I've seen this happen with the "fake geek girl" phenomenon - some women who feel that they are legitimate parts of the community participate in this kind of destructive policing because they've bought into the cultural misogyny and are often rewarded and have their status reinforced in their community.

On a much more damaging level, this happens with slut-shaming and sexual policing. One of the major factors in the recent suicides of teen rape victims was the rejection and shaming by their female peers.

I think that's an understatement to say it only sometimes happens. From what I gather it's a part of almost every woman's life. Based on anecdotal data, while men are often a source of unintentional systematic sexism women are the more likely source of intentional malicious misogyny.

They had the same sort of social structures in the middle ages, but if you were one of Queen Brunhilde's knights, how exactly were you on top? You were utterly expendable, Brunhilde was on top.

And if you want to talk about societal problems, that's pretty bloody important! Yeah, both types of bullying feel just as shitty to the individual, but the broader ramifications are definitely different. Nothing is isolated.

If you disagree with the fundamental premise (society is sexist) that's a whole other issue, but you should be at least able to see why others see a distinction.

1. Keeping in mind that you seem to want to compare arbitrary bullying to the more specific type persimmons references.

Society is more complicated than that. There are more forces swirling around than patriarchy. Any insular group will eventually enforce arbitrary social norms on each other, and since people tend to socialize with those of the same sex, both genders form insular groups in our society.

By the way, "sexual policing" comes from sexual competition and evolutionary psychology, which comes from thinking with your ovaries instead of your brain. In much the same way idiot men's one-upmanship comes from thinking with the testicles.

And I think you are too quick to write off people's actions as evolutionarily programmed - it's a somewhat ironic response, given your first complaint. Whether or not there is a biological instinct to compete sexually, the expression of that instinct is a product of social norms. Arguments for evolutionary psychology have a troublesome and pretty untenable tendency to ascribe a complex, culturally-specific, and socially enforced behavior to some magical mystery determinism gene. It's kind of a pet peeve of mine.

What conclusion did you read into the OP that framed the judgmental girls as themselves responsible for the culture that they were brought up in? Saying that they play a role in perpetuating the culture isn't the same as saying that they are responsible for it.

No, it's not. It really, really isn't. You only notice the stuff that mentions female-victim/male-perp because you don't really care enough about the issue to notice anything further. There is heaps of feminist discourse on women judging women and limiting their options by doing so, the topic of this article. And there are plenty of complex narratives rather than black and white reasoning.

>In the few cases where other women are shown as the problem they are framed as victims of patriarchal socialization not responsible for their behavior.

B) You're making some big assumptions about my awareness of sociology.

B) You're not giving much to address those assumptions.

B) Why would I? The question was obviously a red herring just like the "mouth frothing" ad-hom.

My competence in the matter is sufficient. I switched my major from sociology to CS with a focus on machine learning/data. I've dated several feminists and have been tangentially involved at various points in my life. Not that any of this matters. It's a completely irrelevant question.

Because at the time this comment was made, the 'mouth-frothing' ad-hom hadn't yet been made, which is a bit of revisionism on your part. You also speak of 'the question obviously being a red herring'... but there was no such question posed - you were the one that brought up the significance of your background. How can a non-existent thing be an obvious red herring?

B) I like how you elect to stay mysterious on this point. Since you didn't bother to actually clear anything up and explain where you're coming from, you sound just like yet another pride-wounded MRA mouth-frother.

If you're as familiar with gender studies as you say you are and these "complex narratives" are as ubiquitous as you claim you should easily be able to show us several counter examples. You can't because you've obviously never seen this literature.

And 'show us several examples'? Really? So I get to go and do more work, only for you to hand-wave them away with "yeah, but those are just edge-cases". How does one prove anything is not an 'edge case' with a couple of examples?

As for rudeness and bigotry, it's pretty much what I thought you were being by just dismissing my statement as 'edge cases' when they're not. 'Feminism is 1-dimensional' is as bigoted as anything I've said. And despite you being pride-wounded at how I assumed your background (which you still haven't fronted up with), you say I've 'never seen this literature', assuming my background. And now, interestingly, not even allowing for the existence of your 'edge cases', because that literature now 'doesn't exist'.

Any time you think something is 1-dimensional, chances are good you are only seeing a few small pieces of the world. Often those pieces are the ones that people in the mainstream find easiest to mock. Ignorance isn't a problem, but making assumptions based on ignorance is.