From high schools to townhalls, the topic of bullying has elbowed its way to the front of the grievance parade. City councils are passing “anti-bullying laws,” and the term is now used to describe all sorts of bad behavior. And of course, America is always accused of being the world’s bully - despite the crap we take from just about everyone (especially Belgium, and their stupid chocolates).There’s a reason for this. It’s an easy thing to get earnest about: no matter how much of a jerk you are (and I’m at the top), you can’t say, “bullying is awesome.” You can say it builds character, but don’t tell that to a parent of a terrified kid.
And it’s a slam dunk for celebrities. It makes for legitimate and easy outrage that even the shallowest dope can get behind. More important - as every celebrity constantly reminds us - they were once bullied too. The cause becomes about them, just like everything else.
And it's an easy epithet for "disadvantaged" groups -- feminists, homosexuals, and hard-charging up the middle, Islamists -- to throw around while working the system to their benefit. The hysteria over "bullying" is just the latest manifestation of their power grab, under the color of law, in the service of the biggest bully of them all: Government.
For an earlier example of how the game is played, I'd recommend Christina Hoff Sommers' The War Against Boys (2001), though it's no less applicable to Canada in 2010. (It's still available from Amazon for about $15, and I heartily recommend it.) The Atlantic published a lengthy excerpt:
It's a bad time to be a boy in America. The triumphant victory of the U.S. women's soccer team at the World Cup last summer has come to symbolize the spirit of American girls. The shooting at Columbine High last spring might be said to symbolize the spirit of American boys.That boys are in disrepute is not accidental. For many years women's groups have complained that boys benefit from a school system that favors them and is biased against girls. "Schools shortchange girls," declares the American Association of University Women. Girls are "undergoing a kind of psychological foot-binding," two prominent educational psychologists say. A stream of books and pamphlets cite research showing not only that boys are classroom favorites but also that they are given to schoolyard violence and sexual harassment.
In the view that has prevailed in American education over the past decade, boys are resented, both as the unfairly privileged sex and as obstacles on the path to gender justice for girls. This perspective is promoted in schools of education, and many a teacher now feels that girls need and deserve special indemnifying consideration. "It is really clear that boys are Number One in this society and in most of the world," says Patricia O'Reilly, a professor of education and the director of the Gender Equity Center, at the University of Cincinnati.
The idea that schools and society grind girls down has given rise to an array of laws and policies intended to curtail the advantage boys have and to redress the harm done to girls. That girls are treated as the second sex in school and consequently suffer, that boys are accorded privileges and consequently benefit -- these are things everyone is presumed to know. But they are not true.
The mendacity and corruption that Sommers details is stunning. If I had a son of school age, I'd be moving heaven and earth to get him out of that abusive environment, if I had to homeschool him myself. These people have no business with anyone's children; some deserve to go to jail.