It's hard to imagine a better music video than this.
Speaking as an elder, all the avant-garde film techniques I was introduced to in the mid to late sixties had become commercial cliches by 1980 or so. Once people had figured out that you could could get effective product by stringing random somewhat-vivid images together and using various devices to make them seem portentious and deep, anybody could do it.
Yes, drugs were involved.
/grumpy old man
Could teh gay panic have been caused by the realization that you would rather have sex with any of the men in the video, down to and including the glittery jester, than with the scary big-haired girl?
Happy coming out day, Ogged!
Although I suspect that finding the guy in that video more attractive than the woman only shows that you've got enough of the gay to have good taste. Kinda like thinking K.D. Lang is hot merely demonstrates that you're not stupid.
Whether you go beyond that to actual cock sucking / muff diving would be a separate question.
The difference between fabulously gay and Iranian is vanishingly small, so your confusion is understandable.
Hardly, Tim. Fabulous gay men don't go around chatting up the laydeez.
/grumpy old man
I'll believe it when I see it.
I remember "Obsession" (the song) really well because it was absolutely huge. My friend's mom wouldn't let her buy the 45 because of the "sleep with me" line.
I had no recollection of the video until Matt linked it. Those are some poor production values.
Ben's not Iranian. And, per the linked pic, he's not fabulous, either.
down to.. the glittery jester
Hey!
I'll believe it when I see it.
It was a manner of speaking.
I have to admit that I'm fascinated by the erroneous gay panic -- how did that work? Attraction to a guy, which you misinterpreted as total gayness rather than a passing bit of not-exactly-straightness? Or some weird deduction: "Suddenly, I want to wear eyeliner. Shit, I must be a homo!"
Wait, in 6 is B claiming that the dude from Animotion is hot?
Because he looks like someone tried to clone Matt Dillon and leaned on the forehead switch too hard.
15: I don't really get it, either. At various times, I wondered if I was gay, but I never freaked out about it.
Dear god, no, he's not hot. He's just hotter than the woman.
Seems there was a thread in the winter about adolescent experiences that might have indicated gay attraction, and how we reacted to them.
Homophobia is only partly anti-gay -- it's just as much a way of getting all males to doubt themselves, and then in many cases to try to prove themselves with sex or violence.
I think that Foucault was right in saying that "homosexuality" was originally defined in a therepeutic, interventionist, medical discourse. In 1960-64 () the teachers in my high school had an eye out for potentially gay boys. The marker wasn't really effeminacy, but susceptibility to bullying, and the intervention was to prevent bullying, but it was thought of in a gay "sissy" context.
There was a tremendous load of gay paranoia in pop culture, e.g. Tennessee Williams. The quantity of gay-oriented discourse didn't necessarily increase when it became OK.
To my knowledge two members of my HS cohort did become gay (out of ~60 guys). One was the quarterback on the football team and point guard aon the basketball team.
Clownae, I know you don't wear those curly golden shoes. They would be a hazard in the shop.
15, 17 - I haven't ever really wondered if I was gay, but I've always kind of wished I was. Will putting on eyeliner help?
mcmc, I change my shoes when I go to work.
Will putting on eyeliner help?
It didn't make me any gayer in high school, fwiw.
On the other hand, an ex-boyfriend who was gay in college started by experimenting with the eyeliner. On the third hand, he's married to a woman these days. On the fourth hand, she's a lesbian and they're both queer identified.
So who can tell.
LB hangs out with Hindu dieties.
The only guy I knew who played with eyeliner in high school later shot himself in the gut. He survived.
I don't know if he's gay, though.
26 -- the clowning and buffoonery is the work, the shoptime is the play.
Is eyeliner the stuff that goes over the eyes, or the stuff for your lashes?
Wait wait what, eyeliner? Eyeliner hasn't been the f4g0rz for boys for a long time. I don't even think you'd be harassed for wearing it, much less beaten or picked up.
SCMTim, even a brain in a jar should know that one.
Mascara goes on the lashes, eye shadow is powerdy stuff that goes on the lids, and eyeliner is crayony or liquid stuff that creates lines, usually just above the lashes.
Attraction to a guy, which you misinterpreted as total gayness
No no, this is what I mean about how weird it was. I didn't think, even in my inchoate young way, that he was hot, and OMG! I'm so gay. There's really nothing in the video I can point to that made me think I was gay. It's not, "I can't believe I thought that was hot," but "I have no idea what triggered the reaction."
That's just weird -- something not involving being attracted to men making you think you were gay in the face of personal experience of being actually attracted to women? Teenage boys are insane. Or maybe it's just you.
Mascara goes on the lashes,
I couldn't think of the word, and thought "eye liner" might be a synonym. I have no idea what the use you describe means. Is it a base for the eye shadow, to give it texture? By "over the eyes," I meant just above the lashes, on the eyelid itself.
So Pat Robertson is right. Without MTV, Ogged would be normal.
You've fucking with me, right? Ok, if you really don't know--and I still think you're fucking with me--eyeliner is like a soft pencil. It goes (usually) directly above the lashline. One of its purposes is to enhance the illusion of full, dark eyelashes. It is too sticky to use as a base for eye shadow, which generally goes over the full eyelid, whose skin is fragile. You remember that cat-eye eye-makeup of the sixties? That is accomplished with eyeliner, although eye shadow can be used to enhance the effect.
Tim, you'd make a sorry Gothboy. Eye liner is put on in a line (as you might expect), along the edge of the eyelid. Like so.
Tim's just trying to throw around his heteronormativity. Bet he wore eyeliner in high school just like the rest of us.
Not to interrupt the gay jokes, but fuck.
FWIW, I didn't know either, Tim. I'm not completely sure I understand even now (having read 41), but I don't care so that's okay.
41: Not fucking with you. Thought the eye effects like #46 were eye shadow, which I'm almost certain comes in pencil-like/lipstick-like form (or did at one point).
42: That looks painful, like the coloring is applied on the inner edge of the eye lid. That can't be healthy.
I think that knowing that there are people who have to this day remained innocent of eyeliner has, on balance, greatly cheered me. My gothy teenage self, however, is appalled.
That looks painful, like the coloring is applied on the inner edge of the eye lid. That can't be healthy.
Goth kids are too sad to worry about their health.
inner edge of the eye lid
Yeah. It doesn't hurt, seriously.
Eyeshadow does not come in pencil/lipstick-like form. It's like a cake of powdery stuff that you apply with a little sponge-on-a-stick.
That's just weird -- something not involving being attracted to men making you think you were gay in the face of personal experience of being actually attracted to women? Teenage boys are insane. Or maybe it's just you.
Identity, and the anxieties associated with it, was a huge preoccupation of mine in high school. Gay/Straight was not an issue in the culture then, and thus not for me, but "Who am I?" "What am I?" would be my first approximation of what's bugging most teenage boys
There are cream eyeshadows.
Also, is there a secret to getting eyeliner close enough to the lash line? I always feel like I'm never getting the liner on properly.
Yeah, you have to pull the eyelid taut with your other non-applying hand.
I should do a demonstration video.
Also, it helps to sharpen it, if it's a pencil (which it should be) after every few uses.
A smudger helps with making it look more natural.
My favorite technique is to use a cake liner or eyeshadow with a damp push brush -- basically, you run the sharp edge of the brush along the pigment of your choice and then gently press it (again, the tip of the brush only) into the base of your lashes. It's excitingly idiot-proof.
53: The next extension in the Unfogged multimedia universe: youtube how-to videos for peeling bananas and applying eye makeup like a woman.
Also, it helps to sharpen it, if it's a pencil (which it should be) after every few uses.
Seriously, the idea that you want to sharpen anything you're going to be putting anywhere near your eye is beyond fucked up.
Seriously, the idea that you want to sharpen anything you're going to be putting anywhere near your eye is beyond fucked up.
This, absolutely.
53: My solution, when I bother with eyeliner, is just to smudge it. I feel like a dork for not being able to get clean lines, though.
Eyeliner is pretty soft -- it's like getting a point on a pencil where the lead is soft clay. You can't get it sharp in the sense that you could scratch anything with it.
But I've never been able to get the damn stuff on straight.
Eyeshadow does not come in pencil/lipstick-like form. It's like a cake of powdery stuff that you apply with a little sponge-on-a-stick.
I'm almost certain I've seen it in stick-ish form. Someone (mom?) in the 70s had like six colors in little mini-lipstick shape that snapped into a stick, one in back of the other. And there were various colors, which, as I now understand it, does not describe eyeliner. I think.
Anywho, don't put sharp things near your eyes. This has been your message of the day.
Someone (mom?) in the 70s had like six colors in little mini-lipstick shape that snapped into a stick
I totally know what SCMT is talking about here. That was just an 80s fad. Nobody uses that stuff anymore and very few people even used it then.
50: It does come in stick form, always has, IME. Thankfully, the bright turquoise I remember my mother wearing has apparently disappeared.
Maybe Ogged thought he was gay not because he found the male in the video attractive, but because he was revulsed by the female. ["I'm a teenage boy and couldn't imagine boinking that woman, ergo, I am gay."] OTOH, my son, who is gay, has the hots for Katie Holmes. I prefer to believe it is just because he is a latent superhero, whose role in life is to safe the helpless from alien predators.
How many of you were goths, anyway? Who are you people?
That would explain his Paris Hilton thing as well. ("I am... The Human Shield"!!! Saving the innocent men I love from the depredations of fiends in female form everywhere!")
I totally know what SCMT is talking about here.
Melanie Griffith in Working Girl, right? Man, that movie pissed me off.
Did they have goths in the 80's? When I was in high school, there were people who dressed kind of like that, but it was a punk thing (including eyeliner'd boys). Goth seemed to show up after Anne Rice got huge.
56: SCMT: What scares the shit out of me is watching women on the fucking freeway who drive one-handed at 60 mph whilst putting on mascara and staring at themselves in the canted rear-view mirror. This happens all too often in LA, where to be seen without full make-up is a chargeable offence.
My eye doctor's office even offers eyeliner tattooing. It's a strange world out here...
40: I remember once, I was expouding about that Jack Chick comic book about Dungeons and Dragons, about how it showed this chyk who first got into D&D, and then went from being a nice Christian girl to a pagan. And then my sister-in-law said, "what, you mean like your sister?" To which I had no response.
65: LB, you just made Rozz Williams cry like a thousand eyeliner-stained tears.
65: LB, you just made Rozz Williams cry like a thousand eyeliner-stained tears.
I thought 99 was the traditional cutoff point for tears.
That's only for space aliens. ?, Sun Ra, and Kal-El are limited to 96 tears; terrestrial goths can apparently cry at least two thousand.
Nope, it's 96 I'm afraid.
It is pretty impossible to deny the existance of goth in the 80s though. Robert Smith lived in the 80s, people. Robert Smith! (Plus, Depeche Mode, Bauhaus, Jesus and Mary Chain, and any other conceivably "goth rock" acts that were actually good)
67 - I love Chick Tracts something fierce. It is a good, good day when I get a Chick Tract.
It's not, "I can't believe I thought that was hot," but "I have no idea what triggered the reaction."
This is a little phenomenon therapists like to call "repression."
I wasn't a Goth. I just wore green eyeliner every so often because I was amused by the confused reactions it produced (I also wore earrings in both ears, back when that was supposed to mean something or other). Plus, it made my eyes look greener than green.
I did, however, listen to lots of Bauhaus and Jesus and Mary Chain. I look awful in black, though, and I wasn't about to dye my hair, so the goth fashion thing was a no-go.
Apo == attention whore. Which isn't that Goth, really? They're just attention whores dressed in black.
64: I think he likes PH because she has a flat figure and huge feet. IOW, she's really a boy in drag. Or at least I hope so. [Or maybe not, given Ann Coulter.] But then, I've never understood why Barbra Streisand is a gay icon.
The Offspring has just informed me that Pink and Gwen Stefani are also teh hott. Evidently, the blond guy on Dawson's Creek is teh hott, too.
I can remember wondering if "96 tears" was chosen because of it's being hexadecimal. I felt there had to be some significance, besides euphony.
Sadly, eyeshadow does still come in pencil form, and in bright turquoise. At the same time, even.
I was never a goth, though I've got the pallor for it.
In the last year, I have seen both Bauhaus and Depeche Mode in concert.
I had a collection of Chick Tracts in college. They were always giving them out in the French Quarter. I want to know how many people really accepted Jesus Christ as their personal savior on Bourbon Street.
76: Megan, you know they're all online, right? You could be reading The Last Generation or Dark Dungeons right now.
I thought 99 was the traditional cutoff point for tears.
No, 99 is the cutoff point for Luftballons.
84 - I was just looking at those. Voting machines and fair elections are boring.
In the last year, I have seen both Bauhaus and Depeche Mode in concert.
Isn't the Bauhaus that you saw sans some important member like Peter Murphy or something? I saw them a couple of years ago and they were missing one member and they sucked. Though I don't know if there was a causal connection between those two data.
80 - But 96 decimal is 60 in hex, and 96 in hexadecimal is 130 in decimal. I don't get either one.
Can't we just say that a guy who names himself after punctuation is really weird and needs no rational explanation for his actions?
There is a rational explanation! He comes from Mars. (Sun Ra, like Kool Keith, comes from Jupiter.)
89 -- in any event, it's too many teardrops for one heart to be cryin'.
. Evidently, the blond guy on Dawson's Creek is teh hott, too.
See, that is a good example of why I trust gay appraisals of male attractiveness. He is hot, despite an obvious tendency towards balding and a bit of an eighthead. Make him do a list of eighties/nineties stars,ranked, DE.
92: Crap, you're totally right. Let me measure how much I cry now.
So there was an explanation, I was just looking in the wrong place for it.
He is hot
No, he's not. Congratulations, you're a gay guy without the good taste.
C'mon. Did you see Varsity Blues, or are you just being contrary?
This is a little phenomenon therapists like to call "repression."
There's nothing little about my phenomenon, chicky.
Dude, SCMT, are you serious? Dawson?! The only appropriate man-crush from that show is Pacey, and I will hear no more on't.
I think you're conflating hotness with attractiveness, mrh. IIRC, Pacey's hair sucked.
No amount of rhetorical obfuscation is going to get you off this hook, SCMT.
I thought (Bauhaus) - (Peter Murphy) = (Love and Rockets).
93: I don't think he's even aware of 80s/90s stars; 00s stars, maybe. And chefs, he watches all the chefs, tho' I think Jamie Oliver is the only one who might be considered hot, everyone else being over 30 and therefore ancient. [Come to think of it, JO is now over 30 - oh, well...]
102: Shut up, Dohring-lover.
103: I'll take the 2000s list; I want to true my measure.
So is this the new state of the blog? Celebrity hotness discussions are fine as long as they're about men? Works for me.
I never understood why Joey wanted to get with Pacey in the first place, since Pacey is not at all appealing. As usual, Tim has it right.
Why are we not talking about this plane crash? What a week for the Yankees.
We're talking about the plane crash in the coffee thread.
I remember receiving this tract somewhere or other, and promptly re-naming it "The Protocols of the Elders of Queer Nation".
Works for me.
Just because you've internalized your own oppression, don't think it's okay, teo. That shit is damaging to men everywhere and a 1000-comment thread of scolding is in order.
Apo is right, as usual. Let's all go scold ourselves now. Meetya back here in 10.
When a plane crashes into coffee, it just gets discolored; when it crashes into Mountain Dew, it dissolves completely.
My feelings on the objectification of men are well-known.
113:
But when a plane crashes into a building,
it makes itself a front-page story
Then it sits there for 8-12 hours,
obscuring other stories,
as if it were significantly newsworthy.
Hey, I'm still convinced the Republicans outed Foley just to take attention away from that annoying habeas kerfuffle.
This is why people oughtn't be allowed to fly small planes over dense urban areas. And why the fucking press ought not be allowed to fly over my neighbourhood all night in search of celebrity fracas on the Sunset Strip. [Or, ftm, the fucking celebrities who fly their effing helicopters around at 3am.]
Death to the Wright Brothers...
Eye liner ignorance? How big is that rock, that you both can live under it? Tsk.
I wouldn't really call myself goth anymore, as Rah has introduced earth tones and the occasional shade of blue and even white into my wardrobe over the years, but I will say that light does tend to bend more towards my side of the closet than his. I haven't painted my nails black in eons, though, and I always hated putting on eye liner.
Turning back to 80s videos: Tell 'em what I am! (uh huh uh huh uh huh)
Never be a teenager.
"Seven years and six months!" Humpty Dumpty repeated thoughtfully. "An uncomfortable sort of age. Now if you'd asked MY advice, I'd have said 'leave off at seven'—but it's too late now."
"I never ask advice about growing", Alice said indignantly.
"Too proud?" the other inquired.
Alice felt even more indignant at this suggestion. "I mean", she said, "that one can't help growing older."
"ONE can't, perhaps", said Humpty Dumpty, "but TWO can. With proper assistance, you might have left off at seven."
I'd like to see the Unfogged commentariat remake this video starring themselves. Isn't that what youtube is for?
I also found the woman to be quite fetching, in her way.
I'd like to see the Unfogged commentariat remake this video starring themselves.
That wouldn't be interesting. Brains in vats can't dance.
They can be represented in a dancing manner, though.
My eye doctor's office even offers eyeliner tattooing.
If it came with making my eyelashes dark, I'd think twice before rejecting it with a 'wtf!' Seriously, makeup sucks. I missed the years where girls learn to do that and get to be all gothy and stuff. I was probably off being a nerd.
126: Maybe you'll get the chance in college.
Oh, for the love of little apples, I have to wait for the college job market to learn to put on eyeliner? Is that where FL learned? Is that the secret to getting hired?
Sheesh, Cala. You just need to try out a lot of different ideas and then revise according to the prevailing standard of taste.
I missed the art/rules thread today. Was that the final verdict? That's good to know.
Sure, Cala, but you'll know it when you see it. If you weren't raised in a cave, that is.
I mean, it's hard to figure out how eyeliner works when all you can see of it are the shadows of people applying it outside of the cave. Very hard.
And using a compact mirror in that flickering light? Totally not happening. Worse, you get outside, your eyes are like dazzled, and then omigod, eyeliner, everywhere, back to the cave and the makeup remover.
126: You can get your lashes dyed. I deny DE's claim that you're required to wear full makeup in LA, though--even though I'm not in LA myself, my sister used to be.
If you want a really clean line with eyeliner, use the liquid stuff.
And finally, any man who doesn't know what eyeliner is has me seriously doubting his heterosexuality. You've never dated a woman who wore makeup? And you've never been around in the morning when she was putting it on? Do you really want to admit that?
y. You've never dated a woman who wore makeup? And you've never been around in the morning when she was putting it on? Do you really want to admit that?
I tend to date women who don't wear much, if any, makeup. But, then, they're not nearing forty yet.
Jeez, even I knew what eyeliner was.
When I was 16ish, somtime between 1988 and 1989, I was a heavy make-up wearer. Not as a goth but as a 'glam-rock' sort of thing -- think L.A. big-hair rock bands of the period. Lots of eye-makeup, lipstick, you name it.
I second Apo's 'freaking people out for amusement' thing in 76. Walking into a a traditional small-town Scottish pub dressed like that was an exercise in provocation.*
Plus, it pushed all the buttons of certain types of girls who totally thought it was hot.
Also, wtf with not thinking there were goths in the 80s? About 1 in 4 people in the 80s were goths. Or at least they were in Britain. In the UK, you'd be hard pushed to find *any* women in their late 20s or early 30s who haven't at one time rocked the whole purple lipstick and way-too-much eyeliner thing.
* A very straight-laced friend from school (whose family were farmers) once stopped to give me a lift during that period. I got in his car, then he realised I was wearing lipstick (and all the rest). Silence. A few minutes later, 'Matt, you wearin' make-up?', 'Aye' .... silence .... 'Suits ye' ....
And finally, any man who doesn't know what eyeliner is has me seriously doubting his heterosexuality. You've never dated a woman who wore makeup? And you've never been around in the morning when she was putting it on?
And who grows up with 0 female relatives? Were they all getting up hours before the men so no one ever saw it going on? I had three sisters, and I couldn't have avoided knowing this kind of stuff if I'd tried.
135 rocks my world. Hey is anybody here familiar with a German philosopher named Hans Blumenberg? And a book of his called something like Hohlenausgang? Can you tell me anything about it -- I once made a go at reading it because I found the first chapter really mind-bending, but my German was nothing like up to the task.
140 -- I think in the 80's (in the US) there was the phenomenon of Goth but not the terminology -- people who were goths (in Modesto at any rate) were referred to as punks and no real distinction was made between them and actualy punks (which were in remarkably short supply in Modesto in the 80's anyway -- the closest thing was "hard core" but its practicioners were generally referred to as punks also).
We referred to them as goths. For that is what they were. It's not our fault that the US is 20 years behind...
Goths definitely existed 'round here in the 80s, and self-identified as such.
The 'sad goth' has been a cliché since I can remember.
The Blumenberg book is called Höhlenausgänge which I would translate as "Ways out of the cave" or something like that -- it could be "Coming out of the cave" but I think from my memory of the first chapter that the plurality is probably important -- and the Wikipædia article on Blumenberg does not mention it.
Ah -- Here's what I had to say about the ways out of the cave back when I was reading it. Pretty incoherent but.
140: Not all that different in Ireland, maybe not so high a proportion. My friends and I spent most of our 1980s disco-going days with the black clothes, big spiky hair, pasty foundation, over the top eyeshadow and all that. Good times. Goths/Cureheads also were inclined to go for soppy, longterm, handholding romantic relationships.
I also have a few British friends who are still goths and always have been.
111, and others: Men apparently do have body issues, too.
Interesting. One thing about male body-image in the media that differs from the female images is that at least for now, the ideal male image plastered around in magazines is a body type that, if obtained, wouldn't be harmful to the man emulating it.
137- okay, to defend my heterosexuality: I don't think I've ever dated anyone who wore eyeliner. Neither did my mother, and I have no sisters. I am of course aware that some people often have black lines around their eyes, and am aware of the fact that this is some sort of artificial beautification, but wasn't really consciously aware that these lines were made by a pencil. I've seen eyeliner when I walked through that part of Macy's, but I don't think I've ever given it a great deal of thought. The name "eyeliner" is itself fairly descriptive, and I would have probably put two and two together on my own if pressed, so I guess one could say that I did in fact know what it was. Or at least could have guessed correctly. But at the same time, if someone yesterday had told me that eyeliner was actually the stuff one uses to draw fake eyebrows, or the stuff some use to add subtle (or not-subtle) color their eyelids (eye-shadow?), I would have believed them without much hesitation.
Is that good enough or am I still a homo?
150, 151: But there's an asymmetry of feeling, of anxiety — at least perceived, it wouldn't be true for everybody — that makes it possible to say for/to men, as in the article, "but this is a healthy body, attainable for many men, that I like when I see it." Attempts here to say something similar, in the abstract about women, with caveats about health actually being heavier than the fashion ideal but still trim, fit, and so far as one knows attainable and praiseworthy, have foundered badly, and furthermore treated as if impossible to express without some measure of bad faith.
Isn't that difference entirely explained by the difference in emphasis in our culture between being physically ideal for women and for men? If we were living in a society where women were exposed to as much pressure to be physically perfect as men are now, I heartily doubt that we'd be getting as touchy about it as we are.
Note to journalists: If you want us to take the issue of body image issues for men seriously, interview someone other than Richard Simmons.
Thank you. That is all.
Is that good enough or am I still a homo?
Not being intimately familiar with eyeliner seems, obviously, easily explicable to me. If neither your mother nor any of the other women you knew well were painted whores, I'm not sure why you should know all about eyeliner. But offering a detailed justification in response to someone challenging the vigor of your hetrosexuality? Kind of gay.
I don't think I've ever dated anyone who wore eyeliner. Neither did my mother
Well, when I "dated" your mother, I was past my eyeliner stage, so while it may have seemed that way at the time, it isn't technically true.
A very straight-laced friend from school (whose family were farmers) once stopped to give me a lift during that period. I got in his car, then he realised I was wearing lipstick (and all the rest). Silence. A few minutes later, 'Matt, you wearin' make-up?', 'Aye' .... silence .... 'Suits ye' ....
Awesome.
So is this,
longterm, handholding romantic relationships
by virtue of the disdain that drips from it.
But offering a detailed justification in response to someone challenging the vigor of your hetrosexuality? Kind of gay.
Well, I guess that explains all those cock-sucking fantasies.
154: The male standards in the media seem to me, at least, to be a lot more attainable, and the standards are more flexible. Not all male actors fit the rugged washboard abs type; it's possible for a male actor to be a sex symbol while carrying a few extra pounds. Heck, if he's tubby, he'll have a teeny hot wife, too. The standards for women are a lot harder for most women -- you're a pig at a size 6 -- and there's not as much tolerance or wiggle room for being attractive but bigger than usual.
Thinking maybe the asymmetry of feeling exists because the expectations are asymmetrical.
I think men are also brought up to be more resilient on this score: when I see a guy who is totally ripped, in addition to "damn, he's ripped," I also think something like, "but I'd probably kick his ass in any given sport." Maybe I'm just a bad person, but maybe guys learn to beat back threats to their fragile egos.
My point was that the asymmetry was so marked, so contentious, that it seemed there was no way to express equivalent thoughts, however qualified. The ground was poisoned.
B-Wo, do you know a professor of Classics at Northwestern named Robert Wallace? (Did you go there?) He might possibly be the same person as the Robert Wallace who has translated many of Blumenberg's works.
Clownman, which blog have you been reading that you could have missed that b-dub is a Maroon, through and through? Now he'll have to kill you, you know.
I also think something like, "but I'd probably kick his ass in any given sport." Maybe I'm just a bad person, but maybe guys learn to beat back threats to their fragile egos.
The word you're looking for is not "bad," but "delusional."
Nah, it's totally true, and you'll never convince me otherwise.
Maybe I'm just a bad person, but maybe guys learn to beat back threats to their fragile egos.
Or maybe guys don't spend nearly as much time being beaten up about these issues, so it's easier for them to shake it off.
that it seemed there was no way to express equivalent thoughts, however qualified.
Is it perhaps possible that this feeling reflects a certain amount of asymmetrical oversensitivity to complaint on your behalf, and that of other men's?
163: Not sure I can summon up appropriate feelings. Men can't jibe about which 95 pound actress they think isn't hot because it hurts the feelings of the real women in their lives, even if they qualify it, whereas the women can? Cry me a river. I'll see the inability to jibe and raise you an eating disorder.
a Maroon, through and through
You saying he's stupid? Or is that the school color of some non-Northwestern university? I thought I remembered him hooking up ATM with some Australian professor who had taught him while visiting at Northwestern. But my memory is riddled with holes as always.
I'll see the inability to jibe and raise you an eating disorder.
Can we please not get into another game of misery poker? Let's all just agree that life is a seemingly endless game of suffering and misery from which death is the only release.
Or is that the school color of some non-Northwestern university?
Ooooh, now I'm getting offended. And I didn't even like the place.
Ah -- apparently W went to the University of Chicago -- unless -gg-d is misleading me as is his wont. I can never differentiate all those midwestern schools anyhow.
161- I'd guess it's not the "tubby" guys who have the hardest time, it's the ectomorphs. And short guys. And guys with needle-dicks.
Point being, yeah you're right that "tubby" guys don't face pressures similar to "tubby" women, but that's precisely because "tubby" isn't considered a fatal flaw for men in our culture.
What I'm saying is that I'm not at all convinced that "expectations are asymmetrical" once you sum up the expectations along all possible vectors. (I'm not at all convinced otherwise either -- I'm honestly not sure either way.) Sure, expectations for weight are asymmetric, but expectations for height are asymmetric in the other direction. (And of course we've been over all this before.)
the school color of some non-Northwestern university
Eh -- I just got e-mail back from Dr. Wallace and his is not the Dr. Wallace I seek anyways.
174: I'll grant you that there are different fatal flaws for men, but I think they're perhaps not as serious in terms of the harm they cause because they're not as visible in the media. Height, for example, isn't as visible as weight in movies or photos; plenty of actors who are hot even though they're quite short.
Hey, we can all love both the University of Chicago and Northwestern University. Hmph.
Actually, I hate Northwestern undergrads. Nevermind.
179- Okay, I really don't want to have this discussion, and am therefore very inclined to just concede, but aren't they hot in part precisely because their height isn't as visible in the movies or photos? Meaning, the short guy on the street has no hollywood role models to which he can point and think "see, it's okay that I'm short", and similarly there are few women who think "Tom Cruise is both hott and short, therefore short guys can be hot", because in the movies he's not perceived to be short. So the cultural reference that tall=desireable is unaffected.
If your only point was that, given the availability of flattering camera-angles, a short man is more likely to be able to build a career as a hollywood sex symbol than is a heavier woman, I'll grant you that certainly. But that's because he's not perceived on film as short, so I don't get your point about broader cultural associations.
177--
careful--sounds like he was using Jedi mind tricks on you.
I do grant that the "ideal" for male in our culture is at least healthy, whereas the "ideal" for females is probably unhealthy/underweight. But I really do suspect that's mostly a hollywood thing-- most men I know IRL really do far prefer women of healthy weight to women who have stopped menstruating.
far prefer women of healthy weight to women who have stopped menstruating
Menopausal women are hott. In flashes.
184 Always possible. A question I would like to direct to the philosophers here assembled is, if there's this German philosopher who seems really interesting to me but his later books are not translated into English and I can't read German very well and there doesn't seem to be all that much written about his thought in English, what should I do? Learn to read German better? Seek out an English-speaking professor who has some specialty in the the philosopher I'm interested in, and get guidance from him? This latter is what I was meaning to do with contacting Robert Wallace, but there seem to be a lot of Robert Wallaces and I can't figure out how to tell which one is the translator I'm looking for.
Brock, good point. What I'm arguing is more that it's the state of being constantly surrounded by ultrathin actresses held up as ideal that's damaging to women, because it's impossible to emulate. We internalize that as 'normal.'
It's absolutely true that the height of actors is generally concealed, and so it's not as though it's having a positive effect on men's esteem. But it's not having as damaging effect either, because you can't look at a photograph and say 'That guy is hot because he is tall' nearly as easily as you can attribute it to his muscles or rugged air or sly glance. It's not a problem of role models -- on this point, you're right -- but what's being touted as normal. Guys on TV and in photographs seem to be possessed of variable height that ensures their heads always line up with the actress they're near.
187--
first step: rule out the 19th century Scots politicians. They aren't going to help you much here. Might as well scratch Robert the Bruce off your list, too. Good with a claymore, not much on German syntax.
(That's a broadsword, you jerk, not an anti-personnel mine).
(Maybe I should buy one of the translations of Blumenberg's earlier work to find out who the translator is -- there would probably be more info available than just his name. -- Actually I think I do already have Wallace's translation of Work on Myth at home.)
Is it perhaps possible that this feeling reflects a certain amount of asymmetrical oversensitivity to complaint on your behalf, and that of other men's?
Not clear what this means.
I'll see the inability to jibe and raise you an eating disorder.
I hate the zero-sum quality of this. And I'm not talking about jibing. I saw people shot down for saying "What I like is..."
191: I'm getting the sense from you that you perceive complaints from women about how they dislike our society's relationship to ideals of feminine beauty, and the way men talk about these issues (and the rest of the whole argument about beauty images which I'm not going to lay out here) as unpleasant, or worrisome -- the fact that you hear such complaints is difficult for you. I am sorry that you find such conversations unpleasant, but I think that you and other men may be overly sensitive to the unpleasantness of the complaints.
My FedEx delivery man is short (ish - and I'm 5'8"). And I have a massive crush on him. Am wondering about opening the door next time in some kind of Benny Hill-style seethrough negligee.
In partial defense of ogged, I would guess that "totally ripped" implies, in most cases, chemical aid or not, a fantatical devotion to bodybuilding that would take away from the practice time required to become very good at any given sport. Many professional athletes (and this is less true than it once was, certainly) are very muscular, but not "totally ripped," as I understand the hypertrophy implied.
For instance, the average NBA player is much more "ripped"--though typically not "totally ripped"--than he was twenty years ago; but he's also less skilled. Does the additional power and speed make him a better player overall? There's controversy about that, sure, but I'd say no, at least not in the sense relevant to the reduced scale applicable to ogged's original comment.
I also invited speculation about which members of the commentariat would be best suited for which roles in the video, which I am disappointed not to have found.
but he's also less skilled
I'm not sure this is true.
I don't know from basketball, but I have the uneducated impression from hearing people bitch that things like free-throw percentage were way down from the past.
Asilon, the rumors are true. It happens all the time. I used to have a buddy who was a FedX driver, and he was a hot-lookin' guy too.
They're very strictly supervised and on the clock all the time, but if he's interested you might be able to arrange something after work.
"Am wondering about opening the door next time in some kind of Benny Hill-style seethrough negligee"
I'd say go for it.
Provided that you really, really want Benny Hill-style outcomes, i.e. people bumping heads, awkward over-acting, inept laugh-track, horn-honk noises punctuating vigorous events, etc.
For instance, the average NBA player is much more "ripped"--though typically not "totally ripped"--than he was twenty years ago; but he's also less skilled.
That's more or less complete crap dished out by announcers who need to fill air time and columnists who need to fill inches.
When I was a paper boy [aged about 14] the 'opens door in negligee' thing didn't happen very often, but it did happen. It's not one of those myths. Maybe some people just wear that sort of thing around the house, or something.
Fundamental-type activities, free-throw shooting, mid-range jump shot, passing--these have declined. If the statistical evidence doesn't support this, it's not being interpreted properly.
Really, I linked to that article about men and body image because the lead researcher on the study is an ex-girlfriend and current friend. Seemed Mineshaft-relevant, though.
uh, I don't think anyone has been trying to relegate negligees to the realm of myth, nor the wearers of negligees, even around the house. There are reliable sightings that put all of these things squarely into the realm of natural history rather than fireside tale.
That the wearing of said negligees is an infallible sign that the wearer answering the door wants to have immediate sex with whoever knocked--that might partake of at least the fabulous, if not the mythical.
(ditto for mediate sex).
Hey, we can all love both the University of Chicago and Northwestern University. Hmph.
We most certainly cannot.
(and yes, I was a paper boy long ago, as well as doing another job in young adulthood that required me to show up at people's houses in the middle of the day to service their appliances--not a euphemism. And people wear any damn thing they want and it's none of my business).
I once answered the door, and there standing was a woman in a negligee. She said, "Wanna see my teddy?" True story.
This happened at John Emerson's fabled Reed College, where I was visiting a friend. The next morning, I wound up showering in the stall next to this woman in one of Reed's co-ed bathrooms.
I totally couldn't handle that place.
Um, ogged, roughly when was that?
This wasn't your wife, was it, Jesus?
I guess you won't know until I answer your question. Around 15 years ago.
If you knocked on my door, it's as likely as not I'd answer in my boxers. You don't know how lucky you are you're never going to do that.
If you're more comfortable slobbing round the house in a neglige or underwear, should you forego this benefit in order to be polite to unsolicited tradespeople who come to your house? One of you ethicists?
"That the wearing of said negligees is an infallible sign that the wearer answering the door wants to have immediate sex with whoever knocked"
Given my age, and the fact that I was barely out of puberty, I was under no such illusions.
"Wanna see my teddy?"
Ah, Reed. I understand a lot of the students there keep plush bears and other stuffed animals.
actually, the period when I was barely out of puberty was probably when I harbored the greatest number of such illusions.
Just after my time, but I'm certain I could find out who it was without too much detective work. And no, I had the good sense to marry someone I met well outside of that incentuous den of iniquity. She doesn't have a thing for Mexicans, anyway, at least not that I know of.
A guy I knew in college had vinyl singles, but no record player, so he could ask people if they wanted to see his seven inches.
Hey, we can all love both the University of Chicago and Northwestern University. Hmph.
We most certainly cannot.
We can if we don't have a shriveled little heart, like the heart of a Chicago School economist.
I have no truck with Chicago economists.
That the wearing of said negligees is an infallible sign that the wearer answering the door wants to have immediate sex with whoever knocked--that might partake of at least the fabulous, if not the mythical.
Well, you just ruiined Asilon's attempt to deliver her message. Thank's a lot, guy.
I suppose that in the third millenium nothing so subtle as a negligee will get the message across. How about wearing nothing at all and asking if he wants to be in a video?
Always trying to help. Sounds like a non-relationship, for one thing.
whadya mean? It's the Fed Ex guy she's after. If she wants to send a message, tell her to use Western Union.
Recently I passed through Reed at their Rennfaire, and passed a line of 200 students in line for barbecue, most of them chemically-impaired and 10% naked and painted blue.
Everyone was totally peaceful and civil, which is unusual in rest of the SE Portland chemically-impaired community.
big deal. I'm 10% naked even in a suit and tie.
I did undo my cardigan somewhat (laughing mercilessly at myself inside my head) when I opened the door to him yesterday. Though the effect was probably offset by the baggy pyjama trousers underneath, rather than a negligee.
I've opened the door to the postman about a million times in my dressing gown, but that's a huge opaque thing, and I can't imagine it ever working as a tool of seduction.
Oh, and 210: I'd imagine scantily-clad people opening doors to you is one of the benefits (humorous or erotic) of being a delivery or trradesperson, so I think everyone should do it. (Apart from anyone else on my FedEx man's route. He's mine.)
219: A CD player near the front door that can be surreptitiously turned on to play a fuzzy-bass heavy porno soundtrack is useful for communicating one's intent in such circumstances, or so I've been told.
Cool, good tip, thanks LB. And Emerson, not only would it be a non-relationship (generally I only see him about once a month, I'm a bit over-excited because he's been here twice this week), but it could also easily kill off the relationship I'm already in! Win-win.
223: It doesn't substitute for a tip, though, if a tip is required. Actual sex would be a little too high a tip, though. Maybe if you tipped with sex once every 5 or 6 deliveries that would be about right.
would you like us to send you more FedEx letters so he'd come more often?
uh, arrive more often?
Everyone send little Fedex thingies to Asilon.
The clocks are the same. No pwn.
Books, you mean? The other thread characterizes them as unsurpassed in their thinginess.
225: And you could just order something shipped anytime you wanted to hook up. This is such an elegant scheme, I'd be surprised if it weren't in widespread use already.
Or you could call FedEx for a pickup, and when he shows up be all, "Oh, you thought I meant I wanted to send a package?"
That's OK, you're on Pacific Time.
138: Nice try, but most women wore makeup in high school, and most women wear makeup at least *sometimes*. And I'm completely unfazed by worrying about my age.
153: Nope, not good enough. Also not a homo, because homos know about eyeliner. I think you're in the dreaded "neuter" category, but then that makes sense, what with the new baby and all.
On the male body image thing: actually, men's eating disorders are on the rise, and there's the steroid problem. I think that if anything the guys are gaining on us in terms of body neurosis. I can't begin to tell you how horrified I was when PK said to me that he thought he was too weak and thin and didn't have big enough muscles. At the age of fucking five. Goddamn superhero bullshit. Check out the waist to shoulder ratio of "boy" cartoon characters and the way that the physiques of GI Joe and Superman and the Star Wars dolls and all the rest of them have changed from when we were kids. Absolutely fucking horrifying.
159 :
longterm, handholding romantic relationships
by virtue of the disdain that drips from it.
God no, I wanted one of those relationships for myself and didn't have one. Failure of tone + trying to convey the dramatics and bad poetry.
God no, I wanted one of those relationships for myself
You did also say "soppy," however.
re: 235
My brother started saying things like that when he was around 5 or 6 (9 or 10 years ago). It is pretty worrying.
I don't remember thinking those kinds of thoughts at his age.
I don't think of "soppy" as all that pejorative. I had vast untapped reservoirs of soppiness at the time.
In contrast to the sensitive goth boys whose appearance would deny them the approval of any girl's parents were the farmers in nylon shirts who looked "respectable" but were just looking for a quick ride outside in the disco carpark.
Huh. I've never heard anything like that from Newt. On the other hand, he's just entering kindergarten now, and has spent an awful lot of time in Sally's millieu, playing with her friends; any screwy pressure toward ultra-masculinity may kick in now that he's in school.
Fundamental-type activities, free-throw shooting, mid-range jump shot, passing--these have declined.
Fun facts:
Average NBA league-wide free-throw percentage from the 1959-60 season to the 1968-69 season: .726
Average NBA league-wide free-throw percentage from the 1999-2000 season to the 2003-04 season: .750
If the statistical evidence doesn't support this, it's not being interpreted properly.
Okay, so what's your interpretation of the above? (Stats taken from here.)
241: Yeah, it was the end of PK's first year in kindergarten when it came up. Good luck.
I didn't want to get into misery poker, but the bewilderment at the asymmetry, as if the real problems with portrayals of body image in the media are that men get shut down when they comment about women, bothered me. Similar to white college frat friends of mine feeling discriminated against because Dave Chappelle can do whiteface but if a white comedian did blackface it wouldn't be received well.
The action figure changes are really striking, especially in characters -- like the Star Wars toys -- that were recently redone. It's a different aesthetic, certainly; watching old 70s movies where the hero is as delicate as an emo boy always confuses me. ('Chicken legs is supposed to be the love interest?')
there is something of the same dynamic with male somatodysmorphic syndrome as with female, except the target insecurity is slightly different, I suspect.
The point is to make individuals feel deeply inadequate. But where the particular insecurity for women is not being attractive/loved, the target insecurity for small boys is the threat of being picked on, bullied, and beat up.
If you can intensify the boy's feelings of powerlessness and smallness (e.g. by making them believe that the world is populated by dauntless ultra-brawny superheros), then you can get them to fetishize objects that have the totemic ability to make them feel more powerful. E.g., action figures that they can identify with, that can beat up the bad guys, that are never victims themselves, etc.
But of course the new fetishization of the external power source (e.g. buying lots of GI Joe figures), causes them to buy into the normality of those images and body types to an even greater degree, thus reinforcing their insecurities about their own bodies.
It's a pretty good racket if you're selling action figures. Or later on, exercise equipment and protein powder.
And then at some age, of course, the fear of being victimized is augmented by the fear of being unattractive to whomever you want to attract. But I suspect that plays less of a role in the 10-and-under boy set.
I was speaking, obviously, of the 80s.
244: The takeover of the gym-fit male body in the movies was sudden and remarkably complete. A couple of years ago, I was watching some 80s movie with Tommy Lee Jones (something to do with an experimental car, Linda Hamilton may have co-starred as a car thief or something, I don't actually remember the movie all that well), and there was a scene with Jones half-naked and supposed to be looking sexy. And, not that he wasn't attractive, but my instant reaction was that no one would have let him do a scene like that these days without lifting a whole bunch of weights first -- he just wasn't muscly enough to be starring in a cheesy action movie.
i'd be confused, too, if an emu had chicken legs.
(i.e. what does that want to say, "emo boy"?)
247
see you and raise you for the '50s--Rock Hudson was considered absolutely studly back then, and now looks kinda pudgy and stout.
It was Rambo and Ahnold that did it, wasn't it? Just raised the stakes for male action-heroes. That, probably, and the wide availability of personal trainer+steroid programs to make it possible for skinny kids like Keanu Reeves, DiCaprio, etc. to bulk up.
I was surprised the other day, watching Gremlins, and Billy's mother looks like a normal, fairly plain, middle-aged woman. That was 1985 I think. These days she'd have to look no older than 35 (even if she's supposed to be 45) and gorgeous. Depressing.
246: You're still wrong, for a variety of reasons, most of which won't show up in stats. FWIW, here's a list of league averages. FT% about the same, assists down, turnovers down, points down.
249: When was Top Gun? I remember the volleyball game in that as an early example of the camera gloating over oiled-up gym muscles.
245 is largely true, I think. What's really startling to me is that PK really has about zero action figure type toys and has pretty much been insulated from action figure movies. But he's picked that crap up nonetheless, and it *is* about fear of being weak/losing/etc. Whereas for girls, the thing/rich/shopaholic thing is (supposedly) a mark of power. Which PK picks up on by thinking that somehow there's this meme where girls are better than boys. Of course, he doesn't yet realize that the "girl power" thing is incredibly hollow, and that the "boy power" thing is all about teaching him to feel inadequate and suppress his weaker emotions, blah blah.
Luckily, he's remarkably adept about talking about feelings and has a feminist mother, so he should be relatively okay. But, jeez.
I was speaking, obviously, of the 80s.
Sod, I got the percentages wrong.
Averages for '99-'00 to '03-'04: .741
Averages for '79-'80 to '88-'89: 756
Yeah, huge decline there.
Yeah, yet another artefact of Arnold Schwarzenegger's evil impact on the broader culture. Constitutional amendment, here we come.
It does say 'emo boy', at least on my screen.
A few years ago I was watching some 80s movie with a friend and the female lead seemed almost dowdy: oversized shirt, leggings, long bad 80s hair. I asked my friend 'is she supposed to be attractive?' He thought she was, but man, that was a weird decade.
250: The whole class of teenagey soaps (The O.C. and similar) are composed of 25-year-old 16-year-olds and their 35-year-old mothers.
"It does say 'emo boy', at least on my screen."
oh, sure--mine too.
Sorry, when I wrote
"(i.e. what does that want to say, "emo boy"?)"
I forgot that you couldn't hear my Maurice Chevalier accent.
Ce que je voulais dire, c'etait: "what does "emo boy" mean?"
258--
thanks, Cl-ae.
That's.
very interesting.
I think the comic would have worked better if it focused on a sensitive, misunderstood emu, but that's just my opinion.
That is quite a decline, actually, but the more serious issue, documented at that very site, is the decline in field-goal percentage. The mid-range jump shot is the most reliable indicator of overall skills (the increased athleticism of defenders being presumably cancelled out).
a sensitive, misunderstood emu
Well, be honest -- is there really any other kind?
137: "Required" only in the "looking like a movie star/ club-goer/ Paris Hilton/ poptart/ lady-who-lunches/ executive in The Industry/ anything wannabe" sense. I used to avoid hints-to-wear-make-up from the [female] managing partner at my last law firm by affirming my topical allergies now and then and bemoaning my inability to wear anything more than lipstick. [True and not true; there's stuff I can use, I just don't want to.]
I also recommend eyelash dyeing; takes fifteen minutes and lasts a couple of months. And prevents klutzes such as myself from poking themselves in the eye with a mascara wand whilst standing still in a bathroom, much less whilst driving.
Just as a side comment: Having been Geek Grrl through high school, I arrived at college a complete novice in the World o' Make-up. One of my friends turned out to be a baby drag queen, and he introduced me to Product. I didn't learn for several years that the fire-ants-dancing-on-my-face sensation = topical allergies. I just thought women who wore make-up were insane.
Heck in the 50's and 60's being a bodybuilder was teh gay, right?
Bitch- feelings of weakness and powerlessness (?) are why little boys like to play with guns. Some don't outgrow this.
I don't know much about basketball, but how much is a change in the game a decline in skills rather than an emphasis on new skills? The only sports I know are too girly or esoteric to compare to your manly basketball, but lamenting the loss of technique to athleticism is a quite common complaint. The athletes are often stronger, faster, more powerful than they used to be, and that emphasizes different aspects of the sport.
Especially in basketball, where "fan friendly"action has replaced passing and team work. 30 second shot clock, less travelling called, all for the TV audience.
Boys should feel at least a little insecure about being weak, because they will in fact be beaten up if they are.
I anticipate that the hardest part of parenthood will be inculcating just the right amount of insecurity in the little buggers.
DE: isn't eyelash dye really dangerous?
I'll endorse 245 too. I'm coming to believe my insecurities, transferred as I got older and less physically afraid as 245 suggests to insecurities about attractiveness, comes from being badly bullied as a child, from the very first day of school. I'm sure my detestation of teasing and "giving people shit" has the same source: too closely associated with bullying in my mind.
266--
yup. That is one of the hard parts.
Another one is keeping them away from the children of people who have the kind of attitude you've just expressed.
Boys should feel at least a little insecure about being weak, because they will in fact be beaten up if they are.
Is there really all that much 'beating up' in American schools? My high-school buddies were physically puny wimps to a man, and I don't remember any of them getting beaten up.
There was a fair bit of beating up in my grade school and junior high, and it was totally the prissy part of town.
Yeah, I went to an NYC magnet school, so my sense of the tendency of people to hit each other is probably understated.
The lazy lot of you, unwilling as you are, to remake the original video should instead consider Maya Deren's "Ritual in Transfigured Time":
http://youtube.com/watch?v=xrWNXLPFz40
Boys should feel at least a little insecure about being weak, because they will in fact be beaten up if they are.
I'm not sure how often beatdowns happen of weak guys. I've witnessed one or two. But I think it's more being perceived as different rather than small, and there's nothing wrong with being different but being able to throw a punch.
My snugglebearcupcakepie got into fights in high school all of the time but I get the distinction impression it was because he was perhaps too willing to goad other kids into taking a swing because he enjoyed kicking the crap out of them.
Is there really all that much 'beating up' in American schools?
I don't know about now, but there certainly was when I was young. Although my most savage experiences, probably due to age, were in that dear, kind, peaceful country next door.
Is there really all that much 'beating up' in American schools?
Not a ton of actual beating up, but physical intimidation goes on, and it starts much earlier than high school. You don't even have to be that strong to not get messed with, you just don't want to be that weak member of the herd.
Ogged, quit ignoring the hard questions in the other thread.
totally the prissy part of town
Remembering a classic example: I was, I think, in seventh grade, and got into something of a scrum with another kid. It was decided that we'd meet at the bike racks after school (seriously), but he didn't show. The next day, I was called into the office, and there he was, telling the principal that his lawyer had advised him not to get into any fights at school. One of the great moments of my childhood.
Cala, I don't think many guys who remember high school would equivocate small with weak. Small guys, by and large, often tend to be the most violent, to make up for it. There was a spectacular instance when one of the short guys in my HS had to go to court for going to town on this other guy with a baseball bat.
his lawyer had advised him
yeah, I had the same problem. My hands being registered as deadly weapons, and all that.
Otherwise, I would have been at the bike racks. I so would have.
the female lead seemed almost dowdy: oversized shirt, leggings, long bad 80s hair.
I take it that Cala does not live on the lower East Side or in Brooklyn. Cala, they're wearing baby-doll dresses with their leggings now.
279. Did you beat him up later, or was he just an outcast for the rest of his time at the school?
Yeah, I should have said 'weak', but the kids who were beat up weren't generally the tall kids, either.
268 - I was that picked on kid. I'm good with shit-giving, but I absolutely can't watch any kind of slapstick or physical comedy. A group of people, all laughing at one ungraceful person? Oh no no no no no.
I didn't beat him up later. I don't think he had a ton of friends as it was, and was older anyway, so he was soon gone.
282: That trend hasn't quite hit here yet. (Calaville's about a year behind.) But it still seems to look better than a flannel shirt and stirrup pants.
Not happy with the style changes. Skinny jeans look awful on me. Leggings make me look like I should be trying to play football. If they discontinue bootcut jeans, Immagonna wear sweatpants for the next two years until everyone comes to their senses.
Actually, maybe we need to make a distinction. I don't know of anyone who was regularly beat up, or physically picked on, like the "nerds" on teenage sitcoms.
Everyone without a lawyer was thumped by Ogged. Got it.
I was that picked on kid. I'm good with shit-giving, but I...
You've managed to internalize a distinction that I can't, even now. Not only can't I watch them, they make me physically ill with rage.
To be a bit more fair to Ogged's antagonist, if the kid came in talking about his lawyer - odds are his parents were weirdos, and planted that idea on him. Nurture, people!
277 is right, in my experience. I went to a private elementary school where there was very little actual violence, but the power dynamic was still there: the strong boys were at the top of the pecking order, and the weak boys at the bottom.
I was a wimpy, unathletic kid, and I was mercilessly teased for being skinny. (The worst bit of name-calling occured during the 84-85 famine in Ethiopia, during which I acquired the nickname "Ethiopian" or "Eth".)
I don't know of anyone who was regularly beat up, or physically picked on, like the "nerds" on teenage sitcoms.
How regularly is regularly? In my case, three or four times a year in Junior High. But that's a physical attack leaving a black eye, broken glasses or fat lip. If stealing or vandalizing my stuff, tripping, etc. counts then maybe four times that.
288--I was, constantly. Not so much getting beat up--that didn't really happen. But punches in the arm in the hallway, knees to the back of the thigh in the locker room, titty twisters, etc. Largely ended in high school after I thumped the crap out of someone, but if Columbine had happened 10 years earlier, there might have been a copycat incident in South Dakota.
I got hit in the head with a rock once, but I suspect that the boy was trying to flirt with me.
You seem like a pretty big guy, Choppo. Or were you the pudgy kid who got strong later?
Also, dittoes to swifty's 277.
Jonathan:
The numbers (eyeballing) for '80-'86 and '00-'06 are about the same. I don't know why the mid-range jumpshot should be the best measure of overall skills. And I have no idea what "the increased athleticism of defenders being presumably cancelled out" means, though I assume increased size also cancels out.
And gswift is totally correct when, in #277, he says, "Not a ton of actual beating up, but physical intimidation goes on, and it starts much earlier than high school." Who wants to be known as the kid who gets swirlies? Eighth grade was brutal, and I can think of at least three guys (none of whom were small, interestingly) whose long-term lives (I believe) were profoundly affected that year slightly along the lines I don't pay was talking about.
Chopps, sounds like me in Jr. High. But I gave back a lot (too much, at times). I'm sure I got worse than a lot of other kids, but, at the same time, Low Intensity Conflict seemed the norm for Jr High.
Though, of course, one doesn't have to be Screech-like to be bullied. A cousin of mine is big, tough, and, I'm sure, could be mean. He still got into so many fights he had to quit HS.
FWIW, my HS wasn't actually particularly violent, and we didn't have a pecking order based on toughness.
The only physical violence I can remember from my school years is one time in Jr. High, calling a girl "bitch" and getting slapped, and falling down. I remember feeling under the bigger guys' thumb pretty constantly in grade school but there were no incidents. That I can recall.
calling a girl "bitch" and getting slapped, and falling down
Pussy.
My snugglebearcupcakepie got into fights in high school all of the time but I get the distinction impression it was because he was perhaps too willing to goad other kids into taking a swing because he enjoyed kicking the crap out of them.
Girls love guys who beat up other guys. I totally will not believe anyone who hypocritically says otherwise.
The 2% are not even close to being about the same, of course, a fact remarked upon by the compiler of this data, even.
I had my lunch money stolen one time in H.S. Except it wasn't at school, it was outside a neighborhood restaurant, at night, on a weekend. And there were about 15 of them and only one of me. And a firearm was pulled and pointed at me.
yeah, it was rough in my jr. high school, too.
But the people I felt worst for were the sensitive, misunderstood emus.
Until one of them kicked the shit out of a tormentor.
Great thing about being emu--they can really kick!
Junior High had a lot more bullying than High School. But then again, at the High School I went to it was the jocks at the low end of the totem pole.
I was in a fair number of fights in both primary and high school -- all teh Scottish clichés. etc. I wasn't very good at backing down, I was small, weak and not tough but generally couldn't face intimidation without confronting it head on.
I grew up in one of the tougher areas that fed into our high school, though, and I had long hair and hung with the 'metal' kids so perhaps I had less opportunities to keep out of trouble. *
There was, however, a fairly substantial number of boys who weren't hard but who just kept their heads down and largely bypassed the violence, so even though it was a moderately but not excessively tough school (by local standards) I don't think being small or weak was necessarily a certain way to get bullied. There were lots of kids who, I'd imagine, went all the way through school without getting into fights.
* Looking wierd was a pretty sure fire way to attract unwanted attention.
Brock, I'm glad you were astute enough to determine the "right time to give up the lunch money".
Girls love guys who beat up other guys. I totally will not believe anyone who hypocritically says otherwise.
Well, that shuts down my response.
308 - I was trying for a a humorous tone, since I'm not completely serious about that statement.
309--
yeah, ouch, but not too surprising.
remember, ogged is committed to raising his son to be a real he-man. Just to perpetuate the cycle of bullying.
Just to perpetuate the cycle of bullying.
Too true. I'm thrilled when you academic types have children.
As with everything else, some girls do, some don't. I was aware of girls gathering to watch one time I was getting beat up. Just random though, nobody I knew.
312: I'm raising large, dangerous, pacifists. They're not going to start anything.
311 -- My reaction to 300 is to think Aw shit, -gg-d's being maliciously funny again and I'm the target. And also, well yeah I'm a pussy, I mean I'm admitting that the only time I got beat up in childhood was by a girl and without putting up a fight at all. And also, aw shit, I hate getting called a pussy.
It's certainly true that, while a lot of girls at school (and later) were horrified by violence, the crazy violent bastards were never short of girlfriends.
They're not going to start anything.
Neither will my bullying children be stupid.
#302: We're talking about slightly different intervals, I think. If you go to the link I referenced in #251, and sum up the years I indicated ('80-'86, '00-'06), then (assuming I did the arithmetic correctly) you'll see that the comparison yields .754 to .752 (rounded).
Surely it's time once again to link to psfights.com.
317: Then there won't be any trouble, will there?
Actually, we have three variables now: gayness and effeminacy, physical weakness, and being singled out for bullying. They can overlap but are completely independent.
I was physically weak but was not singled out for bullying much. I think it was loners and oddballs from no-count families who were bullied. In fact, it may be that the same process created tough guys and sissies -- certain kinds of kids, and kids from certain kinds of familes, were forced to fight. If they were good at it they became thugs.
The gayness thing is a whole different dimension. Of the two kids from my school who turned out to be gay, one was a top athlete (albeit a finesse type) and the other was a fairsized, husky guy.
Also, it's also true, that while no-one wants to raise violent bullies, that a certain (moderate) degree of self-confidence in one's ability to deal with bullying and violence directed towards oneself is desirable.
Then there won't be any trouble, will there?
I expect not, LB, but nothing's off the table.
LB will raise her boys to be lovers, not fighters, but in an adolescent lapse of judgement, they will try to love the girls Ogged's boys fancy, and then...
Ogged's boys are in for a world of hurt iff they try to start anything.
325 -- is that "if and only if" intentional, or a typo?
You can look at the society we live in and tell me that 'white' people do?
I felt enormously relieved on realizing my son has for whatever reason had a very different experience from me. Environment may help but character and luck do too. On the other hand, how will he deal with violence when he inevitably experiences it? By his age, I'd been beaten up dozens of times; I'm not sure he ever has.
325 - From Newt and Sally, or from you? A fifth-grader pushed my baby brother on the playground, and only some very fast talking on my brother's part saved that kid from getting a very unpleasant visit from me and my other full grown sister.
Your boys will be dirty fighters? Well, I guess you are Irish.
LB, send your kids out to thump Ogged's kids immediately. It's more economical , kinder, and gentler to establish dominance early on.
When my son was about 12 I read a study in the newspaper saying that if you succeed in whacking someone hard on the nose, that the stun effect took them out of the fight for awhile. He tried it and it worked.
33: Given that my kids are at this point at least 6 and 8 years older than any possible children ogged might ever have, beating ogged's kids up would probably be unsportsmanlike. And Sally and Newt are all about the sportsmanship.
335: I understood that reality was being ignored for the sake of discussion?
I think the thing to do, as a parent, is to savagely beat your kids when they're young. Once they've been acclimated to that level of violence, what they see at school won't bother them at all.
You seem like a pretty big guy, Choppo. Or were you the pudgy kid who got strong later?
I was scrawny. I started really filling out in college. I graduate high school 5'10 and 150 lbs. On my frame, that's really skinny.
I didn't become the "pudgy kid" until I was an adult. Way to call me a fat bastard, ogged.
334 - Yep. It also makes people involuntarily tear up, which is useful if you want to call them crybabies.
337. Honestly, picking up on this basic idea, I think the fear of pain is a really bad thing. I wonder how to get around this, other than brutal acclimation. (which, depending on where you are, some/many of the other boys have already experienced.) "Son, you're 12 now, here comes a punch so you know what one feels like"?
Way to call me a fat bastard, ogged.
Welcome to the Unfogged Flickr group, Choppo.
Seriously, you seem like a big, strong guy, so I figured you'd always been some kind of big...
340: I think sports is good for that -- pain doesn't have to be about hostility. Sally took a ball to the face in soccer practice the other week. She was kind of shocked, and took a minute or so to get over it, and then got back in the game. The next time it happens, she'll know it's not the end of the world. And if god forbid someone tries to hit her, how different is that from getting hit with a ball?
That's good. Unfortunately, after I got beaned in the head once, I was always a bit dodgy about baseballs. (If Ogged calls me a wimp, we're meeting out by the bike racks.)
LB, have Ogged's kids thumped once they are extant. I wasn't suggesting anything different.
Hey, I was just over at Ezra Klein's where they're dumping on Hitchens, and it's turning into an AA / WTCU lovefest. What a bunch of prisses.
I went to the same namby pamby school as LB, but before that I was in a neighborhood where kids got into fights. I did once or twice. But I defended the weak! Honest! A boy in my fifth grade class was once shaking down some 2nd graders for their lunch money and I happened to be taking a karate class at the time and gave him a well-placed whack that sent him to the ground. It was excellent.
Unfortunately, after I got beaned in the head once, I was always a bit dodgy about baseballs.
This is where I admit that I accidentally bloodied Newt's nose with a softball while playing catch a couple of weeks ago. But he took it very well.
Pain from, say, a bleeding blister in your pointe shoe doesn't prepare you for getting hit in the nose by some asshole.
Seriously, you seem like a big, strong guy, so I figured you'd always been some kind of big...
Nope. I can remember very clearly the first time I was in a mosh pit and realising the other guys wer bouncing off me for a change. It was startling, and empowering.
Also weird was when I realized a while back that I was the strongest man in my group of friends, when I had to deadlift a couch by one end to get it up a stairwell wHile they stood by. We're a bunch of pasty, sedentary, and unathletic fucks, but it was still enormously gratifying.
I don't think it's the same as being hit with a ball. I'm not saying that won't be of any use, but the shock from intentional violence, and the much greater efficiency of deliberate punches and kicks, in my experience put them in a completely different category as experiences. I'm sure shock, rage, and humiliation are a big part of that.
348: Which is why ballet is not commonly recognized as a contact sport. Requiring immense athleticism and pain tolerance, but not much is going to happen to you dancing that prepares you for getting hit.
I defended the weak! Honest!
I admit that I was a bully in junior high, but didn't get into any fights in high school, where everyone seemed more sane. But one day the big kid in our homeroom, who went on to become a Marine, got into with someone else, and I broke it up, only to end up in the big kid's headlock. It was sort of absurd, since he and I were friendly, so I just said "Ok, you've got me in a headlock, James. Now what?" So he let me go and all was well.
Another time, as a freshman, I tried to break up a fight in the stands at the football game, where four upperclassmen were beating the crap out of one guy. The four guys looked at me for a second, and went back to beating the crap out of the guy. You win some, you lose some.
350: Oh, I'm sure it's not remotely the same. I am an entirely sedentary and non-violent person, with basically no relevant experience of any of this stuff. It still seems like an experience with contact sports would make actual violence somewhat less shocking.
To me, boxing is like a ballet, except there's no music, no choreography, and the dancers hit each other.
Ten years after I quit tkd, I don't want to think where my skills are now. But, should it come to a fight, I am still completely confident that I know what it is like to get hit. (And to hit someone, which can also be surprisingly painful.)
seems like an experience with contact sports would make actual violence somewhat less shocking
Perhaps for some people, but I don't remember it that way, and I must have been hit and hurt when playing football and hockey, the later with pads that didn't fit and didn't protect.
I've been thinking lately about how much I always hated school, and all levels, and always underperformed. And the ineffectiveness of teachers fueled the contempt I've never been able to avoid feeling for them as a class. I've had to conceal this antipathy from my children, but I'm sure it stems from the sense of going to a place of torture, to which the administration was ineffective and indifferent.
Actually, Sally and Newt just started TKD. I've been meaning to ask you if there's anything I should know about kids and TKD classes. They seem to be enjoying the heck out of it.
Bitch- feelings of weakness and powerlessness (?) are why little boys like to play with guns. Some don't outgrow this.
Absolute and utter tommyrot. Little boys play with guns because guns are provided to them as an alternative to firehoses, pipes, squirting toys, tubes, and other phallic objects (really, I'm completely convinced Freud was right after watching PK's obsession with tubes in his toddlerhood), and also because they are predatory animals. It has fuck-all to do with fears of weakness.
On the beating up front: I'd like to think that this is happening less now that schools are proactive about bullying. But I got in lots of fights (read: I got beaten up, b/c I can't and never could fight) because I had a smart mouth and an instinctive desire to stand up for other kids (usually boys) being picked on by the assholes, until I learned the magic trick. When someone comes over to you and challenges you to a fight, act bored and unimpressed and say things like, "okay, fine, I'll stand up and fight you but not until after I finish my lunch." This makes them look foolish and they will eventually wander away.
Mr. B. says he never got in fights because he had a similar technique, which was to either laugh at the challenge or to earnestly and yet doggedly talk about the issue. Also, he's good at using confident but non-threatening body language. I've seen him do it.
So no, it's not true that you're going to get in fights, necessarily. It is true, though, that if you're not going to you are really going to have to learn some conflict management skills.
We're signing PK up for TaeKwonDo. Mostly to channel his stupid idea that fighting is about aggression, and in the hopeful attitude that it will teach him some discipline and respect, areas in which we, as liberal parents, are utterly failing. I suppose I could simply try throwing softballs at his face, but then he'd yell at me and throw things back, and I'm trying to get him to stop doing that.
"Ok, you've got me in a headlock, James. Now what?" So he let me go and all was well.
See?
Megan, interesting. I've been thinking of taking TKD with PK, b/c I don't know shit about hitting or being hit, and I feel like I should. I always thought boxing, but TKD, huh? Well, it would be easy. Will I feel like a big stupid dork making Karate Kid poses in front of a mirror, or do you get past that?
353: Not to get all gender normative, but if my experience is remotely typical, boys will engage in roughhousing even outside of formalized contact sports. I'm no Drake Tungsten, and was even less so as a kid, but just tossing footballs around at recess in junior high pretty naturally devolves into Smear the Queer*.
* I don't endorse this name or nuthin'.
And if god forbid someone tries to hit her, how different is that from getting hit with a ball?
Vote with IDP. Not the same at all.
Smear the Queer
Dude! Childhood memories!
362: So, this whole 'being a junior high bully', morally, for you, isn't quite as bad as putting glue on a caterpillar? It's wonderful knowing there are people whose morals aren't all phylum-centric out there.
So no, it's not true that you're going to get in fights, necessarily. It is true, though, that if you're not going to you are really going to have to learn some conflict management skills.
Interesting, and possibly true for some situations. I don't know what that would have done about people taking my stuff and throwing it in puddles or breaking it, just as an expression of hostility, though. Seems conflict management wouldn't help much.
On three occasions I can remember in Canada, older kids I didn't know came out of nowhere and without context or any kind of confrontation, just started beating me up. One kid, must have been an older teenager, knocked me to the ground and just started kicking me in the stomach.
I know I didn't tell my parents or my brother, or anybody about this. I was too ashamed and humiliated, I suppose.
Roughhousing is just a manifestation of boys being intensely physical creatures. Try being a mother of one sometime. Your personal space vanishes into nothingness.
I remember actually scolding boys like you people for the phrase "smear the queer."
The throwing stuff in puddles thing was one I just reacted to by rolling my eyes and acting superior. I mean, okay, sure, my stuff is dirty. Big deal. That's what washing machines are for.
An attitude that obviously worked, since I've clearly never outgrown it.
I don't know what that would have done about people taking my stuff and throwing it in puddles or breaking it, just as an expression of hostility, though. Seems conflict management wouldn't help much.
It wouldn't have. The thing to learn (as gswift alluded to a bit) is how to point to the kid right next to you who is eminently more hittable. Or to be a bully like ogged. Or to successfully keep your head down. Everything else is more or less garbage.
358: redfoxtailshrub once described an article to me about a teacher doing conflict avoidance training in his... grade school? Junior high? Among the things he taught were a practiced contemptuous gaze, a sarcastic tone, and comebacks meant to make the fight-picker look stupid for persuing the fight. It apparently worked really well. I wonder if she remembers where that was.
Roughhousing is just a manifestation of boys being intensely physical creatures. Try being a mother of one sometime. Your personal space vanishes into nothingness.
Not to get all less-gender-normative-than-thou, but it isn't just boys. I've got one of each, and they're both all over me.
"feelings of weakness and powerlessness (?) are why little boys like to play with guns."
"Absolute and utter tommyrot."
somewhere in between, would be my call. I agree with bitch that if it weren't guns it would be some other phallic substitute. my boy-child has been obsessed with swords/clubs/knives/squirt-guns/etc. since a very young age, and that this seems to derive entirely from his own internal urgings. Nothing like having kids to make a nature-theorist out of a nurture-theorist.
At the same time, I also think that the culture can intensify and pathologize this underlying tendency, in the way that Tasseled LL was suggesting. There may be a nature-based reason why it is boys in particular who get suckered into the insecurity of physical weakness. But the mechanics of that suckering, and the fact that it now involves ludicrous shoulder-to-hip ratios, are anything but natural.
I also had the experience of watching my daughter at a very young age (2.5?) fall in love with a pair of red vinyl Mary Janes, in a way that convinced me that there was something between her and these shoes I would never ever feel for a pair of footwear. So maybe a love of finery is innate in some/most little girls.
That does not rule out the possibility that the culture intensifies and pathologizes the concern with appearance and attractiveness, in exactly the way that the earlier discussions on body-image have detailed.
okay, sure, my stuff is dirty. Big deal. That's what washing machines are for.
Schoolbooks, musical instruments, food? My clarinet was once kicked down the stairs.
Nonsense about the Mary Janes, Kid. PK absolutely loves and adores his yellow rain boots.
I also had the experience of watching my daughter at a very young age (2.5?) fall in love with a pair of red vinyl Mary Janes, in a way that convinced me that there was something between her and these shoes I would never ever feel for a pair of footwear. So maybe a love of finery is innate in some/most little girls.
Not to get all less-gender-normative-then-thou, but it isn't just girls. Newt is passionately attached to his flashing-light-Spiderman sneakers and his pink velvet blankie.
365: I'm not sure I actually understood "queer" as a perjorative term about gay people at the time, having been warped by Elizabeth Levy's (sadly out-of-print -- wonder why?) Something Queer series. I might have picked up on it if the game had been called "Smash the Faggot", although I probably would have been too chickenshit to say anything about it.
371: Yes. You absolutely must act like you don't give a shit. You're not the one who paid for the clarinet anyway, and skipping a meal won't kill you. Seriously. Do. Not. Care.
Sorry, I was the one who paid for it. And I never felt there was anybody I could tell about this stuff, and felt too humiliated. I think asking not to give a shit about this asks too much of a kid, and just avoids the problem by implying that he is ultimately responsible for it.
357 - About kids and tkd? They love it, 'cause they get to shout a lot and hit things. If the instructor is sweet and modern, s/he should be a pretty good influence. (Mine, for example, regularly scolded kids for mouthing off to their parents and required that we bring him our report cards.)
Only thing I would caution against is breaking bricks or multiple boards before they are, say, 16. I've heard that kid's bones are too soft for that. It probably isn't much of a problem for you.
359 - You'll probably feel like a big dork, although beginner women are generally more flexible, hence better than beginner men. The uniform may offer you some dissociation with your usual image of yourself. I'd hope that you would soon be more interested in the technique than how you looked doing it, which should be true for any sport.
360 - It was strange watching my baby brother (who is 12, by the way) want to wrestle. I mean, he wanted to wrestle anyone, anytime with every fiber of his body. Boys should be born in sets, like puppies, so there is always someone to roughhouse with them.
I don't insist that girls, as a genus, love finery, nor that boys, as a genus, cannot.
I only claim that to whatever extent these predilections are in fact innate and gender-based, they can also be exaggerated by cultural forces.
So when TLL says that your boy's boyish fixations are culturally-determined, you say tommyrot, it's nature. And when I say that my girls girlish fixations reflect some proportion of nature, you say nonsense, it's not nature.
Seems a little reactionary, but maybe you're just expressing the same overall view that I am, sc. that both nature and nurture are factors here.
Jesus, IDP. You had a really rough time of it. I wish someone had backed you up. I wish that hadn't happened to you.
Mostly to channel his stupid idea that fighting is about aggression
???
I did a few years of tkd and many years of taiji chuan, and, um, I still think fighting is about aggression? on somebody's part, anyway.
I know a boy, friend of the family, who is dorky looking, red-haired, with a screechy voice and other annoying little features. And he is attacked and harassed constantly, with extraordinary malice.
Agree with Megan, IDP. You were in a bad situation, and it just plain sucks. I wouldn't sweat B's commentary too much.
Anyway, B, you should take TKD. The great thing about martial arts vs. dance is that it's really fun, even exhilarating movement, and what you look like is totally secondary.
Can you coach him? Partially on not doing annoying things and partially on not taking the abuse to heart?
I know this is more blaming-the-victim, but I am a huge believer that voice modulation would help a lot of people a whole lot. That can be learned.
Sometimes your emotions don't break until somebody does stand up for you. I remember once, in seventh grade, a substitute teacher, an old woman with a mountain accent of the kind common in Columbus, having watched something, dressed the whole class down for it, praising the way I'd stood up to it. Looking back, I appreciate what she was saying, but at the time I was trying desparately not to cry while she catalogued what she'd seen, which until she brought it up I'd been able to take.
I'm not sure I actually understood "queer" as a perjorative term about gay people at the time
Yeah, me neither. We played Smear the Queer in early elementary school, so I think some of us hadn't even had birds and bees, let alone queers and straights.
morally, for you, isn't quite as bad as putting glue on a caterpillar?
Interesting. I have some remorse about a couple of incidents where I was gratuitously cruel, but for the most part, it was eat or be eaten. I had an unpleasant junior high experience--I almost never got into fights before junior high or after--and a lot of people were really hostile to me, so I didn't think twice about anything I did to those kids.
I know. Sympathy can undo me, when I was fine until then.
His mother's a voice actress. I'm sure he'll grow up strong and melifluous, like his dad. He's in high school now, and it's already starting to happen. That's when I grew about five inches in a year.
Poor kid, and poor you as a kid.
I find this thread intensely weird. I've never seen a fight in my life, much less been potentially involved in one. I've never witnessed any act of violence more dangerous than a hard shove, either. I don't even remember there being RUMORS of an actual fight on school property more than 3 or 4 times a year, and never during high school.
I was a miserable nerd who was constantly picked on pretty much from 5th grade through 10th grade, but I never even had the slightest fear that one of my tormentors would physically hurt me. It was all just about being mocked and belittled.
I remember "Smear the Queer" being played a lot, but it was just about forcing the queer to the ground and tackling him, not raining blows on him. Same thing with the weak and awkward kids. The bullies never felt the need to actually give the weak and awkward kids black eyes, they just made them feel like subhumans by using coordinated patterns of taunting and boasting.
but for the most part, it was eat or be eaten.
That seems about right. (FWIW: I was much more "eaten" than "eat".) And, at least in my experience, it really was worst in junior high. I have no idea why that would be true, though.
Disproportionate strength levels? There's a funny couple of years from 11 to 14 or so where some kids are almost adult-sized, and others are still children. You really notice it in the Little League world series, there are some six foot twelve year olds who shave out there. The JH ugliness might be the kids who get big and strong first taking it out on the trailing kids.
I remember "Smear the Queer" being played a lot, but it was just about forcing the queer to the ground and tackling him, pulling his pants down his kicking legs to his feet and rutting desperately in the muddy soccer field, hoping your teacher didn't see you.
there are some six foot twelve year olds who shave out there
Indeed. At one junior high basketball game, my mom was sitting next to two women who were complaining that one of the kids looked like a grown man, and needed to shave, yadda yadda. Then she told them that it was her son. Bwahahaha!
So strength levels, yeah, but also hormones that make you crazy. And it's the first time that you're big and coordinated enough that roughhousing can become something like a "fight" with people getting hurt.
397 - you're thinking of "endear the queer".
Disproportionate strength levels?
Maybe that's right, though in high school, size and strength remained pretty disproportionately arrayed among my schoolmates. I might even believe it's the opposite: by high school, some people are strong enough that there's a real chance that someone could get very badly hurt in a fight, and even (maybe especially) those inclined to do the hurting are more circumspect about doing it. I don't know, though.
What age are the kids in Lord of the Flies?
Girl bullying is probably different, but I was viciously ostracized in grades 6 and 7, and I was relatively tall.
It got better when I got my braces off and contacts within three days of each other. Also, my parents were all feminist and really great, but it would have been kinder to send me to school in conformist clothes and a better haircut.
Ohhhhhh.
Yes, you may also know it as "Spear the Rear".
It got better when I got my braces off and contacts within three days of each other.
Heh. I was pretty thoroughly ostracised, although it was thorough enough that it didn't feel like bullying -- I was simply invisible. When I started eighth grade, with new contacts and no braces, I figured it was all going to change.
No, not really.
but it would have been kinder to send me to school in conformist clothes and a better haircut.
And that's why so many people like About a Boy.
LB (and anyone else), do you feel like the bullying/ostracism made you who you are, and gave you strength of character and all that, and so, in the end you wouldn't change it? Or do you feel like that is solid bullshit, and you would be just as strong now if you hadn't had to go through that crap?
(I once read an interview with Jackie Chan who said that all of his abilities weren't worth the childhood he had in the opera. I was sad for him and I really wanted to sleep with him to make up for it all.)
Solid bullshit. I'm messed up in ways that still cause me some trouble over the ostracism I got in grade and high school.
Aw, thanks. And Megan, that's the best reason you can think of for wanting to have sex with Jackie Chan? I can think of some much better ones.
I've also spent some time thinking of better reasons to sleep with Jackie Chan.
just avoids the problem by implying that he is ultimately responsible for it.
Not at all, and this is the problem with the p-a world view. I'm not implying that the bully-ee is responsible for being bullied. I'm saying, there are things you can do to save face and, ime, make yourself a less attractive target for bullying. This doesn't imply that you're responsible for it; it's entirely Ogged's fault, and I personally stood up for kids like you and got the shit kicked out of me for it by kids like Ogged all the time. I'm saying, boundaries are important, and given that the Ogged's of the world are going to be assholes about it, the best way to maintain your boundaries is to act like you're unimpressed by them.
That said, it's not at all the fault of kids if their temperaments or training don't help them do this, and bullies should be shunned by all right-thinking people and scolded by adults.
Hey, that's enough out of you, B. I had my reasons, but complaining is much worse than bullying, so...
Megan, thanks for the TKD advice. I'll probably do it, since I have to take PK to the studio anyway.
bullies should be shunned by all right-thinking people and scolded by adults.
I so hope there's a unicorn when we get there.
If you have your reasons, feel free to explain, and I'll offer you all sorts of sympathy and backup. Otherwise, I get to hold you responsible for Tony Barrett.
When I was in school, TKD was regarded as rather gay. "Don't mess with that guy, he went took TKD! He's got a rainbow belt with 3 cotton-candy stripes!"
406: Solid bullshit. Unlike LB, I don't have any emotional scars from it, but I don't think it had any positive effect on me either.
Based purely on anecdata, I think women have a harder time getting over the high-school bullshit than men. I'm not sure why that is.
It is especially annoying when people tell you what belt they have, or dress as a TKD person for Halloween.
Is this thread starting to screw up for anyone else? Also, 354 was *awesome*.
I promise not to brag about belt color or wear TKD jammies for halloween.
I think 420 is seriously called into question simply by the people present. The guys seem by and large at least as issue-laden w/r/t highschool as the girls. Look at Ogged, the former bully, all clamming up over being asked to talk about his feeeeelings.
Recalling another incident: in my senior year high school Great Books class, one of the kids I'd known since grade school just lost it one day: "You're a bully, Ogged! You used to be physical bully, and now you're an intellecual bully!"
So you're probably thinking that I was a bully, but this kid also signed my yearbook with something about how I was a Nietzschean Superman, and he hoped that I would use my powers for good.
And you wonder why I enjoyed high school.
It's all been downhill from there, RabbitOgged, hasn't it?
The "but" part of that sentence doesn't actually make me less inclined to think that you were a bully.
Let's pants Ogged and see if he really was a bully.
I think it sounds like your high school was insufferable. But I probably only say that because I didn't go to an Ivy League school.
Come to think of it, he was an ugrateful shit, because I didn't bully him, that I can recall. On the contrary, he was so massively annoying and universally disliked that I had made a point, in elementary and junior high, of befriending him.
He just didn't like losing an argument.
Anyway, he's since published at least one book that I know of, and is a multi-millionaire quite apart from that, so probably he's not still stewing.
It's all been downhill from there, Rabbit Ogged, hasn't it?
Totally.
Would you say that he was a pinner? Pin pin pin pin?
429 is not really making me think any more highly of your high school.
433: Way to exclude everyone else, w-lfs-n, thus reifying the bullied/ostracized feelings we've all been coming to terms with.
Wait a minute, p-a? You're talking like that about a bullied kid? Well excuse me!
I was attempting a joke about an ongoing point of (I thought) good humored contention.
I got beaten up a lot from 2nd-4th grade. I was a white kid in a school that was ~90% black (in a town and time where race relations were tense), with a bad temper and a year smaller than everybody else, having skipped 1st grade. When we moved to Durham, the schools improved mightily, which helped, but mostly I learned that nobody takes a swing at the class clown. That approach has worked for me almost unfailingly ever since. I'm pretty convinced that humor will keep bullying at bay much more effectively than martial arts training (which is a good thing in its own right aside from self-defense, but still entails getting hit).
I experienced some bullying in elementary school, but never any physical violence. In my high school the only fights were between members of rival gangs, and everyone crowded around to watch. My high school was awesome.
nobody takes a swing at the class clown
This is so true; it's the most powerful kind of immunity in school. But you actually have to be funny.
439: Were they national-level-type gangs or just locals?
I'm going to take teo's non-response as confirmation of my long-held suspicion that he's in the Bl00ds and can't disclose.
At my school, mostly locals. Other schools had some nationals as well, but they're primarily a black thing and my school was mainly Hispanic.
I stand by 442, sir. Say what you will.
(But I was asking, because right before I moved to Virginia from Chicago, some friends were getting involved in gangs. I was actually pondering the "beat-in" ritual: one guy for thirty seconds; two for twenty seconds; or three for ten seconds. My parents wisely got us the heck out of there.)
Some Crips did once try to carjack a car I was in, but no. Definitely no.
We middle-class white kids were pretty insulated from the gangs; they mostly just fought each other and did their own thing. There was only one that occasionally hassled us. They once said to a friend of mine "Don't you want to go back to the white hall?" when he strayed a little too close to their hall (most of the gangs had sections of hall that they claimed, but this was the only one that got real territorial about it). Later a couple other friends of mine went over and hung out close to the hall in question to irritate the gangsters, who just glared angrily.
High school was great.
I still wouldn't advocate joining a gang, though.
re: 438 and "I'm pretty convinced that humor will keep bullying at bay much more effectively than martial arts training (which is a good thing in its own right aside from self-defense, but still entails getting hit)."
Actually, in my experience, the number of martial arts where you get hit regularly is quite small.
Lots of 'traditional' martial arts -- karate, kung-fu styles, etc -- do little or no sparring and of the ones that do i) a lot go in for very very light almost 'no-contact' sparring and ii) of the ones that do go in for a higher level of contact, a lot don't go in for head contact.*
Thre's lot of martial arts stuff out there for people who don't want to get smacked about the head during training and who still want to do the other fun stuff: all the balletic/dance/fitness aspects to it, for example.
The 'boxing' type martial arts -- western boxing, thai boxing, 'american' kickboxing and savate -- are the ones where you're likely to find yourself wearing a gumshield while someone takes a swing at your head ... and, personally, I wouldn't send kids to that sort of thing.
* For example, even in those TKD schools that go in for hard-contact sparring, punching to the face is generally disallowed.
Like Ogged, I too have fond memories of Smear The Queer. But he's right, that game started way before we really comprehended the name. It was just an excuse to run around and tackle people.
Also like Ogged, my first real fight (or possibility in his case) was 7th grade. But it was a park instead of a bike rack, and the other guy showed up. He was a bit bigger than me, and 30 other kids or so watched me bloody him pretty good.(looked worse than it was, not that I had world class skills or anything, he was hesitant, and my dad had taught me to fight dirty) He wasn't actually a bad guy, and we ended up being friends.
But, that pretty much established me as a poor target for bullying, and I don't doubt jr. high and high school were more bearable because of it. Which isn't to say I never got in another fight, but I wasn't picked on. Like nattarGcM, I wasn't very good at backing down.
"Like nattarGcM, I wasn't very good at backing down. "
I should stress that most of the time not backing down just resulted in a load of 'verbal' and typical threats being issued. Thankfully.
Hooray! I made contact with a scholar who has worked with Blumenberg's philosophy and is enthusiastic about propogating it. He recommends I should read the first section of The Genesis of the Copernican World and Part II of The Legitimacy of the Modern Age for introduction to the ideas developed in Höhlenausgänge.
