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175 points PaulHoule | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.2s | source
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BriggyDwiggs42 ◴[] No.42158978[source]
I’ve been thinking a little about this subject lately. It seems like bullying is a thing that serves the function of exacting the repressed violent desires of the social body. Who is selected for bullying is determined not primarily by the bully, but by the social group as a whole. To me this helps explain why it’s such a ubiquitous behavior; it’s a mechanism for a social group to act outside of its norms in the enforcement of its norms. To be clear, I think it’s terrible, just interesting to think about this way.
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1. bokoharambe ◴[] No.42159081[source]
I love that you point out that bullying is social and its relation to the ordinary enforcement of social norms. And I think this points more broadly to the function of social violence as a whole: much of it is regulatory and follows from repressive logics that exist in less overt forms. In other words can't have a notion like that of sex without also having sexism and gendered violence.