(no subject)
May. 25th, 2012 02:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwydionI think that something getting missed in the news discussions of whether or not mr. Champion agreed to run the gauntlet is the nature of hazing culture. When I say that whole school institutionalized hazing was dying out in my high School, that doesn't mean it was actually dead, just weakened and gradually decreasing. Part of the tradition that was still in effect was a day where Freshmen had to do anything anyone who was Sophmore and above said no matter what. This being prep school, there was often homoerotic sexual humiliation involved, but more visible elements were ordering a Freshman to do something that would get him in trouble with teachers, violent and painful (gauntlets of kicks and punches) or that old favorite: making a Freshman get your lunch, then another lunch for someone else, using up his whole lunch period waiting in line and burning his lunch card what with him having to pay for all those lunches. (I say him, because the slow speed of sexual integration meant my freshman year a vast majority of high school students were still boys, with no Senior girls at all. My Freshman class was 20 girls to 80 boys, and the numbers were much smaller with juniors and Sophomores. Girl bullying was this whole other thing and the girl on girl hazing was extremely viscous, but very subtle. Boy on Girl happened, but was comparatively rare, though boy on girl bullying outside the hazing structure was rampant and usually scary sexual. Girl on boy bullying tended to be viscous and subtle.) Adults knew it was happening, but didn't step in.
We all knew it was coming. How bad it would be depended a lot on social status, and some of the cleverer omega boys managed to fain sick and miss it. Others, with tougher parents or less foresight were put through a special hell. My bizarre personal status put me outside both girl and boy hierarchies and my parents both worked, so I had to be vomiting to stay home. I was very worried about what would happen to me, and spent some time in the weeks leading up to it to gaming it out. Nothing happened much happened to me. (I little thing involving a textbook, but no big thing). It's one of the few advantages to being invisible and untouchable. The bullies in my grade were busy being bullied themselves, and the older kids simply ignored me, so I actually came out of it with way less bullying and sexual harassment than in an ordinary day. Still, some of the boys and I talked it through before and after. The thing is, you can't say no to the hazing. If you resist, it could be far worse as you would be branded by that the whole rest of high School and the consequences of that were horrifying, even for omega boys and an untouchable. Saying no was way less safe than simply taking the beating or the detention or whatever. (For the record, I refused to participate the next three years because I disapproved of all bullying, ritualized as hazing or not.)
That's the thing that the commentators are missing about the hazing of Mr. Champion. Him submitting to the deadly gauntlet during which they beat him to death, doesn't mean he wanted to beaten to death or that them beating him to death was okay. No, it means he couldn't refuse because they'd simply ostracize him and then randomly beat him anyway, much as they would have at my prep school. he would be branded a coward, uncool, a potential threat to the social order and then would have found all sorts of ways to punish him for saying no. Were the consequences worse than dieing? No, but he didn't know they were going to beat him to death and saying yes meant that if he endured without complaint he'd be confirmed within the social structure. In those situations, "no" is scary and physically, socially, and emotionally dangerous. It's incredibly coercive. It's why you can't stop it by targeting the bottom, you have to target the leaders instead, the ones setting and enforcing the social status quo. Now picture Mr. Champion, a black, gay, older than average college student who loved being in band who grew up and lived in the Deep South with all that entailed. Mr. Champion saying "yes" doesn't really count for much the way a "yes" to a mugging at knife or gunpoint doesn't count for much. The bullies who beat him to death saying it counts as consent to them beating him to death and therefore should exempt them from responsibility for his murder is bullshit. I don't think news commentators with zero experience of hazing culture can really understand how bullshit these claims are.
We all knew it was coming. How bad it would be depended a lot on social status, and some of the cleverer omega boys managed to fain sick and miss it. Others, with tougher parents or less foresight were put through a special hell. My bizarre personal status put me outside both girl and boy hierarchies and my parents both worked, so I had to be vomiting to stay home. I was very worried about what would happen to me, and spent some time in the weeks leading up to it to gaming it out. Nothing happened much happened to me. (I little thing involving a textbook, but no big thing). It's one of the few advantages to being invisible and untouchable. The bullies in my grade were busy being bullied themselves, and the older kids simply ignored me, so I actually came out of it with way less bullying and sexual harassment than in an ordinary day. Still, some of the boys and I talked it through before and after. The thing is, you can't say no to the hazing. If you resist, it could be far worse as you would be branded by that the whole rest of high School and the consequences of that were horrifying, even for omega boys and an untouchable. Saying no was way less safe than simply taking the beating or the detention or whatever. (For the record, I refused to participate the next three years because I disapproved of all bullying, ritualized as hazing or not.)
That's the thing that the commentators are missing about the hazing of Mr. Champion. Him submitting to the deadly gauntlet during which they beat him to death, doesn't mean he wanted to beaten to death or that them beating him to death was okay. No, it means he couldn't refuse because they'd simply ostracize him and then randomly beat him anyway, much as they would have at my prep school. he would be branded a coward, uncool, a potential threat to the social order and then would have found all sorts of ways to punish him for saying no. Were the consequences worse than dieing? No, but he didn't know they were going to beat him to death and saying yes meant that if he endured without complaint he'd be confirmed within the social structure. In those situations, "no" is scary and physically, socially, and emotionally dangerous. It's incredibly coercive. It's why you can't stop it by targeting the bottom, you have to target the leaders instead, the ones setting and enforcing the social status quo. Now picture Mr. Champion, a black, gay, older than average college student who loved being in band who grew up and lived in the Deep South with all that entailed. Mr. Champion saying "yes" doesn't really count for much the way a "yes" to a mugging at knife or gunpoint doesn't count for much. The bullies who beat him to death saying it counts as consent to them beating him to death and therefore should exempt them from responsibility for his murder is bullshit. I don't think news commentators with zero experience of hazing culture can really understand how bullshit these claims are.