> The question you should be asking is why do we as a society tolerate people (of any age and any gender!) being so awful to girls?

This.

Girls are policed from a very young age - how you have to act, "proper" ways to dress, to wear makeup, etc. Being told from a young age that old men being absolute creeps and knowingly hitting on prepubescent girls is normal and that you should be happy that he finds you attractive. Being told that you basically have no agency for something entirely out of your control. Having teachers stand by and do nothing when boys pull up your skirt to cop a look.

And this only gets worse as teenagers, with guys getting ballsier with their creepiness, expectations to be mature and wear outfits that appeal to the male gaze while simultaneously being chastised for being "too distracting," as if men get the uncontrollable urge to masturbate just because of a pair of leggings... (It seems absurd, but just look at dress code enforcement at public schools in America and you will find this is basically the thought process of many administrators.)

And that's ignoring how religious figures and other men in your life tell you that because you are a woman, you are inferior and should always be subservient, always do as your husband tells you, demonizing women who cheat or have children out of wedlock while glossing over absent fathers who didn't feel like wearing a condom or have a mistress.

And to top it all off, if you try and speak up for yourself, to have agency, you're shut down by the adults who are supposed to be keeping order, saying "boys will be boys" and dismissing groping and rape by blaming you for the way you dressed, for hanging out with some crowd, being out late at night, etc.

If you try to resist this treatment, you're labeled rude, catty, a bitch. People who already treated you as unimportant simply for being a woman now actively denigrate you. They already said you were exaggerating your menstrual pains, now they say you're faking it all.

So, what do you get when girls hit puberty? There's a lot of frustration at the world, frustration with the boys in our classes, frustration at the men in charge, frustration with the women in power who defend the system just because it's slightly less horrendous than what they grew up with, and it comes to a head with hormones throwing emotions into overdrive and the general awkwardness of puberty. And you can't take it out on the guys your age, they're untouchable, and adults will just write you off as being on your period if you try to get them to change their behavior.

Reading about how teenage girls' "peak fertility" (which isn't even accurate) causes fighting really just shows how many men on this website believe everything women do is about them, that our worlds revolve around attracting mates, that we have no other priorities in life. No, it's just that we can take out frustrations on other girls our age without being labeled as crazy. It sucks, but that's the reality of it. Not that we only take out our frustrations by bullying others, of course, (most do not bully, just vent to friends, and I know I was never one to dish it out) but there's a reason it's rare for teenage girls to bully teenage guys the way they do each other.

Every time I hear guys say stuff like "you can't even approach women now thanks to #metoo," I think about all the anger they've never had to deal with, how high on a pedestal they've been their entire lives. They think "oh well if girls catcalled me, I'd love it," while not thinking about getting catcalled since before you were even old enough to know what catcalling is. They think the idea of male privilege is "feminist bullshit" while never having to worry about getting whistled at and approached by creeps who won't take no for an answer until you say "I have a boyfriend" (because they only respect women when they can see them as the property of other men). They've never regularly felt fear when strangers followed them because the average man can pummel the average woman, or feared going to the police who will ask you a million degrading questions instead of focusing on prosecuting your rapist.

I wish that the generations who come after us wouldn't have to worry about this. But given how much work it took to get to where we are now, and how much conservatives (at least in America) have already taken away, I do not have faith that the status quo will meaningfully change before humanity manages to destroy itself. Especially after seeing so many conservatives openly say that the Taliban doesn't seem all that bad after realizing they'd like to control women and minorities in the same way.

Rant over. I really hate these "men debate women's biology without ever asking for a woman's opinion" comment chains. These "discussions" really need to stay put on incel forums.

Edit: I didn't really even go into the pressure to look skinny (oftentimes to an unhealthy degree) and the way people talk about you for not conforming. To fit into a size 0, stay <100 lbs, count calories from your teenage years, try to have an hourglass figure (which is mostly determined by the genetic lottery), etc. (Just look at what celebrities do to bounce back quickly after pregnancy. [0]) Even amongst my friends who no longer struggle with disordered eating, they all still have complicated relationships with food. Ironically, it's starting to spread to men. [1]

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyK1wc4kWj4

[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/jul/31/eating-disor...