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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   28356 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 28, 2023

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For the first time in my life, I'm starting to think we need childhood bullying. I am continually astonished by the cruelty of other people, often practiced under the pretense of standing up to bullies. It's like these people don't actually know what it's like to be on the other end. If they did, wouldn't they be more sympathetic?

So, what if we need childhood bullying to prevent adulthood bullying? Perhaps people need to learn at a young age how it feels to be a victim so they don't become the victimizer as an adult?

Of course, maybe being mistreated doesn't cause people to sympathize with others who are mistreated. But I've never seen anyone make this argument, at least prescriptively, so I figured I should, so I can see how people would argue against it.

I disagree with your premise that childhood bullying is less than before. Bullying is a universal feature of children's culture (and arguably, human culture) where low status outsiders are ritually demeaned and excluded by the mainstream. If violence is allowed, violence will be used; if not, the bullying will express in other ways. It's just that the people you think should be bullied are no longer outsiders; they are the mainstream, doing the bullying.

My impression from talking to older people is that the severity of, and violence involved in, school bullying has declined significantly over the past hundred years. I'm not super confident in that, but it'd make sense as part of a general intentional move away from things that seem to be harmful and coercive. E.g. really old people talk about parents and teachers harshly physically punishing children and students, that doesn't happen anymore.

the severity of, and violence involved in, school bullying has declined significantly over the past hundred years

In our majestic modern enlightenment, the law prevents both boy and girl from bullying in ways that only boys are sociobiologically suited to.

school bullying has declined significantly over the past hundred years

Yeah, now it's just "culture war".

My impression from talking to older people is that the severity of, and violence involved in, school bullying has declined significantly over the past hundred years.

Like @jeroboam, I suspect there's a important difference in the way we're using the word "bullying". Let me share an anecdote from Rachel Simmon's Odd Girl Out: The hidden culture of aggression in girls which I got via Joyce Benenson's book on male v. female friendship.

Brianna and Mackenzie were the queen bees, and they presided over the seventh grade. Brianna was the prettiest, Mackenzie the best at sports. Their favorite hobby was having a boyfriend. Jenny [a transfer student] wasn’t really interested in a boyfriend, but she still like hanging out with the guys. Mostly she liked to play soccer and basketball with them after school. She liked to wear jeans and T-shirts instead of make-up and miniskirts.

She had barely introduced herself when Brianna and Mackenzie gave her a code name and started calling her Harriet the Hairy Whore. They told everyone Jenny was hooking up with the boys in the woods behind the soccer field. Jenny knew that being called a slut was the worst thing in the world, no matter where you lived. No one was even kissing yet. It was the lowest of the low.

Brianna and Mackenzie started a club called Hate Harriet the Hore Incorporated. They got every girl to join except two who didn’t care. All the members had to walk by Jenny in the hallway and say “Hhiiiiiii...”

They made a long sighing noise to make sure she knew they were sounding out the initials of the club: HHHI. Usually two or more girls would say it and then look at each other and laugh. Sometimes they couldn’t even say the whole thing, they were laughing so hard. It seemed like Mackenzie and Brianna had suddenly made it their goal in life to ruin her.

[...]

There was no way she’d tell her mother, and certainly not her father. She felt nauseous just thinking about telling her parents she was such a reject.

Every day was an endless battle. She was exhausted trying not to cry, stiffening her body against the hallway attacks, sitting through lunch after lunch alone. There was no one else to be friends with in the grade because everyone, the few that there were, was against her.

One night Jenny’s sadness left no room for her fear, and she picked up the phone. Jenny called Brianna, Mackenzie, and a few other girls. She asked each of them, “Why do you hate me?” They denied everything.

“But why are you doing the Hate Harriet the Hore club?” she pleaded.

Their voices were light and sweet. “We don’t have a Hate Harriet the Hore club!” each one assured her, as though they were telling her the earth was round. They were so nice to Jenny that for a second she didn’t believe it was really them. Then she could almost feel her heart surging up through her chest. The next morning, she actually looked forward to getting out of bed. It would be different now.

Then she got to school.

“Hhhiiiiiiii...!”

To me this is bullying, and the psychological content received by Jenny is equal to that if it were 1923 and MacKenzie and Brianna instead took her out to the woods, stuck a bonnet in her mouth, and strapped her with a branch. Or if it were 1963 and they circled around her and screamed SLUT to her face. Social disapproval and assertion of dominance, when it comes to bullying, are the essence; violence and open confrontation but delivery mechanisms.

So, yes, we have created rules that limit beating a kid up or yelling slurs in their face. That doesn't mean bullying has decreased, it's just become harder to measure.

Those are not equals. Jenny can decide to just not have friends and eat alone. Read a book during lunch.

Having your own physical space threatened is a lot worse. Words you can just check yourself out of.

Those are not equals.

The intent behind them is, though; indeed, that's the whole problem. I see no difference consequentially or deontologically between burning down your enemy's business directly, or spreading rumors so that your enemy's business is destroyed.

"But it wasn't my fault anyone else believed me" is the distaff counterpart of "how could I have known that breaking in, dumping gas all over the floor, and lighting a match would burn the building down?" and for a society to function properly both must be punished the same way.

No, most normies find social death worse than physical violence.

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