I thought firing McChrystal was in error. In hindsight, while it was for politically motivated reasons, it may have been the right call.

The really sad thing? This is all being done to directly benefit a political candidate. The entire campaign, the buttons, the media attention, the whole thing, is the direct result of a top-down order from Hillary Clinton's Presidential campaign team. They say "jump" and the sell-out journalists say "how high?"

Cousin Dave, interesting theory, which frankly makes pretty good sense. Set up before any primary that powerful women are picked on and any criticism is just misogynistic meanness.

Comment I saw elsewhere:

How about we ban "banning"?

I loved it so much I just had to share.

Ban Bossy? Okay. I find it much easier to make my point by signaling what BEHAVIOR I want to stop, not what individual attribute might be at fault. If you say "bossy" is bad, well, you are saying the PERSON is bad. People (usually) aren't bad, but behavior is. It's much easier to say "don't lie" than "don't be a liar," at least with kids. The shorter message - and the more direct (i.e. Don't do X) is most easily understood and followed.

So, if the quietest person bosses somebody, I say, "No bossing people about. It is rude." (note, I say this as a parent, not a peer). Boy or girl, doesn't matter. No bossing.

To paraphrase a wonderful children's book:

In a house, with a mouse, with a fox, in a box - I will not let the bosses be - I won't because it's rude you see!

The whole thing is bull...

you wanna ban bossy, you teach Leadership.

Bossy is "you do as I say!"
Leadership is: "we have a problem, can you take it on as a project? I would suggest this as a remedy..."

Work with that for a while, and the Leader eventually just mentions that something could use some help running, and the follower says "Oh, I'll take care of that..." AND THEN THE FOLLOWER BECOMES THE LEADER OF THEIR OWN LITTLE PROJECT. They bring the results back to the leader, who says "well done."

Bossy is someone who requires something be done their way, right away, and they don't care what you think.

This playground stuff is worried over "feelings" when that doesn't mean squat later. The real feelings are accomplishment when you do what needs doing with the full belief of the leader behind you. You work harder and you take pride in what you are doing, because they believe in you. Likewise when you mess up, you go the extra mile to fix it because you don't want to let them down.

Those feeling work for your whole life.

And when it's time for leadership to pas down, the whole group can level up, because this leadership thing has been passed down.

There is all the difference in meaning behind the words "Don't Do" [banbossy] and "Try this, it works..." [Leadership training]

But, wha'do I know... I'm just a half dead old guy.

SwissArmyD,

You allude to what I see as a fundamental problem. The notion behind the "ban bossy" thing is that "bossy" is supposedly applied to girls when the same behavior is called "leadership" in boys.

I say that's bull. You are right, bossy is "do this." Leading sounds more like, "how about we do/try this?" The difference may be small, but it is significant. Imagine a spouse saying "take me to a movie" versus "how about we go to a movie?"

Which is easier on a kid: having the parents say "don't boss, it's rude" at ages 5-9 OR having them NOT and the resulting trouble making/keeping friends at 10-18?

Also, in my experience, the girls who boss when young (and aren't curbed) keep it up and end up being labeled as bitchy when older. Not exactly a good way to make/keep friends.

Shannon: As I've mentioned, one simple way to tell the difference between someone who's bossy and someone who's trying to get more or less elected as a leader is to ask: Does this person respect and LISTEN TO other people in general, whether the latter are older or younger, or not? Or: Does this person really know what he/she is talking about - or is this person just quarrelsome and contrary by nature?

I can think of three fictional/semi-fictional characters who all meet those definitions of bossiness: Eliza Jane Wilder (real-but-fictionalized), who would humiliate her own father if she thought she could get away with it; Eustace Scrubb (based on C.S. Lewis), who was no more than 9 or 10 but believed himself to be the center of the universe and entitled to order around people three times his age, despite not even being able to remember much of anything he was taught in school, and Henrietta Larson (from the first book in the 1960s "The Three Investigators" series), who, as an 18-year-old humorless secretary, expects her boss (Alfred Hitchcock) to act as her underling - and in that one scene, he does, sort of. (My mother despised the way females in general were portrayed in that series - I can see her point. My guess is that Larson was written as a woman who looks down on males in general.)

BTW, how does anyone KNOW that girls don't get treated badly - and labeled - for being politely assertive, or that boys never get taken down by their male peers for being bossy (as opposed to being a bully)?

Correction - that's "or that boys get taken down"

Well, Lenona, boys for sure say "you're not the boss of me, followed by the swift kick as necessary...

Maybe girls do get labelled even if they are politely assertive, but we are in a teaching mode here, no?

Teaching them how to lead is a different question than if they get labelled. It has to be approached in a different way. From the many times I have seen it, girls will label and place in hierarchy pretty much everyone ever in their groups, and they can be pretty nasty about putting someone in their place. Teaching leadership is designed to be all purpose, so they know what to do in the real world, when dealing with lotsa people...

In working with Bossy people before in business? They never get good participation from the people they are bossing. The minimum required, and less if it can be gotten away with.

Now, teaching girls how to deal with labelling, is a whole other thing, not actually related to ban bossy...

So this ban bossy approach, actually doesn't do EITHER thing it sets out to do.

As I've said, what's wrong with changing "bossy" to "rude" when applicable? Unless we can convince kids to call boys bossy too, when they are? (Which maybe we can't.)

lenona,

Sorry, but Imm not tracking (maybe I need sleep). I don't *think* I expressed a difficulty understanding the difference. Rather, it seems to me that many people say what is called "bossy" in girls is REALLY leadership skills. And that is a position I disagree with.

Also, I call boys on their bossy behavior. I have said, "That was bossy," and, "Bossing people is not acceptable," equally to both my kids. I have also said it to both boys and girls who have been under my supervision at my house.

Of course, I am generally pretty weird socially - I don't even have TV

I was a bossy kid. My cousin reminds me regularly. I became a bitchy adult and I was proud of my bitchiness...thinking that meant I was strong. I was thoroughly misguided.

I eventually learned the difference between assertive and aggressive. And during some personal growth realized that part of my problem is I often can see solutions before others understand the problem and I don't see the point of explaining if we can solve it now. While that sounds like explaining a negative in a positive light...the real negative is I have no patience with people who don't pick up things as fast as I would like. I have HAD to seriously learn patience (at least with people who are actively trying to learn).

I have totally been rude, condescending, patronizing, etc to people who I didn't deem worthy of repeating myself. I was a bitch.

With great respect to someone who stood up to me while I was doing just that...she asked me to not say to her, "Oh, you don't know that?". Luckily, I had the self awareness to know she was right and that moment changed our relationship (and a lot of my behavior).

But how much more effective could I have been all these years if someone actually called me on my behavior sooner?