Towards A Virtual Williamsburg!

[Pretty Little Flower]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

The harm is that we've already got more than enough idiotic interference on the part of law enforcement and government. We're just getting to the point where govt is realizing it has no business telling people they can't smoke pot, and should not be deciding who can and cannot marry. And so given these strides in paring down its officious interactions with the public regarding these matters, it should now start regulating other private behaviors?

The red tape created by endless do-gooder laws is endless. It hampers our economy. It creates needless bureaucratic work. And it's all counterproductive. The more you teach people to ask the govt for intervention, the more they'll lose the ability to handle the problem on their own.

This is pretty much exactly the argument against the stepped up anti-domestic violence laws of the '80s and '90s. What happened between a husband and wife was considered "private behavior,' and many believed that the police had no business interfering in the home and that the legislatures had no business trying to pass laws about it, and that making it far easier to obtain an order for protection (for example) creates red tape and needless bureaucratic work, and that you're just teaching the victims of domestic violence to ask for government intervention rather than handle the problem on their own. Many still believe this, and as I noted, there are all sorts of problems and negative unintended consequences of domestic violence prevention laws, but I think we're in a better situation than we were 30 or 40 years ago.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

I don't think this is like banning big gulps, but rather goes to the core of the Government's police functions. And really, didn't Hobbes answer this question for once and all time a couple hundred years ago.

If a kid physically attacks another, the kid or his parents can prosecute the attacker for battery.

If a kid refers to another gay kid as a faggot, the proper response should include:

1. Other kids shunning the kid making the slur; and
2. Administrators punishing the kid making the slur.

If we start looking at bullying as a unique crime, we risk criminalizing a list of behaviors which, though reprehensible, should not be punishable by law. We also risk removing one more thing society is supposed to regulate, and placing it under the jurisdiction of law enforcement. This leads to legislative overstepping, and waste of resources enforcing zero tolerance policies. And worse than all of that, it trains people to run to the courthouse when they ought to be fixing a very subjective problem at the family and community level.

But we won't recognize that. We'll have more rules, more policies... More easy fixes that let people claim victory over a complex issue and walk away.

[Did you just call me Coltrane?]

Originally Posted by Pretty Little Flower

This is pretty much exactly the argument against the stepped up anti-domestic violence laws of the '80s and '90s. What happened between a husband and wife was considered "private behavior,' and many believed that the police had no business interfering in the home and that the legislatures had no business trying to pass laws about it, and that making it far easier to obtain an order for protection (for example) creates red tape and needless bureaucratic work, and that you're just teaching the victims of domestic violence to ask for government intervention rather than handle the problem on their own. Many still believe this, and as I noted, there are all sorts of problems and negative unintended consequences of domestic violence prevention laws, but I think we're in a better situation than we were 30 or 40 years ago.

Serious Flower makes me sad. [sad face]

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Pretty Little Flower

This is pretty much exactly the argument against the stepped up anti-domestic violence laws of the '80s and '90s. What happened between a husband and wife was considered "private behavior,' and many believed that the police had no business interfering in the home and that the legislatures had no business trying to pass laws about it, and that making it far easier to obtain an order for protection (for example) creates red tape and needless bureaucratic work, and that you're just teaching the victims of domestic violence to ask for government intervention rather than handle the problem on their own. Many still believe this, and as I noted, there are all sorts of problems and negative unintended consequences of domestic violence prevention laws, but I think we're in a better situation than we were 30 or 40 years ago.

Good analogy. You'll note that even today, there's no prohibition on a spouse psychologically tormenting the other spouse. The law draws the appropriate line: Not our problem until it involves physical violence.

Bullying is a similar phenomenon. Attack someone, risk criminal charges. Abuse someone verbally, risk being ostracized (in a properly working society, community, or school). If a community is so broken that its bullies aren't socially punished for their behavior, that's not an issue for law enforcement, but for a town hall meeting in which someone asks, "What the fuck is the matter with us?"

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Sidd Finch

Why is the attitude of "there is nothing we can (or should) do" any less smug?

I don't know about you, but in my high school, way-back-when, I don't recall any of the gay kids being picked on. That would've been considered the ultimate in "dick moves" that would have branded one a social pariah.

If you're telling me that a majority of kids today think picking on a kid because he's gay is alright, or that they'd turn their head the other way when someone did it, I'm calling bullshit.

The media promotes outlier instances of intolerance. They are not the rule. And they certainly aren't a basis for legislative changes.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Pretty Little Flower

This is pretty much exactly the argument against the stepped up anti-domestic violence laws of the '80s and '90s. What happened between a husband and wife was considered "private behavior,' and many believed that the police had no business interfering in the home and that the legislatures had no business trying to pass laws about it, and that making it far easier to obtain an order for protection (for example) creates red tape and needless bureaucratic work, and that you're just teaching the victims of domestic violence to ask for government intervention rather than handle the problem on their own. Many still believe this, and as I noted, there are all sorts of problems and negative unintended consequences of domestic violence prevention laws, but I think we're in a better situation than we were 30 or 40 years ago.

I bet your wife could kick your scrawny ass. Fuck, in a few years your kid probably will be able to. Quit blabbing all this ivory tower shit at Sebby, us guys who can kick ass want other people to learn to do it too.

And if you don't drop this sincere act, I'll lead a charge to bully you out of here like we did ppnyc- fuck, we already have Notbob, we don't need your thoughtful input.

[Pretty Little Flower]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Good analogy. You'll note that even today, there's no prohibition on a spouse psychologically tormenting the other spouse. The law draws the appropriate line: Not our problem until it involves physical violence.

Bullying is a similar phenomenon. Attack someone, risk criminal charges. Abuse someone verbally, risk being ostracized (in a properly working society, community, or school). If a community is so broken that its bullies aren't socially punished for their behavior, that's not an issue for law enforcement, but for a town hall meeting in which someone asks, "What the fuck is the matter with us?"

First, I'll note that you sidestep the fact that the very same arguments you raise against anti-bullying efforts were raised (and are raised) against the anti-domestic violence laws that you characterize as appropriate. Second, my original point was that I agree with neither the premise nor the conclusion of the Atticus Proclamation: "Bullying wasn't 'tolerated' in our generation or any other — it's just that they years before reached the conclusion we'll soon reach again: neither the police, nor expulsion, nor peer counseling, nor duking it out makes any difference toward prevention. The only cure is the passage of time, and some cases will always be incurable." Nothing I have read here changes any of that. Anyway, this is not a pet issue for me, and I don't have the energy to battle your army of libertarian straw men. Also, my writing about this is making Coltrane sad, which makes me sad.

[Pretty Little Flower]

Originally Posted by Did you just call me Coltrane?

[sad face]

A colon followed by an open parentheses will get you there.

[Replaced_Texan]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Good analogy. You'll note that even today, there's no prohibition on a spouse psychologically tormenting the other spouse. The law draws the appropriate line: Not our problem until it involves physical violence.

Bullying is a similar phenomenon. Attack someone, risk criminal charges. Abuse someone verbally, risk being ostracized (in a properly working society, community, or school). If a community is so broken that its bullies aren't socially punished for their behavior, that's not an issue for law enforcement, but for a town hall meeting in which someone asks, "What the fuck is the matter with us?"

Effective interventions to promote behavior change are almost never laws or policy, which is why you're more likely to see awareness campaigns and education efforts as a first step than a march to the legislature for advocacy. Of course, if the intervention is in a public institution (like a school) then you have to deal with that entity's bureaucracy, and that effort can look a lot like policy development, rule making or law making.

[Atticus Grinch]

Originally Posted by Pretty Little Flower

But I don't think we want to go back to a place where police refused to intervene in household violence situations because it is a "family matter." And if there has been a similar shift in attitudes about bullying, and if people are no longer content with a "kids will be kids" attitude, and if, as Thurgreed notes, cyberbullying has made the problem more acute, then I don't think it makes sense to throw up our hands and say "This is too hard, and it really sucks for school districts caught in the middle, and the tricky jurisdictional issues make my head hurt, so we'll soon realize what we learned the hard way before, which is that there is nothing to be done but allow the passage of time."

Whoa whoa whoa. I want to be clear about the real estate I'm defending. I am not suggesting that we must tolerate bullying, verbal or physical. I am saying that we cannot prevent it with the tools we have in our society. The fact that this distinction is so quickly lost is evidence of my argument that the modern American mind cannot be satisfied with the punishment of evil. Evil has to be disempowered.

Also, I think this is an area where our anecdotal experience of school days interferes with clear thinking about the experience of kids in school today. It's easy to remember the parent or coach who said "boys will be boys" and declare that the prior age accepted violence and other miscellaneous inhumanity. The fact is, it probably didn't, really, but as with today, people are getting away with stuff and the crimes that went unpunished loom larger in our imagination. When I was in school if you were a dick to someone there was a consequence, usually adult-imposed, when an adult knew about it. I'm not seeing a huge attitudinal Great Leap Forward on whether kids "should" be assholes to each other because it toughened them up. Put aside the John Hughes films you saw and try to remember the hundreds of times an adult corrected the behavior rather than the 20 times they did not.

[Sidd Finch]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

What did your sister do?

Talked to the gym teacher and essentially got her son a pass from gym class for the rest of the year.

She's prez of the school board which helped.

[Atticus Grinch]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

2. Administrators punishing the kid making the slur.

1. Propose a punishment you think is proportional.

2. Now do it again, except this time the slur was posted at midnight on Instagram.

3. Now do it again, adding the fact that the victim elsewhere spread the rumor that the perpetrator, a seventh grader, blew a guy in the bathroom.

[Sidd Finch]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

No. But it's realistic. I understand that this seems smug when compared to more idealistic ambitions of those who think regulations and prohibitions can cure all. But the word that really fits is "pragmatic." There is only so much that can be done to stop humans from acting shitty toward one another. Barring them from engaging in physical violence upon one another is realistic. Barring them from saying horrible things about one another, or expanding laws to make general (non-employment related) verbal and psychological abuse illegal, are things we cannot do. If those things become illegal, you'll know society has completely collapsed. It'll be a recognition we can't self police anything... And that we're being governed by the most clueless of Utopians.

Why should the school setting, where kids are compelled to be present 5 days a week, be considered less significant and less subject to "laws to make general verbal and psychological abuse illegal", than the employment setting?

I understand Atticus' frustration that schools get blamed and get held liable where there was nothing you could do. But that calls for some limitations on liability, not for a do-nothing, kids-will-be-kids attitude.

Hell, many people were similarly frustrated that a major corporation or law firm could be held liable because an officer, partner, or even a low-level employee engaged in boys-will-be-boys activity (that was retermed, and correctly termed, sexual harassment).

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Atticus Grinch

Whoa whoa whoa. I want to be clear about the real estate I'm defending. I am not suggesting that we must tolerate bullying, verbal or physical. I am saying that we cannot prevent it with the tools we have in our society. The fact that this distinction is so quickly lost is evidence of my argument that the modern American mind cannot be satisfied with the punishment of evil. Evil has to be disempowered.

But we prevented people from dying of marijuana addiction, and we prevented the Iraqis from attacking us-- and, and-- now we're going to prevent the banks from being bad with Dodd Frank.
________
Disclaimer: Dodd Frank actually does prevent something - borrowers from being able to receive mortgages.

[Sidd Finch]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

If a kid physically attacks another, the kid or his parents can prosecute the attacker for battery.

If a kid refers to another gay kid as a faggot, the proper response should include:

This is why you are full of shit -- you start with the notion that the only issues are these extremes.

If a kid calls another kid a faggot once, I really don't care. I care when a group of kids threaten, harass, routinely slam on Facebook, etc. All things that fall short of a physical attack.