Originally posted on my Tumblr, now revised somewhat and re-posted here.
I have seen people chased off a forum because of bullying. I have seen people have tearful break-downs because of bullying. I have had those break-downs myself.
I have been bullied in meatspace – online I seem to have mostly escaped it, with a few notable exceptions I won’t be drawing into this post.
My point is: I write, not as an expert on bullying, but as someone who would like to think she has an ounce of empathy hidden away somewhere in the dark corners of her soul. (my what? I have one of those?!?!) I write, based on the observations I have made over the years, both in cases where I was bullied, but also where others were.
Bullying is incredibly harmful, let there be no doubt about that. Bullying kills. But let’s also be aware of the context in which bullying kills, because bullying is a much more complex thing than a bunch of mean kids saying a few nasty remarks to another kid.
When a person, who is by some order of magnitude marginalised, is bullied, the bullying does not stand alone. It stands as the out-spoken and sometimes violent arm of a society that does not approve of the way in which the victim was “different”. I put different in scare quotes, because sometimes simply wearing glasses is “different” enough for society to hate you. Bullying usually focuses on something that society has deemed an undesirable quality, even if it a feature or trait that is entire harmless. Thus pretty much anything that can be construed to be a flaw can be a focus of bullying. And with the exacting standards of today’s fashion and photo-retouching there will be plenty of perceived flaws to find. That means that not only identities such as our sexual orientation, our gender, our nationality, skin colour, culture, religion, disabilities etc can be focii for bullying, it can also be shallow shit like the ‘wrong’ hair colour, unfashionable clothes, being too skilled at stuff in school, not being good enough at those same things, being ambitious, being unambitious, looking ‘too’ good, not looking good enough, liking the wrong music/singer/film/actor/show/whatever. I could go on. All of these variables mean that in specific communities it will be specific groups that are exposed to bullying.
Have you ever seen a bully be bullied? Of course not. Because the bully belongs to the group of people, who live up to the standards of that community. Mind, the community can be very small, so in the school yard C will be the bully because zie belongs to the group who likes Sailor Moon, but when zie gets home the kids on the street will bully hir, because she goes to a different school than them. So in that sense a bully can be bullied, yes. But within the same community the bullies are never bullied themselves, because they belong to the group in power, by whatever trait or feature that defines that group.
Bullying is about power. Bullying does not work if the bullies do not have power, in fact, without powers they cannot be bulies. In that way it functions sort of like sexism and racism and other such -isms, where instead of prejudice + power you have meanness + power = ability to bully.
If you have no power, you cannot bully anyone (and if you’re not mean, you won’t – goes without saying), because they will laugh in your face and tell you you’re insignificant to them. That’s not very effective bullying. In order to efficiently bully someone, you must first take their power away from them. That is why schoolyard bullies are so quick to declare that telling an adult is like admitting defeat, and to threaten that it’ll be worst for you. If you’re going to tell on them, you have the power to make them stop. The moment they’ve convinced you that telling the adults would be a bad thing, the moment you won’t be telling anyone, that’s the moment they have the absolute power. That’s when the bullying become dead serious. Emphasis on dead here, because bullying kills.
Additionally, bullies pick on things that society view – or at least presents – as defective. This means that when glasses are unfashionable, everyone will know that wearing glasses is Bad, and when you get bullied for wearing them, you automatically know that you’ll receive no support, because you’re doing this thing that is Bad ie. wearing glasses.
The above paragraph does not take into account that sometimes it is the adults who bully the kids, and that’s even worse, because they already have the power. They don’t need to establish it like the school yard bully does. Most of the bullying I have experienced as a child were at the hands (or tongues, as it were) of adults – many of them my teachers/coaches.
Anyway. While one of the privilegedenyingdude memes (specifically the one attacking a specific Tumblr) could be construed to be an attempt at bullying, I have to say I disagree. Because the target of that meme was not a marginalised person in any known way. That is, the meme did not attack him from a place of power for a perceived and unacceptable difference of his, but rather attacked him for using his place of power to attack other people’s differences.
You can’t bully a bully by calling him a bully. The bully is the one with the power, and power cannot be bullied – power IS the bully, or at least the tool of the bully.
Sure, a lot of people got behind the meme that called a specific Tumblr out for being a privilegedenyingdude, but let’s face it: we can be a whole host of Tumblrs calling the bullshit out, but that bully will still belong to the same group as those who make the laws and enforce them out there in meatspace, he will still belong to the group of bullies who decide what’s what and what’s not. We know it. He knows it. And that makes this so-called bullying meme rather ineffective in all it’s non-bullying glory.
It was not a nice thing to post. Indeed it was not. But let’s not pretend that we should be nice when calling out privileged asshats, who have repeatedly proven that they won’t own their privilege. I sense a few bingo squares here. The “tone argument” and the “harming your own cause” squares to be exact (not scare quotes – citation quotes).
And frankly… if once in a while those who are usually the victims of the bully stand up and talk back, we all know that the classic school yard strategy is for the bully to call the adults to squash the resistance, and every attempt at explaining how “he started it” is moot. This is something we felt was unjust when those supposedly responsible adults did it to us as children, why do it to ourselves now? We are pulling a goddamn bingo square on ourselves, saying to ourselves and each other that we “should be the better/bigger person”.
We already are, dammit. We’re the ones fighting the bigotry. And calling a bigoted asshat a bigoted asshat is not bigotry. Nor is it bullying.
It doesn’t matter who started it. What matters is who has the power base. Because it is the power base that makes the difference in the effects of bullying.
And by now the privilegedenyingdude meme is gone. Why? Because the bully called the teachers to quash the resistance. A photo, legally bought to be used for a meme, but with a shitload of exceptions where the sellers of the photo retained the right to call back the use of the photo, if it were used for stuff of which they did not approve. Yeah… they recalled the photo, and claimed copyright infringement because a bunch of white male bullies complained that their victims were talking back to them.
Seriously… this is classic. This is the exact same situation that took place when S from my class was beaten up by the other boys in class every day. And on the day when he finally lost his stoicism and let them have it, one of the bullies ran and fetched a teacher. S spent the remainder of the week in the headmaster’s office – the bullies didn’t. S told them all that the bullies started it, but the teachers shot back: “Yes, but you continued it.” And that is apparently the worst crime of all. To fight back. To stand up.
The way society is constructed these days a fat woman cannot bully a thin woman about her looks, a trans woman cannot bully a cis woman about her gender presentation, a woman of colour cannot bully a white woman about her level of education, a woman with disabilities cannot bully an abled woman about her social propriety. They can tease, they can wheedle, they can snark, but they cannot bully, because bullying presumes a position in a hierarchy that they simply do not have. Take into a account multiple intersections, and you’ll find that bullying follows right along the same lines that oppressions do. Imagine that, there’s a connection somewhere in there – not hidden very well.
So while lots of not so nice things are said and written about some people, it just does not constitute bullying if it is not backed up by the power to exclude them from situations and places they want to be.
This, of course, does not negate the hurt a pile-on or even simple teasing can cause. And it does not make a pile-on the right thing to do nor an okay thing to do.
[trigger warning - descriptions of violence]
But where a pile-on might have the effect of pushing someone over on the sidewalk ie. it causes a minor annoyance like if you stumbled over a crooked pavement stone, bullying is running them down with your car, backing over them once more, making sure that no ambulance is called at all, and possibly kicking them a few times for good measure, just to make sure they never return.
[trigger warning end]
Where a pile-on is mean, indeed, bullying is psychological and emotional violence, and sometimes also physical violence.
And that’s one heck of a difference that we ought to keep in mind.
Filed under: Children's Health, Izms, Kyriarchy, Mental Health, Raising children
