Dreamer Easy

Food for thought: Raymond Chandler's Private Dick: "Masculinity's central tenet is control — and perhaps most importantly, control of the body. Nothing contradicts that edict like erections. It unmans you, it compels you through sensations you scarcely understand. And it threatens to expose you, to humiliates you, in front of everyone... [hence] rappers who, within the first bar, assure us of their pimp status and thus reconstitute themselves not as mortal hetero men who slave before women, but as street gods who are enslavers of women." | Asking For It: "Women have infringed on [the perpetrator's] right to exist without being turned on."

Ozy Frantz criticises "callout culture" in the online progressive community. Or, as I call it, cyberbullying. And they are not the only one.

Australia's buybacks halved gun suicide and homicide rates. Since then, gun ownership has risen. However, the increase is matched by Australia's population growth, and "military-style semi-automatics" remain banned. But as researcher Philip Alpers remarks: "It only takes one bullet, and the great majority of gun deaths are domestics and suicides." | GunPolicy.org

Africa's fair-dinkum feminism - an opinion piece unfavourably comparing Australia's PM with women leaders in Malawi and Liberia. | See Africa Differently reports on economic and social progress in the continent.

Why You're Never Failing as a Mother: "Keep in mind child rearing was viewed pretty differently not that long ago and you could stick a toddler on the front lawn with just the dog watching and nobody would bat an eye at it."

Science! Via drhoz, Things I Won't Work With: Azidoazide Azides, More Or Less - extreme chemistry, involving hopelessly explosive molecules which "the whole thing is trembling on the verge of not existing at all. And if you are minded to make some yourself, then you are on the verge of not existing at all, either." See also FOOF (no, really - "Satan's kimchi", free shipping via Amazon!) and Chlorine trifluoride (which bursts into flames when it touches asbestos, sand, "cloth, wood, and test engineers". | First image of insulin 'docking' could lead to better diabetes treatments - a good, clear explanation of the discovery.

1. Taking the weekend off from the book, as planned. I miss it! Good sign.

2. omg, racing heart and the shakes. But after a vulnerable friend reposted it, I couldn't not.

It was inevitable that with the tide gradually turning against bullying, including cyberbullying, that trolls would find themselves on the receiving end of unwanted attention too. There's a piece in today's SMH in which a troll positively gushes with self-contradictory excuses: she's a performance artist, she's only joking, she's an activist, it's harmless fun, get a sense of humour, it's your own fault, you deserved it. As important as it is to always take any quotes in a newspaper article with a few grains of salt, there's a hint that she has damaged her relationship with her circle of friends, too, and simply doesn't realise it. If so, that would fit with the profile of a bully as someone with poor social skills who doesn't realise how unpopular they actually are.

(A transcript from current affairs program Insight, from which IIUC the quotes are taken, will be available later. ETA: None of the quotes from the SMH article appear in the transcript, so I'm unclear as to their source.)

I'm having a setback, and so am weirdly emotionally labile: last night I was quite upset by a cartoon of a sad-looking Cthulhu, which gives you a good idea of my mental state. However, especially in light of that dreadful report from Sweden, I wanted to share with you something else that breaks my heart a little.



I'm afraid so, faithful readers, but bear with me.

The lyrics of Nu'est's "Face" are a bit elusive, but the gist is - I think - that if you're being bullied, you shouldn't try to be macho, tough it out, and go it alone, but ask for help. The music video bears this out, with the band members intervening in the miserable life of a Korean highschooler.

Now, one of Nu'est's members, Ren, has a strikingly androgynous look:



A wag might respond that looking a bit girly is hardly unusual for a Korean boy band member, but IIUC, this is deliberate gender play, parallel to the tomboy style of some girl band members - but, in some ways, braver than that, since on the whole it's easier for a girl to get away with being boyish than the other way around.

(A caveat here - I am thumpingly ignorant of Korean culture. You pick up bits and pieces from listening and watching, of course, but it only reminds you how much you don't understand. If it wasn't for the translator's notes, often I'd have no idea what the hell is going on. There will be meaning and nuance in all this that's simply shooting over my head.)

Anywho, naturally K-fandom is full of yaoi and speculation, but IRL things are not so gay- or trans-friendly, as Eat Your Kimchi explains: "There are very few openly gay Korean celebrities. The most famous, in our opinion, is Hong Seok-cheon 홍석천, who was fired from all his jobs on TV after he revealed his homosexuality eleven years ago... several Korean celebrities have committed suicide after revealing their sexual orientation to the public. They were fired from their jobs, and harassed and bullied by netizens to the point in which they felt that suicide was their only option." You may imagine the clenching of my heart at the thought of one of my lovely boys coming out, or being outed, and his career being destroyed as a result. (Fortunately, Ren's style seems to have been well-received.)

So, back to the music video. Here's the moment that puts a lump in my throat.

Gyeolko nollijineun anha hey wassup, loser: Ren, standing alone and to the side, is pushed to the ground.





O ne sangtaee geujeo nan click the like it: But he is immediately helped back to his feet, and a moment later we see him dancing with the others (note the hand on his shoulder).




So the tiny story told here is: we know what it's like; you're not alone, and we want to help. (The moment is echoed the end of the video, when we see a band member helping the highschooler back to his feet after he has slumped down in despair.) Here's the verse in English, as per one online translation - it's muddled, but the gist is clear:

You struggling stupid – are you okay?
If you wanna go home, tell me, I'll send you off
I won't make fun of you in the end – "hey wassup loser"
At your status, I'll just click the "like it"

I don't think it's a coincidence that it's the androgynous member who is symbolically rescued. (I don't think all that pink in the video is a coincidence, either, although someone mentioned it was the official colour of an international bullying campaign - haven't checked this out yet. Every member is wearing something pink. ETA: perhaps it's a reference to Canada's "Pink Shirt Day", a grassroots anti-bullying movement begun in 1997.)

ETA: A recent article on Seoul's gay nightclubs gives more context.

The Case of Karen Klein, Bullied Bus Monitor, Proves that Bullying Isn't Personal

"The video doesn’t reveal how the bullying started, but the way it escalates demonstrates how little it has to do with Klein, and how much with the dynamics of adolescent groups. Middle-school mob behavior requires rather little to be ignited, just some sign of weakness... If the victim is trapped and unable or unwilling to meet the group’s aggression with equal force... the bullying will quickly feed on itself, becoming a vehicle for one-upmanship and status. Responsibility is diffused across the group, and cruelty is normalized by virtue of the fact that everyone else is doing it. [...] The greatest injury of group cruelty, the lasting part, is the way it makes you feel about yourself, the way being singled out makes you feel you did something wrong. Some of us blame ourselves, assuming that if we can figure out what we did to provoke the cruelty, we might be able to prevent it from happening again." (Emphases mine. Copy that last one. Hoo boy.)

Study highlights bullying in schools. Strikingly, this Australian study found that boys (around the age of fifteen) engage in slightly more "covert bullying" - malicious gossip, social exclusion, etc - than girls. The researcher calls this "surprising". It's a significant challenge to the thinking (which I share) that girls resort to this sort of social aggression because we're taught to swallow our anger. (Has the study uncovered previously undetected bullying, or is this a change brought on by the advent of cyberbullying?)

Are depressed kids bully magnets?

"Bullies target youth who are unlikely to fight back," says lead author Karen P. Kochel, Ph.D., an assistant research professor at Arizona State University, in Phoenix. "Youth who are depressed really have the potential to appear vulnerable, and are easy marks for victimization, unfortunately."

It's hardly surprising if bullies are ableist, raining contempt on targets who protest that they are mentally ill (or distressed in any way). But this finding could explain more: the disbelief and sarcasm aimed at suicidal young people online, for example. Perhaps that's more than just ignorance, or a terror of weakness.

(I think it's well established by the research that bullying can cause mental illness such as depression, and is not just the result of it; as one of the researchers on this project comments, it could be a vicious cycle.)

"Dismissing a conflict that’s really hurting their feelings as drama lets teenagers demonstrate that they don’t care about such petty concerns. They can save face while feeling superior to those tormenting them by dismissing them as desperate for attention. Or, if they’re the instigators, the word drama lets teenagers feel that they’re participating in something innocuous or even funny, rather than having to admit that they’ve hurt someone’s feelings. Drama allows them to distance themselves from painful situations... many youths engaged in practices that adults label bullying do not name them as such. Teenagers want to see themselves as in control of their own lives; their reputations are important. Admitting that they’re being bullied, or worse, that they are bullies, slots them into a narrative that’s disempowering and makes them feel weak and childish."

- Bullying as True Drama: Why Cyberbullying Rhetoric Misses the Mark

Facebook gossip page vilifies Melbourne high school students. Some of the cyberbullies have been warned or disciplined, but the pages keep resurfacing. Bullies beware: "A Victoria Police spokeswoman said those vilified were encouraged to seek legal advice or contact Facebook if no criminal offence had been committed. Police could lay stalking or menace-over-a-telecommunications-service charges against someone for Facebook posts."

ETA: A superb bit of commentary on this: facebook enabling more efficient bullying.

Hmm. I was wondering if it was too much to call female-on-female social aggression - aka bullying - "a profoundly anti-woman, anti-feminist act." I was thinking of the paradox of trashing, in which feminists bully feminists; and also of the way girls and women are taught to choke down their anger, meaning it spurts out as passive aggression. Still, it's a pretty stiff statement. Is it fair to blame girls and women for how patriarchy expects us to behave? Was I overstating things?

Then, yesterday, I stumbled across an analysis of the discipline imposed by the teachers in a 1950s British girls' boarding school, written by feminist and anthropologist Judith Okely. Obviously, there are major differences between LiveJournal etc and an institution essentially run like a prison. What struck me was the similarities between how the girls were punished - "public exposure", "individual visibility", "to be picked out and stared at" - and the pillorying of bullying targets online. One's quiet and one's noisy, but they both rely on public humiliation - and they both depend on meticulous record-keeping.

At Okely's school, girls were given bad conduct marks for running, talking, losing things, and "for offences so trivial I cannot remember". She describes the "daily 'roll-call' where, in the presence of the entire school and staff, a girl with a [conduct mark] had to announce the mark instead of saying 'present'. Hearts thumped as names came nearer. After a disobedience the headmistress would always ask, 'What's that for?'... While the rest of the school was sitting cross-legged on the floor, she might be asked to stand up and repeat her crime loud and clear. This public confession was a symbolic variant of the public execution, with its necessary witnesses among whom fear of a similar fate would be generated." The headmistress would read out conduct reports to the whole school in a further ritual of humiliation. (Girls would also be put on display, backs turned but "conspicuous to all", in the hallway, at the dinner table, or on the high table on its raised dais at the front of the dining room. Compare this with the uncontrollable exposure possible on the Internet.)

Conduct marks weren't just spoken aloud. They were "given textual form, emblazoned in a public record of crime or obedience. In the main passage at the chapel entrance, for all to see" were lists of the pupils' names. Conduct marks were indicated by an elaborate system of daily and weekly symbols. "Thus the performance of each girl for each week of the term was mapped and open to scrutiny by everyone." A girl whose record was marked "disgrace" could cost her house the good behaviour award. There is an obvious and painful parallel between this form of social control, in which every error and crime is painstakingly publicly recorded, and those fora dedicated to gleefully keeping a record of every tiff, squabble, and blunder in fandom - although this record lasts a lot longer than a single school term.

OK, but why "anti-woman", "anti-feminist"? Partly because it's female vs female*, but that's not all. As Okely notes, "The system of punishment plays on the behaviour expected of girls... From infancy they are made modest, passive and withdrawn compared to boys." The more a girl had "internalised modesty, humility, and the invisibility of the self", the more terrifying this public exposure and shame was for her. Nor could she defend herself: "Humility, an apologetic stance, downcast eyes - possibly tears of defeat - were the correct forms. Any appearance of dignity or pride provoked further rebukes." This is more than just keeping the girls orderly and subdued; it's gender policing. As Okely points out, it both takes advantage of girl's socialisation, and it reinforces that socialisation.

Worst of all, to the school, this conformity was more important than learning or intelligence. There's a comparison to be drawn here with the energy spent undermining and humiliating fellow progressives, energy which might have been spent on fighting bigotry. In the case of fandom, bullying damages individuals, but it also damages a community that, at its best, is a model of shared enjoyment, acceptance, and female solidarity. The policing of anger is gender policing. It's not proper for ladies to fight in public. Why else do fangirls call it "wanking"**?

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Okely, Judith. "Privileged Schooled and Finished: Boarding Education for Girls". in Ardener, Shirley (ed). Defining Females: the Nature of Women in Society. Berg, Providence RI and Oxford, 1993.

* Obviously, boys can be perpetrators and targets for this sort of bullying too. Here I'm comparing Okely's girl's school with what I've observed in majority-female online media fandom. YMMV.

** In majority-male UK Doctor Who fandom, "fanwank" is excessive use of continuity, not interpersonal conflict.