Sunday, December 11, 2011

Where have our cojones gone?

http://cnsnews.com/blog/ben-shapiro/where-have-our-cojones-gone

The fact is that males' aggressive instinct is good for the world, if channeled properly. Without it, Hitler goes unpunished. Without it, millions continue to starve in the Soviet Union. The key to the aggressive instinct is training it to act along proper moral lines, not eradicating it.

The American people know that down deep. A few months back, a video went viral of a young Sydney boy, Casey Heynes, being bullied by a younger attacker, Richard. Richard punches the much larger Heynes in the face. Then he punches him again. Finally, Heynes can stand it no longer: He picks up Richard and body-slams him to the ground. Richard gets up and wobbles around, off camera. End video.

Elites of the world decried Heynes' behavior. "We don't believe that violence is ever the answer," said John Dalgleish, head of research at Kids Helpline and Boys Town. But tribute sites went up on the Internet to Heynes; videos celebrating his heroics became common fodder. As everyone who has ever faced down a bully knows, the only way to stop a bully is to show him that physical force won't get him anywhere. The only way to show him that is to beat the hell out of him.

We live in a world of bullies. So long as we continue to psychologically castrate our own boys, the bullies of the world will continue winning. We will continue asking why they hate us, and they will continue choking the life out of us. Only if we re-learn to kick them in the cojones rather than removing our own will we emerge victorious.

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

The culture supports it

A young boy, about twelve years old, has been hired by a little old lady to do some chores about the house. He rakes leaves and snips hedges and all the while the ad runs, she is sweet as can be to him. So sweet, in fact, that it becomes obvious that the boy hates her. We're expected to join him in his dislike for her. At the end of the ad, this sweet, fawning little old lady comes toward the boy with her purse and proffers the money due him. He hands her the hose and takes the money. Meanwhile she looks into the end of the hose to see why there is no water coming out of it. Cue close-up: the boy, sporting an evil but gleeful grin, holding the mid-section of the hose, releases the kink he's been holding in it. We never see it but we know full well that the woman just took a huge shot of water straight in the face.

What did she do to him? Nothing; she was obnoxiously nice, kind, and generous. The boy willingly performed the chores he agreed to do AND he got paid. I guess it's just a crime not to fit into the well established niche of a twelve-year-old god.

Watch one of those Teenage Angst shows. Hanna Montana, the Suite Life on Deck, iCarly, they're full of meanness, "boy did I put one over on that sucker", "haha, look what a jerk she is". Bullying is widespread. You'd wonder why, except that bullies are so well known to us, and we all have an intuitive understanding. A cuts down B, and then A's friends all join him in a little snickercircle to celebrate how wonderful they are. Or perhaps they're not content with snickering, so the posse joins in on the bullying. It's not cruel enough for B to know that one person doesn't like him, A's friends all don't like him either, and that leaves B wondering about himself. Hurt, hurt, hurt.

Sunday, March 6, 2011

One particular bully, Diane James.

I had a bully beating up on me beginning the first day of seventh grade. Her name was Diane James, it was 1963, and the school was John F. Kennedy Jr. High. I knew her name which was the same as mine, and that's all I knew about her, so I tried to be friendly. When I heard her name the first time, I smiled and said hello. She gave me a look of disgust and turned away.

Foolishly, I kept trying. I say "foolish" not because it was a bad thing to do but because I thought I could work on her and finally appeal to her enough to turn her into a friend. Though I had been bullied all my life, you see I had no idea how to deal with them. I was friendly, affable, and welcoming when I ran into her.

One day early in the year we had an assembly, I believe we were getting an orientation. Diane and her friend came in and picked the chairs immediately behind mine. Funny, out of all the other empty seats, those two looked the most appealing.

She waited till the lights went down and started kicking my chair. Silly me, I didn't recognize it as a hostile act, I just thought she was being a jerk and not paying attention to what rough treatment her feet were giving someone else's chair. Yes, I was that naive. I ignored her but she started kicking me harder and harder till it was actually painful. By this time she and the friend were rocking with barely-suppressed laughter.

I asked her to stop. She kicked me hard several times more. Again I asked, a little heatedly, and she kicked harder. So I reached behind me and pinched her ankle. I was not in the habit of telling a teacher about anything; their answer was always, "Quit making trouble. Go to the principal's office." But Diane James was, and she told a teacher.

I got in trouble, she walked away unscathed.

MEAN PEOPLE SUCK

Bullies are everywhere. And the problem just gets worse over time. I was a kid in the Sixties, and the bullying was godawful then, but it seems that the problem today is far, far worse. I could be wrong because I doubt that there were any statistics kept on the subject back then, but today it seems they do their bullying on twice as many targets per bully, twice as many bullies per target, and they pull three times as many incidents as in former times.

It's a favorite meme among idiots that children OUGHT to go to public school (where they're supposed to get picked on) so they can learn to be tough. I think no stupider thing has ever been said. You don't heal a broken bone by breaking it again; you don't get rid of a bruise by poking it over and over and over; you don't toughen up a sensitive kid by giving him third degree burns; and you can't teach a kid self-assurance with the daily reminder that he's someone else's garbage.

The terrible thing is that bullies can recognize bully-bait from a hundred miles off. And they know just what to do. Is this good? Is it right that 1/3 of the kids going to public school should use the place as a training field to become little Nazis?

Is it good for their targets? Are you really stupid enough to think that training young people to be doormats for the meanest people on earth is good for them?

If that's your position, I'm sure you used to be a bully yourself. And if so, you can join us in the discussion, offering insights to their mental processes.

What do I hope to achieve with this website?

I want to equip people with textual examples of how other people have dealt with their bullies so that with luck, their targets could learn how, themselves. Usually bullies pick out those who have no defenses. The targets get upset, they cry, they try to ignore the bully, or they try to reason with them, but in any case they don't know how to deal with their bullies. If they did, the bullies wouldn't come back for more.