Lawyer’s Book Explores ‘Twisted Sisterhood’ of Female Friendship
Lawyer Kelly Valen experienced the dark side of female friendship after she was raped by her date at an Arizona fraternity party in the 1980s.
Valen has troubled memories not only from the the attack, but also from the reaction of her sorority sisters, according to the San Francisco Chronicle and the Washington Post. They blamed her for the rape, saying she drank too much. They feared a “loose woman” would bring shame to the sorority, and began keeping track of infractions, such as wearing sweat pants to a sorority meeting. Eventually, she got kicked out of the sorority.
Valen revealed the incident in a 2007 New York Times article and received so much feedback, she decided to explore the topic further, the story says. She and a friend, a statistician, surveyed more than 3,000 women and found 84 percent had “suffered palpable emotional wounding at the hands of other females.”
The results are part of a book, Twisted Sisterhood: Unraveling the Dark Legacy of Female Friendships. Valen also includes research on traumatic memories and theories on female infighting.
Valen decided to write the book after the suicide of a friend’s niece who was facing “mean-girl Facebook harassment and related pressures,” she writes in the Huffington Post.
“As I’ve learned through the voices of other women and my own experience, our seemingly innocuous acts of inhumanity—those little nudges, slights, and outright cruelties—aren’t static events that happen in a vacuum,” Valen writes. “They’re leaving hidden, lasting marks on girls and women all around us.”
Hat tip to Pat’s Papers.
