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We are all Mean Girls now Millennials understand the appeal of being a bully

Regina George has finally won. (Mean Girls/IMDB)

Regina George has finally won. (Mean Girls/IMDB)


January 17, 2024   6 mins

In 1995, a girl named Emily Brown raised her hand during our pre-high school anti-bullying presentation. “Excuse me,” she said, smiling serenely at the guest speaker: “I think you should know, it’s just not like that in our class. We don’t bully people, and we don’t have cliques! People just have their own groups of friends, and I mean, it’s not like we can be friends with everyone.”

I have no idea what the presenter said in response. I was too busy having a flashback to a moment from gym class earlier that week: I’d been running laps around the soccer field when a gaggle of girls suddenly came up from behind and surrounded me, like a pride of lions circling a gazelle. One of them, the ringleader, took up a position just over my right shoulder. “Roses are red, violets are black, Rosenfield’s chest is as flat as her back,” she hissed — then drove an elbow into my ribs and laughed uproariously as I stumbled and faceplanted into the grass.

The girl who did this was, of course, Emily Brown.

The bully-in-denial is a recurring phenomenon in the work of Rosalind Wiseman, author of the 2002 parenting book Queen Bees and Wannabes. In her presentations on cliques and bullying, Wiseman would invariably be challenged by one girl who insisted that her services were not needed — and this, Wiseman explained, was your queen bee. “Without exception, three things will be true about this girl,” she wrote. “First, she’ll always be one of the meanest, most exclusive girls in the room; second, she honestly believes what she’s saying; and third, her parents will be in total denial about how mean she is and completely back her up.”

Queen Bees and Wannabes was an insightful analysis of the brutal dynamics of what Wiseman calls “Girl World”, a land of ferocious intrasexual competition and social aggression. It was also the source material for the 2004 film Mean Girls, in which Tina Fey transformed Wiseman’s first-person research and parenting advice into a scathing satire of American teen social life in the Y2K era. The film entered the canon not only thanks to its comedy and quotability, but its familiarity to a millennial audience who had lived the dynamics Wiseman had documented, and still bore the scars of their own recent journeys through Girl World. I was 22 by the time the movie came out, but when the villainous Regina George stood up at her school’s anti-bullying assembly and said, “Can I just say that we don’t have a clique problem at this school? And some of us shouldn’t have to take this workshop, because some of us are just victims in this situation,” I cackled in recognition: Oh my god, it’s Emily Brown.

If Mean Girls was a hit in 2004 because it captured the darkly funny truth about how savage and Machiavellian the socially ambitious teenage girl can be, the new musical reboot of the movie hints at our increasingly uneasy relationship with that truth. Just as Disney has lately tried to complicate its fairytale villainesses by giving them sympathetic origin stories, Mean Girls 2024 traffics in facile YASS-KWEEN-ing feminism that gives meanness an implicit pass. Here, Regina George is a victim of sexism rather than a powerful social terrorist in her own right. After all, the movie asks, would anyone have a problem with her horrible, grasping behaviour if she were a man?

In the original Mean Girls — as in Wiseman’s book, and as in life — Regina George’s weaselly claim to be one of the “victims in this situation” is exposed for the howler it is when Tina Fey’s character asks: “How many of you have ever felt personally victimised by Regina George?” (Every hand in the room goes up.) Not so in the 2024 version, where Regina’s denial goes unchallenged. Much like the velour sweatsuits sported by the original Plastics, the inclination of Mean Girls to hold young women accountable for their cruelty seems to have gone out of style, and even Wiseman’s original research is no longer received as the universally relatable truth it once was. The cruel and cunning young woman who wields gossip as a weapon isn’t just something you see in the movies; she’s a human constant that transcends social construct, a raceless, classless, timeless phenomenon. The truth is, anyone can be a mean girl — but this truth does not jive easily with a contemporary, highly identitarian discourse in which villainy is seen as the sole purview of the privileged. In one recent New York Times article, a competing researcher dismisses Wiseman’s entire concept of the mean girl as racist, rooted in privilege, “a product of middle- to upper-class white girls”.

Personally, if I were the betting type, I’d wager my life savings that this researcher is one of Wiseman’s bullies-in-denial. But anyway: one can certainly see how for those who buy into this mode of cultural critique, Mean Girls becomes not just irrelevant but inscrutable. The oppressed-oppressor model sees no difference between the queen bee who rules with an iron fist, the sycophantic handmaidens who enable her reign, or the naive newbie who fears the queen bee’s meanness right up until the moment she exceeds it herself; they’re all cis, straight, able-bodied white women, so who cares?

Perhaps for this reason, the new Mean Girls makes a cursory effort to be more en vogue and intersectional: the character of Janis, who masterminds the movie’s central plot to take down Regina George, is not only updated in this version with multiple marginalisations, but also given the film’s first, last, and best words, including a sorry-not-sorry showstopper of a solo that outright celebrates her scheming. This might be the biggest change from the original Mean Girls, which was strong on insight while sparing its audience the insult of heavy-handed moralising. The message now, and it’s not exactly subtle, is that it’s fine, even heroic, to manipulate the people around you and destroy someone’s life if you feel she’s mistreated you… just as long as you’re a gold medallist victim in the oppression Olympics.

Advertised as “not your mother’s Mean Girls”, the film is, in this way, utterly in keeping with the mores of the present moment — if not in the Girl World ruled by teenagers, then among the adult millennial women who now reproduce its contours in their personal and professional lives. Wiseman herself has now pivoted in her work to addressing the phenomenon of the grown-up mean girl; even in ostensibly feminist spaces, it’s not unusual to witness the utter social destruction of one woman by another, with the aggression deemed permissible just as long as it’s aimed at an acceptable target by an acceptable perpetrator.

The young adult literary world in which I began my career is no exception, as I found out first-hand seven years ago, when a fellow author began spreading a laughably false but incredibly damaging rumour about me through my personal and professional circles. When I publicly asked that she stop, I was informed that because I was white and she was not, pointing out her misbehaviour was bullying her. A queen bee looks different in 2024 from how she did 20 years ago, but the perks of accruing that level of social capital remain the same, including the freedom to designate certain people as losers and then mistreat them accordingly — all while blithely claiming that there’s nothing toxic about any of this at all.

In this sense, the new Mean Girls both is and isn’t “your mother’s”. It’s not quite the same story, but it is the same idea — one that has evolved (I won’t say matured) alongside its core audience to give them what they want, over and over again. In 2004, the movie offered an unflinching and relatable portrayal of how girls acquire power by hurting each other on purpose. But when the tactics that allowed one to rule in Girl World are useful today to adult women who want to accrue real-world power, can we really indict them? The original Mean Girls, written in the age before social media, made it not just acceptable but socially lucrative to fight like a girl, but had the temerity to note that girl-on-girl social aggression is ultimately damaging to women as a class. The new movie takes a different view: it’s good to be the queen.

Part of the problem is that the new Mean Girls is a derivative of a musical that was a derivative of a film that was a derivative of a non-fiction parenting book, a copy of a copy of a copy that has lost its original sharpness; it has, to quote one reviewer, “mythologised the culture of gossip and backstabbing for a new generation”. In the public imagination, the queen bee has gone from an observable phenomenon to an archetype to a mythological figure. Soon, she’ll pass into legend; soon, people will forget she was ever real at all.

Mean girls? Pffft, that’s just an outdated stereotype, that’s white women’s nonsense, that’s not a thing that exists. In fact, can I just say: we don’t have a clique problem, and some of us shouldn’t have to take this workshop, because some of us are just victims in this situation.


Kat Rosenfield is an UnHerd columnist and co-host of the Feminine Chaos podcast. Her latest novel is You Must Remember This.

katrosenfield

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Right-Wing Hippie
Right-Wing Hippie
8 months ago

Mean girls? Pffft, that’s just an outdated stereotype, that’s white women’s nonsense, that’s not a thing that exists. In fact, can I just say: we don’t have a clique problem, and some of us shouldn’t have to take this workshop, because some of us are just victims in this situation.
It’s interesting that this article is paired with the one by Chris Arnade about the epidemic of squalor in America and its roots in sacrosanct homelessness. I made the same observation in that article’s comment section, that the foundations of this particular dysfunction lie in the assumption that victimhood absolves one of all sins. Note how eager George and the modern “mean girls” described by Rosenfield are to wrap themselves in the cloak of victimhood. Which is peculiar, since victimhood implies vulnerability, weakness, a lack of agency, pitiability, and a certain contemptibility as well. But one of the iron laws of economics states that if you incentivize something, people will do it. “Victims” (meaning anyone belonging to a designated victim group, regardless of whether they have ever, at any point in their lives, actually experienced any trauma, let alone a deliberate trauma inflicted by another human being) are granted any number of privileges by American society, and particularly by the American government, to the point where–shades of Orwell–to be unprivileged is to be privileged, and to be privileged is to be worthy of punishment.
Christ might have said that the mighty shall be brought low, and the humble exalted, but He meant after the end of temporality, and under the perfect justice-mercy of an omniscient and omnibenevolent deity. Nowadays we have those arbitrarily deemed mighty dragged through the dirt by self-appointed and emphatically imperfect deities of human mediocrity who do not even aspire to benevolence, but instead gleefully participate in a process that allows them to act out their fantasies of omnipotence while indulging their spite, envy, and lust for power over their fellow men. In other words, the bullies have won.

Dominic A
Dominic A
8 months ago

I like to think that bullies rarely really win. Their’s is a pyrrhic victory – in the short term we observe then standing triumphant, smug, snide; later on they are likely to to be still fighting for their psychological survival, disliked, alone.

Allison Barrows
Allison Barrows
8 months ago
Reply to  Dominic A

The girl who bullied me throughout 7th grade went on to become a Protestant minister.

Eliza Mann
Eliza Mann
8 months ago

What is your analysis of this fact? Is it possible that she experienced a religious conversion and changed her ways?

Allison Barrows
Allison Barrows
8 months ago
Reply to  Eliza Mann

That’s certainly my hope.

Graham Strugnell
Graham Strugnell
8 months ago
Reply to  Eliza Mann

Unlikely. Clerics like power and to believe God is on their side even as they abuse children.

Simon Boudewijn
Simon Boudewijn
8 months ago

are you a Cleric?

jane baker
jane baker
8 months ago
Reply to  Eliza Mann

If she was clever enough to bully and GET AWAY WITH IT that means she had a clever mind able to understand and use situations and an innate understanding of human nature. Very useful gifts for a pastor. The myth,the comforting myth that the nasty,cruel bully is the fat kid alone in the playground that nobody likes is not true and never has been but we want it to be true as we don’t care about the fat kid but it’s impossible to accept that the bully was our kid with her shining sunny face,those innocent blue eyes,that lovely blonde hair,the dimples,all that charm and grace,the incipient talent she has that may take her far in the future,no,she and her little group of charming friends wouldn’t be imposing rule over the playground would they. Ha ha ha.

Dominic A
Dominic A
8 months ago

Either she is no longer a bully, and has dealt with her misdeeds; or she is unhappy and alone.

jane baker
jane baker
8 months ago
Reply to  Dominic A

I’m unhappy and alone and I’ve never bullied anyone. That’s just how life is for some people. But I was never bullied either. I must be fair. In my day(the 1960s) or at least at my schools the kids were not beastly. They just totally ignored me. I mean that is painful not so much when small but by about 14,so I could claim psychological hurt but not much point really. It’s like the old folk song says ” one is one and all alone and ever more shall be so”. Actually I’m not unhappy all the time. Just if I see one of those TV food adverts that show an idealised, diverse,multi generational,multi cultural family all crammed round a table groaning with food,all laughing,making eye contact and shoving food in their gobs and I see how lacking my Ebenezer Scrooge like solitary meal is in current social acceptability,lol.

laurence scaduto
laurence scaduto
8 months ago
Reply to  jane baker

You’re talking about me.
I used to always have a dog. In a number of different ways they made this life much less lonely.
Just saying.

Graham Strugnell
Graham Strugnell
8 months ago
Reply to  Dominic A

It’s not true, whatever you might like to think. Countless good people have been cancelled or sued by soi disant outsider groups. See the current case against he Michaela school by a Muslim student angry at the absence of prayer rooms in an avowedly secular school. Everyone runs scared of being called islamaphobic and transphobic, and all too often the underdog bullies win.

jane baker
jane baker
8 months ago

I live by a school with a lot of Muslim pupils and more than once I’ve been joined at the bus stop by a group of maybe 3 or 4 Muslim girls just out of school. Like all kids just set free they are exuberant,I remember that feeling. They are garbed in black to a greater or lesser extent but their conversation usually in English accompanied by the screaming and screeching and hysterical laughter endemic to teenage girls is all about – The Koran, The Prophet – no it’s about boys, clothes,make up,videos and trips to the shops on Saturday. Like all other teen girls. This desire to pray at that school is just a way to be oppositional and make trouble. In essence it’s EXACTLY the same as in my day girls who got in the news for demanding the right to wear the shortest of mini skirts to school. The bullying here is being done against Miss Birbalsingh.

jane baker
jane baker
8 months ago
Reply to  Dominic A

That’s the hopeful nice ending of the myth but it’s not true. It’s a nice fairytale. Not in real life.

Champagne Socialist
Champagne Socialist
8 months ago

“When I publicly asked that she stop, I was informed that because I was white and she was not, pointing out her misbehaviour was bullying her.”
Well this never happened!
Not sure why the far right feel the need to make up these sort of improbable stories. Is that the only way to try to support your hateful ideology and racism?

Right-Wing Hippie
Right-Wing Hippie
8 months ago

Yep, it’s the only way. We’re all terrible fabulists. Me especially. Why, I’ve been known to ramble for hours at a time on stories only tangentially related to the matter at hand, like the time I caught the ferry to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for m’shoe. So I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on ’em. “Gimme five bees for a quarter,” you’d say. Now where were we…oh yeah. The important thing was that I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn’t have white onions, because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones…

Champagne Socialist
Champagne Socialist
8 months ago

This is by far your most lucid comment on these boards.
Keep up the good work, sport!

Right-Wing Hippie
Right-Wing Hippie
8 months ago

If there’s one thing I strive for, it’s lucidity.
That, and good sportsmanship.

Steve Murray
Steve Murray
8 months ago

Who knew that when the editors of Viz dreamt up the Johnny Fartpants character, they’d be outdone by a flatus-filled caricature courtesy of Unherd?

Jon Barrow
Jon Barrow
8 months ago
Reply to  Steve Murray

He’d (pretty sure it’s a man) make a great Viz character, could the name be any better?

Kevin Hansen
Kevin Hansen
8 months ago
Reply to  Steve Murray

I tend to lean more towards Millie Tant or Student Grant but I’ll give you Johnny Fartpants.

Matthew Jones
Matthew Jones
8 months ago
Reply to  Steve Murray

Always a joy to see members of the ‘Far Gone’ talk about the ‘Far Right’.

Andrew R
Andrew R
8 months ago
Reply to  Steve Murray

Rick from The Young Ones.

Champagne Socialist
Champagne Socialist
8 months ago
Reply to  Andrew R

How old are you people?!?!?! LOL!

Andrew R
Andrew R
8 months ago

Does your mom know you’re on the internet, time for bed junior. LOL!!!

Lennon Ó Náraigh
Lennon Ó Náraigh
8 months ago

Not sure why you pay a subscription to read made-up stories.

Andrew R
Andrew R
8 months ago

Of course you have evidence to support this… idiot.

Champagne Socialist
Champagne Socialist
8 months ago
Reply to  Andrew R

About as much evidence as she has to support her claim!

Shrunken Genepool
Shrunken Genepool
8 months ago

You can go onto TT or YouTube and find literally hundreds of young black students and white female woke activists pretty much saying exactly this – whites can’t be victims, blacks can’t be victimizers. But you know this. I’m genuinely interested in what motivates you. Day after day, you read material which which you are clearly at odds, ideologically. You make some fatuous comment that would be provocative if just slightly more intelligent. And in recompense, you get piled on and down-voted.
Are you a masochist?

Champagne Socialist
Champagne Socialist
8 months ago

Piled on? By you clowns? Ha!
I’m the only interesting commenter here and you all know it. The rest of you sheep just regurgitate whatever you read on Breitbart any given day. Follow my example and try to think for yourselves.
And stop worrying about downvotes – you’re a big boy now, you shouldn’t get so upset when someone you don’t know clicks a little button!

Peter Lee
Peter Lee
8 months ago

I wish

Right-Wing Hippie
Right-Wing Hippie
8 months ago

I’m the only interesting commenter here and you all know it.
I will admit, you provide an endless amount of amusement.

Champagne Socialist
Champagne Socialist
8 months ago

I appreciate the honesty!

Judy Johnson
Judy Johnson
8 months ago

I enjoy the way that when you shout, ‘jump’ the Champagne right-leaners all ask ‘How high?’ on the way up!

jane baker
jane baker
8 months ago

About the year 2006 I was on the top deck of a bus in Sarf-East London in it,on my way to stay with my friend in the Lewisham area. I was enjoying the long circuitous journey,it was one of those sort of bus routes then only about three stops from my destination ( thank goodness) a load of school kids got on and filled up the bus. It was about 3pm. About six black girls filled the back seat behind me. The one who was obviously the boss girl,she was big,built like a truck,the others were more slim. So anyway Truck Girl was sat right behind me and she started to talk,in the sort of stentorian voice they always do,and she told her votives that she was supposed to be in detention at school but no way was she complying. When they asked why she had got detention she explained that at lunchtime she had seen Miss — one of the teachers walking through the playground so she had walked up to Miss — and punched her. Forcefully.
Her votives all gasped at that. So Truck explained she was shortly summoned to the Head Teachers office where she brazenly and blatantly denied having done any such thing and if she was given any sort of blame or punishment she would put out and about that she was being treated with racism. I was glad to get off the bus then as I felt she might pick up on vibes emanating from me and punch me,she seemed capable of it,and she was one big n..ot to say strong female. I wonder where she is in life now? Not reading this I.hope.

Jack Robertson
Jack Robertson
8 months ago

Let’s face it, allowing female characters the fully equal luxury of being spectacularly appealing alpha bitches without any need for mitigating victim backstories or contextualising feminist narratives isn’t the only thing Fey wouldn’t have a chance of getting away with now.

I will likely be the only one dumb enough to say it out loud, but a young(ish) Rachel McAdams and Lindsay Lohan pretending to be high school girls pretending to be sexy but slightly clumsy Santa helpers in red minis and tight tops remains pretty much the hottest moment in all of celluloid history.

Yeah yeah, I know,..it’s a fair cop, #MeToo, I will go meekly and in great cancelled public shame…to the small waist high guillotine first, then to the waiting lynch on the tree of strange fruits…

Good grief art is such an anodyne bore these days. Even fripperies like romcoms.

Jeremy Bray
Jeremy Bray
8 months ago

Is Unherd run by a mean girl? It says there are six comments but I can see none. Why are they hiding them from me? Is it because I is white? Etc.

Billy Bob
Billy Bob
8 months ago
Reply to  Jeremy Bray

Usual story, somebody has taken offence to a comment and flagged it for moderation, so all the replies disappear too until it’s been checked and reinstated. Unfortunately it’s something that’s becoming more common on the comments section as it seems to be becoming more partisan than before

Andrew R
Andrew R
8 months ago
Reply to  Jeremy Bray

It will be “Champagne Socialist” being heavily downvoted.

Right-Wing Hippie
Right-Wing Hippie
8 months ago
Reply to  Andrew R

He’s here to do two things: transfer ownership of the means of production to the proletariat and drink champagne…and he’s all out of champagne.

Kevin Hansen
Kevin Hansen
8 months ago

Nom de plume, as Del Boy might say! I think one of the cancelled comments was mine, made this morning while eating my toast (non avocado btw). All it referred to was three characters from a comic , one of whose name alluded to flatulence. I am shocked – shocked I tells ya! Long live Viz!

Chris Amies
Chris Amies
8 months ago

“would anyone have a problem with her horrible behaviour if she were a man?”
well, yes, they would. And often do. Do people really believe otherwise?

Christopher Barclay
Christopher Barclay
8 months ago
Reply to  Chris Amies

The women who bully want to believe this because it justifies their action.

Daniel Lee
Daniel Lee
8 months ago

Hard to miss how the bloodthirsty tactics of mean girls colors the way the mainstream media covers those they consider “deplorables.”

Alan B
Alan B
8 months ago

Sick burn, Kat!

Allison Barrows
Allison Barrows
8 months ago

Women are mean without even thinking about it. One on one we’re great, but try to have a gathering of three. Two will always gang up on one – “yeah sure” glances, sarcastic remarks, exclusionary interruptions – I’m convinced women learn this behavior very young when competing for attention. Men are forthright about their aggression; they start as enemies or competitors and often become friends. Does this happen with women? No. They hold grudges, even as they smile and air kiss.

Eliza Mann
Eliza Mann
8 months ago

Huh. That’s not the case in my circles! Maybe you’re hanging out with a nastier than usual group of women.

Allison Barrows
Allison Barrows
8 months ago
Reply to  Eliza Mann

I prefer mixed company.

jane baker
jane baker
8 months ago

I am solitary. So I b***h online!

laurence scaduto
laurence scaduto
8 months ago

Agreed. The way I see it, since the species is split in two, male and female, none of us are actually whole; complete and self-contained. For the most rounded and usually the most interesting conversation both halves are needed. Also, the nexus between the two halves is such a rich playing field for human hearts and minds. Some things are left unsaid, but that just adds to the interest.
After all these years I’m still occasionally amazed at the things women think and say. A little bit of that sort of chaos is good for the soul.

Graham Strugnell
Graham Strugnell
8 months ago
Reply to  Eliza Mann

I’ve met some hateful women who delight in being spiteful and believe they are on the side if the angels. They tell an man he’s fat, shouldn’t have a beard as it’s ageing, etc etc whereas if you pointed one of their physical defects they would hit you first and report you second. You need to get out more.

Allison Barrows
Allison Barrows
8 months ago

At dinner parties or other social occasions, the most civil and interesting conversations are being held by men. I have never been in one with a cluster of women that didn’t devolve into grievance. I’m absolutely convinced that men and women temper each other’s worst impulses.

RM Parker
RM Parker
8 months ago

A very fair point. I am employed in an overwhelmingly female workplace (healthcare) and find the undercurrent of adolescent unpleasantness from some (NOT all) of my female 20-something colleagues dispiriting. I (and other token males) regularly get talked over, dismissed, whatever the alternative of “mansplained” would be, and generally ostracised – unless a favour is required. Thankfully, I’m old, cynical and just shrug it off. I’ve a wonderful partner, great kids and good friends: these clowns have nothing I would ever want.
I pity young men though.

jane baker
jane baker
8 months ago

When I was a little kid I mean pre 12 I’d say I always thought that the boys at my mixed infants + primary had really interesting conversations about THINGS,STUFF,IDEAS but the girls only ever seemed to talk about their big sisters boyfriends and what they’d spied them doing and…well not about ideas and things but having said that no one of either gender ever spoke to me or would have engaged in conversation with me so my ideas on this was gained from the talk that flowed around me. If you wonder why I was solitary and scorned and blissfully ignored. I don’t know either. It must be God’s Plan For My Life. It’s not been so bad as all that.

Christopher Barclay
Christopher Barclay
8 months ago

Remember that any socialist would happily smash your face in with a rifle butt and then blame you for making him or her do it.

jane baker
jane baker
8 months ago

You triggered him/her.

Lynette McDougall
Lynette McDougall
8 months ago

I stood up to a mean girl at my high school in the 1970s. She would push against me when she walked past me, even though there was plenty of room to go around me. One day I got fed up with it and turned around and pushed her in the back and told her to not come near me again. It worked, she never came near me again. Bullies thrive on intimidation and if you let them know you are not going to put up with it, they collapse like a house of cards.

edmond van ammers
edmond van ammers
8 months ago

That happened to me.Two years I put up with it until one day I ‘lost my cool’ and pushed back. Timid like a mouse he was after that. I wonder if it’s difficult for schools to differentiate between bullying behaviours and efforts by ‘victims’ to push back.

jane baker
jane baker
8 months ago

It’s the latter who get punished. Happened to my nephew.

edmond van ammers
edmond van ammers
8 months ago

My advice to teenage women. Observe, learn, don’t complain or try to change dynamics that you can’t. BUT, develop your own strategies using your particular strengthens to survive the battle. These are stone age behaviour patterns coming from people who too young to be socialised out of these behaviours yet. Some will never change and you will have developed the skills to manage them.

Dr. G Marzanna
Dr. G Marzanna
8 months ago

When people dismiss things as “white womens” stuff they don’t seem to understand they should stay out of it then if it doesn’t apply to them.

J. Hale
J. Hale
8 months ago

In the U.S. a majority of generation Z is non white. So a poor black girl bullying an affluent white girl is not considered bullying at all. It’s considered racial justice.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
8 months ago

“Personally, if I were the betting type, I’d wager my life savings that this researcher is one of Wiseman’s bullies-in-denial.” That would be an easy bet in many cases because people’s savings seem to be drying up. Maybe you should add some odds to sweeten the deal. 🙂

James Jenkin
James Jenkin
8 months ago

Another brilliant article from KR.
Identitarians are out to get people based on abstract notions like ethnicity. This always ends in horror. The ideology behind Mean Girls 2024 is way more terrifying than Regina George.