"Though the most common stories of sadistic hazing rituals on high school campuses feature young men’s sports teams, it is young women’s lunch tables that bear the brunt of most critiques of traumatizing adolescent social behaviors. In the public imaginary, cliques are almost universally characterized as not only female but as hyper-feminine, and they are held to demonstrate the absolute worst that young women have to offer: cattiness, exclusivity, cruelty, and ruthless social ambition...
Much of the academic literature about adolescent cliques views them as something closer to intentional communities, with stated missions and values, than elitist in-groups. “Positively oriented cliques, based on values of caring, empathy and respect for others provide learning experiences that augment those opportunities available in the family unit during adolescence,” writes Bette J. Freedson, LCSW, on social worker resource site Help Starts Here. But because cliques consist of members who only interact frequently and intimately with fellow members—as both the social science and lay definitions suggest—it should not be surprising that some outsiders can’t perceive that a clique’s values are “positively oriented.” If these outsiders assume that their non-inclusion is actually an intentional exclusion, that may say more about their imagination than anything about the clique...
“Clique-y” is the pejorative used to describe young women in a friend group that is perceived to be exclusionary. But this dismissal dehumanizes them and disregards their personal reasons for maintaining a tight-knit circle of friends. The suspicion aimed at cliques targets female intimacy, particularly when it shared between women with social capital. My friend and fellow writer Rachel Syme once noted, “Two powerful men being friends is an inevitability. Two powerful women being friends is a conspiracy.”
Women who orient their social lives around a select group are held in distrust, as if women’s duty is to cast their friendship nets widely and superficially. The expectation that they do so signals that a woman’s social life is not considered her own: it must be arranged for the benefit of the family, of strangers, anyone really besides herself."
There is something in here about boundaries and cultivating strong social support and distrust of female social capital. And also, visibility of women's actions. I'm imagining a future in which Hillary is president and there is a crisis around some issue and all her advisors on that topic happen to be female, and suddenly they are a clique whose discussions - because they happen away from the ears of men - can't be trusted.
Related: The women are emailing
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