Beware of Wishing for What You Deserve

I'd seen this meme before, but today when someone passed it along I figured out how to say what is wrong with it.

That girl you called a slut may not be a virgin; she may in fact sleep around quite a lot.  But that doesn't entitle you to bully her.  The pregnant girl may not have been raped; she may in fact be a "slut."  But that doesn't entitle you to bully her.  That boy you called lame may not have to work hard every night to support his family.  But that doesn't entitle you to bully him.  That girl you pushed down may not be getting abused at home, but that doesn't entitle you to push her down.  That girl you called fat may not be starving herself; she may be binging on Hostess Twinkies every night.  But that doesn't entitle you to bully her.  That scarred old man may never have worn a uniform; maybe he got his scars in a fight in a bar over some trivial squabble he was too drunk to remember afterward.  But that doesn't entitle you to bully him.  The crying boy's mother may be perfectly healthy; he may be crying because he didn't get the new Xbox he wanted.  But that doesn't entitle you to bully him.

Implicit in this meme is the suggestion that it's only bad to bully people who don't deserve it, and that it's okay to bully people who do.  Who gets to decide who deserves it?  Insofar as I'm right about this, whoever composed this meme is not really against bullying: they just don't want the 'wrong people' to be bullied.

For example, I found this in a book* by a supposed expert on bullying, telling how to prevent it.  Here's one of the author's supposed successful cases:

Claire had very long hair and a low fringe.  No-one could see her face.  All the other girls wore headbands and called her ‘shaggy-dog.’  The moment she wore a headband and had her fringe cut, the teasing stopped [176].

I'll admit that making such a change may be an easy way to stop oneself from being bullied.  But it's hard to imagine a more classic example of blaming the victim, while leaving the bullies free to police others. Bullies may try to hide behind the bigotry of the communities they live in, justifying their behavior by claiming that their victims deserve it.  Just being different in some trivial way is seen many people, including adults, as a punishable offense.  The aim of the meme I'm dissecting is to try to get rid of difference, to persuade bullies to see the sameness in people they might pick on.  (I'm probably being too generous, though: the meme's last sentence shows that it isn't really directed at bullies, but at people who are "against bullying" -- and aims to bully them into re-posting it.)  That, from everything else I've read on the subject, completely misunderstands the psychology of bullies.

Here's one of the same author's recommendations:

Get fit:  Many targets look weak and wimpy.  Don’t spend your free time in a library or hidden inside a computer.  You need to play outdoors, exercise, go to the gym, play sport or dance.  Even walking for 20 minutes five times a week makes a difference.  Then you can gesticulate, duck, run quickly or protect yourself physically [217].

Sure, exercise is good and important.  But as one who spent his free time in libraries as much as possible as a kid, and still does, I object to the implication here that people should deal with bullying by appeasing the bullies, adopting their supposed values, and becoming like them.  The key words here might be "look weak and wimpy"; bullies pick on people they think are safe targets.  And you can't always get away from bullies by running or ducking, especially if they gang up on you.  Again, this recommendation blames the victim and justifies the bully.  So what if a person looks "weak and wimpy"?  That doesn't entitle anyone to bully them.

Even many people who'd never think of picking on a child seem to think there are people who deserve to be picked on.  Fat-shaming is a very popular pastime among adults of all political persuasions, for example; so is shaming the old, or the sexually active, or the insufficiently gender-compliant.  (Many people also seem to think it's okay to post bigoted stuff on the internet, because they aren't doing it face to face.)  They might indignantly and self-righteously denounce those who bully one group, but they're glad to find people they think it's all right to persecute.  (Even children aren't really safe.  In Alfie Kohn's newest book, he shows that a disturbing hatred of children is widespread and acceptable among liberals and conservatives alike.)

Here's a mild example that showed up this morning, from a grammar-obsessives' page.

The cartoon is funny in a number of ways, but it relies on some stereotypes about language and language users that really need to be dispelled.  The primitive (or the highly educated and intelligent person, for that matter) who speaks broken English, for one.  In his or her own language he or she will be perfectly articulate -- a real caveman would not have spoken broken English ("What woman have?") but a correct form of his own -- but in a new language he or she can only communicate with difficulty.  (Of course, we have no idea what the languages spoken by Stone-Age cavedwellers were like.)  This is one reason why I think everybody should have to learn a new language at some point in his or her life; it might be that struggling to assemble a proper sentence in a strange tongue will promote empathy for foreigners who've done the same with one's own.  But probably not.

Besides, many modern languages don't have pronouns, or use them differently than English does.  Spanish, for example, has pronouns but doesn't use them as much as English does: verb conjugations convey the information that pronouns do in English.  So in Spanish a sentence without a pronoun -- No hablo inglés, I don't speak English --is perfectly correct.  I know that the speaker is speaking in the first person from the conjugation of hablar.  According to this Wikipedia article, Mandarin Chinese speakers "infrequently" use first-person pronouns, though "their usage is gaining popularity among the young, most notably in online communications" -- perhaps because of the influence of other languages which use them more.  But I've also noticed well-educated Americans from the middle and professional classes who regularly drop first-person pronouns, e.g.: "Have to say that this appeals to me a great deal."

So, the cartoon above is harmless in itself, but it's based on assumptions about people who don't speak Standard English for whatever reason, and in the context of a grammar-obsessives' page it feels less innocent.  After all, people who don't speak or write "correct" are stupid dolts who deserve to be mocked and discriminated against, because they're ignorant and uneducated and probably Republicans.

As the political philosopher Michael Neumann wrote a few years ago, "Where ‘respect’ means not beating people or putting them in jail or driving them from their homes, it is a fine idea. But you shouldn’t do those things even to people you hold in contempt. To call this sort of restraint ‘respect’ is to disguise clear moral values in gummy slush."  When I quote this to many fine educated liberal people, they don't seem to get it (though yes, some do).  Some squinch up their faces uncomfortably as if they're thinking, But then what random strangers can I pick on?
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*Evelyn Field, Bully blocking.  London and Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2007.

What Is To Be Done?

[I'm trying to clear out my drafts folder; this one seems worth keeping.]

I sorta ran out of steam towards the end of "Dude I'm a Fag." Ever since the Sixties I've heard that those of us who criticize society shouldn't just criticize, we should come up with constructive, responsible suggestions for positive change! ("Withdraw US troops from Vietnam/Iraq/Afghanistan," for example, is too negative and critical. "Send more, better equipped troops until the Vietnamese/Iraqis/Afghans are ready to take responsibility for their own country" is positive and constructive.)

As you will no doubt have guessed, I'm not very concerned with being positive, constructive, or responsible. I am concerned with being practical, and I admit that it is not practical simply to say stuff like, "If more males simply refuse to play these games, and stop backing up the would-be Alpha Boys who play them, then 'that's so gay' will lose its sting." I know, I know: if everybody would just eat less, obesity would disappear. If everybody would ride the Peace Train, there would be no more war. Is that gay, or what? If it were that simple, we wouldn't be in trouble now, on any front.

After all, even a militant feminist movement let itself be slowed down and distracted by dyke-baiting, though there were noble exceptions who argued that feminists shouldn't be intimidated by accusations that they were lesbians. Mainstream feminists reacted by trying to purge lesbians from their organizations. To this day, women who try to distance themselves from feminism will fret about this and insist that they like men, for all the good it does them. Women in the military, "straight and gay, are accused as lesbians when they rebuff sexual advances or report sexual abuse. ... Lesbian baiting is a powerful tool to keep women 'in their place', not just in the military but in other societal contexts as well." As with fag-baiting, lesbian-baiting has little to do with a woman's actual sexual orientation or practice; but even many adult women with strong political consciousness have found it difficult to counter this move. Simple denial is not very effective, because a woman's heterosexuality is not the point; her willingness to be subordinate to men is.

Fag-baiting is one of the methods boys and men use to negotiate their place in male society. Sometimes it looks to me like a game of Musical Chairs: whoever can't unseat someone else loses and is the Fag. Stephen O. Murray wrote (Latin American Male Homosexualities [New Mexico, 1995], p. 55), "Topping other men (usually verbally or symbolically, but occasionally physically) is central to machismo, perhaps as important as maintaining the subordination of women. As [Roger] Lancaster [Life Is Hard (California, 1992, 236-37)] explained, machismo 'is not exclusively or primarily a means of structuring power relations between men and women. It is a means of structuring power among men.'" C. J. Pascoe shows that this applies among adolescent boys. One of the most striking passages in Dude, You're a Fag! recounts

just one of many instances from my field notes: two boys walked out of the PE locker room, and one yelled, “Fucking faggot!” at no one in particular. None of the other students paid them any mind, since this sort of thing happened so frequently. Similar spontaneous yelling of some variation of the word fag, seemingly apropos of nothing, happened repeatedly among boys throughout the school [59].

In a more sensible world, the boy who yelled "Fucking faggot" out of nowhere, at nobody, would be regarded as one views a derelict having an argument on the street with the voices in his head.

The Persistence of the Closet

Just a tidbit: I'm traveling this weekend, so I have a television in front of me, tuned to Jimmy Kimmel's talk show.  One of his guests tonight is a young actress named Kerry Washington, who's very civic-minded and involved in anti-bullying organizations.  She mentioned that today is Spirit Day, an anti-bullying event, though she didn't mention it was sponsored by GLAAD or that its focus is on the bullying of GLBT youth. 

Then she mentioned that she's going to do an event with GLSEN, "another ... anti-bullying group."  There was a tiny hesitation in the middle of that phrase, which suggests to me that she knows better.  GLSEN, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, is concerned with bullying, but also with curriculum -- how to acknowledge that there are gay people, including students, in school and in the world at large, from the first years of school.  Washington's hesitation, indicating she knew she was talking about a gay organization but chose not to mention it.  I can understand that, I guess, but it's a sign of how far we still have to go that this small closeting still happens, on quasi-sophisticated late-
night television.

This ...

... is totally gay. And I mean that in the most positive, multicultural, lust-filled way I possibly can.

Even I haven't been able to avoid the Jeremy Lin phenomenon, best described by Andrew Ti at Deadspin as the way an "Asian player who, through a combination of circumstance, luck, timing, and some monster performances, has captured America's admittedly infantile and famously fickle imagination." Still, the first full article I read about him was Alexander Chee's slobbering encomium at Salon today, comments under which led me to Ti's article and from there to the clip above. Here's the thing. Sure, it's nice that another racial line has been breached. It might even make a difference to Asian-American kids who are currently the most-bullied ethnic demographic in the country, but anti-black racism is still epidemic despite the high visibility of African-American college and professional athletes. Jeremy Lin has earned his success, but it has no real importance or significance.

It occurs to me, though: what will happen when we finally get an openly gay basketball star of the same prowess?