Human interaction has always involved bullying, intimidation and mistreatment in some form. As time goes on, much of human interaction is becoming mediated by various social platforms and applications, and while those harsh forms of interaction endure, they have taken a new “cyber” form. Such a form of bullying is especially prevalent among members of our generation — from college students all the way down to grade school children. Appropriately, many have taken to campaigning against this new, but eternal, form of mistreatment. Unfortunately, the leading voices on this matter today present a potentially harmful approach to curtailing online bullying and harassment.
Take Monica Lewinsky, a prominent voice on modern bullying, as an example. She recently spoke at ASU and delivered a speech extremely similar to the one below. Her TED Talk is entitled “The Price of Shame.”
As can be heard in her talk, offensive speech on the Internet can be very hurtful. Many of us have experienced it, and many young children experience it daily. Her approach to limiting it, though, seems to me to be flawed.
I first noticed this while attending her talk at ASU. She told a story about a woman who asked her after a speech whether Lewinsky would advise young women to avoid sleeping with their bosses. Lewinsky said to the crowd, and was met with thunderous applause, that Bill Clinton should have to be admonished the same way — that he should be asked to tell men to avoid sleeping with female coworkers. I looked around, confused; Bill Clinton was exposed in every big magazine right alongside Monica Lewinsky. I am sure many people admonish him similarly to her.
The blame game is less important than the fundamental tendency Lewinsky shows in her talks: A tendency to scold members of society for judging each other’s actions through sanitizing wrongdoing. In other words, the solution to cyber bullying and shaming, suggested by many today, is to be nice to each other, no matter what.
To me, that appears to be a slippery, dangerous slope. It also appears to be self-defeating. It is dangerous because to suggest that no one deserves to feel shame would be to suggest that nothing is shameful. Of course, I know that the extent to which we can be berated online is dangerous, but I also appreciate the fact that my friends, family and society “shame” me for certain wrongdoings.
I would have no reference for right and wrong if I didn’t receive any negative feedback for my misbehavior. Furthermore, this is a self-defeating message: The best way to stop a bully is to make sure that he or she understands that bullying is wrong. Someone has to tell bullies that they should be ashamed of their actions for bullies to know that their harassment is wrong.
I believe that Lewinsky received an unfair amount of public humiliation, but I don’t believe that all public humiliation is unfair. I believe that a president and his or her staff should be held accountable for their actions, and I believe that all of us should be held accountable for our actions. I make mistakes just like every single ASU student does, and, while none of us deserve to be bullied for them, we are deserving of appropriate admonishment for our mistakes. Perhaps a byproduct of encouraging social awareness on college campuses is that morality has become too offensive to be considered appropriate, and that should be guarded against.
Lewinsky intends to help prevent bullying, and so do I, but we disagree on how. Telling our friends and family to withhold ill speech is useful, but it cannot be the absolute solution because an uglier problem would grow in its place. On top of condemning hateful speech, we should move towards more measured methods of admonishment as opposed to removing admonishment entirely, and we should promote appropriate behavior.
Related links:
ASU anti-bullying organization You=Special seeks to build confidence in bullied students
ASU freshman addresses bullying with the Be ONE Project
Reach the columnist at gheiler@asu.edu or follow @heilergeorge on Twitter.
Editor’s note: The opinions presented in this column are the author’s and do not imply any endorsement from The State Press or its editors.
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