First, I chose this topic on bullying and school violence because it is a delicate and highly relatable situation of everybody while growing up, especially me. I lived most of my life in a predominantly white city in a way. So being a brown kid with a culture, morals and values different the majority at that time caused many problems for me growing up. But ever since I took this class I realized that my problems with bullying was because of who I was culturally and racially but also the ideology of masculinity had a huge factor in this. I will talk about the documentary about school, the possible applications masculinity in school violence and my personal experience with school violence and bullying.
In the documentary, the news reporter was talking about how violence, such fighting or assault is a constant incident in school. Therefore, I started thinking what could be cause of this brutal urge of violence in these young kids, mostly boys. It is possible that these boys have learned from their fathers that in order to be a man, you have to impose dominance and brute strength. This is quite possible, in Fathers and Fathering in The Masculine Self, the author says, “From a masculinity perspective, authoritative parenting may difficult to achieve because emotional warmth […] due to the limited emotional vocabulary and framework men typically develop.” (Kilmartin 186) Which means that young boys learn what it means to “be a man” and develop these shallow or violent behaviors from their fathers, who learned it from their fathers. We can easily see this in the documentary that we have watched in class, for example, the interviewees at the church talk how their actions in the past that contain violence and bullying are learned and encouraged by their fathers or family members. So it is possible, that fights in high school are caused because they want to show there strength, instead of vulnerability.
In my case, in school, I wasn’t the type of person to show off or being obnoxious to other to show I’m a strong kid, due to that I was picked a lot for the way I would behave in school. I played the same sports as everybody else but I was the non-violent type and the type of kid that would easily express themselves. I always thought it was because I looked different from others. It was definitely one of the reasons, but I realized that the way I was behaving in school reflected on the other boys in school, which put me in trouble. I realized from this documentary where they would talk about the behaviors of these bullies and it made me realize that I went through the same thing as those victims and I finally understood why it was like this for me growing up because of this humanities class. Masculinity is truly the cause on school violence and bullying because this ideology is basically saying that you should not be someone who is vulnerable, because you look “weak” and be somebody strong and violent if necessary in order to be “strong”. It was at that moment I realized that being weak and strong are two is different for everybody. As would Kilmartin would say about in-expressiveness and independence in men, “Men should be strong, sturdy, independent, and in control of themselves, even in the most difficult situations. Further, they should solve problems without help, keep their feelings to themselves, and disdain any display of weakness.” (Kilmartin 6) It was completely mind blowing when I realized the connection between school violence and masculinity…
This hits me a lot, because this class and this documentary made me remind many things, horrible memories when I was in elementary school. I kept asking myself when I was young, what was the reason that I was a target in school. We notice that bullies in films and in real life of course, pick on students that are more vulnerable and show emotions. The reason bullies pick fights and bother these “type” of people is because it’s that masculinity mentality that they have learned from their masculinity parenting. Remember, masculinity is anti-feminist, where it contradicts and encourages men from being vulnerable, emotional and having the ability to not resort to violence if provoked. So the first clip we saw in the documentary when the bully slams the kids to the ground, we don’t really know what could’ve been the reason, but it’s possible that the bully thought that the poor kid did not see the masculinity that he learned and took the opportunity to show his power. Kimmel says in Masculinity as Homophobia, he says, “Homophobia is the fear that other man will unmask us, emasculate us, reveal to us and the world that we do not measure up, that we are not real men.” (Kimmel 147) This results as behaving erratically towards other men, violent actions and homophobic acts such as saying slurs, which I can relate while growing up…
I would just like to conclude that school violence is not tolerable at all. The kid who does boxing after his recovery from his brutal fight (I forgot his name), he mentions how the school administration is not fixing this properly and makes him feel as if the school is not standing up for these victims. I felt the same way when I was in elementary, and I am angry that even in 2020, after all these years of anti-bullying ads, protests and intervention that since I graduated from elementary that it is still the same or in some schools, the situation is getting worse. It is disgusting that some schools are more worried about their reputation than helping their students.
Lovers and Fighters | Section 22 