“Boys Fight, Girls Fight“ by Levy

Adolescent Girls in His Book, Boys Fight, Girls Fight


Levi (2014) explores the perception that boys are more violent than girls in Speak about Girls’ Aggression. The author dispels the myth that female children are much less likely than their male counterparts to engage in excessively physical behavior. According to Levi (2014), in order to completely comprehend the topic, one must first define the scope of acts that constitute violent behavior. They must outline the vast array of processes that must be satisfied to fully accredit a given sex as more aggressive than the other.


Inequality in Manifestation of Aggression


In the author’s mind, there is no such thing as absolute aggression but disparities in physical, mental, and emotional mannerisms that are manifested differently. He opines that boys are often physically more active than girls, right from their fetal stages all throughout childhood. They are noted to exhibit a decrease in physical aggression in teenage and adulthood. Conversely, girls exhibit more emotional aggression. The characteristic increases dramatically during their formative teenage years. They become competitive and frequently fight amongst themselves. Although they may not resort to physical hostility, they are exceeding confrontative. He concludes that societal expectations of the conduct of women have served to limit the expression of physicality by women, further diminishing their expression of aggression. The two sexes cannot be objectively juxtaposed for aggression as the indices for expression of this characteristic differs significantly.


How it is Related


The topic offers a psychiatric observation to the subject of aggression in boys and girls. It offers detailed insight into the circumstances shrouding the perception that boys are more aggressive than their female counterparts. Additionally, it shatters the misconception by claiming that the indices for assessing aggression in the two groups are considerably different hence cannot sufficiently authoritatively define one gender to be more aggressive than the other. This is immensely critical to the study topic as it presents a third dimension to the argument adding to its scholarly flavor.


Major Components


The major components of the theory are aggression in boys and girls, its causes, its manifestation, as well as accepted definitions of aggression by society. Aggression is generally loosely described as the expression of enthusiastic physicality or emotionality in the quest to achieve a given end. In boys, it is generally manifested through engaging in energetic physical activity while it is mainly demonstrated by excessive emotional expression in females.


Theory and the Chosen Topic


The chosen topic questions the validity of the common conception that male children are more aggressive than females (BMJ, 2003). The theory presented by the article defines aggression in both boys and girls and offers an in-depth explanation as to how they differ. Therefore, the theory discusses the two major facets of the chosen topic and disputes the disposition it attempts to assert.


How it Applies to the Study


The theory offers that the expression of aggression in boys and girls are different. It observes that contrasting cognitive and physiological development by the two genders makes it impossible to state with certainty that one particular gender is more assertive than the other. As such, it destroys the theory that boys are more aggressive than girls hence, challenges the hypothesis.


Other Articles


The other articles investigate the various aspects of the aggression and gender argument. Ehrensaft (2011) explores the impact of parents on children’s display of aggression. In her article, Boys will be girls, girls will be boys: Children affect parents as parents affect children in gender nonconformity, the author exposes the colossal effect that parental influence exhibit in the development of their children’s attitudes. Ehrensaft (2011) supposes that girls who are constantly reinforced to assume a combative demeanor at home are more likely to show classical aggression than boys from less supportive background.


Another article, Sex, gender and society, by Oakley (2015) explains the development of gender sensibility with direct influence of society. The author informs that the expectation of society of the behavior of the two genders extensively modifies the young people’s behavior. In a community where less aggressive boys are considered more desirable, it is highly likely that most male children will be trained to assume more calm demeanors. Similarly, the author explains that societies that discourage the expression of aggressive behaviors by the girls are far likely to have fewer instances of young females showing extreme emotional-physical mannerisms.


Troop-Gordon & Ladd (2015)’s Teachers’ victimization-related beliefs and strategies: Associations with students’ aggressive behavior and peer victimization discusses the position of peers in cultivating aggression in both boys and girls. The authors suppose that peer influence presents a mammoth and often underexplored bearing on the manifestation of aggression. Girls with overly enthusiastic social acquaintances are far likely to exhibit this strait than those with uneventful friends. Boys are also likely to undergo the same type of pressure. Lastly, The development and treatment of girlhood aggression by Pepler et al. (2014) investigates the phenomenon of aggression in girls. It dissects the trait and provides a detailed account of its genesis, expression, and eventual treatment or behavioral adjustment.


How They Relate to the Topic


The articles outline several dimensions of the topic to which they offer adept commentary. They adequate the article with enough information to explain the subject in totality. For instance, Zimmer-Gembeck & Duffy (2014) and Paley (2014) discuss aggression from the girl child as perceived by society. Additionally, Schwartzman & Ledingham (2013) and Harvey, Ringrose & Gill (2013) offer accounts from the community’s expectation of the male child. Conversely, Levy (2012) discusses the two subjects together before offering a null hypothesis on the basis of a lack of a comprehensive evaluating framework for aggression in boys and girls. All these serve to provide a better understanding of the topic being investigated.


Tests/Results/Relation to Hypothesis


The articles are peer-reviewed journals and books, authored by experts in various disciplines. They contain empirical and theoretical data that have been established to exhibit great degrees of reliability and validity. They have been studies and improved by other authors who have conducted independent experiments and arrived at the same results. Ehrensaft (2011) sampled a groups of boys and girls alongside their parents. He lived among them for alternating periods of two weeks each of a year study the influence of their parents on them. The children were aged between four and sixteen years. It was noted that children’s attitudes and expression of aggression was immensely impacted by their parent’s outlooks regardless of their gender.


Zimmer-Gembeck & Duffy (2014) conducted a similar environment and noted that while boys appeared to show more aggression, the trait was perpetrated by girls to a similar extent. He noted that the only major difference was that girls committed acts of aggression to other females. However, most of the articles studied in the section appear to agree that boys are generally far more aggressive than girls though the scale is different. The hypothesis observed that society has remained significantly unmoved concerning the perception that boys are more aggressive than girls. However, as has been demonstrated by the various articles reviewed, this perception is grossly misleading and can be repealed through parental and societal effort. Therefore, the evidence from the sources supports the study’s hypothesis.

References


BMJ (2003). Boys’ births are more complicated than girls’. 326(7381), 0b-0. http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.326.7381.0/b


Ehrensaft, D. (2011). Boys will be girls, girls will be boys: Children affect parents as parents affect children in gender nonconformity. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 28(4), 528-548. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0023828


Harvey, L., Ringrose, J., & Gill, R. (2013). Swagger, Ratings and Masculinity: Theorising the Circulation of Social and Cultural Value in Teenage Boys’ Digital Peer Networks. Sociological Research Online, 18(4), 9.


Levy, M. (2012). “Boys Fight, Girls Fight“: Adolescent Girls Speak about Girls’ Aggression. Girlhood Studies, 5(2). http://dx.doi.org/10.3167/ghs.2012.050204


Oakley, A. (2015). Sex, gender and society. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd..


Paley, V. G. (2014). Boys and girls: Superheroes in the doll corner. University of Chicago Press.


Pepler, D. J., Madsen, K. C., Webster, C. D., & Levene, K. S. (Eds.). (2014). The development and treatment of girlhood aggression. Psychology Press.


Schwartzman, L. A. S. A. E., & Ledingham, D. S. M. J. E. (2013). Aggressive, withdrawn, and aggressive/withdrawn children in adolescence: Into the next generation. The development and treatment of childhood aggression, 55.


Troop-Gordon, W., & Ladd, G. W. (2015). Teachers’ victimization-related beliefs and strategies: Associations with students’ aggressive behavior and peer victimization. Journal of abnormal child psychology, 43(1), 45-60.


Zimmer-Gembeck, M. J., & Duffy, A. L. (2014). Heightened emotional sensitivity intensifies associations between relational aggression and victimization among girls but not boys: A longitudinal study. Development and psychopathology, 26(03), 661-673.

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