#6 Don’t be a dick

#6   Don’t be a dick.

Girls can be dicks sometimes. Boys can be too. But I’m not sure I’ve ever encountered anything quite so savage as a mean girl.

Sadly, the horsey world seems to contain a fair few of these 'dick' girls.

This makes me really sad, because there are so many wonderful, helpful, fun and friendly people within it too. 

The dick girls are the kind that gather their cronies together and toy with the feelings of the others in the group - for sport. Or for their own self-esteem. Who knows. The kind who take a really mean-spirited attitude to anything positive experienced by anyone other than themselves.

Anyone who has been on the receiving end of verbal or emotional bullying like this, no matter how mild, may remember the feeling that, each week, someone would take their turn at being the flavour of the month where the Chief Mean Girl was concerned. The others would be treated in a fairly indifferent fashion – they weren’t made to feel anything special, but hey, they weren’t being psychologically bullied either.

In these situations, there’d often be one girl who was ‘target of the day’. The girl who was made to feel excluded at best, or fearful of confrontation at worst.

For me though, the absolute worst kind of behaviour was the not-so-passive-aggressive kind. The comments that were loud enough to be heard: but not made out clearly. In other words, the easily deniable comments, that were definitely awful and definitely aimed at you. The comments where name-calling could be made out clearly, but not who it was aimed at. Alternatively, the loud, bitchy sniggers whenever you were within earshot, bursting forth from the mouths of those who no doubt had plenty of their own life problems, but who chose to exorcise those issues by making someone else’s life a misery.

On yards, whatever type, there regularly seems to be two catalysts for this kind of behaviour.

1.       Knowledge power: Some girls think they know best. Since riding is a pastime that requires lots of knowledge and experience, this provides a weak spot in those who don’t claim to know everything. For every two or three people willing to share this knowledge with others, to genuinely support people and feel happy for them when it pays off, there will always be one who will do one of the following: purposefully withhold this information and snigger at the person who was never able to benefit from it. Or, dish it out in a supercilious, abrupt manner, resulting in the person who simply didn’t know it feeling very stupid and sad.

‘As if she didn’t even know that,’ will come the cry.

But how will anyone ever know anything if people aren’t willing to share their knowledge in a kind way? Have you always known everything about everything? Or did you have to learn it somehow too?

2.       Jealousy: Since riding and horse ownership can get quite competitive – even in a non-competition environment – jealousy can become an issue. Some girls/women spend many years believing that this explanation is a cop-out. ‘Why don’t they like me?’ you might have moaned. ‘Just ignore them. It’s because they’re jealous,’ could have come the response.

And this may not have sat well with you.

‘No, you’re just saying that to make me feel better. There’s definitely something inherently dislikeable about me,’ you might have thought.

And this might be true. You might have acted like a massive twat one day – or on many consecutive days.

But, if you didn’t, it really is way more likely that THEY are a massive twat. And trust me, one day, by the time they’ve grown out of this kind of mindset, you really won’t care what they have to say or think anymore.

As long as you can live by three basic rules, whether at school, at work or on the yard, you can sleep easy at night:

Be helpful.

Be kind.

And don’t be a dick.

#notonmyyard

#bekind