NOTES FOR RESEARCH PAPER - ODD GIRL OUT AND LOST BOYS

Felicia McCaw
Psychology 315


NOTES –
ODD GIRL OUT
BY RACHEL SIMMONS

The anguish of being abandoned by all of her friend spurred on a by a person who claimed to be her friend.

Silence woven into the fabric of the female experience – there is a hidden culture of girl’s aggression in which bullying is epidemic, distinctive and destructive. Female aggress is forced into non-physical, indirect and convert forms.

Backbiting, exclusion, rumors, name calling, manipulation to inflict psychological pain on targeted victims.

Girls attack within tightly networks of friends, making aggression harder to identify and intensifying the damage to the victim.

Within the hidden culture of aggression, girls fight with body language and relationships instead of fists and knives.
Behind a façade of female intimacy lies a terrain traveled in secret, marked with anguish and nourished by silence.
Bullying is a form of aggression in females who use various tactics to accomplish and fulfill their motive.
Most parents try to stir their children from bullying and tell them don’t do it again.
Lynn M. Brown and Carol Gilligan wrote – listening guide – method emphasis flexibility and harmony with the interview subject and it discourages orthodox interview protocol.
Encourage them to speak and regard them seriously helps them express thoughts, feelings and experience seriously to maintain knowledge and encourage exploring and uncovering knowledge.
Odd Girl Out is devoted exclusively to girls and nonphysical conflict and tells stories of perpetrators and victims of what I call alternative or unconventional aggressions.
Bullying acts of alternate aggression – girl’s aggression may be convert and relational – aggress quietly – flash looks, pass notes, spread rumors and text messages, barbs, emotional abuse, use levy of isolation to fulfill motive, pretend to be a friend to get close to hurt.
Worst insult – “she think she’s all that.”
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Aggression may be biological the face of anger is learned
Loss of self-esteem due to bullying
Girls referred to themselves as disloyal, untrustworthy, sneaky, intimacy to manipulate and overpower others, fake – using each other to move up the social hierarchy – unforgiving and crafty, lying in wait for a moment of revenge that will catch the victim off guard
Feelings of self-hatred and feel clashes as normal conflicts
Inherent duplicity of females, whimsical, deceitful, subtle, vacillating
Jealous, underhanded, prone to betrayal, disobedience, secrecy
Nonaggression – catty, crafty, evil and cunning
Aggression is a powerful barometer of our social values
Also it is usually thought of as a masculine characteristic
Aggression is the hallmark of masculinity – helps control their environment and livelihoods
Boys are expected to play rough – girls are supposed to mature into caregivers opposite of being aggressive
Assertive females are called by a list of names – bitch, lesbian, frigid and manly.
Girls become angry as well as males and are not necessarily aggressive but can be moved to a defensive position or stance.
Males exhibit aggression directly and can be labeled as deviant or otherwise.
Social lives of girls appeared still and placid as lakes but investigations are undergoing to explore undercurrents and ripples below the surface. (façade)
Not adverse to aggression when aggression cannot for one reason be directed (physically or verbally) at its target – the perpetrator has to find other channels – slurs, rumors, exploitation, blackmail, photographs, set-ups, etc. and stalking, ruthless, aggressiveness that exceed norm and cruelty.
Relational aggression includes acts that “harm others through damage (or threat of damage) to relationship or feelings of acceptance, friendship, or group inclusion.
Three subcategories of aggressive behavior – relational, indirect and social aggression.
Indirect aggression allows the perpetrator to avoid confronting her target.
Social aggression is intended to damage self-esteem or social status within a group or society.
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Includes some indirect aggression like rumor spreading or social exclusion.
Men viewed aggression as a means to control their environment and integrity – women believed it would terminate their relationships.
Conflict = loss
Fear of solitude is overpowering.
Victims of bullying – loneliness “being seen as a loner is some people biggest fear!”
Friendship becomes as important as air with some.
It just a phase – girl bullying is a rite of passage
The rite of passage theory stunts the development of anti-bullying strategies.
1. Can’t prevent girls from behaving in these ways.
2. Alternate aggression – predisposed to bullying.
3. Some believe it’s positive to go through this rite of passage.
4. Universal and instructive meanness among girls is a natural part of their social structure to be tolerated and expected.
5. Abuse to each other is not really abuse.
6. Problems between girls are supposed to be insignificant that will taper off as they become more involved with boys.
7. Trivializes the role of peers.
Schools ignored aggression in girls – order in class room, sneakiness – easier to let it pass
No consistent public strategies for dealing with alternate aggressions
Mean girls have a social skill deficit
Misconception that bullied children has done something wrong. Lots of excuses listed why they are treated this way. P.35
Relational aggression is mistaken for a social skills problem.
Delayed development – cruel one day – nice the next – victim usually
Beaten down by behavior
Victim’s feeling of being hurt and bullied defined as not having existed.
Misdiagnosing bullying as a social skills/problem makes perfect sense in a culture that demands perfect relationships of its girls at any cost.
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Existence of meanness according to the social skills argument is that it does not question but explains and justifies it.
Relational Aggression starts in pre-school and sex differences –harm others through damage or threat of damage to relationships or feelings of acceptance, friendship, or group inclusion.
Indirect aggression – the target is not directly confronted (such as the silent treatment) and some social aggression, which targets the victim’s self-esteem or social status (such as rumor spreading).
The lifeblood of relational aggression is relationship.
Relationships are weapon – friendship itself can become a tool of anger.
Furtive Aggression is extremely dangerous because it’s hard to detect.
Relational aggression has remained invisible because it resists the normal behavioral patterns of bullying.
Nonverbal gesturing – body language – hallmark of aggression.
1. Mean looks
2. Exclusion
3. Silent Treatment
4. Opaque – uncertainty of knowing
When meanness and friendship become inextricable girls lose the ability to distinguish between them.
Some may understand meanness as a component of friendship, learning to explain it away and even justify it.
Potential ingredients for a stalker – being too friendly – beware of strangers.
Annie was so afraid of isolation that tolerating abuse felt like her only options.
Meanness mingled with friendship sometimes become hard to tell the difference.
Plight of girls who are victims of relational aggression is usually hardest to address.
Limited understanding of female aggression and intimacy makes it hard for girls to deal with peer relationships in healthy ways.
Some girls blame themselves for being victimized. Betrayed confidences by a friend.


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The truth hurts
Everyone’s going to get involved. People make up stuff.
Unresolved conflicts – creating treacherous emotional terrain
Alternate aggressions and the non-assertive behavior they suggest are as embedded in the daily lives of girls as makeup, boys, and media.
She learns to connect with conflict through the discord of others, participating in group acts of aggression where individual ones have been for bidden.
Feeling of depression exhibited since they could not express their anger.
When silent pleas are ignored a girl’s despair can turn swiftly to anger.
Expressions of anger make listeners skittish and defensive.
Absorbing anger is just as frightening as voicing it.
Girls approach the rituals of fighting and peacemaking with an eerie rigidity.
Girls who want to bypass conflict entirely may turn to other behavioral pathways.
Humor is an especially popular way to injure a peer.
Fear of reprisals is not the only deterrent to speaking up.
Nothing launches a girl faster, or takes her down harder, than alliance building, or “ganging up.”
Ganging up is the product of a secret ecosystem – where direct conflict is not allowed.
Thee perpetrator’s strategy is to appeal to those who have history with the target.
A plurality creates a safe space for girls to be mean in a culture that refuses to allow girls individual acts of aggression.
Salience of relationship in girls’ lives make their practicing of imposing isolation especially terrifying.
Deceit is eroticized in the media, where we are titillated by the prospect of a prim façade concealing a truer, dangerous passion.
Manipulation especially when it’s sexual is often shown to girls as the path to power.
Confidence and competition are critical tools for success yet they break the rules of feminity.
Jealously is unbridled desire.
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Speaking in codes – copying
Girls are expected to be passive and powerful at the same time.
Girls are expected to be passive and powerful at the same time.
Girls affirm solidarity and commonality
Codes have confused, shifting meanings. They are built on a second layer of truth-hidden beneath a deceptive exterior. Leaving girls ever suspicious of who will be branded next.
Never allow girls a healthy outlet for their feelings.
The bully in the mirror.
Because aggress as a group – exclusion and its cruel trappings can be a perversely good opportunity for secure companionship.
Musical chairs
Meanness was Lisa’s social amulet.
Control isn’t the right way to make friends.
Going after somebody – you have the intention to tear into them and feel hate. P.148
That wasn’t me – I thought I did what I had to do. It was merely an accomplice, an enable. P.151
Despite the advent of girl power many girls today cut their friendships from the same cloth.
Hidden agenda (dubious of others reasons or motives).
The price of popularity.
Sometimes a girl has to squash a friend to rise above the mortal.
I was the defensive little ball; no one could get into me. Everyone had hurt me. Everyone I trusted had abandoned me and me feel like shit.
Back stabbed by so-called friends.
It’s like each girl has a file and everything you wear – if you like one off thing – goes into it. They don’t even care about you anymore and they throw the file away.
To be popular – old friendships discarded and new connections made.

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Ammunition gathered – girls spread gossip – tell others people’s secrets – spread rumor – they invent other people’s secrets.
Being in a clique makes some forget what is right and wrong.
Victims of bullying despair made her fight back.
Nasty look toward African Americans – insults on clothes and hair. Eventual fight ensued.
Some girls find comfort with physical aggression.
Psychologist has linked the withering of a girl’s esteem to an avoidance of authentic relationships and feelings.
African Americans parents are blunt about the pain and anger they have felt as black citizens.
Many girls are urged to confront the realities of human behavior or especially aggression.
African American girls spoke in unequivocal terms about avoiding relationships with such individuals and about having been raised by their mothers to do so.
Stick up for self and confront lies – no one can tell you how you feel or that you can’t communicates how you feel.
Two – face behavior – deal breaker in a friendship
Dissociate Psychologically – become silent to not bring attention to themselves as they move deeper into mainstream – white academics culture
Hypocritical and fake
It is part the invisibility of girl’s aggression that puts teachers on such shaky ground.
Girls need to make peace with conflict – this provides girls not only with a healthier relationship to aggression.
Ideally you should choose activities where kid are valued more for their contribution they make than for what they’re wearing, saying, or watching.
Role playing is more horizontal and interactive.
You can over empathize.
I feel fine about listening and supporting and offering suggestions for actions but not pushing her because it has to come from within.
Most girls don’t tell their parents what’s going on in a bullying situation.
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Bullying is a deeply humiliating experience for every child.
Hidden culture of girls’ aggression – subsists on silence and isolation.
Helping your daughter improve her social skills is another way to engage her in bettering her own situation.
Try to find the trigger points.
Assertiveness training is the new “it” program for girls.
Must teach acts of courage that are based on everyday life.
School anti-bullying policies needed to be established and if there are – need to be revised and more inclusive.
Many of the conflicts that ignite girl bullying are relational.
In a world without bullying there will always be exclusion.
Every girl, every parent, every teacher has a shared, public language to address girls’ conflicts and relationships.
When girls understand that relationship can be chosen and that conflict is natural, their social identities will cease to hinge on how many idealized friendship they can rack up.
P. 265
Anti-girl List
Brainy
Opinionated
Pushy
Mean
Professional
Serious
Independent
Egocentric
Unrestrained
Artsy

The qualities for a strong leader are the qualities of a bad girl.
To be successful and socially accepted, girls must adopt feminine postures of sexual, social, verbal and physical restraint.
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LOST BOYS
BY JAMES GARBARINO

African American and Hispanic colleagues felt dread because they felt their sons were an endangered species when they went out.
Homicide is the leading cause of death for minority male youth and each death cause psychological reverberations.
No one is immune.
Killing sprees at different schools is student and teachers killed. Middle class white teenagers from towns or suburbs.
No real attention focused on inner-city youth killing or murders but attention focused on white killing sprees/rare actions shocked America.
Inner city violence ignored/them not “us”
Killings in small towns are becoming an increased concerns of citizens.
What can we learn from the past?
Began monitoring the past circumstances of youth violence to obtain insights into the lives of boys – goal is to understand why kids kill and help parents and professionals to try to prevent it in the future.
Listen to children who have killed (stories), examine systematic research on the cause of violence in the lives of children and youth.
How much killing is there?
23,000 homicides each year/U.S. 10% - perpetrator under 18 years of age – extend age to 21 years – 25%, medical technology – improves and lessens death rate
Highlights – conviction that no child is immune to lethal youth violence because almost every teenagers goes to school with a kid troubled enough to become a killer.
Kids who kill themselves
Suicide among adolescents is matched by a murder committed by an adolescent.
15% of boys considered suicide
12% of boys made a plan
2% of boys attempted suicide that needed medical attention
Girls contemplate plan and attempt – boys are more apt to complete the act – boys use guns – girl’s pills
Sometime a boy considers suicide and murder
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Where did the epidemic of youth violence start?
25% of all juvenile homicides in one year were committed
Chicago, NY, Los Angeles, Detroit, Houston – contain 10% of the nation’s population
Twice as high (odds of killing
1. Bad family – criminal history
2. Abused (history)
3. Belongs to a gang
4. Abuse drugs or alcohol
Triple Odds – Committing Murder
1. Use a weapon
2. Arrested
3. Neurological problem that impairs thinking and feeling
4. Difficulties at school and poor attendance record
Odds increase as the number of factors increase
Chicago, NY, Los Angeles, Detroit, Houston – inner-city war zones, adult criminality, child maltreatment, gang activity, illicit drug sales, possession of illegal hand gun by kids, health problems in newborns, school failure.
Child Abuse
Child Maltreatment
14 per 100, 000 to 23 per 100,000
1986 to 1993

22 per 100,000 to 42 per 100,000
1986 to 1993

Gangs
Up 50% from 1989 to 1995

Substance Abuse
9% - Cocaine use (high school males)
50% - Adolescent boys – marijuana
37% - Alcohol

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Weapons
28% - Weapon – gun, knife, club
13% - Carried a weapon to school

Arrests – up 50% from 1980 to 1994
Neurological Problems – 25% higher than those not born prematurely.
Difficulties at school – unable to assimilate material – rate of cheating increased
From 345 to 68% due to ADD and other issues.

Neighborhood that were once complete and resilient communities became homogeneously poor and socially troubled environments the perfect “host” for an epidemic of violence.

Development of boys that commit violence – background of one – sexually abused – life experience of boys who kill.

They lose their way in the pervasive experience of vicarious violence, crude sexuality, shallow materialism, mean-spirited competiveness and spiritual emptiness.

Success Stories
Aggression developed by the time of ten old and at 13 he is standing at the edge of the abyss.
Psychological and legal realities – violent boys – homicide is just part of the violence in their lives.

Research suggests that less than 10% of all juvenile killers are psychotic – delusions and hallucinations.

Real Life

Gave a guy in prison in a book and the guy cried and said no one ever game him a book before.
They may appear to be doing well in school, rather than dropping out for life on the streets.

There is an epidemic of youth violence, and no community is immune.

Every infant contains a divine spark.

Recognizing the reality of the sacred self is the foundation for understanding human development as something more than a matter of engineering, plumbing, chemistry and electronics.


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The emotional temperament of an individual child does much to dictate the terms engagement between him and the world.

The human psyche can be so terribly mutilated that the soul departs.

Violent Boys Souls – the soul is buried under deep layers of violence and distorted thoughts and emotions.

Some children – sunny and light – others are burdened with negativism

Resilience – the ability to bounce back from or overcome adversity.

Most effective treatments for delinquent and criminally violent youth emphasize changes in thinking
(Cognitive restructuring) coupled with opportunities to practice non-violent behavior (behavioral rehearsal).

This attachment is a mixture of knowing them in their particularity and feeling for them as special individuals, a special sense of positive connection.

Varieties of attachment – secure, insecure – avoidant, insecure – ambivalent, disorganized – disoriented.

Human beings need connection.

Disconnection is a threat – particularly if there is some temperamental vulnerability to developing depression.

Depression – discover it links to anger.

Covert depression – males hid the darkness within them both.

The problem is the breakdown of the family but the breakdown in the family.

Disruption in the basic relationships of the family - figure prominently in the lives of violent boys.

Two particular patterns of father influence are most important in understanding the development of violent boys:

1. Presence of an abusive father
2. Absence of caring and resourceful father
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Absent father – associated with chronic juvenile bad behavior.

Early detachment is a very negative influence all by itself.

Being abandoned is a tough challenge for any child and provokes a deep shame. Shame of rejection.

Attachment is one of the crucial building blocks in the process of emotional development.

They are very concrete and specific: rejection, abandonment, disrupted family relationships.

Disruption affects the child’s ability to form and sustain secure, positive social relationships.

I will explore in depth what this alienation means for moral development.

Emotional Retardation – rises from a mixture of biological predispositions (less than usual neurological capacity for empathy) and experiences of deprivation (being treated with emotional brutality rather than empathy.
Learning commitment to another human being bring many developmental rewards.
Role Reversal – the child is the protector and the parent needy.
Face negative social environments.
Violent boys often leave infancy and early childhood with one of the biggest strikes against them – disrupted attachment relationships.
DSM – IV – Conduct Disorder – Aggression to people and animals, ignoring basic rights of people or major age – appropriate societal norms or rules are violated – destruction of property, deceitfulness or theft and serious violations of rules. 80% of boys in juvenile and rehab programs.
Underlying problem – difficult temperament, neurological deficits and difficulties, separation from parents, violence in the family, harsh parenting practices.
“Bad Seed” – irritable, hyperactive and resistant.

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One bad apple spoils the bunch, e.g., one person spreads rumors and lies that are detrimental about the other person to another and then blames the harmless person (or would be victim) and this causes a chain reaction that causes the victim to be treated terribly.
Code compatible with pattern of bad behavior.
1. Children become hypersensitive to negative social cues.
2. Children become oblivious to positive social cues.
3. Children develop a repertory of aggressive behaviors that are readily accessible and can be easily invoked.
4. Children draw the conclusion that aggression is a successful way of getting what they want.

4% to 7% of kids exhibit chronic patterns of bad behavior and aggression that are serious enough to constitute a diagnosable mental health problem.

Majority of boys incarcerated for violent crimes were subject to abuse or neglect as children.

35% of abused kids with negative and aggressive social maps become violent.

Why is that 65% who have been abused and have negative social maps do not develop a pattern of bad behavior and aggression?

National Incidence study of child abuse and neglect.

900,000 case of neglect
750,000 case of abuse

Dissociation – emotional disconnection

Dissociation of violent boys is more than simple temperamental fearlessness

For some boys the psychological vault cannot hold all the hurt and anger that is stored there

Larger social environment

1. An early pattern of bad behavior and aggression is identified and treated.
2. An early pattern of bad behavior and aggression plays itself out in a socially benign setting (in which no matter how bad the boy’s behavior gets, there is little danger.
3. An early pattern of bad behavior and aggression falls on fertile ground and grows into chronic violence and delinquency as the child partakes of the dark side.

Bronfenbrenner’s analysis focuses on the overall level and effects of social poison on children and youth and general.

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Social poison affects us all in one way or another.

1. First motive – aggressive response to shame which refers to the code of honor that says – if someone insults you – you have to fight. (more apt to use guns)


2. Second motive – is comfort with aggression, meaning that a kid is not worried or upset by being around other people with guns.

3. Third motive – excitement that is guns evoke positive feelings in a kid.
Questionable
It includes the social poisons at work that devalue and isolate many children and youth who don’t fit the mold for success in America.

Although racial and cultural diversity exists in America, racism and ethnic discrimination are also present.

Trauma occurs when overwhelming ideas (negative cognitions) combine with overwhelming feelings (negative arousal)

The breakdown of child protection and the realization that adults can’t or won’t protect them figures prominently in the life stories of violent youth.

Depersonalization and desensitization open the door to unlimited possibilities for violence – when done – we fail to see their individuality, their humanity, and treat them in an impersonal way. De-
personalization is the ally of violence.

Resilience is not absolute – some settings overwhelm human capacities.
Terminal thinking is a major impediment to everything positive we would want teenagers to do, because almost everything positive depends upon their having a future orientation.

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His violence is an adaption not only to the conditions of life around him but also to what’s inside his head.

All of us have a moral circle when it comes to violence; some acts are inside the circle of moral justification while others are outside that circle.

Nothing seems to threaten the human spirit more than rejection, brutalization and lack of love.
The three main levels:
1. Preconventional Moral Reasoning – the emphasis is on fear of punishment desire for rewards, and the trade-offs between the two that alternate courses of action will produce.
2. Conventional Moral reasoning – the focus on doing what “good people” do and respecting family and society’s rules.
3. Post Conventional Level – the key is an attempt to live by more universal principles that is, principles that go beyond specific times and places and people.

1. Adults can stimulate the development of empathy.
2. Adults can protect boys from degrading, dehumanizing, and desensitizing of boys.
3. Adults can stimulate and support the spiritual development of boys.
Caring is the basis for expanding their moral circles.
Social health comes from stability, security, affirmation, time for socialization, economic equality, a good home for the spirit, a whole community, and democratic public institutions that protect human rights.

The need to find positive anchors is a big issue for troubled and violent boys and for all those adults who are responsible for their behavior.

Meaningfulness is implicit in the routines of day to day life especially for those boys whose life is far from secure.


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Stab boring Anchor – ACCEPT GOD AS THEIR SAVIOR
1. Reduced suicide
2. Less depression
3. Less casual sex
4. Better response to trauma
5. Less substance

PTSD – POST TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER

The package of symptoms that includes heightened sensitivity to events that mimic the traumatic situation, emotional numbering, and a tendency to relive the traumatic event.
Boys who succumb to the accumulation of risk factors in their life are prone to act out with explicit antisocial behavior, such as violent juvenile delinquency, thereby grabbing the attention and concern of adults around them.

Girls on the other hand are more likely to respond with internalized problems such as eating disorders, overt depression, and self-destructive behavior.

Six Psychological Anchors of Resilience:

First Condition for Resilience
A positive and stable emotional relationship provides a concrete image for a child.
Active coping means finding a way to make something positive out of life, for example, by developing special talents and skills or simply by working extra hard at being a good person worthy of public praise and reward.

Second Condition for Resilience
Is the ability to actively cope with stress rather than just reacting to it.

Third Condition for Resilience
Third foundation for resilience is intelligence.
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Difference between resilience and survival resilience is the ability to maintain healthy functioning or at least return to healthy functioning in the wake of threat or crisis. Survival subsumes distorted development and negative behavior. Lusts boys survive but do not exhibit resilience.

Fourth Condition for Resilience
Is the possession of authentic self-esteem, a sense a person has about his own intrinsic value.
Fifth Condition for Resilience
Is social support from persons or institutions outside the family.
1. Simply making the individual feel connected to people beyond the confines of the family.
2. The second is its role in promoting pro-social behavior, in representing the core values of the community and more broadly society.
Sixth Condition for Resilience
Lies in a person’s ability to incorporate both traditionally feminine and traditionally masculine characteristics, what psychologist call androgyny.
Stability, Security, Time Affect Children
Affirmation means receiving messages of one’s value and worth.
A healthy community feels safe. Security is a delightful state of being.
In a healthy social environment – adults are encouraged and rewarded for investing time in engaging in cooperative activities with children.
Child maltreatment is believed to be the major cause of neurological impairment in boys who are especially vulnerable to learning patterns of aggressive behavior in the home.
Lines of Defense against lethal youth violence (defense against aggression):
1. Defending at the beginning: Before Birth
2. Promote positive parenting practices, practices that stimulate healthy child development.

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3. Early intervention programs that deal with the attachment – related problems that were discussed in Ch. 2.
4. High-quality early childhood education programs – such as well-run preschools, high-quality head start centers, enriching nursery schools and developmentally oriented day-care centers.
5. Early recognition of cases of conduct disorders and effective responses to redirect behavior and reshape the social maps of vulnerable children.
6. Violence prevention and reduction programs at the elementary school level.
7. Character education – core values or pillars of character – trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring and citizenship. Provide a basis for organizing efforts to claim boys in a positive way, particularly in aligning child and adolescent peer groups in support of the effort.
Character education implies that every setting in which children finds themselves involves recognition and encouragement of honorable behavior, integrity, and caring in short such settings and everything a socially toxic environment isn’t. Each day each child would spend some time talking, reading, writing and reflecting about the core values of the character education.

8. Is teaching mediation, conflict resolution, and peer counseling in programs for kids in middle school and junior high.
Conclusion
After following all the preventive and defense strategies lost boys can be rehabilitated and taught good moral judgment, heal wounded spirits, meet their special needs, anchor them in support groups to help


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restructure thinking patterns, learn positive lessons how to be a strong man who does succumb to the cultural stereotypes of a socially toxic society that defines manhood in terms of aggression, power and material acquisition.