Want to know why some bullied girls and women use the woman card just to survive bullying? Here’s everything you need to know.
If you are a woman, there’s a protective mechanism you can use in a dangerous situation. You play the distressed damsel when bullies attack you, and nothing else works. You use your physical weaknesses as strengths, especially if your bullies are boys.
Moreover, you may use it to get sympathy when others attack you. It’s not that you’re doing it to deceive; you’re doing it to survive.
Therefore, in this post, you will learn about the woman card survival tool and the reasons women use it when people bully them.
Once you learn about these important truths, you will understand why we do it. Moreover, you will be encouraged to use whatever you have to keep bullies from harming you. And you won’t feel guilty about it.
This post is all about the woman card and why female victims of bullying use it, so that you will see it as a survival behavior for female victims. Also, if you’re a girl who gets bullied, you won’t feel guilty about doing what you must to protect yourself.
Using the Woman Card: My own experiences
During school, females weren’t the only ones who bullied me. Boys and men bullied me, too. Everyone got a piece of me, male, female, black, white, and purple with green polka dots. It didn’t matter. I was an equal opportunity target.
I got my face beaten in a lot during those years. A bigger boy body slammed me. One guy busted my nose in the seventh grade. This became a pattern until it dawned on me that I could use my femininity as a weapon.
So, I began playing the damsel in distress to gain sympathy anytime bullies attacked me. Moreover, I was five feet four inches tall and only 115-120 lbs. Therefore, I could also use it with girls who were larger than me.
I’ve talked to several women who were bullied as girls, and some of them did the same. And I don’t blame them one bit.
When an environment grows physically violent. You’re no longer dealing with typical high school drama. You are in a survival situation.
Therefore, if you’re a woman, you use the woman card. Why? To either fawn your way out of being harmed or to attract outside protection.
Does it Work?
This works. Don’t get me wrong. There were many times that using your femaleness will help you to de-escalate the situation.
But if your bullies ever catch on to what you’re trying to do, it will lose its effect. In fact, this specific move can make things brutal. And this goes double if you’re in a toxic school with a culture of bullying.
It’s what happened with me. My bullies caught on to my tactic. Don’t ask me how, but they did.
How the woman card can backfire if you aren’t careful
If bullies ever catch onto the woman card, they will do their best to make you regret it. But why?
1. It threatens their Script.
Bullies rely on the power imbalance. When you use your girlhood to gain sympathy from teachers and other peers, you flip the script on them.
You see? In your bullies’ minds, they are the cool ones. They are the superior ones. However, by gaining sympathy, you made them look bad. And the best part is that you did it in a way that they can’t justify.
Now, they think that you’re using your victim status to damage their reputation. Therefore, they’ll react with more violence just to shut you up. This is what they tried to do to me.
2. Aggressive bullies see it as cheating.
In the high school I was bullied in, being tough and aggressive was held in high regard. And, by both sexes. In fact, their answer to all their problems was “whooping your ass.”
Because I used my vulnerability, they saw it as a cheat code. Moreover, they saw it as my using the system against them. This led to a special kind of hatred because they felt they couldn’t win.
And the result of it was worse physical violence.
3. By Using the Woman card, You use “moral injury” to counteract the bystander effect.
The bullies weren’t the only ones who resented me. Some bystanders did too. By seeking sympathy, I forced the bystanders to make a choice.
If they didn’t help me, they felt guilty for it later. If they did help me, they risked making the bullies angry. Therefore, I trapped them between a rock and a hard place.
The physical violence was my bullies’ breaking point. It was their last-ditch effort to destroy me because I was no longer playing by their rules.
using femininity to counter the effect bullying has on your dating prospects
Due to stricter laws, this probably isn’t an option today. However, back in my day, teenage girls had more options for dating, even if they were bullied.
It was the eighties, and we had the option to date college-aged guys. Therefore, I often used my sexuality to attract men in this age group.
Knowing that young adult men loved the idea of dating teenagers, I flirted and used my good looks to make up for the limited options I had in my own age group.
These young men knew nothing of my ruined reputation. Therefore, I got to create opportunities for myself. From a survival standpoint, this should make sense. Why?
Because when your environment becomes a social desert, what else can you do? It’s only natural to look outside the fence for validation.
Besides, would you really want to date anyone from the environment where you’re constantly hunted and devalued? That would be too risky!
1. The woman card helps you to bypass your REPUTATION.
It’s true that there are no shortcuts in life. However, by rejecting boys my age and opting to date college-aged men, I took a shortcut and bypassed my bullies.
It was the ultimate power flip! In class, I was the target. But with college-aged men, I was the prize. To these men, I wasn’t “that girl” everyone hated. I was just a beautiful, interesting young woman.
Using my womanly wiles gave me a sense of power and desirability, which were the very things that my classmates were desperately trying to strip away from me. It also gave me a break from the brutality of life at school.
However, dating adult men was also a sign that circumstances had forced me to grow up too fast. And why not?
It was hard to find anything in common with classmates because they acted like petulant children.
2. The downside, living a double life
When you’re a girl who everyone bullies in high school, finding love with an adult man feels liberating. Moreover, it feels wonderful.
But I look back now, and I realize that I was, in essence, living a double life. From 8 am to 3 pm, I was a target – a damsel in distress. In the evening, I was a prize – a femme fatale. That was a lot of mental weight for a girl so young to carry.
Back then, that never occurred to me. I was too much in love and too busy enjoying it. Also, it seemed like I was winning against those who hated me.
3. The woman card drives bullies mad
After years of being knocked to the bottom of the social ladder, I felt as if I’d jumped over the entire hierarchy. And it showed when people at school found out that I was dating a twenty-two-year-old.
It turned out that I had broken their most basic rule. And I didn’t just break the rules, I changed the game entirely!
By dating someone six years older than me, I outsmarted them. Moreover, I outflanked every boy in the place. Why?
Because, to a teenage boy, a twenty-two-year-old represents a world they can’t access yet – manhood. By dating a grown man, I showed them that their kingdom was smaller than they thought. In fact, it was no more than a tiny kiddie pool.
Therefore, while they were piddling around in their kiddie pool, I was in the big lake, swimming with the big fish.
4. The bullies lose control
Let me tell you! It drove them up the wall! A tarnished reputation only works when you give a damn what others think. By finding love and appreciation outside my school, I signaled that their opinions meant jack.
And that’s what infuriated my bullies the most.
Moreover, they likely saw it as cheating their social system. Why? Because I created an unfair advantage for myself.
I used the woman card to get the kind of attention they couldn’t compete with. Therefore, their outrage was a mix of jealousy and the fact that they no longer had the power to make me feel bad.
As a result, I felt like I’d finally gotten the upper hand. And I didn’t have to swing a fist to get it. It was like I had a secret weapon that made me untouchable. And, to tell you the truth, it felt exhilarating!
Dating Rick gave me a degree of psychological immunity. It gave me a lifeboat. Why? My bullies’ insults stopped hurting because I had Rick telling me that I was beautiful and wanted.
For that time, I wasn’t a victim anymore. I was a woman with adult secrets and adult desires that were being met. And they knew it.
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5. Female bullies become highly jealous.
To teenage girls, a twenty-two-year-old guy represents money, cars, bars, freedom, and “adult status.” These were things my bullies at school were still lightyears away from. Therefore, it made them seem like little kids.
With their outrage, they were admitting that I had something they wanted but couldn’t have. As a result, they gave me a ton of backlash. Why?
Because I had become a threat to their precious hierarchy. At Oakley High School, if you tried to rise above your assigned social position, you were punished for it.
6. Fake moral outrage
They reframed their jealousy as moral high ground. They called me every ugly name you could possibly call a girl. “Slut.” “Whore.” “Tramp.” “Shameless strumpet.” “Floozie.” “Gold-digger.” Whatever bile they could spew, they did.
Moreover, they felt justified in it. Why? Because, according to them, I was breaking social taboos. So, it gave them a moral obligation to be meaner.
However, it was all designed to shame me back to a lower level. Not that it worked, because I knew what their moral outrage was really coming from. They were using it to mask deep jealousy.
They were angry that I’d found a way to be desirable to someone who outranked them in age, finances, and experience.
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7. They felt the need to reinforce dominance.
Because they thought they needed to reassert their dominance, they increased the physical attacks. In other words, they wanted to beat the confidence out of me to remind me that they were still in charge.
The unspoken message was, “inside these walls, you’re still under our control and don’t you forget it.”
However, they could only make life at school hard for me. Once we were off school property, they had no control. Therefore, part of their anger came from the fact that there were other parts of my life they couldn’t touch.
My love life was one of them. That was the one thing making me happy. And they knew it.
I knew it too. Therefore, the attacks had less effect on me. They hurt, but the pain didn’t seem as bad. Having someone outside the toxic environment who loved me helped dull the pain.
8. The adrenaline of winning.
In fact, watching them lose their minds was exhilarating! My good life outside of school was a counterattack.
For the first time, I was the one causing them emotional distress. And the best part was that I was doing it without meaning to. I’ll be the first to admit that it felt good!
It was like I was on a pedestal they were desperately trying to kick me off of. But they were failing miserably.
So, they were, in a sense, punishing me for “acting older than” they allowed.
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In conclusion
Using the woman card helped me in many ways when I was being bullied. This may be the wrong thing to say. However, it’s the truth. Or, at least, it was back then.
Being a girl was the one thing I thanked God for. It gave me some protection against evil people. However, I didn’t realize it until high school.
I had to use every tool I had to stay safe in a broken environment. If it meant using the woman card, then I gladly did that.
My femininity was my last resort. I used it when all else had failed. It was what got me the hell out of Oakley High School.
When I look back, I wish I had not had to use it. However, a part of me is glad I did. Otherwise, I might never have left that toxic school. And I might never have experienced the magic of dating when I did.
And most importantly, I might have been killed. So, if you’re a bullied female and you’re stuck in a dangerous environment, don’t feel guilty for using your femaleness to survive. Because that’s exactly what it is, survival!
So, know your worth even when bullies try to take it from you. Avoid females who are catty. Don’t settle for abuse. And do what you must to ensure your safety!
This post is all about the woman card and why some bullied girls and WOMEN use it to survive bullying. The purpose of this post is so you don’t feel guilty should you have to use it.
Related posts you’ll enjoy:
1. A woman who Knows Her Worth: 7 Things She’ll Never Settle for
2. Catty Women: 5 Powerful Ways to Deal with Their Bullying
3. Signs of a Catty Woman: 13 Characteristics of Female Bullies
4. Know Your Worth As a Woman: 5 Rules to Live by
5. Female Bullies: 7 Reasons They Bully Other Women and Girls