This triangular dynamic among bully, victim, and audience is what I mean by the deep structure of bullying. It deserves to be analyzed in the textbooks. Actually, it deserves to be set in giant neon letters everywhere: Bullying creates a moral drama in which the manner of the victim’s reaction to an act of aggression can be used as retrospective justification for the original act of aggression itself.
Not only does this drama appear at the very origins of bullying in early childhood; it is precisely the aspect that endures in adult life. I call it the “you two cut it out” fallacy. Anyone who frequents social media forums will recognize the pattern. Aggressor attacks. Target tries to rise above and do nothing. No one intervenes. Aggressor ramps up attack. Target tries to rise above and do nothing. No one intervenes. Aggressor further ramps up attack.
This can happen a dozen, fifty times, until finally, the target answers back. Then, and only then, a dozen voices immediately sound, crying “Fight! Fight! Look at those two idiots going at it!” or “Can’t you two just calm down and learn to see the other’s point of view?” The clever bully knows that this will happen—and that he will forfeit no points for being the aggressor. He also knows that if he tempers his aggression to just the right pitch, the victim’s response can itself be represented as the problem.
: You’re a decent chap, Jeeves, but I must say, you’re a bit of an imbecile.
: A bit of a . . . what!? What the hell do you mean by that?
: See what I mean? Calm down! I said you were a decent chap. And such language! Don’t you realize there are ladies present?
And what is true of social class is also true of any other form of structural inequality: hence epithets such as “shrill women,” “angry black men,” and an endless variety of similar terms of dismissive contempt. But the essential logic of bullying is prior to such inequalities. It is the ur-stuff of which they are made.
Bookmarks