bullied by other women

Post Reply New Topic

Does anyone find, that if they are bullied, it tends to be primarily from other females/ women? When I was in middle school I was badly bullied by other girls. The boys teased me a bit but generally left me alone. But the girls were so incredibly nasty and cruel.

What scares me is that even as an adult, if given the chance to express it and get away with it, they still do it-- I still get bullied and rejected by other women. It's like nothing has changed since I was 12 ! I don't know if this is because women are more likely to be psychological bullies (as opposed to getting into physical fights), or if people are just more likely to pick on those of the same gender.

I'm almost at the point where I'm ready to give up ever trying to befriend women or fit into a group of women. I already tend to avoid groups of women because it makes me nervous. Even when I try my hardest to act "normal" and like "one of the crowd" I still get the eyerolls and the snide comments. Is this what I have to look forward to for the rest of my life?

I'm in the same situation as you. But I had boys bully me too when I was in school.

I was bullied in grade school, mostly by other women. I remember being discouraged from attending community college because when I came to the orientation, there was a table full of women who started exchanging knowing glances and snickering at me. I was afraid to return there. In the work place, I got ridiculed and humiliated by female co-workers. I never understood why they did this. As recently as my forties, I had co-workers trying to get me fired. But I learned to fight back. I had one supervisor write me up over a minor incident. I knew that she was trying to create a paper trail to get me fired. After she had carefully filled out the paper, I refused to sign it. I wanted to laugh in her face, because without my signature, she could be just making it up. Another co-worker was trying to intimidate me, and I looked her up and down before walking away. She was furious, but backed down.

I would say yes, you do have this to look forward to for the rest of your life, but you may get tougher or develop a plan for dealing with bullies. Revenge can be nice (sometimes) especially when you weren't trying to get it! I had a co-worker who was from another country. We all tried to make her welcome and my boss took her out to dinner. After she got used to us, she started on me. Laughing at me behind my back, making fun of me, accusing me of being gay, etc. One day she made a remark about another employee that could be construed as a racist remark. We had just had an in-service about job etiquette, and she was breaking one of the rules. I told her how her remark could be taken, and warned her that she could get in trouble. She blew me off. So I reported her as we had been instructed to do.
She nearly got fired. Worse, she was told that she would have to return to her own country if she didn't learn the ropes here in the USA.

I endured both physical & emotional bullying fairly equally by males & females over the years. It's made me very distrustful of all human beings.

Ditto.

I have the same experience.

As far as distrustful-- for a long time I remained resilient in that I kept trying, hoping this bunch or the next would treat me better, or like me, or let me "in" to their little crowd. I'm finally at the point where I am so wary and distrustful I am even afraid to interact with women in a casual context. I guess, if I felt it were important enough, I would try to fight back, but since a lot of the teasing/ whispering is over stupid stuff, I usually just try to cut out as soon as possible.

I'm not incredibly trusting of men either but they don't seem to hone in on me like women do. I swear it's like I have a bull's eye on my forehead.

@Heartzofspace - That's good advice. I had the HR woman at my last job convince management that I be made to take breaks. They even wasted time to have a meeting about it. She totally made them tools. What is sad, is I don't hate her but every other woman did because she was so pretty. To me she seemed plastic because of her mannerism. But I didn't feel like the others, who would call her Barbie. I try to get along with everyone because I look at being around others as an anthropology experiment and try to be cautious and sensitive to their feelings. I have had people laugh behind my back, roll their eyes, or talk to me like a child but those were weaklings. I have been treated with respect from my professors at college and that is more important to me than a seat warmers comment. I could be real mean and say "If I need any coffee I'll let you know, but since I never drink coffee, I guess your not really needed."

Last edited by curlyfry on 09 Jun 2011, 1:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I meant to add, what is difficult too for me, is that I feel envious of what I perceive to be happy female friendships. It's like they get to have the closeness and comfort of a romantic relationship without all the instability and crap that does along with it. I have never really experienced that kind of relationship with a woman, and the few times I came close it ended badly. I live near a senior center and sometimes see older ladies walking together chatting and laughing.

It seems that other women derive tremendous comfort and satisfaction from these friendships, especially as they go into old age.

I still struggle with friendships even as I age. To my dismay, often older women seek me out for friendship with ulterior motives. I have had to end some friendships because these women were secretly lesbian, or wanted to control me.

In middle school I was bullied by other girls. The guys were pretty much okay. In fact, there was a snot-nosed kid that was trying to gain popularity by picking on other people. He did this whole tangent right in my face about how whores like me have to wear so much make-up to cover our acne but everybody can still see it so we just look gross. I barely wore any make-up and was trying to cover one obnoxious zit on my chin. One of the "cool" guys came over, stood between him and me, got in his face and told him to shut to f*ck up. I wasn't a "cool kid" in junior high but I obviously wasn't hated by the cool guys, even if none of them were inclined to ask me out. There was only one girl who was really mean with her bullying. The rest was all dumb crap that you forgive and forget. This one girl, I couldn't even add her on Facebook because she was so sadistically mean to people, including me. She was the kind who'd snap "slut!" at you as you passed, enough for you to hear but not for the teachers to hear. And I wasn't having sex in junior high... she was! She physically tortured a girl in PE who had gotten pregnant... at least that was the rumor. Who knows for sure if she even was actually pregnant. But this bully physically tortured the hell out of her until the PE coach came into the girls locker room and broke it up.

Nobody hated me in high school. I was weird and didn't belong but people either completely ignored me or they were nice to me. My adulthood has been free from the catty, snarky bullies... at least in real life. Livejournal was getting like that but I backed away from it enough to be victimized like others were. I was recently bullied on Facebook by a bunch of Catholics because I'm Episcopalian. I was upset at the time but it really had to be the most stupid thing that had ever happened in the history of the world.

But I think this is ONLY because my mother could not get along with anyone. She couldn't work anywhere because there'd always be a conflict and a fight with somebody so she couldn't go back. She couldn't keep friends or be on good terms with neighbors or have anyone close to her at all. In seeing her relate to the world, I was able to set the goal to not be like that. I enjoy being around people and get energy from it, so I made decisions to get along. I'm very outspoken and have opinions so I'll still get into debates and disagreements here and there, but generally and especially in real life, I get along. I'm still very awkward and can say the wrong things, but I'm not having fights with everybody. I have to imagine that this goal has played a major role in preventing any further bullying in my life, without that being the primary purpose.

Yeah, I probably have a highly idealized view of female friendships, since I've never had a real one. In fact on other boards I see women moaning and groaning a lot about their "friends." My sister has a friend who treats her horribly... so maybe I should consider myself lucky.

I experienced this kind of double standard too... it's ok for the popular girls to have sex but if any of the "lower tier" girls do, they're sluts. In fact the one time I was severely bullied by a guy, it was because I had a boyfriend in 9th grade. He would talk about what I whore I was etc etc. Of course he had a GF but I guess she wasn't a whore too for being with him?

Something similar happened to me but it was in adulthood, just a few years back. I hadn't really considered this bullying until you shared your experience. One of my husband's old, old friends was really chummy with me. He seemed to like debating crap with me and that's fine. But this "friend" had a history of competing with my husband for girls. The guy's first wife was actually my husband's live-in girlfriend. Well, I wasn't thinking anything of the debates or even when he started flirting, because I told myself it was just friendliness that I was reading too much into, until he made a pass. When I refused him, he started the bullying. He trashed talked me to other people, he made up outright lies about things I said and did, and then he claims that I wanted to sleep with him. A lot of people had trouble believing him, and my husband's rage really helped keep my reputation in tact, but that didn't change that he'd done this to me.

Three of my guy friends who were exposed to this mess asked me how long that guy wanted to get in my pants. They could see, from his perverse and infantile behavior, that he was either in love with me or lusting after me. The arguments, they said, were because he was trying to get me to match his worldview and he was threatened by my differences from him. I found the whole idea very sick and they confirmed that it takes someone who is psychologically unhealthy to make those choices. All three of these men were police officers all trained in interpreting human behavior and one with an undergrad degree in psychology.

Even though it's been cliche for people to say that someone is only picking on you because he likes you, I do believe there's some credibility to it when a guy has no other motivation for acting in such an awful way toward someone. Of course, this is not a reason to be flattered, as the cliche usually suggests. It's a definite warning sign to stay far, far away from such a person.