Bullies, sissies and crybabies: Dangerous common sense in educating boys for violence

Abstract

abstract Rather than just assuming that men are naturally violent, we need to understand the specific experiences and ideas that shape masculinity and steer men towards violence. This Article is a case study exploring one aspect of these processes by looking at the public debate that raged in a local newspaper after reports of vicious bullying at a prestigious South African high school. Readers’ comments expressed contradictory ideas including anger at the bullies, anger at the people who made the story public, and disgust at the victims for not being ‘manly’ enough. They also advanced arguments that initiation and bulling were good experiences that made men stronger and built character. In this Article I seek to understand these different reactions, especially the ideas of masculinity that justify this kind of abuse, and why people who had themselves been victims of this kind of violence were often the first to justify it. By focusing on the emotional processes underlying these processes, I explain why such dangerous ideas are so commonly held and defended, even by the people who seem to have nothing to gain from them. This analysis then reveals how commonly held ideas about appropriate ways of raising boys contribute directly to the high levels of masculine violence in South Africa, and foregrounds an additional theoretical perspective that might add to current sociological accounts of the construction of masculinity.