also

position her as ‘better’ than Isabel, who would not fight, again privileging toughness

and willingness to fight as positive attributes. However, the girls again deny Madison’

positions as they said ‘it makes her seem better’ rather than ‘it makes her better’, since

they are again constructing a false or fake presentation. At the end of the extract some

of the girls were having a private joke and were smiling at each other, to which Isabel

says ‘I’m gonna knock yous out in a minute’. The conversation then moves on to a

different discussion.

The girls’ use of ‘faggish’ and ‘faggot’ is also interesting here. ‘Fag’ has previously

been used as a derogatory term to mean ‘gay man’, or a man who is seen to be insuffi-

ciently masculine in some way. It is unlikely that here the girls literally mean that; by

saying that she would not fight her, Madison is making Isabel appear to be a gay man.

218 Siobhan Dytham

‘Fag’ was (and in many cases still is) used to denigrate men as it highlighted how they

differed from an idealised version of a strong, heterosexual man. It seems to be being

used similarly here, where the girls are describing an unwillingness to fight as ‘faggish’

What is important is that in this extract this term is being used only with reference to

girls, who are similarly being positioned in a negative manner for not being willing to

fight. The girls seem to have taken ownership of the arguably ‘masculine’ traits of

loudness, dominance and intimidation, and made them positive traits which are the

domain of confident women. This paper will demonstrate how these behaviours are

used to bully and intimidate other popular girls and boys.

Popular girls’ interactions with other popular girls

In comparison with other students, the popular girls claimed to be confident and

‘good at arguing’, which made them different from other groups. Sian (who is

described as a ‘popular girl’ by other students in the school) explains that ‘people in

our group are better at arguing than other groups so they just don’t bother arguing

with us’. These girls positioned themselves as tough, loud, confident and intimidat-

ing, and there are many cases where the girls have used this to their advantage and

either embarrassed or intimidated others. While studying ‘dominant boys’, Dalley-

Trim (2007: 213) noted that these behaviours brought with them ‘depressingly real,

punitive and disenfranchising consequences for others’. It is not being argued here

that these girls have become hegemonic boys, but since they are behaving in some

similar ways, it would be expected that this would have some ramifications for others.

The following discussion will detail some of the ways in which these girls engaged in

these types of behaviours with other popular girls and boys from all social groups,

including popular boys. As will be seen, the girls’ verbal skills are an important part of

the way that they maintain this reputation and their positions as tough girls. This is

contrary to research in Stockholm with students of the same age, which found that

Whereas boys largely benefit from being verbally abusive, such practices mostly reflect

unfavourably on girls. For boys, showing oneself able to handle the giving-and-taking of

verbal abuse contributes to toughness and popularity, whereas for girls both using verbal

abuse and being the target of it can lead to unfavourable positioning. (Eliasson et al.,

2007: 601–602)

It is important to remember here that these girls were described by all of the stu-

dents as ‘the popular girls’, and the toughest girls particularly were noted to be the

most popular. Therefore, rather than verbal abuse positioning these girls unfavour-

ably, the girls’ ability to intimidate others (including boys) actually seemed to rein-

force their position. In this school it was suggested that other groups were ‘scared’ of

the popular girls.

Becca I think people are scared of our group

Ellie and the boys’ group

Becca yeah

Ellie like Tyler and all that

Popular girls bullying and intimidating 219

Laura yeah I just don’t think they know how to like (.) they’re scared that you’re gonna

offend them or something not like they’re scared of us

Isabel I think they just don’t want to get on the wrong side of ya

Laura yeah (.) like they don’t know what to (inaudible)

Becca cause if you say something bad (.) then (.) yeah

Although it was considered that other groups were scared of or intimidated by the

popular girls, this does not necessarily mean that they feared they would be physically

hurt. Phrases such as ‘they just don’t want to get on the wrong side of ya’ could sug-

gest concern over physical retaliation, but the girls also describe a fear based on more

verbal intimidation, such as ‘they’re scared that you’re gonna offend them or

something’.

As mentioned in the extract above, it is not that this fear or intimidation was only a

characteristic of these girls (as the popular boys were also talked about in this way),

but the focus here is on the construction of the popular girls as intimidating. As will

be seen, this sense of unease or potential fear of the popular girls was not limited to

the least-popular students, and it seems that students from all groups had the poten-

tial to be intimidated by the popular girls.

Firstly, some members of the ‘popular girls’ social group experienced some of the

physical and verbal attacks which other students experienced from girls who were

considered to be particularly ‘rough’. Therefore, popularity does not necessarily pro-

vide ultimate protection from the bullying, intimidation, teasing and embarrassment

which many students experience at school. For example, in the following extract Ellie

is talking about Alanna (a popular girl) and her response to treatment from Madison.

Ellie Madison erm (.) Alanna was sticking up for someone I dunno who it was and then

Madison got Alanna and she was like booting her in the legs and like I turned around

and Alanna was crying and I was like ah what’s wrong and she was like Ellie don’t

talk to me and I was like why and she was like just don’t cause she didn’t want no one

to know that she was crying because Madison booted her in the leg so many times and I

was just thinking that’s just sick

In this extract Ellie describes a situation where Madison had been kicking Alanna.

Alanna is perceived to be in pain and upset by this experience, but she does not seek

support from her friends and instead Ellie stops talking to Alanna to avoid drawing

attention to the fact that she is upset. Some of the popular girls were considered to be

less tough than others. Whilst these girls were not timid and did talk about the impor-

tance of sticking up for themselves, this story tends to suggest that whilst they would

stick up for themselves against students from other social groups, there may be some

girls in their own social group who they would feel less able to stand up to. For exam-

ple, Sian is seen as a particularly dominant tough girl, even within the popular girls.

This meant that other members of her social group were reluctant to say certain

things to her. In the following extract Laura is talking about confronting Mia, a girl

from a different social group.

Laura like I knew Mia wouldn’t say anything but I just didn’t want like Sian getting involved

and then they did

220 Siobhan Dytham

Isabel you shouldn’t have told Sian

Laura I know but I couldn’t exactly say don’t matter

Ellie you could

Isabel you could (little laugh)

Becca I always say that

Isabel or you just say I’m not gonna tell ya because you go mental and turn into some like

gorilla and shout at them (some small laughing)

Laura I should have said that actually

Ellie yeah but you wouldn’t (.) you wouldn’t say that to Sian

Laura I would if she knew I was joking

Becca yeah but you wouldn’t be joking

Multiple (some laughing)

Isabel (laughing) yeah

Laura and Sian are friends, and Sian had previously expressed a strong sense that

she would stick up for and support her friends, but in this scenario Laura did not want

this to happen. Sian’s behaviour is presented as uncontrollable and potentially

extreme, by saying that she will ‘go mental’ and ‘turn into some like gorilla’. The girls

note and make a joke of the fact that they would not feel able to discuss this with Sian,

even though they are all part of the same ‘popular girls’ social group.

As it is argued that ‘popularity is power’ (Payne, 2007: 65), this can mean that

aspects such as these can be overlooked. As demonstrated here, all students have the

potential to be intimidated or treated negatively by others, even those considered

‘popular’. Popularity does not just function across different social groups, but also

within social groups.

Popular girls’ interactions with boys

As well as treating other girls in these ways, the girls were also seen to bully and intim-

idate boys. This is an interesting area to consider, since it seems to be discussed rarely

in the literature. Also, during fieldwork, it seemed to be an issue which teachers were

less aware of. Except for cases involving a student in the ‘learning support’ group, the

teachers did not seem to support boys when they were being bullied or teased by girls.

When boys reported this to teachers during lessons, a common response was for the

teacher to make a light-hearted comment or joke such as ‘you should be pleased that

you’re getting this attention’ or a suggestion that they were being overly sensitive. For

example, the following extract is from lesson observation notes:

James (sitting in-between Laura and Becca) says ‘look, seriously, can someone please help

me?’ The worksheets have been given out one between two, so Laura, James and Becca

have been given two worksheets. The girls are not sharing and both of them have a work-

sheet in front of them and are leaning over it to work and James cannot see a worksheet.

Becca says ‘give me the book’ and starts pulling James’s workbook. James doesn’t give her

the book and holds onto it while she pulls. After a few tugs she gives up. James then tries to

look at the worksheet on the other side, but Laura is working and hiding her work. She

looks up and in a loud whiney voice she says ‘James’. James is exasperated as he cannot see

a worksheet. He turns to the people behind him but they are working, he then talks to the

girl in front of him and complains about ‘learning Spanish on my own’. The girl on his left,

Laura, calls the teacher over to check her work. When the teacher comes over the boy

complains to her that the girls aren’t letting him see a worksheet. The teacher coaxes Laura

Popular girls bullying and intimidating 221

into sharing the worksheet saying ‘he’s begging you’ and ‘he’s upset’. Laura says ‘I’ll share

the sheet but I’m not working with him’. The teacher then moves the sheet so that both

Laura and James can see it. Laura goes back to work but hides her book. James looks at

the sheet. Laura has moved it closer to her from where the teacher had put it but James

can still see it. He leans over and looks at the sheet for a while and then starts to work.

Later in the same lesson:

James says to the teacher ‘miss they’ve stolen my pen and one of these [girls] has got it’ but

the teacher makes no response. He asks Laura if she has got it, she says no and takes his

protractor. She plays with it for about 10 seconds then James goes to snatch it back but

Laura pulls it away and looks angrily at him. James gives up and stops trying to grab his

stationery. He sits back and does nothing. Eventually one of the girls throws his pen in

front of him and he goes back to his work.

When teachers came to the defence of boys in response to female tormentors, they

did so in a different way. In the extract, although James has raised the issue with the

teacher and is positioning Laura and Becca as the tormentors, the teacher does not

tell Laura to stop her bad behaviour but asks Laura to share as a result of James’s

emotions, saying ‘he’s begging you’ and ‘he’s upset’ rather than ‘Laura, stop taking

the worksheet’. The two girls are friends, but they are not friends with James, who

was described by students as an ‘unpopular boy’. Later, when James informs the tea-

cher that the girls have stolen his pen, the teacher does not tell them to stop, and

James is left unable to complete his work until the girls decide to return his pen. As

noted by Ringrose and Renold (2010), male victims are abhorred by teachers and stu-

dents, and common responses are that they should stop complaining and ‘toughen

up’. Further to this, what is highlighted here is the potential for this to be heightened

further still, or go entirely unacknowledged, when the tormentor is a girl.

There is much less research which focuses on cross-gender bullying than same-

gender bullying (Garandeau et al., 2010). In terms of adult perceptions of student

bullying, ‘a consistent finding is that. . . aggression toward females is perceived more negatively than incidents in which the victim is male’ (Fox et al., 2014: 360). Fox

et al. (2014) argue that these findings can be explained in terms of social norms

about male and female behaviour, where women are perceived as weak and vulnera-

ble and men are viewed as strong and aggressive. There has been a common

assumption that the ‘power relations’ involved in bullying equate to the bully being

physically or psychologically stronger than the victim (Horton, 2011), which results

in the ‘common perception that it is more acceptable for girls to harm boys, since

the “strength inequality” or “gender differential” offers impunity for the girl bully’

(O’Brien, 2011: 295). What was seen in this research is that teachers dealt with

cases of cross-gender disputes differently depending on whether the boy or girl was

positioned as the victim. Also, whilst it is not being suggested that this was more

prevalent than other forms of bullying, it was certainly seen that some of the girls

did bully (both verbally and physically) some boys, but there is only a small amount

of literature which considers this.

As discussed earlier, many of the students were thought to be scared of or intimi-

dated by the popular girls, and it is important to note that this does not just apply to

222 Siobhan Dytham

‘unpopular’ students. For example, although Ash was considered to be a ‘popular

boy’, he is still considered to be scared of or intimidated by the popular girls.

Ellie Ash is scared of us though because he always sits like (.) Isabel flipped him over in

music and he was just like (.) usually if someone did that he’d go really mad (.) cause

remember when I did it

Laura yeah

Ellie he fell out with me in the next lesson (.) but when Isabel did it he’s scared of her

Siobhan why do you reckon he’s scared of Isabel?

Ellie because Isabel’s really violent

Laura yeah

Ellie and she’s so like (.) I dunno people are always just scared of her ain’t they

Laura she’s like confident she’s not afraid to speak her mind kind of thing

Ellie yeah (.) she always like (.) she’s so abusive

It is important to note here that Laura and Ellie are friends with Isabel, in fact

Laura considers Isabel to be her ‘best friend’. Therefore, although the things they are

saying about Isabel could be deemed to be negative—such as ‘Isabel’s really violent’, ‘people are always just scared of her’ and ‘she’s so abusive’—amongst the popular girls, an ability to stand up for yourself and to be intimidating were considered posi-

tive attributes. The point here is that some of the popular girls are seen to be physi-

cally and verbally aggressive towards boys and, as in the case of Ash above, they do

not respond or retaliate as a result of perceived fear. As a further example, in a lesson,

Bianca and Sian (two popular girls) are talking to Tyler and Ash (two of the most

prominent boys in the ‘popular boys’ group).

Bianca and Sian were talking to Tyler, who is sitting in front of them, and complaining that

he was eating cheese crisps because they smelt unpleasant. Ash says something to the girls

in response to their complaints. Bianca then says to Ash ‘Lorelai would batter you anyway’

Ash turns around to look at her and raises an eyebrow. Bianca smirks and says ‘don’t pull

that face, you know she would’. Ash smiles and turns back around.

Although the girls mostly used verbal intimidation, this could involve threats of

physical violence. As in the case above, these were often successful. In a different les-

son a boy had been throwing a rubber at students. He was holding the rubber and

looking around for someone else to throw it at. As he looked round he caught Bianca’

eye. She said ‘If you throw that rubber at me I’m going to shove it up your arsehole

you absolute minger’ (‘minger’ is a derogatory slang term meaning someone unpleas-

ant or unattractive). The boy looked away and did not throw the rubber.

The examples discussed so far are more minor cases and mostly involved the ‘pop-

ular boys’, but the girls also interacted with the unpopular boys, and arguably the

cases of intimidation are clearer in these scenarios. In the following extract Bianca is

talking about people in the year group that she has never spoken to. Here it is sug-

gested that the ‘quiet’ boy that Bianca is talking about is scared of her.

Bianca I’ve not spoke to Ben either (.) yeah I have (.) on the way to school (.) he lives like two

doors away from me (.) I don’t walk to school with him cause he’s just like one of them

quiet ones he’s just like (.) I asked him to walk to school with me and he’s just like no

Popular girls bullying and intimidating 223

Laura (laughs)

Bianca I run [out and chase] him and he walks speed walks and I’m like (.) OK

Laura [he’s scared of you

Here Bianca is saying that on the way to school she has chased Ben, and as a result

he rushed away. Rather than positioning herself as intimidating, Bianca explains that

Ben is ‘one of them quiet ones’, which is why he does not want to walk to school with

her. Similarly, when Bianca explains that she chased him and he sped away, she says

‘I’m like, OK’. Bianca positions herself as calm and accepting, with this rather non-

chalant reaction to Ben rushing away from her, reinforcing the idea that it is Ben who

is behaving irrationally or in an unnecessary way because he is ‘quiet’. Alternatively,

Laura explains ‘he’s scared of you’, again demonstrating a perception amongst the

popular girls that they intimidated others and that some boys were scared of them.

As a further example, in the following extract Bianca talks about a time when Sian

takes a boy’s bike and Bianca is left to walk to school with him. The sense of power

and control that Bianca feels that she has over certain boys is clear here.

Bianca Sian took Nathan’s bike and rode it off (.) Sian rode to the school and I was with

Nathan in this like thing and there was this big puddle and he was like (whispers) ‘do

you want a piggy back over the puddle?’ and I was like (laughing a little) ‘no thanks’

(.) and if I say take my book he’ll take it (.) he’ll do anything I say

In this extract Bianca is positioning herself as someone who is able to intimidate

and control boys. These extracts indicate that some boys are potentially being chased

and having their bikes taken by girls on the way to school, and these types of beha-

viours need to be researched in more depth.

These instances are not just limited to Bianca. In the following extract the girls are

talking about a particular male student, Tom. Ellie feels that it is wrong that some of

her friends bully him and they discuss this.

Ellie you know what I hate it when Becca and like Jo and everyone they all bully Tom

Barnes and I really think he’s adorable

Laura (laughs)

Ellie and I’m just like why are you doing that and she was just like Ellie he’s disgusting and

I’m just thinking oh my god you’re so nasty to him and everyone like bullies him

Laura yeah but he is a bit annoying

Ellie yeah but he’s annoying but

Laura and he’s like an attention seeker like he does it to get attention

Ellie yeah but (.) Becca always like (.) punches him and that

Laura yeah I wouldn’t do that (.) that’s out of order but

The fact that Tom is considered to be ‘disgusting’ and ‘annoying’ is presented as

justification for his treatment. Laura also claims that ‘he’s like an attention seeker like

he does it [behaves in an ‘annoying’ way] to get attention’, which again reinforces the

notion that those who are bullied play some role in this and that they partly deserve

their treatment, whether because they are ‘quiet’ or ‘disgusting’. Other research has

also noted that a common explanation for students being excluded or bullied is that

the student is considered different or deviant in some way (Ter€asahjo & Salmivalli,

224 Siobhan Dytham

2003; Thornberg, 2011). Given the discussion earlier about teacher responses to

boys’ reports of girls irritating or harassing them, these accounts are potentially very

problematic if the students are likely to receive less support from teachers because

their tormentors are female.

Popular girls and femininity

As well as the potentially ‘masculine’ characteristics discussed above, the girls did also

show many ‘feminine’ characteristics such as heterosexuality and attractiveness that

previous research has highlighted as important for acceptance and popularity

amongst peers (Lees, 1993). The girls often engaged in performances of femininity in

the classroom, such as applying make-up or brushing their hair. But there is a more

dominant element to these behaviours, where others are forced to participate, or the

activity somehow becomes the main focus of the lesson. For example, in the following

extract the girls decide to put make-up on male students.

Jo and Alica are throwing make-up and laughing. Bianca and Lorelai join in. They laugh

and talk about how to put some on a nearby boy’s face. Alica gets up and does this. Bianca

instructs her after she has done it, saying ‘Alica go get that thing off Ash’ meaning put

some make-up on Ash. Alica puts foundation on Ash’s neck as she walks past. Ash says

‘urgh’ loudly, he looks around and shouts ‘urgh’ again. Jo says ‘it’s just make-up’.

The girls put make-up on Tyler as well, and they began to throw make-up pads at

people. Three boys then left the classroom to go and wash the make-up off. They did

so without permission from the teacher and so are told off on their return. Two other

boys moved seats so that they were sitting further away from the girls. When Bianca

asked why they had moved, the support teacher said ‘because they didn’t want make-

up thrown at them’ in a pointed manner. This scenario had begun with one of the

girls simply taking out make-up and putting it on in the lesson, yet it escalated to

involve five boys, a number of girls and three members of staff. The girls came to

dominate and disrupt the lesson, and this was common in lessons which contained

these girls. Therefore, whilst earlier studies have suggested that boys monopolise les-

sons (Shilling, 1991; Francis, 2005), this may begin to change as these more domi-

nant feminine identities develop. The girls did engage in very ‘feminine’ activities,

such as applying make-up or discussing hair and fashion, and this was often done in a

loud manner which drew focus. These very overt and noticeable displays of femininity

are potentially used to counterbalance displays of ‘masculine’ traits and reaffirm the

girls’ femininity and importantly, heterosexuality, which remained a central aspect of

popularity.

Conclusion

Despite common perceptions, this paper has highlighted the role that girls can play in

bullying and intimidating powerful others, such as boys and popular girls. To date

there has been a tendency in gender and education research to focus on patterns of

gender which conform to and reinforce expected gender dynamics and behaviours,

rather than providing analyses of behaviours which seem to counter or disrupt this

Popular girls bullying and intimidating 225

(Francis & Paechter, 2015). The assumption that violence or dominance are ‘mascu-

line’ diminishes the actions of girls and positions them as trivial and non-threatening

(Solomon, 2006). Considering whether a certain act is ‘violent’ or ‘aggressive’ is not

free from social construction. ‘Materially as well as discursively, physical aggression

and violence are stereotypically considered masculine behaviours and therefore the

violent girl challenges normative gender constructions, more so than the relationally

aggressive girl’ (Brown, 2011: 114). Therefore, whilst it is widely reported that girls

engage in relational aggression and forms of ‘bitchiness’ or meanness, there is less

reporting of girls as aggressive (Waldron, 2011).

Francis (2012) draws on Bakhtin’s notion of ‘heteroglossia’ and ‘monoglossia’ to

consider how we might address these apparent tensions. Whilst alternative construc-

tions and experiences of gender, and cases where girls may be intimidating boys, may

be experienced in specific contexts (heteroglossia), this does not necessarily lead to

changes in the monoglossic, or the broader discourses and understandings of gender

in society (Francis, 2012). However, the girls in this research clearly feel powerful.

They also feel that they are unchallenged and that because they are ‘good at arguing’,

other groups do not disagree with them. They feel able to threaten boys and girls with

physical violence, and feel that others in the school are scared of them, therefore this

should be acknowledged, and more research focusing on these heteroglossic con-

structions and experiences is needed.

However, this should be acknowledged with caution, and does not mean that

monoglossic gender discourses should be ignored or written out of such analyses.

Links can be made here to discussions of ‘post-feminism’, where women position

themselves as no longer in need of feminism. ‘Rather than directly opposing or dis-

puting feminist claims, post feminism gains rhetorical efficacy through the suggestion

that gender and sexual equality have been achieved, such that feminism is no longer

needed’ (O’Neil, 2015: 102). Feminist writers have warned about the dangers of this

discourse, in that it obscures continuing power relations and means that these mecha-

nisms are now harder to detect (Budgeon, 2014; O’Neil, 2015). Analyses which

engage with these wider discourses and consider the outcomes for women and femi-

nism are therefore important. But we also need micro-analyses that engage with how

(young) women construct their own lives and positions, and how girls are coming to

understand and position themselves as powerful, dominant and in control of their

own lives.

This paper has demonstrated that girls are involved in bullying and intimidating

other popular girls and boys, both verbally and physically. But it is important to high-

light the context of this specific research, and that the students are all white and work-

ing class. Therefore, the points discussed may not translate to all schools and

contexts. Furthermore, whilst girls’ views and interactions are discussed in depth, the

views of boys and how they perceive this behaviour is unknown. Cross-gender bully-

ing is an under-researched area, and further research is needed to gain a deeper

understanding of this issue. This research needs to analyse more examples of this type

of behaviour, so that a clearer picture can be built up, including information about

the prevalence of this in different contexts and amongst diverse groups of students.

This paper has also highlighted that teachers responded differently in cases of cross-

gender teasing or bullying when the ‘victim’ was male or female. Girls are often

226 Siobhan Dytham

automatically cast in the role of ‘victim’, and are less likely to be directly told to cor-

rect bad behaviour when perceived as the tormentor. Highlighting this means that

more consideration can be given to cross-gender bullying, and thinking about how

those experiencing this can be supported by teachers. Making staff more aware of this

could mean that they are able to recognise and support boys who may be being bul-

lied (either by boys or girls), and further research should consider how schools can

support students in these situations.

Acknowledgements

I gratefully acknowledge Dr Cath Lambert and Professor Christina Hughes for their

critical and informative input and feedback throughout this research.

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