‘Just be friends’: exposing the limits of educational bully discourses for understanding teen girls’ heterosexualized friendships and conflicts

Abstract

The present paper explores the conceptual limitations of the bully discourses that ground UK anti-bullying policy frameworks and psychological research literatures on school bullying, suggesting they largely ignore gender, (hetero)sexuality and the social, cultural and subjective dynamics of conflict and aggression among teen-aged girls. To explore the limitations of bully discourses in practice, the paper draws on a pilot, interview-based study of girls' experiences of aggression and bullying, illustrating how friendships and conflicts among the girls are thoroughly heterosexualized, en-cultured and classed. Drawing on girls and parent interview narratives, I also trace some of the effects of bully discourses set in motion in schools to intervene into conflicts among girls. I suggest these practices miss the complexity of the dynamics at play among girls and also neglect the power relations of parenting, ethnicity, class and school choice, which can inform how, why and when bullying discourses are mobilized.

Travelling and sticky affects: Exploring teens and sexualized cyberbullying through a Butlerian-Deleuzian-Guattarian lens

“…We believe mapping this 580 movement of affect helps us to understand desire, technologically mediated exclusions, and the multiple affective permutations of becoming in school life in more nuanced ways. bully tend to be positioned in a binary and this formulation tends to pathologize both positions (see Ringrose, 2008). Where movement is suggested is the risk that the victim could become the bully.…”

Teenagers’ Explanations of Bullying

“…By almost exclusively attributing the causes of bullying to the bully or the victim, teenagers risk overlooking other factors that might cause or influence the process of peer harassment. Bullying prevention efforts and interventions have to help children and adolescents to discover, understand and consider the complexity of bullying and factors such as social participation roles in bullying and the power and responsibility of bystanders (O'Connell et al 1999;Salmivalli 2010;Salmivalli et al 1996), the everyday process of making and maintaining friendships by defining and excluding nonfriends (Besag 2006;Mishna et al 2008;Owens et al 2000;Thornberg in press), instability in peer networks (Besag 2006;Neal 2007), the power of group norm settings by popular classmates (Dijkstra et al 2008), social hierarchy (Frisén et al 2008;Kless 1992;Neal 2007;Thornberg in press), probullying norms (Duffy and Nesdale 2009;Salmivalli and Voeten 2004), group processes and group pressure (Bukowski and Sippola 2001;Burns et al 2008;Hamarus and Kaikkonen 2008), social representations or peer discourses about victims and bullying (Teräsahjo and Salmivalli 2003;Thornberg 2010b), gender (Kless 1992;Neal 2007;Phoenix et al 2003;Stoudt 2006), heterosexual hegemony (Phoenix et al 2003;Ringrose 2008), and intolerance of diversity (MacDonald and Swart 2004;Merton 1994;Thornberg in press) in peer culture. Hence, it appears to be urgent to deepen children's and young people's insights into peer attributing, school attributing, and human nature/society attributing, since these are atypical bullying explanations among the young people in our current findings.…”

Let’s talk about sex: gender norms and sexual health in English schools

“…[20][21][22][23][24][25] But research also suggests practical ways in which such norms may be challenged. A new generation of 'Health Promoting Schools' (HPS) interventions aim not only to provide health education through the school curriculum but also to modify the school social environment and reach out to local communities to promote healthy behaviours including, but not limited to, sexual health; 26 for example, a whole-school multicomponent US intervention (Safer Choices) aimed at reducing multiple risk factors for HIV, STIs and pregnancy.…”