This is one way in which girls shouldn't aspire to be the equal of boys:
Cops are grappling with escalating girl-on-girl violence in Boston as fights have become so intense that the 'fair'' sex is even caking faces with Vaseline to give attackers' nails the slip. Four flare-ups between female youths at two stations on the Red and Orange lines were doused on Sept. 26 alone, according to an internal memo the Herald obtained from the MBTA. Transit police are now sending a Female Intervention Team into schools... Suffolk Law School's Juvenile Justice Center has teamed with the Operation Stop Watch partnership of Transit, Boston and school police and Suffolk juvenile probation officers to understand how and why female youths, typically ages 13 to 17, express anger."We've learned, as we suspected, that there is a definite spike in female youth problems, arrests and incarceration,'' said Transit Police Lt. Mark Gillespie, whose department has arrested a half-dozen teenage girls since the start of the school year for brawling in MBTA stations.
Patricia Pearson's When She Was Bad is one of the better books I've read lately on female violence. I haven't read Odd Girl Out, but it's gotten good reviews for its description of how ugly behavior rears its head quite early among young girls.
Posted by kswygert at October 11, 2005 11:20 AM