Girls are Worse: Ghetto Girls, Tomboys and the Meaning of Girl Fights.

Although boys engage in more fights than girls, there has been a growing amount of research devoted to understanding the aggressive and antisocial behavior of girls. Unlike boys, girls tend to engage in relational aggression, which includes anything from name-calling to spreading rumors to violent threats. Because of the elusive nature of this type of aggression, it may be less easily quantifiable. This paper interrogates girl fighting from a qualitative approach to help better understand the meaning of girl violence in public high schools, and to examine the perception that (despite statistics) "girls are worse." This research reveals how fighting among girls can sometimes be a site for reinforcing a normative feminine role of the overly "emotional" girl, at the same time it can be constructed as a transgression of such ideals, where girl fighters are "tomboys" and "tough girls." This is often intricately connected to sexuality, where girls who fight are sometimes perceived to be "gay girls." This kind of homophobic name-calling may in turn work to reinforce heterosexism and homophobia in schools. This paper also examines how fights are tied to race, where the construction of "ghetto girls" can work to reinforce racist ideologies about violence in schools. Finally, this paper suggests that girl fighting can also be a site of situated agency, where girls fight to gain a sense of power and respect among their cohorts. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]