Get a group of females together and there’s bound to be a bit of bitchiness. Be it girls at school, university or in their office jobs. Be it mothers in the school playground, women in the WI or even old ladies in a retirement home. Women, when together, can join forces and produce so many things, of course one of them is bitchiness. Mummy bloggers are of course no exception!

The parent blogging community is vastly female. The occasional male voice breaks the trend but on the whole, it’s us Mummies who write our thoughts and feelings in on-line diaries. With our blogs comes a community of friendships and camaraderie and just like anywhere else where we women get together, we can do immense good but we’re women together… The bitchiness will come!

Women are so very strong. There’s a genetic reason that we are the sex who bare the children then live longer after having had our bodies go through it. It always amazes me that history dictates men as the ‘stronger’ sex. I suppose physicality played an enormous part in times gone by but look what women did with that. We didn’t just use our fists or weapons to show the men we should be equal but we fought with our minds and our strength as a unit. Emmeline Pankhurst and the suffragettes are responsible for us women having the right to vote but they didn’t go to war in the traditional sense of the word, they used their intellectual powers. Although they did use some direct action it was often themselves they put in the line of danger. Emily Davison died while trying to throw a ‘votes for women’ banner over the Kings horse and those that were arrested went on hunger strike. One woman would not have made a difference but those women, together, did. Their fight had not yet been won when the first world war broke out so Emmeline and the Suffragettes moved away from the suffragette movement to focus on helping with the war effort. A typical thing for women to do I’d say. Fight the good fight but fight what’s needed and when.

This isn’t a history lesson so I won’t go into too much detail (although it’s fascinating I think) but the women, as women do, didn’t give up. By 1918 women over the age of 30 had gained the right to vote and in 1928, a year before my beloved Grandma was born, ALL women had equal voting to men. Those women fought so that the women of my lifetime could be equal to men. We’ve come a long way since then and it’s all down to women. The thing is, we’re not equal, they can’t do a hell of a lot of the things we can! You’ll never see a man push another human being out of a tiny hole in their body!

It was women who kept the country going through both world wars. The men went off to fight, physically they did the best thing they could do and we women proved we were every bit as good as them on the home front by running farms, shops, policing the streets, being the medical profession, teaching staff, bankers, street cleaners and all other trades as well as parent, cook, home runner and even spy! Women held it together when they were losing their husbands, sons and fathers at war. They kept the country working and all because they are women. Women who are strong in numbers.

By 1979 we even had a female Prime Minister. Now for me, the less said about her the better, she was NOT my politics!

Women together can BE anything, DO anything and strength in our numbers is, I believe, even more forceful than men. Hell, we even fight in the wars these days that’s how strong we are! In The US even on the front line!

When Soldier Lee Rigby was brutally murdered in front of a community in broad day light, it was women who approached his attackers. Two women stood in front of the scene which saw a dying man and his attackers still with blood on their hands. Two women didn’t turn and flee as I would have seen perfectly fit to do! No, two women stayed and two women did what they could do to help. I have heard that one of them asked the attacker if she could sit with the soldier, she didn’t want him to die alone. She sat with him and checked his pulse, I have been told she spoke to him and comforted him – what a thing to do! She was just an ordinary woman I believe, a cub scout leader in fact. I have heard that the other woman asked the attacker to hand over his weapons and when he replied with the fact he wanted war on London, she told him ‘right now this is just you against many people, you will lose’. That brave WOMAN said THAT to a man wielding the weapon he had just used to execute an innocent man right in front of her. That’s what women can do with their strength!

But…

Our strength is sometimes used for trivial and like I mentioned, the not so good. I’m guilty of bitching. I know we all are. At times; I have said things like ‘Oh you’ll never guess what?’ or ‘Can YOU believe what she wore, does she have a mirror’. Fairly harmless I suppose but at the same time could my words have hurt the person I was talking about? Oh absolutely. And by my speaking with others about them, was it making it doubly worse? As I was then a ‘gang’ of two, three four while the poor girl with bad dress sense was an innocent one then yes, I probably was and it was unnecessary! I can’t say bitching should be eradicated because let’s face it, it won’t be. But I think we should be mindful to try not to hurt others. Especially in big gangs.

I’ve been on the receiving end of girls ganging up many times and to my detriment, I’ve probably ganged up too. At school it happened to me a few times. As a Mum with other Mums it even has. I’ve been hurt by it, it hasn’t passed me by. I’m gobby though and will stick up for myself, I don’t give a poo about it and will give as good as I get. I absolutely NEVER suffer fools gladly and am MORE than happy to deal with things face to face. I don’t hide behind anyone or anything, including my computer screen! But others don’t and who deserves to be made to feel badly about themselves? What crime have most people committed to deserve it?

As strong as we women are in numbers, as much as we can use our collective to produce good, we can also use it to be bloody awful to each other. What a waste don’t you think…

Mummy bloggers recently have shown me a side I find my top lip curling up Elvis style at. I have seen Mummy bloggers pull together in the way they should and I have seen what a gang of women fighting the same fight can do in positive ways. So disappointing then to see Mummy bloggers turning on each other. Bloody waste of space I say! Obviously there’s gonna be a bit of it, as I opened with, we are women, we WILL be bitchy; I bet even Emmeline’s gang had the odd moment of ‘Urgh, that flipping Sheila well annoys me sometimes’! We all do, we’re human. But I think we should try to remember, we are stronger when we’re together… By far! Let’s not turn on our own eh! If we possibly can!

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