Dreamer Easy

I'm reading Bird Brain by Nathan Emery, about intelligence in birds - tool-making, puzzle-solving, recognising themselves in mirrors. Birds' brains have evolved to do many of the same jobs ours have, but the architecture is different. Emery discusses the theories about how intelligence arises. The leading theory is that social animals need social intelligence to keep track of their relationships, to know what others are thinking and to deceive. This theory depresses me, because it suggests that bullying - which is, at core, about excluding someone from the group - will be a universal practice of intelligent species, wherever we find them.

But there are other theories. One is that spatio-temporal intelligence is needed to find food; an avian example is the scrub jay, which can remember not just where it has cached food, but also when the food was cached and who might have seen it being hidden. Another is that using and making tools to obtain food requires brain power. And finally, there's innovation: "the ability to produce novel behaviors or solve novel problems".  All of these kinds of intelligence, social, spatio-temporal, tool-making, and innovation, might be at play in the smartest birds.

I don't know whether non-social intelligence could produce a species that's self-aware in the way that human beings are; my idea about that is that since we must model others' minds, we can therefore model our own minds. But if birds' brains have evolved their own structures for doing the same work as ours, maybe there are other paths to self-awareness and to the cooperation needed to build a civilisation. It's soothing - and also intriguing - to imagine a species, a culture, with the benefits of language and technology, but without social anxiety, without bullying, perhaps even without prejudice or war.


(I also watched the documentary "Beak and Brain". Originally from Germany, it includes a marvellous scene of a camera operator clambering across a steep, wet New Zealand hillside, hoping to get a shot of some keas. He loses his footing, slides down to land with a bump, and emits a very Kiwi "Ah, fahk". The keas do some sarcastic flying.)

Ah! A small insight. I was reading some definitions of bullying online, for example at stopbullying.gov, Beyond Bullying, and Bullying. No Way!. Each refers to the power imbalance that is sometimes present between bullies and their targets. A bully may be physically larger and stronger than the target, for example, or be the target's boss.

Where is the power imbalance in "social justice" bullying?* The accused person** has, or is assumed to have, privilege that the group they have offended lacks. When they receive a flood of abusive messages, aren't the people sending them "punching up"?

No, for two reasons. One, perhaps this only reflects my own experience, but "social justice" bullying is mostly carried out by people with similar status to their target: to put it bluntly, it's mostly white girls picking on other white girls. Two, and more importantly: if there are dozens or hundreds or even thousands of them to just one of you, it isn't punching up. That's the power imbalance: numbers. The bullying target may be told, and may believe, that their entire community rejects them***. A situation in which one or a few genuinely upset people confronted the accused person would not be bullying.

Now, the enemies of social justice accuse us of mere "virtue signalling" - of merely saying the fashionably correct thing. A dogpile is exactly that, with the abuse heaped on the accused acting as "social glue": each individual indicates their membership in the group by marking an outsider. "I'm not a racist - she is!" The outbreak of bullying may be triggered by legitimate hurt and anger, but once the dogpile gets rolling, the ratio of sincerity to self-righteousness drops like a stone.

Some of the people attacking the accused may be genuinely upset. But bullies keep an eye out for the opportunity to abuse an "appropriate" victim - someone who "deserves it"****. They know that others will join in, because they, too, are bullies, or because they fear being bullied themselves. Or - and this is what I know I've done myself sometimes - they just let their own outrage fly without thinking. It's the decades-old danger of Internet communication, quick and shallow. Any of us can fall into bullying behaviour just as easily as we can make a thoughtless, hurtful remark about race. We - I - can only take better care online.



* I put social justice into quotes here, not to mock (for example) anti-racism, but because "social justice" bullies misuse anti-racism etc as an excuse for their self-gratification. And also as "social glue": a dogpile is a series of individuals indicating their membership in the group by directing aggression against an outsider. (I once described this, accurately if unclearly, as "hooting and gibbering", in imitation of the angry group display of the siamangs at Western Plains Zoo "threatened" by outsiders - the tourists.)

** Here I say "the accused person", because the bullying target may have deliberately and knowingly said or done something hurtful, may be a clueless or even conscientious person who has said or done something hurtful unintentionally through clumsiness, thoughtlessness, or ignorance, or may not have done anything wrong at all. In the first two cases they are responsible for their actions. In all cases the bullies are responsible for theirs, including (mis)interpreting their target's words and actions in the worst possible light to justify their abuse.

*** Here's a just-so story: the human species has survived by being social. Alone, we're not particularly fast, strong, or tough; we're easy prey. Take away the group and we're dead. No wonder being made an outcast is so psychologically devastating.

**** I'd be offended if someone equated cyberbullying with sexual assault. But victim-blaming always involves the same bullshit, whoever the victim is and whoever's doing the blaming.

is a pain in the arse. The sensible part of your brain is going DISENGAGE DISENGAGE DISENGAGE, while other parts are unrelentingly writing that next response - you know, the one that will at last stop the abuse*. It's when you realise the next response is "Madam, perhaps I could invite you to SUCK MY METAPHORICAL DICK" that you know you're going to be all right.

Seems like a good opportunity to re-post some links from lj:

ETA: This is beyond price: Certain Propositions Concerning Callout Culture (Thing of Things, 13 December 2014) "Callout culture essentially means that when you do something oppressive, everyone is allowed to yell at you as much as they like and whatever they like, even if you apologize. It reaches its epitome on Tumblr, in which people occasionally tell suicidal people to kill themselves because they used the word 'crazy.'" "... until you’ve seen a woman of color told that she’s ignoring the voices of women of color, you haven’t lived." "Callout culture comes from a place of class, educational, and ability privilege." And much more.

A similar, more detailed analysis: Come one, come all! Feminist and Social Justice blogging as performance and bloodshed (originally from Tiger Beatdown, 17 October 2011). "... call outs, and the modus operandi behind them, the pile-on, can potentially kill people. The most virulent call outs can exacerbate existing PTSD. They can drive a person to severe episodes of anxiety and/ or depression, they can lead someone to feel isolated and suicidal."

Fear, self-censorship, and facing into it: "I found myself being vilified by total strangers based on other people's interpretations of a few words of mine in a blog post. I found myself being held up as an example of ignorant, arrogant white privilege. I found a lot of things being said about me that were flatly untrue, grossly misinterpreted, or simply assumptions based on my skin color and gender as portrayed in my blog's icons — in that last case, flatly stated as such."

Internet. It’s Time To Talk. "Bullies use the tools and the language of social justice to do their work. They literally weaponise the very tools we have fought so very hard to create and work with. And they rely on this to maintain the culture of silence."

And my own notes, from books about bullying, etc:

http://kateorman.livejournal.com/860832.html
http://kateorman.livejournal.com/864657.html
http://kateorman.livejournal.com/862592.html
http://kateorman.livejournal.com/864799.html
http://kateorman.livejournal.com/871248.html ("Female bullies tend to assume the role of leader in a core group of peers. They are socially cruel and manipulative. They attempt to ostracise targets through backbiting, spreading rumours, trashing reputations, and rewarding others for refusing to interact pleasantly with the target")
http://kateorman.livejournal.com/872507.html
http://kateorman.livejournal.com/873380.html
http://kateorman.livejournal.com/875669.html (the "Bullying Circle" is very interesting, as are the motivations of bullies)
http://kateorman.livejournal.com/877446.html

ETA:

The tragic irony of feminists trashing each other (The Guardian, 3 May 2013). "That's not the sign of a healthy movement, but it is how one earns credibility in online feminist circles today – nothing looks better than pointing out how everyone else is doing it wrong. Bonus points if those other feminists have had a modicum of success, like a book, a highly-trafficked website, or getting paid for their work."

So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed and Is Shame Necessary? review – think before you tweet (The Guardian, 15 March 2015) "It is [researcher James] Gilligan’s contention, based on some highly successful therapeutic work with prisoners in Massachusetts, that violence, being mostly an attempt to restore self-esteem, can almost always be directly linked to shame. Ronson doesn’t spell out in full the implications of this thesis but the reader who isn’t content just to gawp, metaphorically speaking, at the casualties of the Twitter mobs and trolls he has carefully lined up for our delectation will grasp precisely what it means."

The Evolution of Shaming (The Atlantic, 24 February 2016). "A new study suggests that we punish people who haven’t directly wronged us to signal our own trustworthiness." "People genuinely feel outrage and moral anger. But at least part of why they care is that it gets them reputational benefits. That also helps to explain why people get pissed off even when the wrong that was done was accidental."



* Don't kid yourself. Nothing will stop the abuse, not apologies, explanations, promises, self-degradation, or suicide. Which tells you that it's nothing to do with you or your actions. This is the basis of Justine Sacco's advice to Sam Biddle: "Just don't engage."  "... she knew the only divine truth of the internet: Do nothing. Never tweet. Never apologize. Never say anything at all. Be an inert bundle of molecules and let the world tear itself apart around you." Eventually they will move on to their next target.

to: office@piccoli.minister.nsw.gov.au
cc: Malcolm.Turnbull.MP@aph.gov.au

Dear Minister,

I'm writing to you to ask you to follow the lead of Victoria and the ACT in fully funding the Safe Schools program in New South Wales.

In my last two years of high school, a gang of girls decided that I was a lesbian. They constantly pursued, threatened, and harassed me. Their incessant bullying made those critical years of my education a nightmare. I have no doubt that it contributed to my lifelong problems of anxiety and depression, especially social anxiety, which are typical of bullying targets.

I can only imagine what it would have been like if I actually had been a lesbian, struggling to maintain some self-esteem in a society that still in many ways reflects those girls' attitude and behaviour.

I can only imagine what it might have been like if anti-bullying programs had existed in schools in the late eighties - if those girls had been taught not just that bullying itself is wrong, but that lesbians are normal, healthy, and broadly accepted by Australian society - including being asked to imagine themselves in the place of a lesbian.

Please support Safe Schools and vulnerable Australian children and adolescents.

Yours,
Kate Orman

Water shortages, toilet restrictions and constant fear: Details about life on Nauru revealed (SMH, 10 February 2016) "The whistleblower [a former Broadspectrum/Transfield employee], who worked with single adult men, said they lived in tents that were hot, overcrowded, mouldy and infested with mice. 'Water shortages were common, resulting in restrictions on toilets and shower facilities.' The detention centre failed to provide privacy and personal space and 'vulnerable men who experienced bullying or harassment by other asylum seekers' were forced to live among their antagonists after just a few days' respite. Asylum seekers endured long waits for medical and dental treatment and waited hours for a bus to travel to the clinic. It meant some missed their appointments or lost access to an interpreter." Human Rights Commission president Gillian Triggs separately stated that "Nauru detainees had access to a washing machine barely once a month during water shortages, and lived in constant fear of being physically and sexually assaulted, particularly outside the centre."

Catching up on links:

Children urge Australia to free them from Nauru island 'prison' (CNN, 28 January 2016)

Child refugees tell of bullying on Nauru: 'They are rude to us, they punch us' (GA, 21 January 2016)

Nauru-based refugees take aim at Australia's human rights record, continue plea for NZ resettlement (19 January 2016)

Human Rights Watch blasts Australia's asylum-seeker policies, terrorism laws (SMH, 27 January 2016)

"I think part of the problem is that people are frustrated that they want to see more women, doing more things, in superhero movies, and because we don't have as many women as we should yet, they're very, very sensitive to every single storyline that comes up right now."

— Mark Ruffalo on criticisms of writer Joss Whedon for Avengers: Age of Ultron, which have ranged from thought-provoking to an outright torrent of abuse on Twitter (where else?). (Mark's too generous IMHO; sisterhood kills sisters. Happily, Whedon says he has always copped it on Twitter and that his decision to depart was because he's trying to focus on work.)

Haven't posted about bullying in ages. Just need to get these thoughts out of my head.

Wil Wheaton sent away a "social justice" bully on Tumblr with a well-deserved flea in their ear. I was impressed as hell, but left a little shaky, as is typically the case. The day before, I'd not been shaken but merely disappointed by someone railing against the "fetishisation" of Olympic ice skater Yuzuru Hanyu by anime fans, who was unable to respond to even polite questions with anything other than defensive bluster.

I was reminded of both types of dysfunctional "social justice" blogging when skimming through Lois' Grant's People Who Make Your Life Hell on the bus today. You don't have to look far in online social justice communities to find Grant's "Queen of Hearts", whose method is to explode: "She blows up in your face without warning, taking authority where she has none. She also carves you up with cutting criticism... Some people grovel, hoping for peace through submission, giving the Queen outrageous control." The desperate grovelling is a familiar response; I've done it myself plenty of times in my life, but of course, it only encourages more of the same. In fact, the example from Wheaton's Tumblr was typical, in that his apology itself was the subject of attack.

If no amount of apologising stops the abuse; if the other person misuses the legitimate problem of the "tone argument" as an excuse to behave however they want and treat you however they please; if what you say gets distorted, exaggerated, or simply reversed; if you can't seem to do or say anything right; you're not facing genuine, honest anger, you're dealing with bullying.

Not dissimilar to Grant's "Queen of Hearts" is the "Bear", who "likes to intimidate, humiliate and ridicule in public". The "public" part is a crucial element of bullying in the social justice community; it is, after all, a community, and one very concerned with telling right from wrong - and, unfortunately, the right people from the wrong people. ("Let Wil Wheaton serve as an example of What Not To Do!") Grant's "Cheshire Cat", who always knows better than you, is also a familiar figure. I used to be terribly intimidated by misogynists on Usenet who sounded authoritative. I soon learned their confidence masked ignorance, blunders, and outright lies. Similarly, the Tumblrer attacking others for "fetishising" the skater went to pieces when questioned. Like so many others, I think she'd picked up the concept online, but didn't understand it well enough to discuss it.

I also perused Gerald A. Arbuckle's Dealing With Bullying. He provides some striking examples, including sexual abuse in the Catholic Church and Australia's treatment of asylum seekers. Arbuckle offers one explanation for the distortions and lies used by online bullies: narcissism. "They are simply blocked from hearing the logic of arguments used in favour of their victims so that when positive information is provided in support of them, bullies will immediately attack their victims from another angle."

Arbuckle and Grant both discuss the reasons that bullies mistreat others. I think that, when "social justice" bullies are themselves members of mistreated groups, there may be a direct connection between that behaviour and the damage done to their self-esteem and self-confidence by injustice. Arbuckle writes that violence is provoked by "firstly, frustration resulting from failure to achieve one's desires and, secondly, an attack or threat of attack on one's life, material well-being, self-image or self-esteem." Experiencing prejudice means experiencing that frustration, and those attacks, direct and indirect, large and small. (Arbuckle goes on to describe "symbolic bullying", where the target may represent "a culture which they [the bully] feel is oppressing them.") Grant says of the "Bear" that he believes he has "the right to punish the world for what the world has done to him... other people are his enemy and he has the right to crush them." I accumulated immense damage from the small, continual, everyday assaults on my self-esteem at school; I can only begin to imagine the damage caused by a lifetime of being harassed, caricatured, and excluded by the surrounding culture (let alone being denied basic needs like shelter or medical care). The resulting insecurity and rage wouldn't excuse bullying others, but it might help to explain it.

Of course, they might just be assholes.

So tired and fed up at the moment. One of my many frustrations is online activism. I've shoved a dozen keywords into Tumblr Savior just to avoid topics in which I would once have been deeply interested, just to avoid all the laziness, self-righteousness, and untruths. Constantly fact-checking for my own side is exhausting.

Meanwhile on lj I've been grumbling at people who, in response to a hilarious video in which vloggers encounter Kpop, keep slagging one of the participants off, complete with a dusty charge sheet of his past sins. It's bullying, of course, social exclusion and malicious gossip: although he does nothing objectionable in this video (at least, we assume not, we haven't watched it) you should not watch or enjoy this video, as you will be contaminated by this outcast, and here is the proof (which of course is the unfiltered truth, trust us).

Coincidentally, this morning I stumbled across a clipping from last November's Washington Post - handily, it's online, making it easy to quote the bit I highlighted at the time:

"People hold onto things for all kinds of reasons, many they can't articulate. A common one is that people form impressions, organize them in a way they understand — and hang on to that filing system because it's more secure-feeling than recognizing that over time, they have to reacquaint themselves with the people they supposedly know best in the world."

Columnist Carolyn Hax is talking about a mother and daughter here, but I'll bet this applies even more when you don't know the person at all. It makes sense to me that people who maintain and share their in-group and out-group lists would also maintain and share lists of the out-groupers' past sins. One problem is that these lists tend to be ancient, feeble, dubious - and sometimes incomprehensible, if you weren't present for the initial drama. Another problem is that everyone makes idiotic remarks online; if a list was trotted out every time we showed up, none of us should 'scape whipping. And yet another problem is that this behaviour has a tendency to backfire and make the poster look a lot more obnoxious than their target.

Balls to all that. Here's the video, which is blissfully free of any of the above garbage - and a riot to boot!

You may recall the opposition's efforts to use an alleged crime to call for "special checks" on all asylum seekers living in Australia. That alleged crime happened in our local area - specifically, in student accommodation at Macquarie University. I am proud to report that Ryde Council soundly defeated a motion to supporting kicking all asylum seekers off campus. The Deputy Mayor reminded the councillor who brought the motion: "Remember, statistically, the chances are that you will be shaking hands with these very people at a Citizenship Ceremony in five years' time." (Perhaps after they have graduated from Macquarie with degrees in medicine and pharmacy, as Zainab Kaabi just has.)

Somehow I doubt you're going to encounter a great deal of intelligent discussion of the book so let me recommend Matthew Sweet's review of JN-T: The Life and Scandalous Times of John Nathan-Turner by Richard Marson in the Guardian. I was moved by his remark that for fans, Doctor Who "can form the unifying principle of their lives". It has done so for mine.

The SMH's headline Young people who get drunk aware of risk of sex attack looks suspiciously like a spot of victim-blaming on the part of a subeditor - you'll have to look hard to find any basis for it in the news item itself.

Another misleading headline tells us that Harassed women 'work harder'. In fact, what researchers found was that women confronted by "workplace incivility" - rudeness, gossip, insults, etc - tend "try to improve their work relationships". Although the study examined behaviours that "stop short of bullying", anyone who has tried to placate a bully will know that this is like running as hard as you can to stay in one place.

Last week's Sexpo (my first, and probably my last) was extraordinarily repetitive and uninteresting. The Helpful Hunks were terribly sweet, and there was an excellent introductory talk on BDSM by Kim from MJ's Toybox (attended by many fidgety eighteen year olds), but there was nary a blip on my radar*. Why then am I telling you this? Because Stop the Traffik had a booth there, at which I picked up a pamphlet from the Salvos' International Social Justice Commission. Its elegantly written explanation of social justice was a heartening reminder, in the face of the daily news, that Christianity can be non-judgmental, inclusive, and compassionate.

Apropos of none of this I leave you with a quote from Isaac Asimov:"One of Mars's two moons is not a moon at all in our sense of the word. I refer to Deimos, the outer of the two, which is nothing but a mountain on the loose."


* Far more entertaining was the juggling, fire-eating, and general shenanigans of the Fantastic Toy outside the Convention Centre. Hell, he was sexier, too.