#relational aggression

This is incredibly nice and uplifting to hear, especially since, like, that’s part of the entire point of the A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club. If I may speak frankly, TTRPG spaces are almost all incredibly fucking toxic and hostile. If it’s not “why is there even a single black guy in this game, and women should have -2 Strength.” then it’s “Hm it’s really yikes that you say your PC isn’t just a 1:1 avatar of you and therefore doesn’t reflect your own values and that their actions aren’t your own idealist fantasy. We’re going to have to remove you for the safety of the community.”

I had a bunch more examples but I cut them short, maybe you’ll see them as their own posts later. Anyway we run the server very differently from the standard discord server rules for this reason. The server rules are designed to let conflict and disagreements just happen instead of always favoring the most polite and well-spoken person in the room and punishing the one who says the most swears. That sounds bad on the surface but when you instantly shut down anything at the first sign of somebody getting upset or speaking impolitely, it’s very easy for a certain type of well-spoken person who knows the right social justice language to aggressively cry-bully, dogpile, and sealion anyone they don’t like, and get them punished if they get mad about it. Ask any autistic tumblr trans woman about this.

That and a lot of talks about, and safeguards against, relational violence keep the general population resistant to callout posts shit like that.

By: Jaimee Marshall

Published: Feb 10, 2026

New research shows that women show more indirect and verbal hostility towards women with larger breasts. Does this explain the hate for celebrities like Sydney Sweeney?

For years, it’s been folk wisdom that women with well-endowed chests, from Kate Upton to Sydney Sweeney, conspicuously find themselves the targets of disproportionate hostility compared to smaller-breasted women. The implication being that women find other women with large breasts sexually threatening, which motivates them to cut them down. Empirical research now supports this theory.

Study Finds Women Are More Likely to Target Women With Larger Breasts

A 2024 peer-reviewed study at Texas A&M International University’s Department of Psychology and Communication found that women were significantly more likely to engage in “derogation tactics,” such as verbal and indirect aggression, when shown photos of women with larger breasts. Women with C or D cups were disproportionately more likely to be the victims of verbal and indirect aggression than those with A and B cups.

Because breast size and shape are important physical traits in mate choice, which men find sexually attractive, and women are attentive to men’s interest in them and aware of women with attractive breast features (the famous photograph of Sophia Loren staring at Jayne Mansfield’s well-endowed assets comes to mind), the researchers made some predictions. They expected women would engage in verbal and indirect aggression when women possessed large and firm (non-saggy) breasts, notably if these women had a sexually competitive disposition.

The sample size was 114 Hispanic women, each of whom was shown 12 images of women’s bare breasts varying in size from A cup to D cup and three different levels of ptosis (firmness vs. sagginess). The researchers also measured the participants’ propensity to engage in same-sex competition using an Intrasexual Competition Scale (ICS), a 12-item inventory of statements like “I can’t stand it when I meet another woman who is more attractive than I am.” The women would then rate the statements for agreement on a scale of 1 to 7, with 1 indicating strong disagreement and 7 indicating strong agreement. Higher scores were associated with greater intrasexual competitiveness.

The women were then asked questions designed to measure their propensity to engage in verbal and indirect aggression, such as “How likely are you to be verbally aggressive against the woman?” and “How likely are you to be indirectly aggressive against the woman?” Curiously, levels of ptosis (i.e., how firm or saggy the breasts were) and women’s ICS scores (which have excellent reliability) were not predictive of women engaging in rival derogation. By far the most significant predictor was breast size, with C and D cups disproportionately more likely to be the victims of verbal and indirect aggression over A and B cups.

The researchers found no association between dispositional levels of intrasexual competition or breast perkiness with verbal and indirect aggression. One possible explanation is that the women in the sample skewed young, so markers of youth like laxity and firmness were not as easily discernible or threatening to them as breast size. Women were more likely to derogate women with larger breasts, even if they did not score high in dispositional interpersonal competition, suggesting that seeing women with large breasts makes women more competitive than their baseline disposition would predict. This study suggests breast size alone can provoke hostility, notably in one direction: the bigger the bust, the bigger the hate.

Limitations of the Study

However, the study has some limitations. For one, this study was performed on a small, non-diverse sample: 114 college-aged, predominantly Hispanic women in a university setting. That’s hardly a representative sample that can be generalized to the broader population. There was also a limited range of breast features tested: breast size and firmness. Researchers proposed additional potential features for future study, such as cleavage.

The research participants, all women, were also viewing nude images of other women’s breasts. Since heterosexual women are unlikely to view other women naked in ordinary, everyday contexts, it’s worth replicating the study with clothed women to see if the findings persist. The participants also self-reported their feelings rather than measuring physiological effects such as heart rate or pupil dilation, which capture unconscious responses.

Prior research shows that “priming intrasexual competition by using a partner threat task can increase derogation tactics in women, such as rating them less favorably or preventing their partner from interacting with an attractive woman,” but no priming task was employed in this study. The authors also disclosed that while larger breasts were perceived as threatening in their sample, large breasts are not universally viewed as more sexually attractive. You might get a different result using a different sample.

Why Women Compete Indirectly With Other Women

Women have a unique evolutionary mating strategy. Rather than engaging in direct physical aggression or violence, women have learned to utilize indirect, non-physical strategies like gossip and rumor spreading as a means of subtly undermining sexual rivals without risking harm to themselves or their children. Due to women’s greater parental investment, aggression must go undetected, ruling out the much more overt male strategy of direct physical aggression and violence.

Women engage in these tactics when a competing attractive woman is directly threatening their relationship. However, they’ve also evolved mechanisms that increase their vigilance to potential threats. Studies show that women “condemn other women who expose their breasts and will view them negatively,” as well as women who are dressed provocatively, such as by showing cleavage.

Because men place a premium on youth and physical attractiveness in selecting mates, women have learned to become attentive to other attractive women and indirectly undermine attractive female rivals through tactics like reputation destruction to reduce perceived threats to their relationship. Attractive female rivals exhibit markers of physical attractiveness like facial femininity, lower waist-to-hip ratios, and larger breasts.

Women are then motivated to spread rumors about such women or increase other forms of aggression, which are effective, especially if the perpetrator is attractive herself. Other tactics include enhancing their own appearance when feeling threatened. Women who are higher in intrasexual competitiveness are more likely to enhance their appearance, have a more positive outlook toward cosmetic surgery, and are more likely to consider women with attractive features as sexually promiscuous.

A 2024 peer-reviewed psychology paper reporting on two studies found that intrasexually competitive women were more likely to advise women to cut off more hair than their attractive peers wanted. The more similar the women were in attractiveness to themselves, the more hair they recommended cutting off, even when the hair was in good condition and the client stated a preference for cutting off as little as possible. The conclusion drawn from these studies is that intrasexually competitive women engage in sabotage when they perceive women to be as attractive as themselves.

Female sexual rivalry is assortative, just like mate selection. In layman’s terms, people mate assortatively, meaning people tend to have an accurate grasp of their “mate value,” where they fall on the social hierarchy of attractiveness, and choose partners that are similar to them. This assortative pattern also pops up in competition with female rivals. Women are more motivated to sabotage other women they perceive as equally attractive or of the same mate value as themselves than women who are obviously more attractive, because they’re competing for the same pool of potential mates.

These studies demonstrate how competitive motives can play out in the background of female-to-female interactions, even when they’re removed from any obvious direct competition for mates. This 2022 study found women condemn other women who appear sexually permissive by dressing in revealing clothing, even when these women are not direct sexual rivals (including their boyfriend’s sister).

A woman is obviously not competing for a man with his sister, but women nevertheless continue to punish this behavior because it’s associated with a greater likelihood for casual sex and lowers its perceived cost. The consequence of that raises competition for attention and reshapes expectations for all women, so they have a vested interest in keeping the cost of sex high. One way they can do this is through enforcing norms by policing women’s behavior. Even if they don’t make sense in a specific context, policed behavior prevents norm drift.

When one woman raises the sexual bar, it pressures other women to follow. So why don’t women just play the game rather than sabotaging or policing other women’s behavior? A few reasons: sexual capital isn’t evenly distributed. Some women have odd proportions or excess body weight, are older, or have fewer attractive features. Assuming women do have the attributes to compete, overt sexualization comes with serious tradeoffs, like a perceived lack of seriousness or authority and higher scrutiny with age. It’s also a valve that, once opened, can hardly be turned off.

How This Plays Out in Popular Culture

Let’s go back to that infamous 1957 photo of Sophia Loren and Jayne Mansfield taken at a Paramount Pictures dinner at Romanoff’s in Beverly Hills. It’s become a piece of Hollywood iconography symbolizing female rivalry, jealousy, and the policing of female sexuality (often by other women). It’s a visual symbol for the woman-on-woman “violence” characteristic of making it in Hollywood. Women, especially legible sex symbols, are typically pitted against each other and feel their fragile sense of relevance and vanity acutely. The photo is, on the one hand, funny, especially in Loren’s retelling as someone earnestly concerned, anxious even, that Mansfield was about to spill out of her top and onto their table. But it’s also sad.

The photo is what we might call a “loaded image,” in that it communicates lots of ideas about women in Hollywood, even if they’re not necessarily true for the women frozen in the lens. One such idea is that there’s only room for one big star at a time and that women competing in the same industry with the same level of star power can hardly be friends or allies. It led me to wonder: is this still true today? It certainly was when this photo was taken.

Another iconic image taken on the same night shows rising star Jayne Mansfield approaching Marilyn Monroe’s table, where Monroe reportedly snubbed her. Mansfield was poised as Marilyn’s replacement, often referred to as “the King-sized Marilyn” or “the poor man’s Marilyn,” with the two constantly pitted against each other. Mansfield embraced this public rivalry, leaning into stunts like crashing photo-ops, wardrobe “malfunctions,” and other displays of opportunistic hypersexuality. Mansfield has been pictured sticking her hands inside Marilyn’s handprints in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. Both are rumored to have had affairs with President John F. Kennedy, were considered sex icons of their time, and met untimely demises: Monroe in 1962 at the age of 36, and Mansfield in 1967 at the age of 34.

It’s especially fitting, then, to see someone like Sydney Sweeney, a modern successor to that sex symbol archetype, satirize the Loren-Mansfield photo in a recreation with her Euphoria co-star Maude Apatow. The two play sisters on the hit HBO show, with Sweeney cast as the more sexually available sister whose looks have long overshadowed the plain and introverted Lexi (played by Apatow). By recreating the image, they’re playfully engaging in a kind of meta-commentary on female sexuality and competition.

Several waves of feminism after that infamous original photo, female relationships, and Hollywood itself have ostensibly evolved. Today, you hear more about the importance of being a “girl’s girl” than you hear about women tearing each other down. Following the takedown of some very powerful alleged Hollywood predators, the industry has undergone a lot of reform, for better or worse, and largely resulted in female kinship and solidarity. With the rise in popularity of sex-positive feminism and the normalization of sex work, women seem less likely than ever to shame other women for being sexually provocative. But some things stay the same.

Despite building a loyal female audience for years, Sweeney’s ascent into superstardom has landed her in controversy after controversy, including being accused of right-wing or even MAGA sympathies after a family member’s country-themed birthday party captured some family members donning “Back the Blue” merch and red parody hats that looked like MAGA hats. Her refusal to condemn her family was strike one.

Suddenly, she caught criticism for objectifying herself, not for the nude scenes she had been doing for years, but for overtly sexualized ad campaigns selling men’s soap and SNL Hooters skits drawing attention to her body and appeal with men. This escalated, most absurdly, when she was dragged into discourse accusing her of promoting white supremacy over an American Eagle ad that played on a “great jeans/genes” pun. So why does she inspire so much hostility now? Notably, from the female fans who were once her target audience demographic.

If we extrapolate from the research, Sweeney, who has always had a noticeably large chest, should have been receiving hate from women this whole time. But she wasn’t. There was a clear turning point in the past few years, and she didn’t suddenly grow breasts in 2024. Sweeney fits a familiar Hollywood archetype: the woman perceived as indulgently seductive and overeager to appeal to men while possessing highly visible sexual assets. A modern-day Mansfield, if you will, who was always juxtaposed with the more coy Monroe.

This helps account for the discrepancy between similarly voluptuous actresses like Christina Hendricks or Kat Dennings, who are nevertheless read as female-coded and embraced by women. Sydney Sweeney and Kate Upton, meanwhile, don’t seem particularly female-coded or liked by women in the same way. Large breasts may predict woman-on-woman hate, but in the real world, that hostility doesn’t distribute evenly. Hostility seems to peak when those assets are paired with male-aligned career signaling over female in-group affiliation. It concentrates around the women whose bodies are read as performing for men.

That’s why the female affinity for Sweeney, previously known as a sex-positive (implicitly) feminist actress doing indie roles who wasn’t scared to “ugg” it up, did a complete 180 once her image started to cater to male audiences and right-wing aesthetics in a way that wasn’t subverting them but playing into them. It also explains why she’s often compared to other famous women, like Sabrina Carpenter, and why commentary often turns to bemused attempts to deconstruct why one appeals to men and the other appeals to women. The body didn’t change; only the meaning attached to it did. That framing, more than any single trait, tends to trigger subtle, indirect forms of rivalry that have always shaped how women evaluate one another.

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Abstract

Physical features that are desired by the opposite sex may drive competition between members of the same sex to gain access to potential mates. Women's breasts are considered sexually attractive to men, and it has been shown that women may engage in competitive tactics to compete with or derogate women with ideal physical traits (i.e., physically attractive features). In the current online study, we investigated Hispanic women's (n = 114) perceptions of breast stimuli that had been manipulated to display four levels of breast size (A-, B-, C-, and D-cup) and three levels of ptosis (i.e., levels of sagginess: non, low, and high) and their likelihood of engaging in rival derogation tactics, such as verbal and indirect aggression. The findings demonstrated that women were more likely to engage in rival derogation towards women with larger breast sizes. Women's dispositional level of intrasexual competition did not play a role in rival derogation tactics. The results are in line with previous research suggesting that women's rival derogation tactics are likely to be targeted towards women with attractive features that are desired by men.

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Highlights

Potentially sexually permissive women are negatively judged across traits (Study 1).

Negative mating judgments “leak” into non-mating-related judgments (Study 1)

Controlling for mating judgments reduces negative non-mating judgments (Study 1).

Women mentally represent other women's judgments of permissive rivals (Study 2).

Abstract

Here, we identify a novel reason why women are often criticized and condemned for (allegedly) sexually permissive behavior due to their choice of clothing. Combining principles from coordinated condemnation and sexual economics theory, we developed a model of competition that helps explain this behavior. We hypothesized that women collectively condemn other women who appear to be sexually permissive (based on their choice of clothing). Study 1 (N = 712) demonstrated that women perceived a rival with visible cleavage more negatively. These perceptions were ultimately driven by the belief that “provocatively” dressed women are more likely to have one-night stands. Study 2 (N = 341) demonstrated that women criticized provocatively dressed women, even when these women were not direct sexual rivals (e.g., her boyfriend's sister). Our findings suggest that future research should investigate competition outside of mating-relevant domains to understand women's intrasexual competition fully.

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Highlights

Women use competitor manipulation as a form of intrasexual competition.

Highly competitive women advised hypothetical salon clients to cut off more hair.

Women told clients of similar attractiveness as themselves to cut off the most hair.

Female intrasexual competition may be assortative with respect to mate quality.

Female intrasexual competition manifests without any contextual cues to mating.

Abstract

Intrasexual competition between women is often covert, and targets rivals' appearance. Here we investigate appearance advice as a vector for female intrasexual competition. Across two studies (N = 192, N = 258) women indicated how much hair they would recommend hypothetical clients have cut off in their hypothetical salon. Clients varied in their facial attractiveness (depicted pictorially), the condition of their hair, and how much hair they wished to have cut off. Participants also provided self-report measures of their own mate value and intrasexual competitiveness. In both studies, participants' intrasexual competitiveness positively predicted how much hair they recommended clients have cut off, especially when the hair was in good condition and the clients reported wanting as little as possible cut off – circumstances wherein cutting off too much hair is most likely to indicate sabotage. Considering data across both collectively, women tended to recommend cutting the most hair off clients they perceived to be as attractive as themselves. These data suggest that just like mating, intrasexual competition may be assortative with respect to mate value. They also demonstrate that competitive motives can impact female-female interactions even in scenarios which feature no prospective mates, and are nominally unrelated to mate guarding or mating competition.

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It's wild when you get told that this is a myth and never happens. As if everyone who watched Mean Girls scoffed and said how completely unbelieveable it was.

By: Claire Lehmann

Published: Jun 27, 2025

Banging drums in Columbia University’s Butler Library in early May, a group of protesters shouted: “Free, free Palestine!” When campus security shut the doors of the reading room, effectively trapping the demonstrators in, their chants turned into pleas. One person tried to break through to the exit, and a scuffle broke out. “You’re hurting him, stop!” a girl cried out. By the end of the occupation, 80 protesters had been arrested. Sixty-one of them were women.

The Columbia protest made national news in the U.S., but the striking gender imbalance of its participants went largely unnoticed. It shouldn’t have. Whether the cause is Gaza, climate change, Black Lives Matter, or feminism, overrepresentation of young women has become the norm in progressive activism. And this shift signals a susceptibility to ideological extremism.

Women moving to the left is a global phenomenon. A 2020 study on the Extinction Rebellion environmental movement in the U.K. (a group which regularly engages in civil disobedience such as blocking traffic and vandalism) described it as a “highly feminised” protest culture. Surveys have found that attendance at climate demonstrations in cities around the world tends to be about 60 percent female, and recent American progressive movements—such as Black Lives Matter and the Gaza encampments, many of which were supported or led by the female-founded Jewish Voice for Peace—have likewise been launched and sustained by women.

Data published by John Burn-Murdoch in the Financial Times confirms that the shift spans continents. In South Korea, the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom, Gen Z women have shifted toward “hyper-progressive” political positions, while men in the same age cohort have held steady or moved to the right. In the U.S., according to Gallup data, women ages 18 to 30 are now 30 percentage points “more liberal” than their male peers.

There is growing awareness of how young men can be drawn into far-right extremism or misogynistic subcultures, but we in the media—and society more broadly—pay less attention to how young women become drawn into political subcultures. Indeed, the terms “radicalization” and “women” are rarely—if ever—seen together. This oversight has consequences, because radicalization—defined as rigid commitment to an ideological cause to the point where it distorts one’s worldview, harms mental health, undermines relationships, or disrupts functioning—is not a male-only phenomenon.

Of course, political engagement is not, in itself, cause for concern. The fact that young women attend climate protests or BLM marches is not evidence of extremism. But if we imagine political engagement on a spectrum, the extreme end is not benign. And the failure to recognize this has allowed radicalism to flourish.

The escalating tactics of climate activism illustrate the pattern. Last year, three female members of the British climate action group Just Stop Oil, alongside two male members, were sentenced to prison for climbing onto overhead signs of a major motorway, forcing police to shut down traffic. One of the men received a five-year sentence, while the others were sentenced to four years each. Two trucks collided and one police officer was injured amid the chaos. The stunt created major gridlock that led to people missing medical appointments, exams, and flights.

Another tactic popular with climate protesters is the defacing or attempted vandalism of artwork: Vincent Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” was targeted by two female activists in London, while Edgar Degas’ “Little Dancer Aged Fourteen” was splashed with paint by two activists, one male, one female, at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

Men are still engaging in radical left-wing protest, of course, with Aaron Bushnell being a salient example. But we find it easy to recognize radicalization when it happens in young men, while romanticizing or ignoring the same phenomenon in women.

In my home country, Australia, a female protester cemented her arm into a car near a major freeway to protest a weapons exhibition in Melbourne last year. In Sydney, a 22-year-old woman shut down the Harbour Tunnel during peak-hour traffic by chaining herself to her steering wheel. Another offender, Deanna “Violet” Coco—who helped shut down the West Gate Bridge in March 2024, delaying emergency services and forcing a pregnant woman to give birth roadside—recently had her jail sentence tripled on appeal after a judge noted that she had 15 court appearances in less than four years.

Sometimes, mainstream institutions don’t just overlook female extremism—they actively encourage it. In Australia, Elsa Tuet-Rosenberg, a Melbourne-based activist who helped dox more than 600 Jewish-Australian creatives following Hamas’ attacks on October 7, 2023, has delivered taxpayer-funded “anti-racism” training to primary schools through her own consulting firm. Clementine Ford, a feminist author with a large social media following, has spread conspiracy theories about Israel, dismissed the mass rape of Israeli women on October 7 as unverified, and accused the IDF of manufacturing hostage deaths—all while remaining associated with a prestigious publisher, and being featured as a speaker at major public events.

This dynamic is perhaps best reflected in the career of Greta Thunberg. Since she began skipping school at the age of 15 to demand action on climate change, Thunberg has been showered with encouragement and awards. She was named the youngest-ever recipient of Time’s Person of the Year honor in 2019 following her “How Dare You” speech at the United Nations. She has since received multiple Nobel Peace Prize nominations and an array of awards from media, philanthropic, scientific, and academic institutions, including several honorary doctorates. No matter what one thinks of Thunberg’s activism, it is hard to imagine a young man receiving the same level of global adulation. A “Gus” Thunberg who encouraged children to skip school would be more likely to be called in for detention than invited to the U.N.

Thunberg’s trajectory illustrates a broader pattern: Radical behavior from young women is not just tolerated but actively encouraged through awards, platforms, and institutional support. This creates a feedback loop. The incentive structures that rewarded Thunberg so handsomely for her climate activism have since encouraged her to expand into pro-Palestinian activism. “If you, as a climate activist, don’t also fight for a Free Palestine and an end to colonialism and oppression all over the world,” the now 22-year-old activist declared at a demonstration in Milan last year, “then you should not be able to call yourself a climate activist.” This demand for ideological purity across unrelated causes is a signature move of female radicalism, and a feature of how “intersectionality” is used in activist cultures. What began as a framework for understanding different forms of disadvantage, and how they can overlap, is now a litmus test for moral conformity—not only on issues like climate and Gaza, but also on heavily charged topics like abortion, where deviation from the dominant view is treated as betrayal. While generally not coercing people through violence, female radicals coerce through threats of shaming and social exclusion.

It’s easy to dismiss such actions as inconsequential compared to the violence of male radicals. Women rarely engage in political assassinations or mass shootings, the way a small subset of fanatical men do. But the blocking of infrastructure and the vandalism of cultural property inflict a real toll—on the public, yes, but also on the activists themselves. Social coercion through threats of exclusion causes young women across the world significant anxiety. More concerning is that this phenomenon remains largely unstudied. A growing number of academics are researching how and why young men become radicalized, but they generally exhibit little interest in addressing similar processes in women—with the exception of female radicalization in the context of Islamic extremism. 

Still, existing studies in moral psychology and social behavior offer valuable clues about the underlying dynamics. Moral Foundations Theory, developed by the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and colleagues, argues that human moral reasoning is built on a set of intuitive foundations: Loyalty, Authority, Care, Fairness, and Purity. A 2020 study using this framework across 67 countries found that women consistently scored higher than men on the latter three. The Care foundation relates to our sensitivity to the suffering of others—an extension of the instinct that compels parents, especially mothers, to respond to infant distress. Fairness is tied to notions of justice and equality, while Purity—originally evolved to protect against disease—can manifest as a desire for ideological or moral cleanliness. These tendencies, while adaptive in many contexts, can also make young women particularly receptive to political narratives framed in terms of trauma, injustice, and moral absolutism. And they also create vulnerability to ideologies that use victimhood as currency.

The way young women organize their social lives compounds this vulnerability. Studies by developmental psychologist Joyce Benenson have found that female friend groups tend to be less resilient than those of males, and many women suffer from an intense fear of social exclusion. The pressure to “fit into” a group is stronger for girls than for boys, possibly leading girls to support beliefs or ideas out of a desire for social harmony rather than true conviction.

These dynamics create perfect conditions for availability cascades, a social phenomenon—described by Cass Sunstein and Timur Kuran in 2007—in which a group comes to hold a belief through chain reactions. Take, for example, Greta Thunberg’s declaration that climate activists must also fight for Palestinian liberation. In progressive social circles where Thunberg is held up as a moral authority, some girls might think this argument makes no sense—but they won’t say so. Collectively, such silence can be mistaken for universal agreement, pressuring others to mold their views to fit in. This artificial consensus can snowball, as individuals assume everyone else in their peer group agrees with a given sentiment, completely unaware that many don’t. The result is a fragile system held together by fear rather than belief.

Social media intensifies these cascades. When female friendship groups migrate online, superficial displays of consensus—the sharing of memes, badges, and hashtags—can feel mandatory. Platforms like Instagram and TikTok serve up a stream of trauma-related content—activating the care instinct—while exposing young women to constant cues that their safety, belonging, and self-worth depend on adopting “pure” ideological postures. The result is a technological and ideological hijacking of female psychology.

It should come as no surprise, then, that progressive girls were the first group to suffer a major mental health decline following the mass adoption of smartphones and social media around 2012. As Haidt points out in his book, The Anxious Generation, and in his newsletter, After Babel, Gen Z girls have been socialized online in a culture based on hypervigilance toward harm, accompanied by demands for moral absolutism and purity.

This represents a new form of radicalization that operates differently from its male counterpart. When ideology takes over female friendship groups, the process is less violent and more relational, driven by peer pressure, emotional reasoning, and fear of social exclusion. It thrives in spaces that appear safe and caring, but beneath the language of justice lies a brittle conformity.

The implications extend beyond individual well-being to institutional trust and social cohesion. When compassionate instincts become misdirected and the instinct for purity leads to coercion, the resulting absolutism becomes toxic. A formal study of female radicalization would need to examine evolutionary psychology, social psychology, and the incentive structures that reward extremism. Recognizing this pattern is the first step toward protecting young women from the misguided narratives that exploit their moral sensitivity. But to change it, we must first name it.

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Women and girls have objectively been radicalized far more than men and boys, who are as moderate and centrist, on average, as they've always been.

And it shows in the rapid deterioration of their mental health.

But the last 5 years in particular have been a campaign of abuse and gaslighting to convince you that BLM, racism and sexism against the right people, supporting terrorists who want to destroy us, belief in pervasive conspiracies without conspirators, and drugging, sterilizing and mutilating children and gay people is the "right side" of the moral arc.

Gossiping, spreading rumours, telling lies, attacking someones status, destroying their relationships…

The whispers in the playground, the cold shoulder at the party, the secret WhatsApp groups; if such a thing as ‘toxic femininity’ were to exist, then surely it would be this?

Much is said and done about the way boys and men hurt each other, and how their dominance of the physical realm allows them to punch, hit and fight one another as a means of aggression.

But is all aggression physical?

And might women (just as men exploit their physical superiority) harness their mastery of language, their skills of communication and relationship building, to wreak havoc in their own specific way?

“Relational aggression”, is the ability to harm others through deliberate manipulation of their social standing and relationships – and yes, it’s mostly women and girls who do it.

But like always, society remains reluctant to say anything about the malevolent side of the femme – even to the detriment of girls, who are the primary victim of this kind of bullying.

Worse, girls bullying other girls is hyper charged through social media, causing untold harm, and likely drives the recent rise in suicides in adolescent females – yet our social justice warriors are too gutless to talk about it.

The simple fact of life is this – women and girls are no better, or worse, than men and boys.

No less capable of greatness. No less capable of harm.

That is what ‘women’s autonomy’ truly is.

We all exercise our unique powers in specific ways, some of which draw the spotlight and ire of society, and some don’t.

So what is to be said about the destructive power of words?

Will anyone talk about the uniquely devastating ways that girls bully each other, or how women can destroy the life of a man without even lifting a finger?

Who will talk of relational aggression?

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APA: https://tinyurl.com/3rjdz6mv

Psychology Today: https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/digital-world-real-world/202302/research-casts-doubt-on-male-centred-theories-of-aggression

Misogynistic Tweets: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/26/half-of-misogynistic-tweets-sent-by-women-study-finds

Women as innovators of language: https://tinyurl.com/2st3vxz8

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Peer abuse is that one "friend group" I thought I was in, actually never telling me that they didn't like me at all. And just ignoring my literal presence—not being invited to their hangout, sleepovers, and never having them come to my birthday despite inviting them, type of stuff—until for some reason they decided to spill the tea in highschool (been with them for a major part of elementary) and straight up saying that I hit them in elementary?? Like constantly? Me? The bullied kid? And how I was the problem because I was clingy, but also told the teachers how I was simultaneously abandoning them because I managed to get an actual friend group where I wasn't ignored?? And how they were the victims despite having countless opportunities to communicate with me and tell me that they didn't want me as a friend, but actually chickening out and purposefully ignoring me every day despite being literally around them all the time? How I even tried during that time to give them homemade gifts to try and get them to like me because i was desperate to keep their friend group and nothing like that had ever happened to me at that point? and also really really ignoring me when I was crying and hiding behind my chair, and they were literally not even five feet away from me.

Not to mention the cherry on top that was how two of them simultaneously messaged me with ten minute long audios of how I was never their friend and only stuck around around highschool (false, I literally had kindergarten friends there), how I hit them and was mean during elementary school and how I was creepy due to sticking around (because I thought I was their friend and they decided to never tell me until I literally asked)... On my birthday. Like specifically my birthday. To this day I still refuse to believe that's a coincidence.

Plus how I had to be the one to arrange a meetup to talk about it and fix things. After months of trouble. Just for only one of them to up, out of five people. And how the life long friend in question sorta asked me to stop hanging out with them, without any actual care for how I may feel or how the message might make me feel. Like not caring at all about how to properly talk to me, zero gentleness or consideration, just saying how they were pressured by the others complaining about me and how they didn't want to talk to me about it (despite being the ones that lied and spoke behind my back).

To this day I feel guilty because I don't remember my time in elementary school all that well, so I have no idea if I ever actually abused them as a kid. Which is the scariest part for me. I have no idea if they were lying about that. But at least I know that as of today, I have healthy friend groups that I can go to, people to trust, and that I'm a good enough friend despite the really really deep insecurities. I actually never really acknowledged it, but they most likely traumatized me in some social way and I get really anxious about whether or not I'm being a good friend.

(on a lighter note: the last time I spoke to them was when trying to make a goodbye video for one of our teachers that was retiring, about three years ago. And a couple of them got mad and screamed at me because I fumbled (got flustered, forgot my lines, stuttered) and had to make more than one take. (I'm really sensitive and often times cry if someone screams at me) Thankfully, I was there with my two greatest friends in the whole world, who were laughing their asses at me/pos, so I didn't feel that bad at the moment because we all felt like idiots lmao. We also got what we affectionately called "the great photo of shame", which is both of them losing their minds while I got red faced and hid in embarrassment.)

this is peer abuse (relational aggression and ostracism).

Philosophy student is condemned as a ‘bigot’ after buying gender-critical books

By: Tim Sigeworth

Published: Dec 13, 2025

University of Cambridge students allegedly carved the word “Terf” into a fellow undergraduate’s door after she showed interest in gender-critical books.

Thea Sewell, 20, says she was ostracised by friends at Christ’s College and condemned as a “bigot” for possessing literature which disputed gender theory – the notion that gender is changeable.

The second-year philosophy undergraduate, who is a survivor of childhood sexual assault, says she continues to be shouted at in the street for allegedly holding “reprehensible” beliefs on gender.

Ms Sewell has now co-founded the Cambridge University Society of Women (CUSW) with other gender-critical students to fight for the right to express their views.

Cambridge has recently come under fire after Newnham, its oldest women-only college, said it would welcome trans women as students despite April’s Supreme Court ruling that the definition of a woman under the Equality Act means someone who was born female.

The wider university, however, has banned transgender women from women’s college boat races following the court’s clarification on the legal definition.

Ms Sewell said she had bought books by Kathleen Stock, the former University of Sussex professor, Alex Byrne, the philosopher, and Helen Joyce, the gender-critical author, at a talk by the latter in Oxford in April.

Upon returning to Cambridge for Easter term that month, Ms Sewell showed her purchases to another undergraduate and recommended she read them.

“I didn’t think it was going to turn into anything until well, then, everything sort of started falling apart,” she told The Telegraph.

On May 25, she was confronted by a different friend in a communal kitchen in the college who asked her, “Are you a Terf?”, an acronym for “trans-exclusionary radical feminist”.

“I actually first said, ‘No, I’m not a Terf’,” she recalled. “And I still actually would stand by that, because I think that that term doesn’t necessarily allow for the nuance that my opinion has.

“I asked her why she thought that, and she said she knew that I owned some gender-critical books, and she knew I’d gone to the Helen Joyce talk. I said to her, ‘Okay, what’s the problem with that? I’m a philosophy student. I’m going to own philosophy books. I could also own Mein Kampf. It wouldn’t make me a Nazi.’

“Her response was that buying books from bigots is the same as being a bigot,” she said.

Ms Sewell then confronted the friend to whom she originally showed her books.

“Her tone was completely different to anything that it had ever been to my face,” she said. “She told me that I was a bigot and that everyone deserved to know my hateful views on trans people.”

The friend then ended the call and Ms Sewell had a panic attack. Over the next fortnight, she struggled to sleep and said she was “completely cut off by pretty much all of my friends, bar maybe one or two”.

Others told her they “loved” her but could not be seen with her in public because of “social optics”, while her “college wife” – a fellow student with whom she was due to help settle in some of next year’s undergraduates – “divorced” her.

Ms Sewell returned home for two weeks to escape what she called the “deeply upsetting” ostracism and moved into a different part of the college when she returned.

“I was transporting my stuff from my old room to my new room in the middle of the night,” she said. “That’s how I was doing it, because I was too afraid. And one night, I went to my old room to get some stuff and “Terf” had been scratched into my door.”

Emails from Christ’s College’s master and senior tutor, seen by The Telegraph, show the college condemned her treatment and the graffiti as bullying, and the matter was investigated. But Ms Sewell said she was unaware of any disciplinary action being taken.

“I had a mediation talk with one of the girls who started it, which was good, and college officials went out of their way to help,” she said. “But in terms of dealing with ostracism, there’s not much that the college can do.

“I think what needs to happen is that academics need to start coming out loudly for free speech. We need a real culture change because people are really, really scared to speak their minds, academics and students alike.”

Ms Sewell found her treatment particularly shocking because her fellow students knew she had been abducted and subject to a serious sexual assault in 2019, when she was 14.

She kept quiet for two years because she “wanted to pretend it didn’t happen”. That was until 2021, when Sarah Everard was raped and murdered by police officer Wayne Couzens. She told her school, parents and the police what had happened and in 2023 her attacker, a man in his late 50s, was sentenced at Inner London Crown Court to eight years in prison.

“My feeling is one of outrage,” she said. “Every single person in my college knew about that, and if I was them, even if I was captivated by gender ideology, I would think, ‘Wait a minute, I’m going to have a chat with Thea, because I’m sure that her views on this matter will be influenced by her experience as a teenager.’

“And it absolutely has informed my beliefs because I know just how important single-sex spaces are for women.”

Ms Sewell is continuing her studies at Cambridge but now attends fewer lectures and tutorials in person because she fears how fellow undergraduates will treat her.

Her former friends continue to ignore her, while other students stare, surreptitiously take her photograph and shout abuse, she says.

But she and other gender-critical students are hopeful that CUSW will change the atmosphere at the university.

“Students don’t know that being gender-critical is a protected belief,” she said. “That’s something that I think people are gradually waking up to, because our society has not been shut down. I think they were under the impression that university authorities or even the police would come and shut us down, but obviously that’s not going to happen. Our success will change things.”

The Committee for Academic Freedom (CAF), which campaigns for free speech at universities, has now written to the university highlighting Ms Sewell’s case and accusing it of not taking free speech protections for gender-critical students seriously.