blogcutter

For some reason, I always thought of the term "bullying" as meaning something like: forcing someone else to do something they don't want to do. But clearly the term as is presently used encompasses something broader than that. And even in the 1960s-era Concise Oxford Dictionary, the definition is fairly broad - to "bully" is defined as to "persecute, oppress, tease, physically or morally; frighten (into or out of)". On the other hand, that same dictionary defines the use of "bully" as in "bully for you" (especially US or colonial) as "capital, first-rate, bravo" - in other words, something fairly positive. I wonder now if the definition has not in recent years become so broad as to be virtually meaningless. Could our failure to come to grips with what exactly CONSTITUTES "bullying" have something to do with our failure to adequately address the problem?

In my early days in the workplace, the big no-no was "sexual harassment". That seemed to me to be fairly clear-cut - rape or sexual assault or making sexual favours a condition of promotion or continued employment - but eventually it got expanded beyond that, to include things like telling any kind of sexual-innuendo joke that might make people uncomfortable, or posting Playboy calendars, or things that, while perhaps inappropriate, were not really direct attacks against any particular woman or other individual.

And after "sexual harassment" there was "personal harassment". That was another category that to me, seemed to verge on being so vague as to be meaningless. I remember one discussion during my days at Labour Canada in the late 1980s or early 1990s, when someone asked, "If we don't like it or disagree, is that automatically 'personal harassment'?"

Now the big bugaboo is "bullying". If someone says or does something that is politically incorrect, does that automatically constitute "bullying"? Where does bullying occur? It used to be a term for playground altercations, but clearly bullying occurs in adult venues too. In some circles, it's almost "de rigueur" - consider the TV show "Dragon's Den", for example, or some of the reality-TV shows.

I'm not defending any of the behaviour which may now be considered to be bullying. But at the same time, we have to realize that at different times in history - even from one decade to another or perhaps one YEAR to another - our standards change and the lens through which we view things gradually changes focus. Corporal punishment was a given in my childhood, both at school and at home. It wasn't FREQUENT - in fact, I never experienced it at school - but it was considered a legitimate and expected part of the arsenal that adults used to discipline children. Now, we like to pretend that we have never favoured it. Societal attitudes towards gays, lesbians and the transgendered have undergone a sea change during my lifetime and the evolution continues.

Are we reaching a point where, whenever someone, adult or child, does something we don't like, that we can label it "bullying" and demand that the "authorities" intervene and remedy the situation? Is there even a satisfactory remedy to be had?

Teen suicide is real. Work stress is real. Everyday-life-stress is real. But like life, solutions are complex and not to be found at the bottom of a cereal or Cracker Jack box.