To be a person: growing up adjectiveless

[kiya]

There are a couple of discussions on The Cauldron at the moment about bullying, how to deal with it, etc. And I need to gnaw on things a little. And thrash about a lot, apparently, because I'm trying to get this spatial-emotional experience to turn into language, and it's not going at all well (possibly because I'm trying to translate it into visual-emotional and then describe that, and that's way too many levels of translation). Centrifuge. :P

Argh. *spends some time trying to talk this into English at oneironaut*

Whitney again has issues turning a visual-emotional image into language.
Whitney says, "Actually, it's spatial-emotional, and I'm trying to get it into language by translating it into visual-emotional and describing the results."
Tesla says, "Oh dear."
Whitney says, "I could talk at you in sentence fragments and see if you understand me?"
Tesla says, "I promise nothing. But you could."
Whitney does so, in the hopes that the reflection will help her translate in general.
Whitney says, "Maturity is developing a complex Venn diagram."
Whitney says, "Early life, all belonging-circles; adolescence gets major differentiation urges, need to create disjoint bubbles to indentify self in the node-overlap of overlapping adjectives."
Whitney says, "Development of antagonism to people in not-bubbles reinforces bubble strength; still defining self in terms of others, but doing so negatively."
Tesla says, "Hmm."
Whitney makes vigorous hand gestures.
Whitney says, "Develop new groups to belong to, generally first defined by not-family."
Tesla now has a rather interesting mental image involving a lot of intersecting ripply glass spheres.
Whitney says, "Yes! Like that!"
Whitney says, "And the grey bit is where self happens. It doesn't start out existing, it gets /constructed/."
Tesla says, "Right."
Tesla says, "I'm digging you."
Whitney says, "Some people never grow out of needing to have identity defined by their adjectives, rather than, y'know, being an identity that has adjectives."
Whitney says, "But the need to have distinct adjectives isn't the first thing, that comes out of the need to be not-other, that's adolescence."
Whitney says, "Blurry self-lines -> strong, sharply defended lines circumscribing developing sense of independent-self -> person."
Whitney, more vigorous gestures.
Tesla tries to figure out how to paint this mental image.
Whitney says, "I've got a pinkish one in the lower left, if it helps."
Tesla says, "Is it intersecting a blue one? Mine is."
Whitney says, "Er, lower left near, as opposed to far."
Whitney says, ". . . it's intersecting an approximate assload of other bubbly bits."
Tesla says, "Well, yeah. But I've got a very clear image of it intersecting a blue one."
Whitney has a very pale blue one, if that helps.
Whitney says, "And a green one center-back-right."
Whitney says, "Sort of mint green."
Tesla says, "If, for example, you were to kill your father, you would cease to exist." "*gasp* But existing is basically all I do!"
Whitney says, "The pink one is actually bothering me a little, as it's warm and pushing a bit on my left cheek. :P"
Whitney says, "I really need to have less substantial conceptual metaphors."
Tesla laughs hard.
Whitney says, "What I'm actually trying to write about is bullying. The thing is, okay, one of the things bullying is about is trying to define the bubble. The people there don't have enough personal mana to be, y'know, people without the group, and they don't know how to be a useful /adjective/ without enforcing the group, and they can't think of a better way to do this than define certain people as being not-group and enforcing -that-."
Whitney says, "And sometimes the not-group people can assimilate into the group by interacting just right with the bubble."
Whitney says, "But then you get people who . . . they're in the differentiation age, right? But they only have, like, the family-bubble, they need to differentiate from that, but all the other bubbles in their vicinity they're not-in. They have no adjectives, no identity."
Whitney says, "You know, rather than try to translate this for the journal entry I'm trying to write, I should just pull a log."
Tesla says, "Very lazy. I approve. (Though I don't know how I'd translate it, myself, because it makes sense already.)"
Whitney says, "All of which is background for me trying to articulate my experience as being the target of bullies. So I'm going to come up for air and let that be preamble."
Whitney says, "The thing is, okay . . . the thing is that I experienced bullying as unpersoning. Especially the sexual harassment stuff. It wasn't merely denying me a group to adjectivise myself in, to get some independent identity, it was actively removing identity."
Whitney says, "I wasn't even a /girl/ to the sexual harassers. I was a breast. Though after I was a breast pretty directly I became an elbow, so I was an elbow for a while, and the fellow who went for the boob was an ass, because that was what he landed on."
Eastman cackles.
Tesla cackles.
Whitney says, "I'm not kidding about being an elbow, mind; that was basically how they interacted with and referred to me for a couple of weeks after that."
Whitney says, "I was just parts. And I /felt/ like parts, because I didn't have any unifying adjectives. And at some level I needed to build adjectives, and I tried to bootstrap myself into the independent-of-group-definition phase, but that's fucking hard to do when you're eleven."
Tesla begins to leak steam.
Whitney says, "You can go beat them later, dearheart; I'm trying to geek out here."
Tesla says, "I'm being good. I am. Please continue geeking."
Whitney says, "So there's this discussion elsewhere about bullying, and someone said basically, 'Why not just get the kids to defend themselves? I used to get into fights all the time, and whether I won or lost didn't matter, I showed I could defend myself and got left alone. Sometimes I got friends from the bullies that way'. And I sort of look at that funny, because the physical stuff isn't all there is to bullying -- there's that unpersoning thing, the reduction of other people into object-target, in the worst cases the reduction of their capacity to develop selfness."
Whitney says, "And I'm still not sure what to do about the girl who invited me to a slumber party at an address that did not exist."
Tesla says, "Aaagh."
Eastman says, "Beat her?"
Eastman, helpful.
Tesla says, "There's always giving me her name and then pretending you've never heard of me when the cops call you."
Whitney says, "I think I've actually forgotten it, though I know her surname began with an M."
Whitney prods at the selfness thing. "That's the thing that I'm trying to get at, really, the whole development-of-self and the ways that bullying behaviours feed into that whole process. And the weirdnesses that happen in a self that doesn't have enough bubbles they're defined as a member of, rather than defined as not a mumber of."
Whitney says, "I'm wondering if this has anything to do with my tendency to collect adjectives. I don't /do/ anything with them, particularly, except identify them as accurate descriptions of the me. But it's a sort of shell against being undefined."
Whitney says, "Also wondering if it has anything to do with my tendency to be confounded by people who make their lives all about The Adjective. A combination of too-many-eggs-in-one-basket thing and having had a really defective interaction with kids who were doing the big deal The Adjective stuff in a timeperiod when I didn't have any adjectives of my own."
Tesla says, "... well, if you're right, you're remarkably internally consistent."
Whitney says, "This whole thoughtpattern was triggered by me pondering the guy who basically said 'Why not just let 'em fight and prove their strength to each other' and replying to him with, 'The guy I dumped on his ass after he grabbed my breast was not dissuaded by that. Or anything else.'"
Whitney says, "How so?"
Tesla says, "Well, it all hangs together. I can't do that with my head stuff, for the most part."
Tesla says, "One gets the impression that guy is pretty dim."
Whitney says, "Actually, I get the impression that he's very one form of Asatru-mindset. Strength-proving, demonstrate your worth, etc."
Tesla says, "That usually correlates pretty strongly to 'dim'."
Tesla says, "Not that I'm a judgemental bastard or anything."
Whitney says, "I can also see his point, to a certain extent; the establishment of order through that sort of ritualised thing is a big deal, and preventing it causes problems. But it's not always the -unpersoning- thing, and I think the people who experienced adolescent status wars as proving-worth and people who experienced them as unpersoning are communicating across this huge rupture-gulf."
Whitney says, "And the problem is that the kids who are experiencing the unpersoning thing get the message from the adults who experienced the proving thing that they're weak and worthless for being unwound. Which, of course, contributes to unpersoning."
Tesla says, "Ugh. Yes."
Whitney says, "And I don't know if they're qualitatively different experiences, if one can point at things consistently and say 'this is group bonding' and 'this is unpersoning'. Which makes the whole thing more tangled."
Whitney says, "But anyone who says 'Boys will be boys' should be beaten, nonetheless."
Tesla says, "With a stick."
Whitney thinks she's mostly run out of steam, pulls a log.

Comments

[rainfallsautumn.livejournal.com]

Oh, I need to not go look at that thread.

Should I be scared that I understood the geeking, or proud of myself? ;)

I have a certain sympathy for the Asatru-guy-- that *does* work exceedingly well for a certain type of bully. Some bullies are like cichlids-- they can tell sluggishness, vague weakness, and a couple of missing scales from an appalling distance. They bite on weakness, if you can prove that you're not-weak, they category-shift you. I had one of those in 6th grade. The second I ceased being the little girl who worried about a rumpled dress and gave her a bloody nose she started being quite friendly. I saved her grades in Earth Science in 9th grade, too. ;)

But it doesn't work on bullies who are responding to something other than a weakness-sensor. The trouble with *those* bullies is that they've already had entirely too much operant reinforcement that violence, harassment, and unpersoning *work.* I agree with you that as to how the cycle gets started, but I think it continues because, for this type, there has never been any significant amount of evidence that their behavior fails to produce the desired result. And there likely never will be, either. This type doesn't change, they just grow into something much more bigger and scarier. So the Asatru-guy is right *to a point* with this case too-- had you been his first boob-grabbing attempt, or second or third, and dumped him on his ass, he might not have continued doing so (which simply means he would have internalized the desire, and that could be even worse), but I suspect by the time he got around to boob-grabbing, he had a ton of useful experience grabbing other things.

*/blabber*

[rainfallsautumn.livejournal.com]

ack, "more bigger." Teach me to try to think after several hours of deadline-meeting workstuff.

[kiya]

Should I be scared that I understood the geeking, or proud of myself? ;)

I often feel that I'm harder to understand than I am on this sort of thing, I think -- when I can convey the shapes in my head, they often make sense to other people, but because I'm not always processing meaning in language, the transmission vector is lossy.

When I think of the gang of twerps that included the boob-grabber -- there were about five of them -- I really only have distinct personalities on two of them. The others weren't the dominant personality in the collective, they were in that state of being-defined-by-being-with-him, y'know? But I have a clear sense of the boob-grabber, who I think you've called right; I would be surprised if he weren't out there now groping at whatever caught his fancy. And then there was the guy who always read to me as being on the verge of being too uncomfortable with what maintaining the group entailed to be able to stay in the group. I wonder what would have happened if I'd been able to talk to him without the coterie, in a situation where we'd have to have been real.

[rainfallsautumn.livejournal.com]

Lossy?

The visual references provided by oneironaut definitely helped. I'm not a very spatial thinker, but I am *very* visual. So thank him for me. :)

The trouble with the guy you reference in the last couple of sentences is that they tend to grow into the sort who nods when abusive!boss harasses you, and then says "you know, that was really unfair..." when you're alone in the lunchroom. The sort who you think you can count on, but leaves you high and dry in a fight. I almost prefer the bullies-- at least I can see *them* coming.

[kiya]

Lossy, er. Translation loses data, precision, every time; like static on the line. meaning fizzles, gets averaged out so nuance is lost or new, incorrect nuance is introduced. Lossy. Thingy.


As to the guy -- yeah, that wouldn't surprise me either.

[brooksmoses]

I'm reminded of the girl in Sunday school who tended to always be teasing me and picking on me. There was, once, a time when we happened to find ourselves with nobody else around (and I was up in the rafters and thus invisible to anyone who might walk by), and -- for a few minutes -- had a reasonable conversation. I think, looking back on it, that I would have liked her if that had been more than a one-time thing.

[janetmiles.livejournal.com]

Makes sense. Not identical understanding, but congruent.

[undauntra.livejournal.com]

Made perfect sense, thanks largely to introductory phrase: "Venn Diagram".

With it, I was primed to parse everything else in terms of set-membership. Otherwise I'd probably have been staring at the visual part blankly until you got to the unpersoning discussion.

Anecdotal data: I pretty much missed out on adolescent status wars entirely. I always seem to have had a recognized place off to the side of the hierarchy, but under its aegis.

In jr. high, I helped the football star with his spelling homework. This effectively put me under his protection as far as bullying was concerned. Heck, a bunch of the popular girls kept trying to rehabilitate my fashion sense to get in good with him.

By high school I was pretty well-established as a geek. There was a bit of hazing, but it stopped after they time they padlocked my locker shut and I just walked down to the dean's office, borrowed the bolt-cutters, and took care of the problem myself in under a minute without breaking my composure.

Random side thought: For me, the status wars were all within the family. (My father had a few problems with alcohol and child-rearing.) This may have been a contributory factor in some way. It's difficult to work up a good head of fear after going toe-to-toe with a full adult who has legal and financial authority over one.

Unpersoning makes intellectual sense to me, but doesn't resonate at a gut level. I cannot remember a time when my sense of self was fragile enough to be shaken by one relative stranger's actions. But then, I seem to have less adjective collecting tendencies than most people I see on LJ, judging by the number of LJ quiz-memes I see. Interesting.

[mindways]

Makes sense to me, overall...

The thing is, okay, one of the things bullying is about is trying to define the bubble.

*nod* Though not the only thing.

And I don't know if they're qualitatively different experiences, if one can point at things consistently and say 'this is group bonding' and 'this is unpersoning'

My gut instinct is that it's a continuum: 'this is a breast'; 'this is a victim'*; 'this is a geek'; 'this is someone who's not as cool as us'.

* = 'victim' with the connotation of 'human-shaped object upon which I can do what I want - assert my dominance, make myself feel better, etc.'. "Emotional scratching post" might be an appropriate metaphor.

But I don't really know.

[elf]

'Why not just get the kids to defend themselves?'

Because the possible results include
1) Tempest Smith, who couldn't figure out how to defend herself & decided to kill herself because the pressure was too great;

2) More bullies, who think it's okay to attack anyone because the "truly worthy" will know how to stop it--this is the "blame the victim" mode; "If she didn't want it to happen, why didn't she stop it?" (I haven't seen the thread. Has anyone pointed out to this guy that "kids should fight back for themselves" is the same as "rape victims should fight off their attackers?")

3) Ender Wiggan (who, I know, is fictional): a kid who learns to hit back and *destroy* the attacker, because that's the only way to be safe;

4) Columbine High: Kids who know they can never best the bullies by the rules the bullies are using, and decide to escalate to a level the bullies can't reach.

[kiya]

Unfortunately, Bob's now pulled out the "They can't hurt you if you don't let them" line, to go with all that.

Grargh.

[elf]

Damn. Maybe I have to go over there & take a look.

* * *

eep. I hadda open my mouth...

Bob & I go way back. He's got a grudging respect for me, but we don't agree on much. (I think he's possibly the most civil & reasonable Asatru I've met online. But I don't hang out at his forum anymore.)

I got personal. Don't gimme that "words don't carry any power" BS.

[kiya]

Got personal? I suppose I'll see when I catch up.

I narrowly avoided saying something to the effect of "'It's just words on the internet' is the phrase of the coward who doesn't have the guts to take responsibility for their actions." We'll see if that comes out later, I suppose.

[elf]

Calling him a coward won't work--you don't know him well enough to make it stick. (Neither do I.)

I'm skirting an edge there... I haven't been active on the Cauldron in a long while, and re-starting by flamewar is, err, not unexpected, but probably not the "best" way to rejoin the conversations. And I'm really, really sitting on my hands to keep from making some kind of vague comments about his daughters, bullies, and the sexual overtones many teenage boys attach to bullying.

(I dunno. Maybe he's absolutely oblivious to the prevalence of attempted rape in high school. The guys who'd never dream of it, seem to think it really doesn't exist.)

Saying "it's just words" is either the mark of:
1) A bully who wants to believe he's not hurting anyone (which Bob isn't)
2) A victim who can't believe he's being hurt by something as "silly" as words (possible, but not likely)
3) Someone else, who's never been involved in a toxic verbal environment, and doesn't really believe they exist.

(By the way, if you're not reading ozarque, you should. Cos you'd like it. Only vaguely connected to this conversation.)

[kiya]

Given that the majority of the severe bullying I received was explicitly sexual, I'm not surprised that it's common. I wasn't aware that that was the case in general, but, well. . .

Meh.

[kiya]

*eyes ozarque*

Ooh, shiny language geekery. Thank you for the pointer.

[kiya]

You know, I'm amused that standing up for myself and refusing to back down to revisionism and the promulgation of the lies that support abusers is a "victim complex" that I'm supposed to "enjoy".

I wonder what it would be if I'd just let him define the terms without challenge. Aside from rolling over and showing belly to the big bad Bob and his manly displays of insight into the true nature of things.

[elf]

"You have a victim complex" is the favorite accusation of TC. They don't want to believe that anyone actually attacks anyone else; it's all misunderstandings and poor communication from the victim.

Pagans are not being persecuted; our religions are just as acceptable as Christianity--all those stories about high-school kids being harassed for their pents are invented by wannabe goths who are showing off. All those single parents losing custody because of witchcraft are really bad parents in the first place. All those stories about workplace harassment are just blown out of proportion; nobody's every really lost her job for coming out of the broom closet. And if your friends are teasing you or preaching at you, you just need to get new friends.

And if they're not *all* that way, well, maybe there are a few tiny pockets of close-mindedness, but at least 90% of the claims are bogus.

It's all the victim's fault for "putting up with" harrassment & intimidation. Nobody can make you feel intimidated... and now that you know that, you won't have any more problems, right?

Feeling intimidated will vanish as soon as you acknowledge there's no reason for it. That's the way it's always worked.

[boojum.livejournal.com]

Would this be like the bullet that can't hurt me if I don't let it?

I have not yet met a "can't hurt you if you don't let it" sort that doesn't spend a lot of time complaining about how other folk are attacking it with words; this doesn't mean they don't exist, but it's rather (and rightfully) colored my views: admitting that other people can affect you gives you more power over what you do, because you are willing to take note of all data.

[jinian.livejournal.com]

I think I understand, and I agree with what I understand. Odd Girl Out by Rachel Simmons talks a lot about the interaction between group membership and unpersoning, mostly in the context of girl-girl popularity interactions (which I didn't do a lot of, don't think you did either) but still useful.

[the-real-diana.livejournal.com]

Whitney says, "And I'm still not sure what to do about the girl who invited me to a slumber party at an address that did not exist."

Whitney says, "I think I've actually forgotten it, though I know her surname began with an M."

AKKK- I hope this wasn't me- I swear to God that our street has no street sign, it never has. Although I think you came to my house a couple of times, to sleep over and help my dumb ass pass IB Physics. Oh yeah and THE WINDMILL! I still tell people about that story about how our Windmill kicked some ass, even though it was the runt of the litter so to speak. :) Gotta love duct tape and plastic wrap!

I've never been really bullied physically by other students- unless you count that time in 2nd grade when a Korean girl decided to hit me on the arm for everything, even when she wasn't mad at me, but my 2nd grade teacher took care of that little problem. Verbally many times, especially that one year I spent in regular HS. I was always big and in good shape though. I'm not sure if that had anything to do with it. Most of the time I don't think anyone really cared about me one way or the other. Except for that one guy in HS, most of the time it was girls who didn't like me.

That is really insane that someone grabbed you like that. I would have kicked their ass for you.

[kiya]

Don't worry about it -- that was junior high sometime.

The IB program was when I started getting adjectives of my own. :)

[the-real-diana.livejournal.com]

Can you add "Savior of Diana's ass" to your list of adjectives?

I really like the part where you hit with a log that notion that "boys will be boys". That is one of the phrases that annoys me the most. We were doing a group project and some guy typed in the stuff all wrong and I was mad and thought this person should redo it and take responsibility. This other girl said, "You know guys, they aren't good with details." I'm like, WTF? I'm not good with details either (ironing, spelling, handwriting, finding stuff that I squirreled away, remembering stuff) but I wouldn't make excuses about it. I would never excuse any kind of behavior on someone's gender. If it's bad behavior it's bad behavior.

I forgot where I heard this, but someone said something to the effect of: Instead of going to junior high, they should just strip you naked and force you to run in front of the entire school population and get it over with.

Although in my college a lot of people did that for fun. To the point of, "Man, Bob, I've seen you naked about 2000 times, why don't you ever do something interesting?"

Sorry about the long post.

[kiya]

"Boys will be boys" was how the school administration responded to the boob-grabby incident and its ilk. Bothers me a lot; the principal clearly thought I was the greatest student since sliced bread, and couldn't be bothered dealing with this sort of thing.

That sounds like a fair description of junior high. Junior high was why I went IB -- in the middle of eighth grade I basically said, "Okay, my choices are Blair or RM." Quince Orchard was just plain out of the question.

[the-real-diana.livejournal.com]

WHAT- THAT IS TOTAL BULLSHIT! I mean I don't think people should use lawsuits to solve all their problems, but in this case, DAMN. Send them all in! This kid should have been locked up.

Yeah IB was probably the best HS experience I could have had in any dimension. It would have been nice if we had some more cute boys though...:) Trust me, from personal experience, regular HS was HELL, you probably know what you missed. The only way I survived was to make good friends with a Junior and some nice but rough kids. I only went to class once a week but I got As anyway. I don't know how people dealt on 4 years of that place.

Well I guess I found my place in IB as the village idiot, so it worked out! :) I actually like being surrounded by people who are all smarter than me. I was always awed by how awe-some you were and you'd consider being friends with a dumbass like me!

[kiya]

Hey, you're cool. Cool people get friends.

[the-real-diana.livejournal.com]

Wow, I don't think anyone's ever called me "cool" before. Cool. :)

I still owe you $10! One day I'm going to send it to you.

Last night I was thinking about all those times we visited a certain person at Burger King. :) I think I drove out that way a few years later and the BK was gone, is that true?

[kiya]

I remember that shopping center thing has changed around a bit, but I don't actually remember how it's changed . . .

[linenoise.livejournal.com]

Once again you manage to describe a portion of my own experience in such a way as to make greater sense of myself. I've always know that I had a *seriously* delayed adolescence. Like, we're talking 20 years old when I *started*. I always just figured I was retarded (in a non-judgemental sense). But the gas bubbles thing points out that no, I really didn't have any opportunity for self-definition. Junior High I was "the weird kid", and a couple of people's emotional scratching post (very nice phrase, I thanks to jikharra). High school I managed to find other weird kids, because it was a bigger school, so I at least I didn't have to be the whipping boy. But there was never any real sense of belongingness there. At least not for me. Some of the others I think had it. But for me I still desperately wanted to hang out with the cool kids, this was just something to make my days less hellish. Wasn't until I discovered Usenet, after graduation, that I finally had anything resembling not-family belongingness. And lo, few months later, finally had my very delayed and very much acclerated/shortened adolescence period. And came out completely new person, with actual sense of self.

Huh.