Also, why on Earth do some men find them sexy?
Me, too! It is so true, though, especially in a high school setting. Girls don’t usually have physical fights. They go for the back-stabbing and hurtful-name-calling methods, instead. I think this is because girls acknowledge that most of them are much more sensitive and emotional than others. In fist fights between boys, I think they just fight as fast as possible or until one of them gives up. But girls fight until one of them goes down completely and can’t get back up again.
For any bizarre fetish you can think of, someone will find it sexy.
Me too. Holy shit, this is scary!
I got into a cat fight in 9th grade. My best friend and I were always having little spats, and finally, we just got so pissed off we went at it. Sadly it, was a piss poor excuse for a cat fight. My hair got messed up, and we mostly were just sort of locked arm to arm. If our teacher hadn’t stepped in (this was right in the middle of homeroom), we probably would have gotten really viscious, but we didn’t get the chance.
All I remember is that I really was so pissed and I royally wanted to hurt her, any way I could.
Not being a girl, I just attributed it to the reason I learned not to fight with girls. They fight dirty. Really, really dirty. In fact, that’s gonna be part of my advice if I ever have a son. “Don’t fight with girls. It’s not that they’re untouchable (a double standard that drove me nuts by the time I was six) but that they fight really dirty.”
Ripping out weaves. 
Around my neighborhood, you can always tell if girls have had a fight, because you see weaves on the ground.
I just remembered that episode of Seinfeld:
Jerry and George were talking about high school PE, and hoy the boys tormented each other with htings like noogies and wedgies. They asked Elaine if girls ever did anything like that.
She replied that guys were barbaric, girls would just tease someone until they developed an eating disorder.
I think most women have a vicious side they try to suppress most of the time. PMS gives us a little glimpse of what goes on inside. It seems to me most women lose every once of kindness and compassion they ever had by the time they are 40.
:: watching out for flying objects ::
What a weird thing to say! I’m 44, and I think I’m kinder and more compassionate that I was when I was 20. I have a lot more experience of life and its joys and sorrows.
::throws pillow at ccwaterback::
Heh, I made the bad judgement call to try and break up a fight between two cute girls in my JROTC outfit when I was in high school. One of my friends (who was on the power-lifting team) had to reach in and pull me out from between them before I could get seriously hurt.
Since then, my policy on catfights has always been to spray them with a fire hose from a safe distance.
One girl I talk to said it was because girls are smaller and thus have to fight dirtier (this still doesn’t quite explain why they fight that way to eachother though). The idea that they don’t fight as often and thus only do so when really pissed seems valid.
I think it’s because they don’t carry their reproductive organs in a vulnerable, easy to find sack on the outside of their body. Guys are always mindful of the little dude and the kids, and are not wont to go so all-out that we do not also try to keep track of where our gear is in relation to everything else involved. Girls, keeping their reproductive organs safely tucked away, don’t have that problem, so they tend not to get distracted from their berzerker rage mode.
I think a lot of it is that physical fighting is culturally more accepted between guys than between girls, and thus the guys have more opportunity to learn, either from being taught by a friend or older male relative, or just by observation, fisticuffs techniques (how to throw/avoid/take a punch, grappling technique, etc).
Since girls aren’t supposed to fight, we don’t really learn the “right way” to do it, so when the berserkergang is upon is, we just dive in with with the weapons that nature and a good manicurist have endowed us with.
It might have something to do with this:
Two words:
Mud wrestling.
My old martial arts instructor once said that women are part of 2 different worlds.
There’s the societal rules that we impose, wherein women are kind, gentle nurturers, who don’t fight and let men protect them.
Then there’s the biological drive that makes women defend and protect offspring which makes them fierce enough to attack full grown wild predators.
When you can suppress the former, the latter is a handful.
I have a pair of theories :
1 : Females are wired differently when it comes to violence. For males, it’s largely a dominance display; they want to win, to prove their superiority. For females, they just want to hurt their opponent. Therefore, males tend to stop fighting once the other person backs down or falls over; females don’t. Males fight to disable, females fight to cause pain/humiliation.
2 : Women are not taught to control violent impulses, but to suppress them completely. When they lose it, they lose it all the way; they’ve never learned to moderate themselves.
I might think of something else when I’m less tired…
Guy fighting is largely about either establishing dominance or winning respect. If one guy gets jumped by another but makes a good show of defending himself, the two will just as often as not call a truce and may even become fast friends. This kind of behavior totally baffles women, who (as others have commented) rarely get into a physical confrontation until they are ready to kill.
+1
Guys practice at the display stuff. Girls are out for blood.
A guy wants to knock you down. A girl wants to knock you down and stand on your neck.
Interesting aside: have you seen these studies on Internet bullying? I have read bits where they talk about the dominant trend is that girls are the bullies and that they anonymously are out for blood in the tactics they use.
Because we hope that during all the scratching and biting and clawing they might…kiss. 
I miss Seinfeld. Sometimes.
When most guys think of girls fighting we think less of the biting, tearing, bleeding and more of two grunting sweating girls ripping each others’ clothes off. Same reason I like women’s tennis. 
I think guys over analyze a fight thinking about defense and offense, deliberate moves, pacing themselves thinking they are about to go twelve rounds. Like a conservative boxer.
Gals are all about offense, punch-scratch-pull-bite anyway you can, and expend all your energy in round 1, don’t even bother with defense, just go nuts! Like a mid-eighties Mike Tyson.