Gendered behavior, bullying, and feminism

[jhkim]

In the thread "New Flash: RPGs are Different From BDSM" on the RPG forum, people had some differing views on gendered socialization. It's gotten off-topic from RPGs, so GeekyBugle suggested the discussion continue here, if Pundit is interested.

The starting point of disagreement was this post by Cloyer Bulse, where he said:

So-called safety rules and conflating rpgs with bdsm are all about our culture trying out this experiment where we blend the gender hierarchies. Men gaming with men, or men working together on oil rigs for that matter, don't need special safety rules or safe words. Men bully and harass each other as a natural way of weeding out useless, dependent males. It's only natural that women would find such behavior threatening. Feminists demand that men socialize according to female rules.

I've watched girls role-playing with each other and it's not something I want to be a part of any more than I want to watch My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. Let them have their fun. Let us men have our own fun.

My initial reaction was:

Bullying and harassment among men might well be natural and around for millenia -- but that doesn't make them a good thing. Stuff like democracy, free speech, tolerance, and forgiveness may not be in our genes -- but they're positive changes in human behavior from recent times.

I don't want my male-only games to be full of bullying and harassment. That's not behaving like women, in my opinion. That's just behaving like a decent human being. If a disabled man joins our group, maybe the evolutionary instinct is to weed him out by bullying him until he breaks -- but that's not behavior I want in my game.

Later, GeekyBugle replied:

For starters I don't think there are gender hierarchies, not in the sense him and you are using the term.

I would like to know what he and you call bullying and harassment before talking on it. (because now a days buddy ribbing buddy is termed bullying by many.

Feel free to open a thread on pundie's forum so we can talk about feminists and their demands.

Mean Girls Cliques were a thing well before any feminist wrote about it, and I bet you even before the gender integration of schools women talked about it.

We should kemosabe? Yo do what you want and I'll do like wise, I don't find that my groups of friends need any major behavior adjustment, which is why they are my friends.

And before you keep talking about harassment and bullying you need to define those terms and give a few examples of what you consider falls into them. Best done in Pundies forum.

Spinachcat also had his reply:

Bullying and harassment among men might well be natural and around for millenia -- but that doesn't make them a good thing.

It's a phenomenally good thing. It toughens the weak or weeds them out. Bullying and harassment teach toughness, resilience and the drive to fight back and succeed, and swiftly identifies the weak who either learn to stand or get ostracized. Without it, we get the current generations full of weaklings.

If a disabled man joins our group, maybe the evolutionary instinct is to weed him out by bullying him until he breaks -- but that's not behavior I want in my game.

Most disabled people either shatter or become steel. Disabled who maneuver outside their homes are usually tough hombres. There's nothing any bullying can do that compares to challenge of living 24/7/365 with a real disability (not the online wankery "disabilities").

I think this is a significant point of disagreement that anyone's welcome to weigh in on. I'll post more commentary in reply to GeekyBugle if this is approved.

[RPGPundit]

You know, I genuinely feel sorry for guys who think that the way men normally mock and tease and bully their friends is somehow a bad thing. It means they've never ever been part of a group of true functioning male friends. It means that the only times they've ever been roasted on it was to reject them from the group because the group had judged them unwanted. But then I probably remember that the reason they were judged this way and thus don't know how normal men can mock the fuck out of each other and build closer bonds that way, bonds of trust, rather than feeling excluded, is because they probably have character traits they refuse to work on or change to be tolerable in normal society.

[Warboss Squee]

I work with a 23 year old kid who still lives with his mom. Very sheltered. He was shocked by the way us Vets treated each other on breaks or at lunch.

[Stephen Tannhauser]

Buddies busting each others' figurative chops as a sign of mutual trust and amusement is one thing. Bullies humiliating those they see as weaklings for *their* amusement is something very different.

I doubt I could give an explicit definition that would work for all examples, but I think it's pretty clear to anyone who's gone through both how to tell them apart. I don't think that preventing the latter means you *have* to disallow the former ... but I do think people who want to preserve the mutual joshery of masculine friendships sometimes forget that in most cases, the joshery is a byproduct of the trust -- not, in fact, vice versa.

[Trond]

Since when was bullying NOT a part of women's way of socializing and forming cliques?

[Spinachcat]

My friend's son runs a secret fight club...in his 8th grade.

As you can imagine, California public schools are feminized safe space shitholes, and recess is no exception from the PC indoctrination. However, the teachers can't be everywhere at once and kids know the places where to gather out of sight.

Dodgeball is - of course - not allowed on the schoolyard, but its the sport of choice behind that one wall at the far corner of the field where my friend's son and his friends gather. Not only do these tween boys of all colors play the forbidden sport of throwing balls at each other to knock each other out of the game, they have instituted their own rule....physical punishment for the loser by the winner.

If you lose the round, the winner gets to peg you in the head with the ball. Whammo to your fucking noggin!!

The end result? My friend's son is worried they are going to get caught because they have nearly 40 kids hiding behind the wall for the chance to get smacked in the head!

PS: If you don't take your hit in the head, the winner can punch you in the shoulder really hard. They're fucking animals!

Here's where things take a funnier turn. My friend's son now exercises at home and takes PE much more seriously to increase his chance of being the winner vs. the loser. AKA, to avoid pain, he makes the effort to improve his skills.

I'm seriously considering adding "Did you ever belong to a secret fight club?" to my list of hiring questions!

[EOTB]

We've forgotten the simple wisdom of the man in black



Like in most things, they find the point of rhetoric that's high-ground (what about the sociopathic-sadistic football player who torments for the pure joy of it?!?!!!) and use that to attack the underlying structure in its entirety.  The only thing worse than the sociopathic-sadistic football player tormenting undeserving people unable to defend themselves is the society which has replaced him.  But you never get rid of the sociopaths, you only tell people you can.

[Spinachcat]

Nobody is worse to a woman than other women, particularly their "friends".

Buddies busting each others' figurative chops as a sign of mutual trust and amusement is one thing. Bullies humiliating those they see as weaklings for *their* amusement is something very different.

The weakling must learn to stand against the bully. Even if standing means getting knocked back down. The weakling must also learn to ignore the words of bullies and drop the hammer on the bully in return.

If they do that, they won't be weaklings anymore and be worthy of mutual trust with others. This goes for either gender.  

Letting the weakling retreat to an adult controlled safe space and color pretty pictures to express their feelings means they'll always be a weakling. And this world does horrific things to the weak.

[rawma]

I'm seriously considering adding "Did you ever belong to a secret fight club?" to my list of hiring questions!

Oh, come on. The first (and second) rule of secret fight club is that you do not talk about secret fight club. So you should shut up, and you should clobber your friend's son with a dodgeball for talking about secret fight club.

[Stephen Tannhauser]

The weakling must learn to stand against the bully. ...If they do that, they won't be weaklings anymore and be worthy of mutual trust with others. This goes for either gender.  ...(T)his world does horrific things to the weak.

Last I checked, civilization was by definition the institution and enforcement of rules intended to protect the weak from the strong. The horribleness of the world is precisely *why* we're obliged to demand better of ourselves in living here. I'm all for people learning to get stronger, or finding a way to take strength from their suffering; that doesn't excuse assholes justifying their sadism by claiming it's for their victims' "own good".

Now that said, again, friends giving each other a hard time is not the same thing, and people trying to shut this down because they can't tell this apart from real bullying are making a mistake. But in my experience real assholes don't stop being assholes just because a bullying victim strikes back once in a while.

[jhkim]

Last I checked, civilization was by definition the institution and enforcement of rules intended to protect the weak from the strong. The horribleness of the world is precisely *why* we're obliged to demand better of ourselves in living here. I'm all for people learning to get stronger, or finding a way to take strength from their suffering; that doesn't excuse assholes justifying their sadism by claiming it's for their victims' "own good".

Yeah. The fight club example strikes me as utter sophistry. Spinachcat -- If someone were to tell you that their son was bullied because he voluntarily participated in a fight club, how would you respond? I bet you'd say "that's not being bullied". That's what I would say.

A voluntary fair fight is the opposite of bullying. Bullying is deliberately targeting those who are weaker than you in order to feel stronger. Bullies don't want those they pick on to get stronger -- they want them to stay weak. And all too often, the result of bullying isn't in the weaker people becoming tougher -- it's the victims themselves becoming bullies of those even weaker than them.

And from the other thread:

So, when you (NOT refering to you personally here) go out on a date and I break into your home, stealing all your stuff - that's not theft/burglary. It's me teaching you to be smarter in protecting your worldly possessions instead; I'm just weeding out the dumbfucks here. Let them eat cake.

That's EXACTLY what I'm talking about.

We didn't curb theft and burglarly with hugs, crayons and talking about feelings. We curbed break-ins by giving guns and cars to cops to patrol neighborhoods with the power to murder people for stealing. We buy and train guard dogs with sharp teeth to fuck up anybody who enters the house when we're out on a date. We invented security cameras to help ensure that thieves would be caught and punished by being thrown in prison hellpits for years of their lives.

AKA, we used "bullying" and "harassment" to curb burglars.

Likewise, if a person were to claim that he was bullied by the police because they arrested him, gave him a fair trial of his peers, and sent him to jail -- how would you respond? Personally, I would again tell the person, "You weren't bullied."

[Spinachcat]

Last I checked, civilization was by definition the institution and enforcement of rules intended to protect the weak from the strong.

Most civilizations have been set up for the strong to rule over the weak. Even direct democracy is just two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner. In our modern era, we can often replace "rich and poor" for "strong and weak"

At best, civilization has rules intended to protect those who obey the rules from the rules-breakers. The burglar isn't stronger than the homeowner, just the one willing to break the rules against burglary. Same with the corporation who dumps garbage in the water supply.

The horribleness of the world is precisely *why* we're obliged to demand better of ourselves in living here.

I missed the memo where we're obliged to do anything other than pay taxes and die.

The world was horrible in the past and will be horrible in the future. Star Trek is nothing but fantasy.

that doesn't excuse assholes justifying their sadism by claiming it's for their victims' "own good".

What the asshole does or why isn't important. There will always be assholes and they will always have justifications.

What matters is the victim's response. Do they crumble or fight back?

And how can future generations end the current glorification of crumbling and instead learn to stand their ground? (hint: it's called gendered behavior!!!)

But in my experience real assholes don't stop being assholes just because a bullying victim strikes back once in a while.

The bullying victim who strikes back again and again will no longer see themselves as a victim. They will reject victimhood mentality because they will always remember that feeling of standing up for themselves when it was hard and scary, but they stood up regardless.

Assholes can smell a victim. They're afraid of getting smacked (physically or verbally) and target those who won't fight back.

[Spinachcat]

Oh, come on. The first (and second) rule of secret fight club is that you do not talk about secret fight club. So you should shut up, and you should clobber your friend's son with a dodgeball for talking about secret fight club.

LOL! So true! But I've noticed that there's nothing people want to tell you about more than their secrets!!

It's why I have a very hard time believing conspiracy theories. Humans rarely can keep their pieholes shut.

The fight club example strikes me as utter sophistry. Spinachcat -- If someone were to tell you that their son was bullied because he voluntarily participated in a fight club, how would you respond? I bet you'd say "that's not being bullied". That's what I would say.

I wouldn't be as polite.

However, you know full well that parents crying about bullying aren't going to say the fight club was voluntary. Instead their precious little schmuck was innocently dreaming their gender non-binary goodthink when suddenly they were dragged into that nigh-Trump rally by those horrific bullies!

A voluntary fair fight is the opposite of bullying. Bullying is deliberately targeting those who are weaker than you in order to feel stronger. Bullies don't want those they pick on to get stronger -- they want them to stay weak. And all too often, the result of bullying isn't in the weaker people becoming tougher -- it's the victims themselves becoming bullies of those even weaker than them.

You will never end bullying. The world will never be without bullies. Never. And you're right that many of the bullied will become bullies by seeking out those even weaker. They will mistake bullying for strength.

All the bullying by SJWs will never change those facts.

Feminists can cry about toxic masculinity all they like, and yet those facts will never change.

The best we can do is teach children to be strong. That's the point of the kid's fight club. Even though their entire school experience is designed to keep them weak and submissive, they instinctively understand they need to develop toughness.

And since they're adolescent boys full of crazy ass puberty, learning toughness involves punching.

Likewise, if a person were to claim that he was bullied by the police because they arrested him, gave him a fair trial of his peers, and sent him to jail -- how would you respond? Personally, I would again tell the person, "You weren't bullied."

You are never gonna get invited to the Warren 2020 rally with that attitude mister!

And then, unless the criminal was a honky, you'd be deemed totally racist on Twitter.

Of course I agree with you, but I'm a irredeemable deplorable monster!

[GeekyBugle]

Late to the party, sad to see you all started without me and surprized to see you really made the thread jhkim.

Lets start with some quotes.

You know, I genuinely feel sorry for guys who think that the way men normally mock and tease and bully their friends is somehow a bad thing. It means they've never ever been part of a group of true functioning male friends. It means that the only times they've ever been roasted on it was to reject them from the group because the group had judged them unwanted. But then I probably remember that the reason they were judged this way and thus don't know how normal men can mock the fuck out of each other and build closer bonds that way, bonds of trust, rather than feeling excluded, is because they probably have character traits they refuse to work on or change to be tolerable in normal society.

Agreed, men (and boys) mock and tease each other and feminists are very busy banning all this behaviour everywhere by labelling it bullying or harassment.

We've forgotten the simple wisdom of the man in black



Like in most things, they find the point of rhetoric that's high-ground (what about the sociopathic-sadistic football player who torments for the pure joy of it?!?!!!) and use that to attack the underlying structure in its entirety.  The only thing worse than the sociopathic-sadistic football player tormenting undeserving people unable to defend themselves is the society which has replaced him.  But you never get rid of the sociopaths, you only tell people you can.

Agreed again, it's the old trick of here's this problem (often without proving it's a problem and exagerating it) if you give me power I'll fix it. Of course they never fix it and instead demand more power after switching lanes to distract you with other "problems".

You will never end bullying. The world will never be without bullies. Never. And you're right that many of the bullied will become bullies by seeking out those even weaker. They will mistake bullying for strength.

All the bullying by SJWs will never change those facts.

Feminists can cry about toxic masculinity all they like, and yet those facts will never change.

The best we can do is teach children to be strong. That's the point of the kid's fight club. Even though their entire school experience is designed to keep them weak and submissive, they instinctively understand they need to develop toughness.

And since they're adolescent boys full of crazy ass puberty, learning toughness involves punching.

Fucking agree again!

You'll never end bullying, rape, murder, etc. Instead of demanding "teach thiefs not to steal!" put some good locks on your doors and buy a shotgun.

And I seem to remember jhkim I was telling you about feminists demanding men act like wahmen, well, banning something as innocuous as dodge ball sure seems to qualify as evidence in my favor.

[GeekyBugle]

As for definitions :

Bullying is a subcategory of aggressive behavior characterized by the following three minimum criteria: (1) hostile intent, (2) imbalance of power, and (3) repetition over a period of time.


Harassment covers a wide range of behaviors of an offensive nature.