tales of torment
ELEANOR ROBERTSON HAS SOME THOUGHTS ON HOW TO END BULLYING.
A nice thing about not having been born 50 years ago, is that most people now agree that schoolyard bullying is bad. Back in the day, the attitude seemed to be that if you couldn’t handle never-ending torment from your peers, you were softer than a jumbo marshmallow and should probably be thanking the bullies for helping to harden you up. A group of classmates refer to you as “Stinker” and scream, “PEEEE-EWWW” in unison whenever you walk past? Good on them, you’ll never get ahead in this economy without a bit of social torture to develop your character!
But even though we’ve all agreed there’s no causal relationship between atomic wedgies and greater personal resilience, most anti-bullying chatter doesn’t rise above the level of ‘don’t do it, kids’. And it’s much the same in the workplace: I went to a workshop once where the person telling us not to bully each other was themselves commonly known as a bully. It was like attending a wine-tasting night run by someone whose favourite drink is dirty bathwater. Or learning to knit by watching Youtube videos of cats chewing up phone charger cables.
The causes of bullying are not that hard to understand: it’s a shortcut to social cohesion. The easiest way to make friends is to find something you all hate and bond over going in on it together like a pack of wild animals, and there’s nothing more hateable than some idiot everyone knows who seems a bit weird or different. It doesn’t really matter whether you hate them for indefensible reasons – like they’re gay, or fat, or poor – or for better reasons, like they take a wheeled suitcase with them wherever they go because their mum says it prevents back strain. (A belated apology to that kid at my school who I referred to as “suitcase freak” behind their back for four years.)
You can train people not to bully on the basis of race or sexuality, but that free-floating human tendency to build relationships by exploiting someone else’s weakness – aka being an absolute dick – is still there. A utopia free of discrimination isn’t very utopian if we’re still bonding over how insanely funny it is for a person to wheel around a suitcase instead of carrying a backpack like everyone else. (I’m sorry, I can’t help it, it’s so funny.)
In that sense, ending bullying is actually a bit of a head-scratcher. We haven’t really innovated much in the space since we were burning witches back in plague times. Our funny little brains are still very inclined towards solving social problems by picking one person, or a group of people, and acting like it’s all their fault. Sure, you can try and build communities around objects of mutual love or interest, but that’s riskier, because loving something exposes you in a way that hating something doesn’t. Bullying really has that going for it.
Plus, while you’re doing it, bullying often feels completely justified. It’s difficult to look deep inside yourself and ask, “Am I taking this cowardly shortcut to social acceptance rather than dealing honestly with my own fears?” Who the hell wants to do that? No thanks, I’d rather lose both my arms in a horrific incident involving a chainsaw strapped to an angry mountain pony. I’d rather call some poor kid “suitcase freak” than admit to myself that I’m being a mean, insecure arsehole.
But that’s basically the only way to stop bullying: admit how attractive being a mean, insecure arsehole is, as a shortcut to existing with other people. Acknowledge that real human connection can’t be built on bullying and exclusion, and must involve tenderness, kindness and acceptance. And remind yourself that science has shown backpacks to cause lumbar strain in numerous studies, and maybe wheeling around a dumb little suitcase was the right way to go all along.