Surprisingly many conservatives believe that bullying builds character. C. S. Lewis noted that he had a harder time in school (a proper British boarding school) than in the military in World War One, because in the war nobody expected him to like it.

Alon, that's a good point, and this is the result of confusion on the part of conservatives. Bullying doesn't build character; it builds bullies. *Challenges* and sometimes even teasing can build character, but challenges involve effort to accomplish worthwhile activities, and teasing is generally more well-intentioned than bad. Bullying is just mean and pointless. No good comes of bullying, period.

This is one of those things that makes it almost impossible to stick to the "disagree respectfully" line that I really do think is important. You'd, or at least I'd, like to try to be respectful of people's religious sensibilities, even if I don't share them, but then you see this. They're opposed to preventing children from being bullied. Because promoting violent gay bashing is more important than protecting children.

Yay for Oklahoma. Not. *rolls eyes* I hate living in a red state. That's exactly the sort of thing you can expect from Oklahoma, take it from a resident...by and large, we won't promote tolerance unless forced to do so.

This does, however, make me think of a "Dykes to Watch Out For" cartoon from the last issue of Off Our Backs.

Bullying builds character? What a bunch of horse shit (Hey, FireFox 2.0's dictionary didn't correct shit!)

Some of us casual commenters at Scienceblogs.com got a little look into the minds of people (usually middle-aged white upper-middle class men) who think that bullying builds behavior thanks to Coturnix.

Reading that article and the comments, I have to agree with The Law Fairy completely. Bullying only builds bullies.

"Surprisingly many conservatives believe that bullying builds character."

Huh? Got anything to support that?

If I had to guess--and this is only a guess, mind you--I would guess that the original bullying language was too vague. Speech codes are difficult to write well.

Aerik linked to Coturnix, who writes about that sort of thing a lot. Unfortunately, Coturnix tends to be overly binary in his thinking, but the bullying-builds-character idea is well established, in a sense. For example, consider how ubiquitous hazing is even in very traditional institutions like military academies.

I think conservatives believe that bullying builds character primarily when the target of bullying isn't a non-disabled white heterosexual male. I mean, let's face it: The folks who struck down this language are bullying other adults on the basis of sexual orientation, so why hold kids to a higher standard?

Cheers,

TH

No way, you guys got it all wrong...
Bullying builds the CONSERVATIVE character!

That's why it is so important to keep it around. If there's no bullies, all the men will end up being girly lefties!

I'm not so sure, Mastermind. My experiences with the school food chain made me a fierce individualist, in the anti-hierarchical sense.

This is a state with a Democratic Governor and a State Superintendent last nominated by a Democrat prior to the position becoming an elected office where I believe she won as a Democrat. It's a public school, so 99% of the teachers and administrators are Democrats. Thus turns into a bash on Conservatives allowing bullying based on "trends" thread instead of focussing on all the lefty's who actually allowed this real example of bullying to occur. If the left doesn't hold their own accountable it's tough to take it seriously when the finger is pointed across the aisle.

Southern Democrats aren't really liberal... and for that matter, neither are most Northern Democrats.

I wonder how many more cases of straight kids killing gay kids do we have to endure before the conservatives start teaching their children that "gay" is not an insult, nor anything to be ashamed of?

I taught at public schools for 4 years, and I don't believe that it is the case that teaching or administrating at a public school automtically means that you're a Democrat. I'd say more than half of the people I worked with were extremely conservative. I was one of the few who would not allow kids to say "fag" or use the word "gay" as an insult in my classroom. Many of them didn't particularly care.

The only thing worse than bullies are the parents who excuse it. I'm sick of this "boys will be boys" crap. Some preppy kids thought I complained to a teacher about them in high school. And they just HAD to bring it up in class and apparently one girl's father said I was "jealous" of her.....right as if. SHe even confronted me in the hallway and I had NO IDEA what she was talking about.
My becoming a feminist and the excellent academics were the only good things that came out of my going to that school.

"Surprisingly many conservatives believe that bullying builds character."

Many conservatives are authoritarians which means they believe in tough fathering as opposed to nurturing. John Dean wrote about it in Conservatives Without Conscience.

"I think conservatives believe that bullying builds character primarily when the target of bullying isn't a non-disabled white heterosexual male." -- TH

You forgot "Christian." They're very happy to bully atheists, freethinkers, humanists, and the like.