Input Junkie

that's the thing with bullying, right? its only funny to the bully.

I wish. Sometimes the bully has an appreciative audience.

However, here's a rather cool clip about a habitually obnoxious person who finds out what his friends and relatives really think of him. The relevent section is about 47 minutes in, though I recommend the whole show.

http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1183

From:

madfilkentist

The Imus flap was blown up out of all proportion. People who weren't even the direct targets of the insult were supposedly "scarred for life" by Imus's name-calling. If there is any great movement saying that bullying is OK, I've failed to notice it. But there is considerable, and justified, reaction against the notion that insult equals injury, and that freedom of speech needs to be curtailed for that reason.

From:

The Imus flap was blown up out of all proportion.

I disagree. I don't think that anybody was "scarred for life," but people rightly took exception to Imus targeting a team of college basketball players as subjects for racist and, just as importantly (because it keeps getting lost in the debate), sexist insults. Big difference from making snide remarks about ambitious public figures like Hillary Clinton or Jesse Jackson, who presumably have learned to grow a thick skin. And it was hardly the first time Imus had used such terms.

As for "freedom of speech," please. The First Amendment covers governmental censorship. The government didn't censor Imus. Nobody did. Advertisers, pressured by consumers, pulled their ads from his show, and MSNBC then cancelled it for economic reasons. Nobody has an inherent right to be broadcast or published. And Imus will likely get offered a gig on satellite radio, paid for by the millions of people who, inexplicably find him funny.

(I don't find him not-funny because of the racist/sexist insults. I've listened to his show and found him boring.)

From:

goldsquare.livejournal.com

Pardon me for butting in, when we don't really know each other.

I'm seeing the conflation of too many issues around Imus, and the discussions you linked to.

Context affects so much: the same day that Imus's shows were cancelled, I was watching Comedy Central's broadcast of "The Chappelle Show". In one skit, which he wrote, an elderly white woman enthusiastically said the N word. Where is the shock? Where is the outrage? There was none, and should be none. I don't often watch that show (it was the classic lazy man's case of "I watched the show before it, and didn't change the channel when the next show came on"), Dave Chappelle does race humor. That's his show. That is his context.

I tuned to a different channel. I don't think Imus went beyond the Imus pale, and I don't enjoy is work. Not since I outgrew him in college. I think he was attacked by his non-audience, and abused for that result. Comedy is a tough business - you dance on the edge, and fall off. His comedy is an ugly business, and he fell off. I can accept that.

Whether society at large has too many coarse niches, I am not sure. Yeah, I find there are many I don't care for. But by and large, I live in a world of civility, and if I wish to sample coarseness, I am able to do so. The challenge to American society and free speech is the ability to permit speech that you personally don't care for. Permitting that which you approve of, is easy.

Which brings me to my point of difference or debate. I believe that a diverse and civil society requires tolerance of all sorts, and many responsibilities. One of those responsibilities is to speak well for each context you are in. That is the transmissive role.

The receptive role is equivalently important, and that is the duty to be hard to offend. To evaluate context. "Was this directed at me? Was it more general? Was it appropriate to its intended audience, time and place? Was it a valid exercise of free speech?"

I believe that person to person civility is required. I think that many contexts require civility. I think a smart person recognizes that words can jump from one context to another - and is thoughtful of that.

I am proud of those ladies, who did not personally over-react. They let their accomplishments speak for themselves. I am disappointed in many of the speakers against Imus - who felt free to intimate heartfelt personal positions to a quip from a comedy show.

(I compare and contrast Imus's off the cuff comedy, with the sad insanity perpetrated by Michael Ricards not so long ago. His was not comedy in context, and his claims that it was such ring hollow.)

Convivial society puts a duty on all of us. And, forgive me for contradicting you a bit in your LJ, some of that duty is the duty to not find insults whenever you can NOT find them.

(None of which answers the questions of "how do we react when we are directly insulted in an inappropriate context".)

From:

I'm seeing the conflation of too many issues around Imus, and the discussions you linked to.
[snip]

Agreed. Especially with this part:
One of those responsibilities is to speak well for each context you are in.

Yep. Although I don't cut Imus as much slack as you do, there is a difference between what he said and what Michael Richards said. Just as there's a difference between what both of them said and what Dave Chappelle says.

More generally, there's a difference between how one speaks (or should speak) in bed with one's lover, how one speaks with friends at a bar, how one speaks with one's parents, how one speaks in the workplace, how one speaks in front of Congress, and so forth. Not to mention that speech with friends, family, lovers, and even co-workers is going to differ depending on one's own personal situation(s).

A lot of the people who wring their hands about the "lack of civility" and especially the "vulgarity" that goes on today are either trying to shut others up themselves, or they're enormous prisses who need to take the sticks out of their ~~asses~~ backsides. And they need to learn a little history. Public conversations of the past might not have prominently featured words like "cocksucker," but they did feature duels, fistfights on the floor of the House and Senate, and truly ugly cartoons and editorials in newspapers.

From:

I had that posted over my office doorway. Many found it inconceivable. I dealt with all kinds of shit, being in the pet business. Heh-heh. Where love and money meet.

I was never vulgar, but I called things as I saw them. Sometimes I went home weeping and headed for qa warm bath.

So I'm used to standing up to insults. Most of them verifying my gender. I am a Manager. I am XX. I stand 5'2". I am meaner than you. Please do not think that looming over me will get you anywhere. I have learned to resist intimidation since I was 20" tall. And I will tell you what you're doing and why I don't like it. Without swearing. Bogus Rattus norvegicus anus.

From:

I'm still thinking about this. The problem is that I was a designated humor object when I was a kid, and I don't have much of a mean streak myself.

I don't have any sympathy for people who get pleasure from making other people's days a little worse, and who do it again and again. On the one hand, it's a really strong--sometimes compulsive--motivation for them, and I believe people need some slack for who they are. On the other, they're not cutting me slack for what I want.

And insults don't stay in their own context--if someone's insulted you, the odds are very good that one of your friends will tell you.

I don't think group insults are some minor thing--they can set a context for how you personally get treated.

From:

goldsquare.livejournal.com

I think the whole discussion hovers around an area rich in contradiction and in mutually impossible goals: in this case, free speech rights and good manners obligations. In terms of free speech rights, it is hard to support free speech that one does not actually believe in. Everyone supports free speech (content and style) that they agree with.

Free speech grants others the right to be horribly inappropriate, impolite - even scandalously wrong. Free speech involves supporting people saying racist, hatred things. Or, in the case of someone like Imus, making a joke which only some find funny, and which cuts very close to the bone to some.

As for your comment: "And insults don't stay in their own context--if someone's insulted you, the odds are very good that one of your friends will tell you." - in my personal ethos, I draw a very narrow boundary. I am prepared to be insulted if something is personally said to me, or about me. Again, context matters - I am sure my ex-wife says terrible things about me on occasion, and I do not find myself insulted. Just weary.

But I reserve my outrage for myself, or for comments which were meant to be deliberately and contextually universal. Because the logical and social response to "I am outraged for an insult not done to me and mine" is polarization, excess anger, and permanent divisions.

Analogously: my mother was a Holocaust survivor. I've been encouraged to seek reparations money now that she is long deceased. If I did so, however, I would be punishing people one or two generations removed from harm done to my mother, to reward myself - who was not directly harmed. In order to promote an end of harms done, in order to promote peace, I promote the notion that all grievances must end, and must be contained as well as possible.

So - I strongly disapprove of Imus and his work, and have for years, but I can't find myself to be fraternally aggrieved when his "intended to be humorous work" is taken out of context, and an insult to others is more widely shared. Little good can come of it, I fear, but much bad. Despite his speech being something I find odious.

So, when you close with "I don't think group insults are some minor thing--they can set a context for how you personally get treated.", I agree. But I also fear that "group responses to individual insults" can also set a stage for how everyone is treated - and I dislike that as much as I dislike such "insults". Which is why I urged considering context before "punching up" loutish comedy into the territory of intentional and broad-spectrum insult.

From:

fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com

One effect the bully can hope for, even if you don't react in any way, is the effect of making you look bad to others--there are plenty of people who looked down on Kerry as a result of the Swift-boaters--and some would have done so whatever his reaction was. The victim isn't the only one affected--so is the audience--whether they are taught to fear on their own account, or led to think less of the target.

From:

osewalrus.livejournal.com

Yes, I despie people who insult and bully. I have encountered it in a variety of circumstances and it always pisses me off. Especially the experts who have learned the manuevers and the rhetorical tricks that leave people felling helpless and degraded.

OTOH, especially in fandom, it is important to distinguish between the genuinely cruel and the socially clueless. And the problem of different cultural expectations. I was in one meeting where a person said "the problem I have is that peoiple are so 'sensitive' about offending people that they dance around and speak in generalities. Where I come from, we can shout and scream at each other and its o.k., because we get to the truth and can clear the air."

That doesn't make shouting at each other intrinsicly good or intrinsicly bad, or make blunt criticism intrincly right or intrinsicly wrong. Which is where problems happen. Enter a traditional men's yeshiva and you will see paired up study partners shouting at each other about the various interpretations of the text. But if your study partner spoke to you the same way about your choice of music, you'd be absolutely right to be offended. Because it isn't a behavior that belongs there.

So to conclude my long ramble, life among human beings remains eternally complicated. We have cruel bullies. We have cruelty caused by throwing all manner of restraint to the winds in a mistaken belief that such "free expression" is the way to go. We have accidental cruelty caused by behaviors that are acceptable in one place and not in another. And we have, especially in fandom, an abundance of not terribly well socialized individuals.

A final thought, the ones who really get my got are those who are incredibly sensitive to how other people treat them, yet expect others to simply brush off their own offensive behavior provided that it was not done with ill intent. A useful double standard, but not one conducive to social harmony.

From:

solri.livejournal.com

I like the comment about Stoicism. If everyone were a Stoic sophos, you could punch people in the street at random and they wouldn't get upset. (They might, of course, decide it was their Stoic duty to punch you back.) There again, if everyone were that sagely, so would you be, so you wouldn't want to punch them, except perhaps in the following scenario ...

BAM!
"Ouch! Why did you do that?"
"Just checking your apatheia, mate."
"Ah I see. Well, I had a split-second fight/flight reaction when I was about to murder you, but I'd say that was a propathos, not a real pathos, wouldn't you?"
"I guess you're right. Try me."
BAM!
"Hmm, I don't think I even got a propathos there."
"But that's because you asked me to hit you, so you had already refused assent to the cognitive impression."
"You might be right, my friend. We should do this more often."
BAM!
"Teehee, I just did."
"Haha, you little Stoic rascal, you!"

From:

womzilla.livejournal.com

Lore Sjoberg coined the term "Shutupicrat" years ago, but I'm not sure if it's the same thing.

From:

I definitely see more support out there not only for verbal but for physical bullying. I've seen quite a few right-wingers make snide remarks about how various people who disagree with them — hardly all of them flaming leftists — must have been "the kind of kid who was regularly stuffed into his locker." With the obvious implication that this sort of treatment was deserved.

More generally, I've also seen plenty of commentary on "the pussification of Americans," especially of boys, complaining about how bullying is no longer considered OK to do. Now I think it's completely legitimate to opine that sometimes, a kid just has to fight back physically against a bully; and that schools that punish both equally because "violence is never the answer" are wrong. But the sort of opinions I'm seeing are more in the vein of, "The weak kids who let themselves be pushed around deserve it. Fuck 'em."

Back on the topic of verbal bullying, I've also seen a teacher commenting on a right-leaning education blog that he trusted most kids in high school to make judgments about their peers. The context was what's known to feminists as "slut-shaming" — specifically, spreading rumors that such-and-such girl was a slut. (This teacher, btw, is also a sports coach. You can draw from that what you will.)

I think this is a factor in the victim-blaming that went around the 'net in the last few weeks after the VA Tech shooting. I was appalled to see several people on my f-list rage at the students who fled, hid, or froze in place as "cowards" who should have instead rushed Cho Seung-Hui (and, even more disgustingly, that the 71-year-old Professor Livrescu "wasn't really a hero" because he "only" barricaded the door, rather than attempted to jump Cho). Never mind that the ROTC cadet who did attempt to confront Cho physically was killed. Defriending ensued. Anyway, I think that while such ranting is in great part indicative of the ranter's own fears and denial that he himself might someday become a victim, I think it's also been enabled by what you refer to as bullying as ideology.

From:

You hang out in a much rougher online neighborhood than I do, which I suppose isn't surprising.

I'm appalled at what you're mentioning--it's nastier than I could have imagined.

From:

You hang out in a much rougher online neighborhood than I do, which I suppose isn't surprising.

<grin>

To be honest, most of my LJ friends aren't like that, even though I originally "met" many of them in alt.tasteless. They're often "rougher" and more cynical in tone, yes, but the vast majority of them have their heads screwed on straight when it comes to basic morals and ethics. Even the ones who sometimes struggle to do the right thing know what the right thing is.

As for elsewhere on the 'net, I did spend quite a bit of time on more right-leaning blogs in the first few years after 9/11. Eventually I got sick of the Bible-thumping, the sneering at anybody who wasn't xtian or Jewish, the sexism and sometimes outright misogyny, the crypto- (and sometimes not-so-crypto-) racism, the homophobia, and so forth. Many of them are as bad as the Islamofascists they decry (and, in some cases, proud of it (http://www.amazon.com/Enemy-At-Home-Cultural-Responsibility/dp/0385510128/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-0134242-5077766?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1178462512&sr=8-1)).

I'm appalled at what you're mentioning — it's nastier than I could have imagined.

Yes, it's quite appalling.

One aspect I forgot to mention in my previous comment was how much of the pro-bullying sentiment surfaced after Columbine. The fact that Harris and Klebold were nasty pieces of work, and that many of their victims (well, the best-known, anyway) were popular, white-bread xtians, seemed to justify bullying in the minds of many e-trogs. Never mind that bullying was a precipitating factor in the massacre (though of course the blame rests solely with H&K...millions of bullied children and teens don't murder their classmates).

From:

I am D'G's girlfriend/sweetheart/lover. I ran an ethical pet store for 20 yrs., and put up with no insults. I find the new ideology of stoicism in the face of random bullying really weeny.

I am 5'2", XX, plump, mid-forties, and have learned to whup those who want to mess with me because they think they can. I don't go looking for trouble. If anyone wants to make some, I'm nasty.

I find tolerating bullying wussy, and uniting against such behaviour admirable. I put up with it not at all. And am surprised that those who perpetrate such misbehavior act offended when I call them on it as offensive. Further causing me to think them stupid.

I don't go looking for trouble, it's more that it comes looking for me.

Or maybe by just being me I offend their notions of "right". *snort*

From:

I'm interested in anything you have to say about how you learned to whup bullies.

Thanks for the introduction. I'd noticed you from

dglenn's lj, but I didn't know you'd run a pet store. Did you tend to get a lot of insulting people there?

From:

I did my best to not pick fights. Work for the optimal outcome. When some guy got in my face and demeaned my gender, yes I spat on his car in My Parking Spot when he refused to move it. It was a hoot. His co-workers/bosses were friends of mine. He told them what a b___ I was. He got fired. No one liked the turd anyway. Life in a small town. There are no big fish. Or you don't know Who They Are. Sometimes even we don't. That time I was. Life is funny-- no?

From:

I actually Will demean the size of your genital organs. And, if necessary, your mother's use of hers. Shut the business up outta one stupid fool(expletive deleted) at a NC fiddlers' convention the day 3-mi-island erupted once. I don't use heavy artillery often. I was the one who got us all back to Binghamton.

Just because I was enough of a Manager to have bus fare.

My brother posted the sign on my bedroom door when I was 12.

And no, I know shit when I see it, and pick it up and bag it, as any polite lady does.

Unless they're bullies'.

From:

Because I'm piss-poor at recognising faces, I pretend not to exist, lest someone expect me to recognise them. If my husband weren't brown, I wouldn't find Him. If D'G weren't unusually tall, and definitely iconesque, I'd not find Her.

So I find it a compliment that you don't remember having met me. I remember having met you, and liked you well.

From: