teenage wasteland: alpha female

The degree to which children harbor seriously violent fantasies is well known for some time. From Golding’s Lord of the Flies, to Freud, to Heinrich Hoffman to everyday experience among children, their inability in many cases to sublimate the kill button has intrigued modern thinkers. It is an expression of an unlived life, or something from the darker recesses of the psyche. And these violent urges seem equally divided between both genders….

Although some of the details remain unknown, it is clear that Virk was lured to the park at about 10 p.m. by two teens she met while hanging out at a convenience store a few blocks away. Once out of sight of passers-by, she was set on and so viciously kicked and beaten that she suffered multiple fractures, including fractured arms and a broken neck and back. According to a sister of one of the accused, she cried out, “Help me, I love you,” during the assault. When her partly submerged body was found more than a week later, a few hundred metres from where she was attacked, a few scraps of underwear was all that remained of her clothing. Read More:http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/articles/macleans/girls-kill-teenage-schoolmatea

…But the behavior of many young girls, Artz suggests, is being twisted by profound cultural pressures their parents barely understand. Pressures to be sexy, to be popular – to be powerful. And when conventional methods of achieving those goals fail, more and more girls are turning to violence. “They are taking the attitude that the way to reach power is by being like males,” Artz says. “If they can’t get what they want, they become enforcers for the group. It’s an ugly and painful thing.”

That, many Canadians might respond, is an understatement. While the overall numbers remain small compared with boys, police are charging vastly more girls with violent crimes than they did 10 years ago. …many say there is little doubt that common and aggravated assaults are on the increase. “Except for murder, I’m convinced that things have gotten worse,” says Ray Corrado, a professor at Simon Fraser University’s School of Criminology. “The context of the violence has also changed. It’s more random, more vicious – and it’s not just in the bad parts of town.” …Read More:http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/articles/macleans/girls-kill-teenage-schoolmatea

…The Theory Y approach of this is that  destruction and violence are not inherent to human nature, and neither are they related to an absence of discipline and order; they are interpreted as  expressions of identity, individuation and a drive for self-fulfillment that have been repressed. Into this one could throw the capitalist idea of “creative destruction” where children and their objects could be broken and beaten, as well as perhaps messianic views of violence sprinkled with a healthy degree of nihilism. Baudelaire,  in his A Philosophy of Toys, asserted that children destroy their toys as an emancipatory, liberating and poetic act, a way to peer at the soul of the toy. But, when the toy’s life stops this is the beginning of melancholy and ominous gloom. A preference to destroy rather than share?   To Baudelaire, this was the opposite of receiving ” ready-made” forms of knowing the world. I suppose if the child was bright enough, he could take these ready-mades and customize them…

…”There’s a pretty big reason for violence among girls,” says Fila, 15. “It’s got to do with dominance and what you believe is yours. Usually it comes down to our boyfriends. First you threaten – ‘Don’t touch him or I’ll kill you.’ And if that doesn’t work you fight.” Crystal, 16, and Kat, 15, say that clothes are also a flash point. There is even a hierarchy of most desired brands – Nike, Fila and Adidas. Kat says clothes matter because they reflect status and membership. “It’s about belonging. You want to be part of a group, a gang. It’s like your family,” says Kat, who is in Grade 10. As for violence, Crystal says, “people don’t listen if you say it nicely, so you have to put it bluntly and threaten them. And if that doesn’t work, what comes next is to fight.” …

…Many prosecutors and social scientists caution against easier treatment for girls than boys. Halifax Crown attorney Catherine Cogswell has become impatient with such an approach. “What’s facing the system is how to get out the message that violence is wrong and to not deal with girls with kid gloves,” she says. “I have seen parents, police officers, social workers and judges be more lenient because the case involves a girl. I have walked away and thought, really, this is sexist.”…

Social workers have long tried to determine, to map out the emotional makeup of the delinquent. If play is assumed to be a therapeutic function why does it often turn so nasty? To explain this disconnect, one can use the primitive human gene that seeks to establish hierarchy, a pecking order and the ensuing invid

comparisons to enforce it as an explanation, and Freud could complement this is his assertion that the joy kids derive from play is anchored in repeating a traumatic moment and mastering it; often coming to grips with it by revenging on a substitute. In theory, play is supposed to purge disruptive emotions and channel the most violent instincts. But it could also hone these dangerous tendencies. Practice.

But like adults playing, the stakes of child play are higher than their nominal value. They are ideological, with analogies between individual aggression and group political violence being plausible: a playing out of eternal conflict between forces of attraction- eros- the force of attraction, the builders, and those of a death drive with its force of destruction and disintegration.Rooted in Christianity’s faith in resurrection or the Judaic trust in the Covenant.Children do act on ideas. The playground is a  places where the struggle between civilization and barbarism, democracy and tyranny, are enacted in a micro-environment.

…A sampling of recent Halifax-area cases vividly demonstrates the casual viciousness girls are capable of. In one recent incident, Cogswell recalls, a teenager stabbed her friend with a knife, puncturing her lung. By the time they got to court, neither could remember what the fight was about. And last year, when four boys gang-raped a classmate, a group of teens – including girls – stood by cheering. At the trial, one girl referred to the attack as “no big deal.” According to her, “these things happen at school all the time.” …

…Whatever the reasons, some teenage girls clearly are experiencing acute – at times uncontainable – levels of anger and are showing far more willingness to strike out. Researchers and clinicians are also discovering a chilling lack of empathy among young girls – a quality that, until recently, appeared to be more common among adolescent boys….

ADDENDUM:

Alpha Girls can sometimes grow into Alpha Women: think of the Mitford sisters. Their tricks as adults are similar to those honed in the school playground. They attempt to demote other women by a process of devious backstabbing as opposed to the male practice of face-to-face encounters. In this way they demolish potential rivals without having to expose themselves to physical risk….

…For more modern examples of Alpha Women, you need only look at the world of politics. The pretty, pert Baroness Jay is one. The seemingly sisterish Glenys Kinnock, with her recent catty remarks about goody-goody Delia Smith, would appear to be another.

Alpha Girls are now the subject of a series of books: Queen Bees by Rosalind Wiseman, Odd Girl Out by Rachel Simmons, Fast Girls by Emily White.

But perhaps the most controversial is called Woman’s Inhumanity To Woman. The work is considered so repellent to feminists on both sides of the Atlantic, with their idea of the ever-loving sisterhood, so politically incorrect, that Erica Jong has described it as ‘the subject that dare not speak its name’.

The American author of Woman’s Inhumanity To Woman, Phyllis Chesler, identifies Alpha Girls as those many females ‘who tend to hold grudges, engage in slander and shunning and never speak to their opponent again’.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-106518/The-rise-Alpha-Girls.html#ixzz1mUdlTMz5