Entering

Girls' Secret Attack Culture
intimate enemy
The truth hurts
A child who thinks he is the best
The perpetrator in the mirror
How to become popular
resistance
Parents and teachers
The way forward

In conclusion

The first book to delve deeply into the psychology of girls dealing with bullying!

“A bold, myth-shattering work,” Seattle Weekly raved about The Psychology of Girls.
Moon Jae-hyun, director of the Village Community Education Research Institute, which is also working on a local community movement centered on education, praised the book as “the first book to deeply capture and reveal the psychology of girls related to bullying and conflict around the world.”
In addition, numerous media outlets and educational organizations, including the LA Times, have praised the book (see cover page).
In fact, "The Psychology of Girls" began to gain attention as soon as it was published in 2002, making it onto bestseller lists and is still recommended as a must-read on bullying to this day.
What is the reason?

One day, Rachel Simmons, the author of the book, was attending graduate school at Oxford when she went to the library to find answers to bullying.
He himself was a victim and perpetrator of bullying as a child, so he desperately needed an answer.
Furthermore, I became even more curious when I confirmed that not only myself but also my female graduate school colleagues had gone through similar ordeals.
I naturally assumed there would be a lot of books explaining how and why girls bully.
But... there were no books at all.
While there are countless papers on boys' aggression and bullying, there are only a handful of papers on girls.
He decided to start collecting material from the ground up, emailing everyone he knew and asking them to spread the word to as many women as possible.
“Did you ever experience bullying or teasing from other female friends as a child? Tell me about that experience.
How has that experience affected you today?” Within days, replies poured in from all over the country, which gave me the opportunity to interview over 300 girls, teachers, parents, and adult women over the course of three years.
And the result is “Psychology of Girls.”

Compared to the bullying of boys, the bullying of girls has received less attention.
First of all, it was because of the limited perception that bullying was considered direct physical violence.
Compared to boys who express their aggression through fighting and bullying, girls' bullying is often covert and non-physical.
Bullying by girls is difficult to detect and therefore often treated as insignificant.
Of course, there are no facts and the research results are woefully inadequate.
Added to this is the voluntary silence of girls and women.
The girls instinctively sense the helplessness of “talking is useless” through their own experiences and walk into a deeper world of silence.
And this silence leaves a much deeper and longer-lasting scar than any outward physical violence.

“It’s time to break the silence,” Rachel Simmons pleads.
“We need a new language for the bullying that every girl experiences, but that becomes a lump in her chest that she keeps quiet about,” she argues.
And he presents his argument point by point, weaving together numerous interviews and the research results of leading scholars on the psychology of girls.
"Breaking the Silence." That's why the media and educational organizations are praising the book.
"The Psychology of Girls" is a report on the psychology of girls related to bullying, and a book of comfort for "girls suffering in a silent war."

Let go of the 'good girl' inside me that society forces upon me!

One girl glares at another girl.
Then he smiles slyly at the girl's friend.
The next day, the mastermind secretly passes notes to the other girls, asking them to write about things they dislike about the targeted girl.
The next day, the bullied girl goes to sit quietly next to the boys, her head bowed and her shoulders hunched.
Their bullying is clean and quiet, with neither the perpetrator nor the victim revealed.

In this way, girls cause psychological pain to their targets by gossiping, ostracizing, spreading rumors, swearing, and manipulating them behind their backs.
Boys tend to ostracize people they know little about or don't know well, but girls often ostracize their friends.
Therefore, bullying of girls is difficult to detect, and the damage suffered by the victims is much deeper.
Girls fight using body language and relationships instead of fists or swords.
Friendship becomes a weapon, and there is no gesture more shocking than turning your back on a friend.
Rachel Simmons conceptualizes the nature of bullying among these girls as "alternative aggression."
“The Psychology of Girls is the first book to focus solely on girls and non-physical conflict, and it talks about the perpetrators and victims of what we call ‘substitute aggression.’”

The book doesn't stop at highlighting the differences in the aggression cultures (bullying) of boys and girls.
Take one step further.
"What is the root cause of this insidious, insidious culture of aggression among girls?" asks Rachel Simmons. That's the ultimate question.
The answers he found were ‘culture’ and ‘learning.’
Competitiveness, jealousy, and anger are natural emotions that all humans have, regardless of whether they are boys or girls.
Boys grow up in a culture where they are taught to express these needs and desires naturally.
Therefore, the boys' aggression is expressed in the form of physical violence without hesitation, and the wounds heal easily.
Sometimes aggression in boys is encouraged as a way to be 'manly'.


On the other hand, girls grow up in a culture where their desires and needs, such as competitiveness, jealousy, and anger, are suppressed and repressed.
The core concept that defines that culture is 'good girl.'
Even in an age of female soccer players and female astronauts, the "good girl" ideology still holds a powerful influence.
Women should be good, so they should not easily reveal their desires or needs, and even if they do, they should not be obvious.
The girls' anger, having lost its outlet, is distorted and manifests itself in covert attacks on their close friends, leaving deeper and more lasting scars on the boys' hearts than on their bodies.

So it's quite clear what Rachel Simmons proposes as a solution to the girls' alternative attacks.
Don't suppress natural emotions like competitiveness, jealousy, and anger; express them.
It means, “Let go of the ‘good girl’ inside you that society and culture force upon you!”
Of course, it is not an easy task.
This is especially true in environments where parents and teachers are ignorant and passive about girls' alternative aggression.
So, in the final two chapters of the book, the author spares no effort in offering advice to teachers and parents, urging them to understand the culture of covert aggression among girls.
We also offer actual manuals.
“It offers concrete ways to anticipate and prevent girls’ covert attacks,” says the Library Journal review.


What does the author, who was both a victim and a perpetrator of bullying as a child, hope for? "If society values ​​all of girls' emotions, they will be able to enjoy the freedom that comes from honest relationships."
...What I wish a woman who has been bullied could say this.
'My biggest regret is not saying anything then.
“What on earth could you be so afraid of?”