Why Geeks Get Bullied (It's Not Necessarily for Being Geeks)
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
Blaming it on class and gender roles is one of those things that urban intellectuals do to maintain their status among urban intellectuals. Maybe he should analyze it from a Marxist-feminist perspective for good measure.
I don't suppose the irony of this statement escaped you.
I had a good laugh at both the joke itself and that the telling of the joke is an act of "verbally humiliating the dumb".
The author of an article about geeks being bullied, not because they were too academic, but because they were seen as being of a different class.
I prefer your interpretation to be honest, but clearly there is enough irony for everyone.
Taking this criticism as validation of Marxist analysis (or accusing the critic of bullying, etc.) is cheap and pointless, like Freudians answering criticism of a weak Freudian analysis by saying the critic is only criticizing due to reaction formation.
If we disallow this kind of criticism then we are validating every kind of posturing. Not everything anyone says can be correct and it isn't bullying or snobbery to say so. It's not even personal.
I don't use Marxist analysis myself, at least not deliberately (I am not myself an academic), either.
I don't know what you mean by:
>content-free, being equally applicable to everything
and I think that:
>brings little or no insight to any topic outside of economics
ignores the fact that a large amount of history, culture and contemporary society has been profoundly shaped by economics.
>Not everything anyone says can be correct and it isn't bullying or snobbery to say so. It's not even personal.
Yes. There are a lot of things I agree with in your post, the problem is that they are "equally applicable to everything", so I feel like I've joined an argument halfway through, and I have no idea what you are responding to or why.
Anecdotal evidence, which I have not been able to disprove so far, is its more like in a diverse group, people who don't follow the "greek golden mean" tend to get pounded down for not being diverse. Lets rephrase the original article as "kid who hyperfocuses on art gets pounded by kids who do some sport, some TV, some movies, some socializing, etc". For another anecdote no surprise I did a heck of a lot of computer "stuff", but also did weightlifting and long distance bicycling and also hung out with the kids who joined the .mil (at least back then, we all hung out together in later high school years), I also hung out with the geeks and the heavy metal kids (who were actually pretty cool), no problemo with bullying for me... I'd see kids who did nothing but ace math all day have a rough time of it. Or kids who did nothing but pick their nose all day have a rough time. The correlation seems to be if only one word description fits, gonna have a rough time.
Not unusual at all for the biggest bully to be kinda wimpy compared to even an average kid, I think there's a bit of a compensation reaction.
I will admit the "helped not be bullied" bit IS true solely WRT my point of diversity although I think you have the reaction mechanism wrong. I did not hang out with the football players much but we did commiserate about leg days (everyone hates leg days, lets just say the soreness the day after is probably the most painful thing anyone intentionally does as an inherent part of any sport) and I did not hang out with the mountain biker kids but we could talk about favorite trails and stuff. I don't think it matters that I was big-ish, even as a scrawny little long distance runner I could have at least talked with track and field kids about blisters or something even if I never joined the track and field team. The point being that it gave me the diversity to communicate with kids other than my classmates who took calculus and "intro to o-chem" their senior year. In retrospect, solely looking at bullying oriented outcome it probably is a heck of a lot easier to listen to some heavy metal than to doing squats in the weight room, for the identical quantity "X" of not being bullied, if that makes any sense. The other problem with weightlifting is it leads to ... enhanced caloric intake, which becomes a problem later on in life if you drift away from lifting but continue to eat entire roasted (small) chickens in one sitting, for example. I'm still kinda fat even now.
Those who interact with people as though their interests were worth being interested in are possibly less likely to provoke retaliation. People who are single-minded may not realize that the connotation to the people around them is insulting, but it doesn't mean it's not.
I was bullied, I grew up poor. Neither of my parents were college educated. Mother raised 3 kids as a single parent while doing menial jobs. Living in a crime ridden neighborhood in Baltimore City where other kids were getting killed for their Nikes, books and computers were my only refuge, fantasy words of SciFi, even distopian ones, a better place to live than where I started. (BTW, when I got into a better school finally in the suburbs, I was made fun of by kids because my family was poor, not because of privilege)
My theory of why geeks are bullied is the same as why goths are bullied, or why fat people are bullied. When lions hunt buffalo on the plains, they look for those they get separated from the pack. Simply put, attacking an individual that is part of a smaller, less powerful, group is more likely to succeed without anyone coming to their defense.
If geeks, even as a small population, worked like the Crips, bullies wouldn't dare, knowing that an attack on one would invite tit-for-tat counter attacks. If a bully goes after someone who has lots of friends in the main group, they put themselves at bigger risk.
The more interesting question is why geeks don't have a mutual defense or strength in numbers, the answer there probably lurks in perhaps connections between seeking out things because you implicitly like them, and seeking out things because they are likely to strengthen the bonds within your social group ("fitting in", "bowing to peer pressure"). Most of the non-fake-geeks I know just can't stomach being in-authentic, of pretending to like stuff just to fit in, and so there may just be some core personality or emotional intelligence traits that are different in people end up at the fringes like this. If you subscribe to Meyers-Briggs, then it's people who are in categories like INTP.
This was exactly my experience in school. I wasn't bullied in high school, I was bullied throughout elementary instead. I'm INTP, introverted, extremely geeky, but none of that was why I was bullied. I was bullied because I was fat and I didn't know how to fight back. I was an easy target, basically. I had friends, but none who were capable of physically standing up for me, so we all suffered the consequences.
The bullying stopped in 7th grade (13 years old) when I stabbed one of my bullies with a pen and was suspended. I also started weight lifting and made a name for myself on the JV football team. The bullying stopped, even though I had become no less the geek and didn't stop hanging out with my geek friends.
> The more interesting question is why geeks don't have a mutual defense or strength in numbers
In my experience, fear. In a typical school pecking order, if you're not capable of physically dominating others, then you live in constant fear of being physically dominated yourself. I certainly was.
If that's how we're going to do it, I would assume a simpler explanation. Kids, and often adults too, want to show to their peers, or themselves, that they're strong. So they pick on the weak to prove it.
Schools generally aren't enlightened places. Many of them, especially for the poor, are particularly clear about their prison-like nature: need for written permission to move ("hall pass"), threat of prison, etc. So you get some prison-like dynamics. But even many above-average ones impose hierarchy, rating individuals and setting them against each another using competition (competition is a well-known way to atomize and control people), obedience to authority figures no matter how ridiculous, etc. In any case, these places generally provide virtually nothing in the way of conflict resolution, like particularly nasty governments.
And most families aren't utopian institutions either. Parents often act like owners of their children, and take out their frustrations and psychological problems on them. Child abuse (even for conservative notions of "abuse") is rampant. Even when parents aren't overtly abusive, they may simply not be particularly competent at the skill of nurturing children's minds and bodies.
It's not about the acts themselves. First of all bullying can range from light to severe just like nerdrage can range from light to severe, so right away you're comparison is nonsensical in the general sense.
More importantly, the point is that when one experiences hurt, the healthy thing is to understand where those feelings come from and allow yourself to release the hatred rather than holding it into our core being and reflecting it back out to others in the future. I'm not saying this easy, it's not easy for anybody (and it's not just nerds that experience abuse btw), but if you don't do this it will rot and wither your soul and it will be you who ultimately suffers the most.
For years I thought I was picked on because I was smarter than my peers. Looking back, it seems more likely that I was really kind of a brat about getting better scores on things. There were plenty of smart kids at my school who didn't get picked on.
How about: "Kids are frequently bullied because they are placed in an stupid environment which does not adequately protect them."
To make it worse, children are placed together in a deliberately infantilising environment with very few role models who aren't basically wardens as well as educators.
Primary lesson there: You are not special.
There is a difference between an apprenticeship and simply being forced to mix with children who literally don't yet have the same neurological architecture as you.
edit: here's the link -- http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/Articles_id_10489.aspx
> Americans have trouble seeing class, and the intersection between class and intellectualism—or geekishness, if you prefer—can be especially invisible.
"Geekishness" is an intersection of class and intellectualism? That's absolutely horseshit. There are no shortage of poor geeks and rich jocks. Being middle class definitely confers some advantages to pursuing those interests, but it has nothing to do with the innate quality of geekiness. Furthermore, geeky interests are not particularly intellectual per se, it's just we like to get involved in the details of them beyond what most people consider normal.
Very well put. The problem is most geek/nerd kids don't realize they are geeks/nerds until some point in their teenage.
In my case, I always wondered 'Why I was so different from others?'. It was only until a time in teenage that I realized this was actually a positive quality. Over time I saw geeks/nerds do far better than life than others, especially bullies.
Most bullies I know have only gone downwards in their lives, even the rich ones have only gone down with time.
^ this. I was bullied by some kid, took me years later (and processing an experience at his house) to realize he was probably beat up by his mom.
Short straw went to him, imho.
I.e. "geekishness = intellectualism", which I think the case could be made for. He is right about Americans having trouble seeing class, since there is so much propaganda against seeing it (e.g. as soon as anyone anywhere mentions class, some republican is going to start screaming "class war").
I recommend reading those instead of this article, which seems based on speculation.
No-one should be bullied, but if sometimes geeks could rein in their Fotherington-Thomas [1] aspects for their own good, they might have an easier time.
I've never heard that before. That's an eye opener. Now I must think about how not to look like "food."
The problem is that this can lead you to a place where suffering, or persecution, only matters when, or because, the victim is special. This, in turn, can make it hard to see the ways in which violence is not special, but routine — and if you can't understand the violence directed against you, how can you stop it?
The point he's making is that anti-nerd violence is not unique, but part of the wider culture of violence for all sorts of reasons (and in all sorts of directions - up and down the social 'ladders').
I encourage you to read the disqus comments on the article itself, where the author responds to many of the objections raised here.
This article makes things worse, if anything.
What he is suggesting is that both privilege and a lack of privilege (he mentions homosexuality as an example, poverty might be another example) are more important than "being a geek" to whether you get bullied.
When you are called a geek, consider what the aggressor means by that; is it that s/he considers you overly-effeminate? That you can't afford to take part in social activities, making you an outcast? Or perhaps that you have opportunities and a position in the mainstream which they can't have?
That is all the author is saying (I think, I may have mis-read or read selectively). They're not saying that poor geeks don't get bullied.
What? That's a meaningless distinction.
Of course bullies do not necessarily use the word 'geek,' that word is a product of people trying to carve out a measure of societal and self-respect by claiming the label (like others have claimed 'queer' - a closely related concept given that all these targets are lumped together as bottoms for the purposes of imposing domination with impunity).
It's far from true that nobody is attacked for having qualities encapsulated in the word 'geek'.
A quality can be necessary for being a 'geek' without being sufficient for it.
>It's far from true that nobody is attacked for having qualities encapsulated in the word 'geek'.
I agree.
However, those qualities can be found in many different populations, and as geek is roughly approximated to "X qualities + intelligence" the question I feel as though the author is asking is whether the "+ intelligence" part of the definition is useful.
>(like others have claimed 'queer' - a closely related concept given that all these targets are lumped together as bottoms for the purposes of imposing domination with impunity)
I agree very strongly with this.
I think a lot of what people see as "bullying" is actually a just half of this male social pattern of "giving each other shit." It's just what guys do. If you can handle it and fire back, you don't call it bullying. It's only when you refuse to participate that it becomes bullying. Obviously, that line of logic has some inherent victim blaming, and I am not defending bullying at all. I think it's despicable. But at some point you just need to accept the status quo and learn to defend yourself instead of lamenting about it. And if you're truly smarter than the person bullying you, it should be no problem to come up with a quick witted response.
Come on people. Get some confidence.
Geeks get bullied because it's easy for people who are prone to bullying to bully ostracized kids.
What the fuck, man. I guess all those ~privileged~ gay kids who killed themselves deserved it for not checking their privilege. Ridiculous.
As a GLBT, and in addition to that, a smart and geeky one, I got bullied a lot in high school. There were some occasions where I couldn't (and still can't) understand the reasons why, but there were at least a few times where it was pretty clear whether I was being targeted for being GLBT or being targeted for being smart. This author is full of shit.
This thing is not a gender role difference. This thing is difference in force and fitness. Being fit allows you to both bully and stand for bullying. There nothing related to homophobia there.
I was bullied myself until some spring my "friends" found that I can pullup more than them. I wasn't bulied anymore. I was hated, but that's different story.
I also should mention that there are almost no gender roles in human society. Especially for males - they should be successful in finding food and a place to stay at night and that's all.
Thus I consider author dumb one. He sees things that do not exist.
That is just so wrong. You need to have a look around.
This and homophobia are actually well related, as bullied victims are often shamed as "fags" and accused - by people like you - of meriting the treatment due to their weakness or effeminacy. And it is also of one piece with blaming rape victims for the way they dressed. It is all one role, that of the passive-receptive 'bottom' which society despises.
I am not justifying bullying, I was bullied in school. I am failing to see how you read my comment to infer this.
Gay people call themselves fags when swearing. Are they homophobic too? It seems to me that you (and author of original article) infer something big from small thing.
victims with very specific traits - You're choosing to ignore a whole load of violence (including harassment) which undoubtedly occurs against members of all minorities (indeed, to all "diversity streams" - since women are in fact the majority.) You're arbitrarily filtering out all sorts of similar violence that happens to people who aren't nerds, which isn't valid (the author argues).
> On the contrary, I think people get bullied for lots of reasons.
Which leads to the implication she touches upon near the end of the essay:
> ...violence is not special, but routine—and if you can't understand the violence directed against you, how can you stop it?
She's pointing out that geeks shouldn't necessarily think that they were bullied because they were smarter than the others, but because bullying is a common feature upon the dystopic educational landscape. And not recognizing this leads to a situation where bullying of victims who are not somehow especially outstanding in some way (smart being only one attribute of specialness), is not recognized as bullying. She cites that this sometimes emerges from previous victims of bullying themselves by mentioning how male geeks sometimes bully female geeks for not being "real geeks".
All this is well and good, but it unfortunately doesn't materially help the folks on the ground waking up today and dreading their daily bullying gauntlet. This perspective is where I think the article is possibly over-thinking the issue, by not providing actionable information. To be fair, I don't think that was her intent, but judging from the comments, there is a sub-group of people who seem to desire that kind of information with these articles that explore bullying.
At the risk of generalizing, and supplying actionable information that may be out of date, in my personal anecdotal experience bullies select victims that somehow respond in a manner that rewards the bullying. Thus the commonly-dispensed advice to "ignore them". But I think that advice often doesn't come with a helping of how to ignore them, and really should be dispensed as advice on using ignoring as a way to stand up for yourself. Ignoring taunts while showing on your face that the taunting shatters your confidence and self-worth tends to incite further bullying. Ignoring in a manner (which will not be easy to pull off) that fizzles out the "fun" of the bullying is a means of standing up for oneself. This may sometimes mean actually interacting with the bully, but not in a manner that they expect; the "ignoring" refers to ignoring the intended effect of the bullying, and figuring out what action takes the fun out of the bullying. I wish someone had told me this when I was first going through my daily gauntlet.
For males, and increasingly for females, physical bullying is sometimes the form. I was very fortunate that I grew up in a part of the world and time where just fighting back was sufficient to stop physical bullying. I got the snot beaten out of me sometimes, but the ringleaders I was up against uniformly did not like to get their hands dirty, so using the element of surprise to land in a hit that draws blood (visible bruising counts) helped me dissuade them from further bullying. These days, there are more nasty places where you can get murdered fighting back. Be safe, play it smart, and don't get yourself killed if you are stuck in that kind of situation; if you're in such a dangerous situation and the adults around you aren't helping, some anonymous forums can sometimes provide ideas from sympathetic adults who have been-there-done-that.
YMMV, and all that.
And here we are again, blaming the victim. Substitute 'rape' for 'bully' and you get a readout of the same regressive mentality. The target of bullying or of rape gets the 'bottom' role; the kind of argument you are making is that they are more or less justly assigned that role for being inherently effeminate or oversensitive and that the solution is for them to toughen up. Because you didn't suffer that much, because you were so much better at dealing with the bullying. Sorry, it doesn't work that way. You are congratulating yourself for having it relatively easy.
For the record, I do not blame the victim. I've done my speaking stint with a battered women's shelter in my area, I've seen and worked with victims aplenty and have a perspective that informs me better than to blame the victim. But victims need to know there are ways to stand up, get help, and get out of the situation. In some settings where bullying takes place in the US public school system (the context that I'm familiar with), there might actually be no help feasibly available. Facing the reality that one might have to fight back (and note that I first described it in a metaphorical sense of redirecting the bullying's energy in a judo-like manner), is to acknowledge this situation on the ground, and does not mean I desire to blame the victim or in any way stop advocating for more assistance infrastructure like what we have for battered women.
If you have a more studied perspective, or your own personal views that influence how you view the issue that can help the kids getting bullied today, then I encourage you to share it here. If you want to go down the "...congratulating yourself for having it relatively easy..." road, then we all here discussing about bullying could be guilty of the same characterization, because this is #firstworldproblems to an orphaned 6-year old girl on the streets of Mumbai. There is always someone, somewhere, somewhen that has it tougher. My position is I'd rather not devolve into that kind of meta-discussion, and instead put more energy into a discussion that can help those suffering at the moment. Or we can just agree to disagree.