Re: [xmca] Youth Saving Youth

[Steve Gabosch <stevegabosch@me.com>]

Beth, yes, the youth activism and solidarity aspect really struck me,  
too.  I found it inspiring.

Mike, your question is loaded! - about how are we, whoever we may be,  
supposed to behave once we "as a society" see the horrendous effects  
that harassment, bullying, violations of privacy rights, etc. can have  
on people, including being a direct cause of suicide.

Another recent NY Times article on bullying is attached below.

My first response to your question Mike is to think in terms such  
as:   the need for a new surge of understanding of the fundamental  
concept that "an injury to one is an injury to all" among students and  
working people - and a new willingness to act on this basic concept of  
human solidarity.  Perhaps the video clip Beth pointed us to is a peek  
at the beginnings of such a surge among youth.  I believe this will  
happen, sooner or later.  Hope springs eternal.

A less political line of inquiry, but possibly one that is more within  
what CHAT can offer, might be questions about **why** harassment and  
bullying occur.  Why does it occur at all?  Is it increasing?  If it  
is increasing - why?  Even if it is just a matter of people becoming  
more generally conscious of it - why is that happening?  Clearly, gay  
students and other students that are "different" (itself a very  
peculiar concept) have been and continue to be on the front line of  
receiving this kind of awful treatment.  But why does this bullying,  
harassment violations of privacy rights, (not to mention violence)  
occur in the first place?  Why does bullying exist?

I'm attaching a Word file of a recent NY Times article on bullying  
among 5 to 8 year old girls.  The editors classified this article  
under "Cultural Studies."  The article explains that this particular  
phenomenon was not formally studied until the mid-1990's, so it is not  
empirically clear what is new in terms of bullying among young girls  
and whether it has actually been there all along.  The article talks  
about a Stop Bullying Now! campaign being organized by the government,  
and a Bullying Prevention Summit, which was sponsored by the Dept of  
Education in April 2010.  Bullying is clearly becoming a major media  
issue, and in some places, an openly discussed school issue.  But is  
anything really changing?

At the level of research on "why does bullying exist," my intuitions  
lead me toward an approach that starts with how broadly, deeply and  
pervasively the **competition between workers** for jobs and places in  
society has historically impacted social relations.  This is not a new  
idea, but it is often buried under many others.  (The article I am  
attaching on bullying among young girls, for example, suggests  
possible reasons such as: an increase in TV shows with "socially  
aggressive" females, reality TV, and other media; hormones kicking in  
at younger ages; mean girls coming from mean mothers; bullying  
reflecting the larger society; and maybe parents are just more hyper- 
aware of it these days.)  I would lean toward examining the  
competition between workers as a central cause, both as a permanent  
feature of modern society, and also as something that keeps changing,  
sometimes rapidly, such as in the current economy.  I am including as  
"workers" here all layers of the workforce, present and past - that  
is, the unemployed, the retired, those with fixed incomes, the  
unskilled, semiskilled, skilled, semiprofessional, professional, self- 
employed, farmers, owners of small businesses, etc. etc. - in other  
words, essentially, everyone but those in the upper classes.  As is  
now commonly acknowledged by most thinking people, especially since  
the Black civil rights movement and the women's movement, this  
competition (whatever its causes, which people disagree over - is it  
human nature, or education, or culture, or the social system? etc.)  
this competition historically manifests itself in many **overt** ways  
- discrimination, class frictions, racism, sexism, heterosexism,  
xenophobia, many, many forms of prejudice, etc.  Struggling against  
these overt forms has become an increasingly prominent theme in US and  
other cultures for nearly half a century now.  But apparently it is  
now beginning to more deeply dawn on people that this competition also  
manifests itself in more **covert** ways - not only in the intricate  
and hierarchical ways that **adults** can treat each other in  
workplaces, neighborhoods, markets, places of gathering, etc. etc. -  
(not to mention marriages and relationships) - but also how  
**children** and **teens** treat one another in schools, playgrounds,  
neighborhoods, malls, sports activities, and families.  In other  
words, following this line of reasoning, just as fierce competition  
exists between **current** workers and adults, it also exists between  
**future** workers.  And in some ways it may take even more naked  
forms.  We may learn much more about class society (which in the US is  
structurally racist, sexist, etc.) by the time we are 13  - and even 6  
- than we fully realize.  After all, isn't this indoctrination the  
number one purpose of schools?  But we don't seem to just **learn**  
about the social realities of this world - we also **react to** and  
**act upon** them, probably at least since the moment we begin to  
talk, and certainly beginning the day we start school.  We **live**  
these social relations and forms of competition from the very  
beginning.  As for this relatively new social question of bullying  
among 5-8 year old girls, now that US women are not only now half the  
workforce but also nearly half of the "breadwinners" - a remarkable  
historic change we have been witnessing accumulate for many decades  
now - it makes sense to me to look to these same pernicious and  
pervasive forms of competition among working people as increasingly  
impacting girls in similar kinds of ways that they have  
"traditionally" (i.e., in modern capitalist society) impacted boys.   
According to this line of inquiry, bullying isn't essentially about  
human nature, or puberty, or gender, or even ignorance, per se, it is  
about the way working people are forced to compete with one another in  
a class system that is organized along racist, sexist, and other  
lines.  Children and teens are just creatively (and not infrequently,  
cruelly) playing out within their daily social relations how the adult  
world really works.  Following the logic of this line of inquiry,  
solutions would be sought in renewed and newly created mass movements  
for democratic social change, new kinds of working class consciousness  
that would unite working people, and a major restructuring of class  
relations.  The optimistic singing and solidarity of the Pride Youth  
chorus, which has been ringing in my ears the last couple days, adds  
to my sense of hope that such solutions are possible.

So that's one research approach - basing oneself on classical Marxist  
sociology and combining it with lessons learned from the struggles  
associated with the new waves of democratic and humanist consciousness  
that emerged in the second half of the 20th Century - which spawned  
and rediscovered so many powerful ideas associated with antiracism,  
feminism, gay rights, sex-positivity, opposition to prejudice, the  
rights of young people, the rights of the differently abled, etc.  
etc.  And then, for me, further combining these ideas with working  
class unionism, solidarity and socialism.  These are all my  
intuitions, anyway.  I realize I may be "different"!  LOL

It is good to ask, as you do, Mike - what can we do about bullying and  
its disastrous consequences?  Damned good question!

My question back to you - and to myself:  what can CHAT do to help  
explore and penetrate the reasons behind these kinds of social  
relations?  What specific tools and concepts can CHAT offer, or  
perhaps develop?

- Steve






On Oct 10, 2010, at 1:54 PM, Beth Ferholt wrote:

> I think part of what I was saying in the original email was a  
> response to
> this: what struck me about this particular video is that it was a  
> youth
> conceived/organized/created response to save youth.  Dan Savage (an  
> adult)
> started the series of IT GETS BETTER videos to tell suicidal  
> teenagers that
> they need to stick around because being a gay adult is better than  
> being a
> gay teenager (better than being in a school run by adults -- ).   
> THen this
> group of young people created a performance for other young people  
> where
> they talk about NOT waiting to either get out of school -- or for  
> the adults
> to realize the obvious and figure out how to behave -- but instead  
> finding
> queer friends NOW and then trying (as they are doing with this  
> video) to
> improve the life of gay teens NOW.
> I was thinking of Yrjo's use of Breaking Away as I wrote the email.
> Beth
>
>
> On Sun, Oct 10, 2010 at 2:25 PM, mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Steve. You perfectly caught a core purpose of our discussions. It  
> > is indeed
> > becoming obvious. To me it seems a long time in coming. And it is not
> > bearing a white flag. Its kind of slouching. You wrote:
> >
> > It is becoming more obvious to many that the question of cultural
> > difference and how these differences are socially related to can  
> > become a
> > life and death question.
> >
> > Correct. So what, as whoever(s) we are we supposed to behave once  
> > we, as a
> > society, reach that state of "its obvious"?
> >
> > ??
> > mike



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