Last month, Bruce Springsteen canceled a concert in Greensboro, N.C., to protest a new state law that, among other things, requires people to use the bathrooms of the biological sex reflected on their birth certificates. Springsteen released a statement saying he wanted to “show solidarity” with those waging a “fight against prejudice and bigotry” against trans people. In response, United States Representative Mark Walker, a Republican who supports the bill, told The Hollywood Reporter that Springsteen’s boycott was “a bully tactic,” thereby joining a growing chorus of people who seem to have mixed up their Davids and Goliaths.
A few days later, a (white) North Charleston, S.C., police chief refused to attend a community meeting on the one-year anniversary of the death of Walter Scott because of what he called the “bullying tactics” of its (black) members at previous meetings. Last September, Kylie Jenner, a reality star worth millions, claimed that she was being cyberbullied by commenters on socialmedia. In 2009, the blogger Heather Armstrong tweeted that no one should buy a Maytag washer because of what she called the company’s inadequate response to her broken appliance, and onlookers on Twitter accused her of bullying Whirlpool, the company’s $19 billion parent corporation.
In the old days, bullies were tough guys who picked on wimpy guys, a predictable, archetypal clash that inevitably led to a heroic outcome. Picture the brute kicking sand in the face of the scrawny wimp in the Charles Atlas comic-book ads, inspiring our hero to pump up his muscles and seek revenge. Picture Bluto, Popeye’s hulking nemesis, imperiling Olive Oyl time and again so our favorite sailor man could eat his spinach and save the day. For decades, Western culture treated bullying as an expected rite of passage that tested a man’s mettle, an unpleasant but surmountable obstacle on the path to glory.
As a result, bullying has long been a rich source of comedy, with even its insults and injuries mined for laughs, all the better to set up that final, triumphant scene in which the bully gets his comeuppance. The 1989 cult hit “Heathers” took this final act of vengeance to an extreme: A merciless group of high-school girls harasses their peers until the characters played by Winona Ryder and Christian Slater murder them one by one, then blow up the entire school.
That dark scene foreshadowed the radical transformation of our view of bullying that came 11 years later, when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, two seniors at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., armed with pipe bombs and a small arsenal of firearms, killed 13 people and then themselves. The media painted a dramatic portrait of bullying culture gone wild at the high school, with an imagined “trench coat mafia” of angry, alienated geeks seeking their revenge against popular jocks who’d tormented them for years. But in the 2009 book “Columbine,” Dave Cullen, who reported from the scene that day and studied the event for the next 10 years, asserted that the trench-coat mafia was marginal, and Harris and Klebold had nothing to do with it. According to Cullen, Harris, the lead perpetrator, had many friends, was popular with girls and was rarely bullied. He was just a psychopath.
A fundamental misunderstanding of the event remains in place 17 years later, but this misreading nonetheless helped to incite a seismic — but necessary — shift in the common wisdom on bullying. It came to be acknowledged as a serious threat to the emotional and physical health of its victims. And then, with the advent of social media came the rise of “cyberbullying,” harassment that felt at once private and public, ephemeral yet deeply personal.
The roots of the word “bully” never foretold such a gloomy outcome. In the 16th century, “bully” was originally a term of endearment, arising from the Dutch word boel, or “lover,” and broeder, or “brother.” The word evolved into a greeting for a male friend, and from there into a term meaning “worthy” or “jolly.” This positive connotation lived on into 19th-century congratulatory slang — “Bully for you!” — but back in the mid-17th century, an alternate usage, meaning “harasser of the weak,” had already caught on.
Today this meaning is utterly dominant, and antibullying slogans, campaigns and organizations make up a fundamental piece of education culture. My 9-year-old daughter is currently serving as an antibullying “ambassador” at her school, one of a gaggle of fourth-graders charged with (gently) confronting their peers on any and all bullying behavior. According to my daughter, such offenses range from “being mean” and “hurting someone’s feelings” to “teasing.” The linguistic creep evident here has often struck me as troubling, especially as a relatively laughable bully archetype has been supplanted by the specter of mass murder and suicide.
A few days later, a (white) North Charleston, S.C., police chief refused to attend a community meeting on the one-year anniversary of the death of Walter Scott because of what he called the “bullying tactics” of its (black) members at previous meetings. Last September, Kylie Jenner, a reality star worth millions, claimed that she was being cyberbullied by commenters on socialmedia. In 2009, the blogger Heather Armstrong tweeted that no one should buy a Maytag washer because of what she called the company’s inadequate response to her broken appliance, and onlookers on Twitter accused her of bullying Whirlpool, the company’s $19 billion parent corporation.In the old days, bullies were tough guys who picked on wimpy guys, a predictable, archetypal clash that inevitably led to a heroic outcome. Picture the brute kicking sand in the face of the scrawny wimp in the Charles Atlas comic-book ads, inspiring our hero to pump up his muscles and seek revenge. Picture Bluto, Popeye’s hulking nemesis, imperiling Olive Oyl time and again so our favorite sailor man could eat his spinach and save the day. For decades, Western culture treated bullying as an expected rite of passage that tested a man’s mettle, an unpleasant but surmountable obstacle on the path to glory.
As a result, bullying has long been a rich source of comedy, with even its insults and injuries mined for laughs, all the better to set up that final, triumphant scene in which the bully gets his comeuppance. The 1989 cult hit “Heathers” took this final act of vengeance to an extreme: A merciless group of high-school girls harasses their peers until the characters played by Winona Ryder and Christian Slater murder them one by one, then blow up the entire school.
That dark scene foreshadowed the radical transformation of our view of bullying that came 11 years later, when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, two seniors at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., armed with pipe bombs and a small arsenal of firearms, killed 13 people and then themselves. The media painted a dramatic portrait of bullying culture gone wild at the high school, with an imagined “trench coat mafia” of angry, alienated geeks seeking their revenge against popular jocks who’d tormented them for years. But in the 2009 book “Columbine,” Dave Cullen, who reported from the scene that day and studied the event for the next 10 years, asserted that the trench-coat mafia was marginal, and Harris and Klebold had nothing to do with it. According to Cullen, Harris, the lead perpetrator, had many friends, was popular with girls and was rarely bullied. He was just a psychopath.
A fundamental misunderstanding of the event remains in place 17 years later, but this misreading nonetheless helped to incite a seismic — but necessary — shift in the common wisdom on bullying. It came to be acknowledged as a serious threat to the emotional and physical health of its victims. And then, with the advent of social media came the rise of “cyberbullying,” harassment that felt at once private and public, ephemeral yet deeply personal.
The roots of the word “bully” never foretold such a gloomy outcome. In the 16th century, “bully” was originally a term of endearment, arising from the Dutch word boel, or “lover,” and broeder, or “brother.” The word evolved into a greeting for a male friend, and from there into a term meaning “worthy” or “jolly.” This positive connotation lived on into 19th-century congratulatory slang — “Bully for you!” — but back in the mid-17th century, an alternate usage, meaning “harasser of the weak,” had already caught on.
Today this meaning is utterly dominant, and antibullying slogans, campaigns and organizations make up a fundamental piece of education culture. My 9-year-old daughter is currently serving as an antibullying “ambassador” at her school, one of a gaggle of fourth-graders charged with (gently) confronting their peers on any and all bullying behavior. According to my daughter, such offenses range from “being mean” and “hurting someone’s feelings” to “teasing.” The linguistic creep evident here has often struck me as troubling, especially as a relatively laughable bully archetype has been supplanted by the specter of mass murder and suicide.
by Heather Havrilesky, NY Magazine | Read more:
Image: Matt Dorfman
