Teenage girls behaving badly

Results of survey on girls’ violence shocked researcher but came as no surprise to teens

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By Katriina Pajari
     
      According to a recent survey conducted by the Non Fighting Generation (NFG), almost half of Finnish teenage girls are prone to violence.
      It can take many forms, including name-calling, slapping, putting people down, and jostling and shoving them around.
      The Non Fighting Generation is a nationwide youth education association established in 1996.
     
The most common form of abuse is name-calling, and a girl can routinely be called "a whore, a cow, a slut, an idiot”.
      Girls are also guilty of physical abuse. One in four respondents said that she slaps someone on a monthly basis.
      To disrespectfully slap someone in the face with an open hand is called bitch slapping.
     
Yes, yes, Nilla Kaurisalo and Milla Oesch, two 14-year-olds from Helsinki, nod in agreement. Callling names and slapping sound familiar.
      ”I have never slapped anyone deliberately in order to hurt”, says Kaurisalo.
      ”But if someone abuses me verbally, I respond in the same way. It makes me feel better”, she adds.
     
Violence among girls has increased, indicates the NFG’s recent survey.
      Researcher Eevastiina Gjerstad was among those who studied the attitudes of girls aged 12 to 18 towards violence.
      A total of nearly 9,300 ordinary Finnish girls in different parts of Finland were involved in the survey, which was conducted through the IRC-Gallery, a Finnish social networking site.
      ”It is naturally shocking if 45 per cent of these girls use violence. Also the amount of physical violence came as a surprise to us, all that slapping and pushing”, Gjerstad says.
      The survey is a part of the association’s more expansive project entitled Levottomat tuhkimot (”Restless Cinderellas”), focusing on the different aspects of teenage girls’ violence.
     
Most commonly, they are just some drunken scuffles of pissis (see link on "fjortis" ) - teenage girls who behave in an immature, insecure, and naive way, say Eveliina Suvisaari, Emmi Koskinen, and Aurora Taipale - all of them 16 - when discussing the violence of girls.
      However, they were also once challenged to fight - girl against girl, but they did not accept the challenge.
      ”We were on our way to a party when we met some girls in the yard. They had obviously been thrown out of the party”, Taipale says.
      The unknown girls started to verbally abuse one of the newcomers. They said that the girls had no business going in.
      ”When we turned away, they came after us and ridiculed us, saying that we were too scared to stay”, Koskinen adds.
      The three girls have no sympathy for girl-on-girl fights. They are embarrassing.
     
Is it right for a girl to hit her boyfriend if there is a valid reason?
      In the survey on the violence of girls, a total of 6,400 teenage girls responded to questions on dating violence.
      Some 40 per cent of them said that it is right. However, most of the respondents said that there must be a good reason for such violence, for example some form of physical abuse.
      ”I understand very well that if a boyfriend has for example cheated on a girl, she can react to that by hitting him. At such a moment, one can just be so angry”, Aurora Taipale explains.
      Suvisaari and Koskinen could imagine that they might even push a cheating boy away heavy-handedly, if he for example tried to force them to hug him. But would it be violence?
      According to researchers, it would.
     
”Girls do not think that slapping and jostling a boy would be violence. Many believe that such handling does not hurt boys in the same way as they are stronger. It is a wrong belief”, says Eevastiina Gjerstad.
      She argues that there is wrong kind of equality in the girls’ world: men must not hit women, while women’s slapping men is more acceptable.
      Finnish girls’ fights are tame compared with for example those in Great Britain, say Erika Koljonen, 14, and Fardowsa Moalim, 15, who have both lived there.
      Happy slapping is a fad in which someone assaults a victim for fun while an accomplice records the assault with a camera phone.
      ”At least we do not have that in Finland”, Moalim notes.
     
     
FACTFILE: One in five teenage girls is guilty of jostling monthly
     
A total of 45 per cent of all respondents (aged 12-18) said that they sometimes use violence.
     
Some 40 per cent of the respondents abuse other girls verbally on a monthly basis.
     
Roughly 24 per cent of respondents are in the habit of slapping other girls at least once a month.
     
Some 20 per cent of them are guilty of jostling and pushing others every month.
     
A total of 10 per cent of teenage girls subjected or publicly humiliated other girls in the course of the past month.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 20.11.2009


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Teenage girls more prone to violence against dating partners than boys (21.8.2009)

Links:
  Non Fighting Generation
  Fjortis - Pissis in Finnish (Wikipedia)
  Happy Slapping (Wikipedia)

KATRIINA PAJARI / Helsingin Sanomat
katriina.pajari@hs.fi