Mean girls on the Internet?

Peninah* has always been overweight. It’s something she got bullied about all through primary and secondary school. By the time she joined campus, she had low self-esteem and thought herself unworthy of love.

“The outside world saw me as a fat, introverted girl. Even though I despised it, I didn’t do anything about it. I just didn’t see anything worth loving on me and shared this much with my roommate at the time.” So when a boy on campus showed interest in her, she was surprised. “I thought my roommate would be happy for me as she was always telling me to stop being so hard on myself.

“The following day when I logged onto Facebook, she had posted all these vile rumours about me. She went as far as calling me a slut. Though I knew it wasn’t true, it still hurt, especially the fact that the name-calling came out of nowhere. The comments her post attracted hurt even more and were all from people I don’t even know. I’ve never talked to her ever since. It still beats me why women are always attacking each other.”

SOCIAL CONDITIONING

They say that women are their own worst enemies, always critical and almost cruel to their own sex. It does have something to do with social conditioning. Dr. Grace Wamue-Ngare, a senior lecturer at the department of Gender and Development Studies at Kenyatta University explains that this is because girls have been raised to be passive.

“If a child is belittled, they will exercise authority once they have a chance to do so and will be aggressive to someone weaker than them. Women are critical of other women because women are the most vulnerable,” she says.

With the theory that the workplace is a male-dominated world, one might think that women would cut each other some slack and help each other out. That is not the case.

Research carried out in the United Kingdom on ambition and gender by the Institute of Leadership and Management found that women won’t help each out at the workplace because of the notion that there are fewer opportunities for them.

Raj Raghunathan, a professor at the University of Texas who studies theories from psychology, behavioural sciences, decision theory and marketing to explain interrelationships between affect and consumption behaviour, says that since women need to provide for their offspring, they will engage in fierce competition for the available resources which to them, are already scarce. They believe the woman at the top gets a larger share and therefore have one more motive for one-upmanship compared to men.

Competition is not only reserved at the workplace. The Oedipus complex comes into play in a family setting. The Oedipal complex is a term used by Sigmund Freud in his theory of psychosexual stages of development that concentrates upon a child’s desires to sexually posses the parent of the opposite sex.

“Essentially, a girl will feel like she is in competition with her mother for possession of her father. Mother and daughter view themselves as rivals and therefore will compete for attention and affection from the father,” says Salome Bukachi, a lecturer of anthropology at the Institute of Anthropology, Gender and African Studies.

PASSIVE-AGGRESSIVE CULTURE

And because young girls are taught conflict avoidance roles, instead of addressing conflict directly, they will whisper, in other words, gossip and backstab. The notion that women gossip more than men, though, has not been proved. This theory comes about because women meet more and talk a lot more. Dr Wamue says that men also gossip, they just don’t have a social forum.

“Women gossip or backstab other women because they see her achieve something and feel, ‘that should be me’. They will say something negative about the achieving woman to make them look bad and this, on the other hand, makes them feel adequate psychologically. They are not saying something negative because you think badly of them, but because they are covetous of you,” says Salome.

“Women will not however say things to this person’s face, but will do it behind their backs. They have been taught to avoid conflict. Men will confront a problem directly. Also the way we are wired, women talk a lot, and there’s a verse in the Bible that says that in the midst of many words, something bad will likely come out,” she adds.

It’s because of this passive-aggressive behaviour in females that men were thought to be the culprits of traditional bullying. Boys bully in direct ways, for example by physical threats. Girls are also bullies, only that they are more indirect in the way they do it. They participate in psychological and emotional harassment and aggression. Because of the almost anonymous nature of cyberbullying, women are assumed to make a large percentage of online bullies.

This, though, is just an assumption. Researchers and psychologist argue that it is hard to identify perpetrators or potential victims of cyber bullying because online bullying is largely, and almost by definition, anonymous.

CYBERBULLYING

Cyberbullying is bullying that involves the use of electronic technology and communication tools such as social media, texts, chat and blogs. If you are harassed, threatened or humiliated, it is cyberbullying. Adults as well as teenagers and children, have fallen victims to cyberbullying. Dr. Cheryl Dellasega, the author of Mean Girls Grown Up, says that bullying can be one rude comment or a string of them.

The anonymity offered by electronic technology tempts people to behave in a way they would not in a face-to-face scenario. This, in turn, has notched up hostility.

A lot of factors are at play when it comes to online bullies and what exactly motivates them. According to Charity Ochieng’, a psychologist based in Nairobi, it could be a retaliation to traditional bullying. “You finally have a chance to get back to someone who bullied you when you were young, and you may not get caught because you can hide behind a computer screen and a fake identity. Others simply do it to seek attention,” she says.

The bully may also be someone who is bored, angry, jealous, righteous or simply bigoted.

Women have been bullied for many reasons; their weight, appearance, parenting styles, fashion senses... you name it. Cheryl Cole was bullied on Twitter for ‘looking fat’. When she won two gold medals at the 2012 Olympics, Gabby Douglas became the first Black American woman ever to do so. But instead of acclaim, she got criticism on social media for her hair upkeep. “We love how she’s doing her thing and winning but we just hate the way her hair looks with all those pins and gel,” was the bitchy consensus.

Singer LeAnn Rimes had to attend rehab for treatment to help her cope with stress and anxiety from cyberbullying. She was bullied for having an affair with actor Eddie Cibrian (now her husband) while they were both still married to other partners.

Cases of suicide have been reported in America after cyberbullying. In Kenya, Caroline Mutoko was attacked on social media for speaking her mind, while her co-host, Linda Nyangweso was bullied because of her weight.

REDUCING VULNERABILITY

Vera Sidika, East Africa’s top video vixen according to Channel O, is always a victim of online bullying. “They criticise the pictures of me in a bikini when I’m out swimming. (But) I can’t swim in pyjamas,” she laughs. “I get harassed about my big forehead, which doesn’t bother me because I’m happy with my looks. Most of these harassments usually come from women,” she says.

There were rumours doing rounds on social media sometime back about her HIV status that led her to do a test and post the results online, did that bother her? “I don’t know who started it and I can’t waste my time trying to find out. I only took the test to prove a point and have people talk based on what they see and not hear. It didn’t affect me because I don’t care about what people say about me,” she says.

According to a 2013 report by Kenya ICT Action Network, the Kenya Communications Act 2009 recognises cybercrime and sets out legal protection for government and businesses. It however does not acknowledge cybercrime against persons and as a result “cyber crime committed against women for example would not be a priority within this legislative framework.”

As the debate continues on who the perpetrators of cyberbullying are, make yourself less vulnerable. Speaking and typing with respect is one way. And if you’ve fallen victim to cyberbullying, do not respond to the bully directly.

This will only fan the flames because they are always waiting for you to respond. Both researchers and parents have agreed that the general population should be educated on the harm they cause by bullying someone.

We should be able to enjoy the benefits of technology without looking at it as a step towards a catastrophe from which we will never recover.