Former bullies

We are all the protagonists in our own life story. As a result we often have a very hard time seeing ourselves in the way others see us.

When a murderous gang member goes to a movie in which the hero is fighting and defeating a horde of murderous gang members, who does he root for? I imagine most of them root for the hero and fail to identify with the gang members. Moreover I suspect they fail to even recognize the cognitive dissonance.

If it’s hard to recognize one’s self in a movie, how much harder it must be to recognize ourselves in our sepia toned memories or the memories of others.

There are many adults who were terrible bullies or “mean girls” when they were in high school. How do they think of their high school selves years later? Do they feel bad or are they proud? Maybe that was the most power they ever had and they think of the period as their glory days? Or are they in denial and don’t even really remember how they acted? Obviously it’s different for each person, but I’d be curious to do interviews with former bullies and their former victims to find out just how different the perceptions are. It’s funny to see former bullies and their former victims being calm and mature with each other at high school reunions.

My guess is that most former bullies have (or admit to) only vague memories of their school age behavior and identity as a bully, whereas their victims probably have crystal clear memories of themselves as “nerds” or “losers” and can probably list any number of specific indignities suffered. The jock remember winning the big game, not spitting on some whimp and daring him to do something about it.

Another thing I’d be very curious to know is how the former bullies and former victims behave as adults. Are the former bullies generally mean to their spouses and children? Successful in business? In prison? Are the former victims now suffering at the hands of cruel spouses, mean bosses and selfish neighbors?

Analyzing the theater of sexual power is the real point of this blog, and I am making my methodical way toward it, so what is the pattern of sexual behavior engaged in by former bullies and former losers? Do bullies become sadists and dominatrixes? Do losers become submissives? My guess is that in many cases this is what happens. Starting slowly in college it begins to become uncivilized to practice naked implicit power, at least in public. Fraternity initiations are a kind of exception, but they involve both explicit and implicit power as well as quasi sexual activity.

But between consenting adults, anything goes in the bedroom. All it takes is an open mind or a compelling fetish. So how do bullies, mean girls, and their victims act in this context?

I can only speak for myself. I was the victim of bullying until late in high school and, true to form, I discovered many years later an intense desire to submit to women sexually. I even married something of a former popular “mean girl” years before I really noticed my sexually submissive nature. Lucky for me she was more popular than mean. Though it is titillating for me to fantasize about her tormenting me in various ways, I am much better off with someone who loves and cares for me.

Explicit and implicit power

Explicit power is the power an institution gives to an individual over other individuals. Basically anyone not at the bottom of an org chart has explicit power over all those below. An “institution” in this definition means anything from a family unit to a primitive tribe to the largest armies, governments, and corporations. Usually, but not always, there is some kind of official contract, constitution, job description, or other definition of the limits (or lack of limits) to this kind of power.

Implicit power exists when an individual controls or has the potential to control another individual or group in the absence of any “official” agreement. This type of power dynamic is more interesting. It is organic in that people with implicit power have to realize on their own that they have it, and then have to decide what to do with it.

Implicit power is much more common than explicit power. Every romantic relationship contains an internal implicit power dynamic. Who pursued whom? Who said “I love you” first? Who said “I love you” last? Whose career is more important?

Every high school in America is practically paralyzed by a conflicting, operatic jungle of both strict explicit and fecund implicit power dynamics. The teachers, administration, and, to a ridiculously puny degree, the student government have all the explicit power. Meanwhile the popular kids and bullies (who are often the same) have so much implicit power that they control the experience of the average student in most of the ways that actually matter day to day.

One of the things that makes the high school power experience so fascinating is that those with implicit power, the jocks and beautiful girls, are spontaneously discovering their power and then wielding it with a casual and breathtaking cruelty worthy of Genghis Khan.

That these dynamics are inborn and natural is almost indisputable. Leaving aside observations of similar dynamics in many social mammals, especially primates, the simple fact that these implicit dynamics arise in virtually every high school in essentially identical ways in different societies and times in spite of explicit attempts by school officials to dampen or eliminate them is proof enough. (For a fantastic analysis of the stereotypical ways groups of high school girls self organize see the book “Queen Bees and Wannabes“.)

That these dynamics are more powerful than the explicit power structure is also clear. Witness the ineffectual strategies parents and administrators devise to try to address bullying. If a student is bullied they have a choice. They can keep it a secret in the hopes that the bully will mostly leave them alone, in which case the bully wins. Or they can “snitch” on the bully, something the implicit power structure tellingly considers a near capital crime. Should the victim report their problem then the situation may be addressed in some way in the short term, but in the long term the problem is almost always made worse for the victim and the bully wins again. There is no witness protection program for high school snitches, and extreme bullying often can only be addressed by the victim changing schools. And the bully wins again.

So why is the situation so stacked in favor of the bully? And where do bullies come from? And where do the victims come from? These are the kinds of questions that fascinate me and that I will write about in more detail in future posts.

Alphas

Who do you boss around? Who bosses you? Why?

I am most interested in romantic/sexual power, in particular female romantic/sexual domination of the male, but that subject can only be understood in the context of general human power relations. In turn sexual power dynamics help us understand general human power relations because sexual power is small scale and uninhibited and is therefore closer to the state of nature than the complex artificial, socially moderated power of politics.