Two Tales of Bullying: James Feibleman and Audre Lorde
There are two tales of bullying from the philosophical literature which have stuck with me over the years. They always struck me as complementary in some way, or as mirror-images. I’m going to juxtapose them here, not because I have any grand lesson to draw from them, but simply because they raise interesting questions.
The first story comes from the autobiography of James K. Feibleman, called The Way of a Man. Feibleman was a philosopher and writer who taught at Tulane University for many years. The story I want to focus on takes place in New Orleans, Louisiana, around 1916. Feibleman, as he says, was around 12 years old when the events took place. The story begins with the Feibleman family moving to a new neighborhood in New Orleans:
Mother was a very understanding woman. She did not want a bully but she definitely did not want a coward, either. A few years later, we moved to a new neighborhood. Father had been promoted in the department store to the position of junior partner. He had magnificent moustaches which turned down around his mouth. He had a wonderfully clear face and great dignity. He really was a strong, silent man. We had moved because he had bought some ground and had ordered a house of our own to be built on it. In the new neighborhood I acquired friends, but the old difficulty [of bullying] soon made itself evident. Across the street, in a half house, lived a boy of my own age with whom I played. I must have been about twelve. He became angry with me once and punched me in the chest. It hurt, and I began to cry and ran home to my mother. She was sympathetic until she found out what had happened. Then she gave me a whipping with a hair brush.
“The next time, maybe you will fight your own fights,” she said when it was over.
I had definite reservations about that — until the next time. It was the same boy again and we had gotten into an argument on his front porch, which could not have been more than three steps from the ground. He hit me, and I hit him back, thinking mostly about that hair brush. I was surprised to notice how easy the whole thing became. But I had also noticed that I was fighting with my back to the steps. That was certainly a disadvantage, and we sparred around until I could work my way to the door. Then when I had him with his back to the steps, I gathered up all my strength and gave one hard jab. The boy went backward down the steps on to the grass. He was not hurt but he was very much surprised. The fighting stopped then and we got to be the best of friends. I liked him and I think he liked me, but it was a new sort of liking, based on respect. The entire situation changed and I was pleased with it. (pp. 32–33)
The young Feibleman, under the instruction of his mother (who wanted neither a bully nor a coward), fights back against his bully and gains the other boy’s respect. Feibleman “was pleased” with the outcome.
The next story comes from an essay by the feminist writer and activist Audre Lorde. The essay is called “Man Child: A Black Lesbian Feminist’s Response” and was first published in 1979. The events would have taken place around 1973 in New York City (probably Staten Island) — nearly 60 years after the events in Feibleman’s story. Lorde’s tale also begins with the family moving to a new part of the city:
When Jonathan was eight years old and in the third grade we moved, and he went to a new school where his life was hellish as a new boy on the block. He did not like to play rough games. He did not like to fight. He did not like to stone dogs. And all this marked him early on as an easy target.
When he came in crying one afternoon, I heard from Beth [his older sister] how the corner bullies were making Jonathan wipe their shoes on the way home whenever Beth wasn’t there to fight them off. And when I heard that the ringleader was a little boy in Jonathan’s class his own size, an interesting and very disturbing thing happened to me.
My fury at my own long-ago impotence, and my present pain at his suffering, made me start to forget all that I knew about violence and fear, and blaming the victim, I started to hiss at the weeping child. “The next time you come in here crying … ,” and I suddenly caught myself in horror.
This is the way we allow the destruction of our sons to begin — in the name of protection and to ease our own pain. My son get beaten up? I was about to demand that he buy that first lesson in the corruption of power, that might makes right. I could hear myself beginning to perpetuate the age-old distortions about what strength and bravery really are.
And no, Jonathan didn’t have to fight if he didn’t want to, but somehow he did have to feel better about not fighting. An old horror rolled over me of being the fat kid who ran away, terrified of getting her glasses broken.
About that time a very wise woman said to me, “Have you ever told Jonathan that once you used to be afraid, too?”
The idea seemed far-out to me at the time, but the next time he came in crying and sweaty from having run away again, I could see that he felt shamed at having failed me, or some image he and I had created in his head of mother/woman. This image of woman being able to handle it all was bolstered by the fact that he lived in a household with three strong women, his lesbian parents and his forthright older sister. At home, for Jonathan, power was clearly female.
And because our society teaches us to think in an either/or mode — kill or be killed, dominate or be dominated — this meant that he must either surpass or be lacking. I could see the implications of this line of thought. Consider the two western classic myth/models of mother/son relationships: Jocasta/Oedipus, the son who fucks his mother, and Clytemnestra/Orestes, the son who kills his mother.
It all felt connected to me.
I sat down on the hallway steps and took Jonathan on my lap and wiped his tears. “Did I ever tell you about how I used to be afraid when I was your age?”
I will never forget the look on that little boy’s face as I told him the tale of my glasses and my after-school fights. It was a look of relief and total disbelief, all rolled into one.
It is as hard for our children to believe that we are not omnipotent as it is for us to know it, as parents. But that knowledge is necessary as the first step in the reassessment of power as something other than might, age, privilege, or the lack of fear. It is an important step for a boy, whose societal destruction begins when he is forced to believe that he can only be strong if he doesn’t feel, or if he wins. (pp. 75–76)
Lorde takes an opposite tactic to Feibleman’s mother. She resists instructing her son to fight back and instead reveals her own vulnerability.
The question I’ve often pondered is which mother was right: James Feibleman’s mother or Audre Lorde? I think different people will give different answers to this question depending on their position and experience in the world. If you interpret these stories through the lens of the culture wars, some people will want to say that Feibleman’s mother is perpetuating toxic masculinity, or that Lorde is perpetuating the feminization of men. I don’t think these simple kinds of judgments help here. Personally, I find it quite impossible to judge either mother; I can see the rationality behind each of their responses. Feibleman’s mother wants her son to be able to take care of himself in the outside world; Lorde wants her son to be able to manage his inner world.
And although the stories have similar elements, we have to keep in mind that they take place in radically different contexts: New York in 1973 is not New Orleans in 1916. What’s right for one person in one place and time is not necessarily right for another person in another place and time. In my view, most people most of the time are just doing the best they can with the hand they’ve been dealt. It has elsewhere been my argument that our moral intuitions, our feelings about what is right and wrong, are not universal, but emerge from deeper social conditions of which we are usually not conscious. Feibleman and Lorde are obviously trying to instruct us, the readers (Lorde most obviously). But I would not want to draw any universal lesson from either of their stories. For what it’s worth, Feibleman grew up into a peaceful and productive member of society, and as far as I can tell, so did Lorde’s son. And we don’t need to suppose that Lorde’s son grew into a wimp afraid of physical confrontation; later in her essay we see him practicing Taekwondo.
These two stories originally drew my attention because of their parallels. But pondering them has led me to wonder more about their differences: the differences between the personalities and lives of the mothers; the differences between the personalities and lives of the sons; the differences in the social circumstances.
And it has led to wonder also about those small moments that make up a life, some of which are long remembered, some of which are long forgotten — but all of which go into some complex mix that make us what we are. Feibleman long remembered his mother’s response to his bullying. But did it really make a long-term difference to his life? Lorde long remembered her own response to the bullying of her son. But did this response make a long-term difference in his life?
Which mother was right? Or were each of them, in their own circumstances, right? And on what basis can we really answer such questions?
References
Feibleman, James K. The Way of a Man. New York: Horizon Press, 1969.
Lorde, Audre. Sister Outsider. London: Penguin Books, 2007.