I once vaguely knew the headmistress of a local school who, in the midst of a lively scandal over a run of instances of bullying, declared — privately, of course — that it was all poppycock. There was absolutely no bulling at her school.
The bully never sees themselves as a bully. Nor indeed does their appreciative audience, up to and including, in some cases, the school principal (assuming they are not the individual doing the bullying at the time).
The bully is doing the Lord's work, putting the aberrant and eccentric on the path to self-improvement. Bullying is rarely premeditated; it's most often purely reflexive. "See something, say something." Also shove something, trip something, punch something in the side of the head, pull something's pants down in the middle of the playground, if necessary.
When I tell people how pervasive bullying was in the culture of my school, they often express astonishment and, like our headmistress, claim there was no such thing at their own school. However they then rather give the game away by implicitly admitting that they are intimately familiar with bullying and its' purposes by asking "Well, were you doing anything to deserve it?"
Nobody deserves it. Unless, as in the minds of most people at least, they do.
Of course overt bullying isn't usually acceptable in nice, polite, affluent, middle-class society, but still the police work must go on. In retrospect, I've been dimly aware of how bullying morphs into something more subtle for some time, but it's only become really blatantly obvious since I decided to stop fretting about my gender and just get on with my life.
It turns out that this is the precise moment at which certain fine, upstanding, community-spirited people start fretting about your gender. Constantly. Obsessively.
Like a slowly dripping tap in the next room, not important enough to get up and deal with but impossible to ignore, it niggles away at them until suddenly, in the middle of some group activity, apropos of nothing, to nobody in particular, glassy-eyed as though dimly perceiving Brigadoon emerging from the mist, they loudly and clearly propound upon their personal theory of a supposedly natural and immutable relationship between gender and one or another biological measure (the latter varies over time according to current utility in confirming the hypothesis).
How is this relevant to the topic in hand, I wonder to myself in response?
Somewhat startled to realise that they have made themselves the centre of attention, they look abashed and start to stammer out what they feel is a list of conclusive proof, eventually trailing off into an apologetic murmur. In the meantime, every eye in to the place has fired off at least one sideways glance in my direction to gauge my reaction.
I'm sorry; I hadn't realised that we've held an election for the post of Elephant in the Room. I wasn't even aware I'd been nominated.
Eventually things get back on track, but then perhaps ten minutes later, gripped by the same irresistible urge to contribute to a debate nobody's having, another person ventures that having to be so careful with what one says these days is such a tremendous strain, isn't it? It's so easy for somebody to get offended.
I'm not offended. Just baffled. You're clearly not feeling restrained at the moment. If anything, I'd say you're verbally profligate. Why are you saying this, and why am I suddenly the most attractive person in the room again?
They carry on to say that one day soon, they expect that we normal people will be in the minority, as though it's self-evident what a catastrophic dystopia this would be. Then, satisfied that in some way justice has been done, they yield the floor.
I try, as much as possible, to wear this sort of thing in silence with a beatific smile. I mean, if everybody is looking at you anyway, you may as well endeavour to strike an attractive pose. Sometimes, reluctantly recognising that I've been conscripted into the role, I try to present a brief case for the defence, trying not to appear incredibly irritated. I did not ask to be the resident diversity advocate. This is exhausting, and it's not why I've come here today. Why is any of this necessary?
Oh. Wait. You all just want me to get the message, don't you?
You may not consciously realise that this is what you're doing, but you're expressing a strong preference that people more than two standard deviations away from what you consider the average person (i.e. yourself) should somehow cease to exist, or at least go away, so that the natural order can be restored and everybody can breathe a sigh of relief.
The last few years have been good for catching up with a lot of modern terminology that has passed me by, especially when it is not quite so modern. The term "microaggression" has been around since 1970 (says Wikipedia). In my defence, I've been distracted lately; well, since the early 70s.
I'm not revealing any closely-guarded secrets by observing that I'm a bit peculiar along a number of different statistical axes. In my later teens, when the overt bullying evaporated, I didn't make the connection with the increasingly mystifying behaviour of others in social situations.
Something as simple as age is a distinguishing feature that increasingly puts me out of sync with people. Around the age of forty, it feels like every adult is more or less the same age as you. And for a while popular opinion agrees with you. After a period of time, varying depending on how well you've looked after yourself (so in my case not long), you start to notice a curious phenomenon.
It's rather like being slightly, but noticeably, more drunk than the people around you, and realising that they're all bracing themselves to catch you the moment you inevitably keel over.
People seem incredibly sweet and solicitous, but you get the sense that they are watching your every move. They are actually petrified that, in your senescence, you are about to do something grotesquely socially inappropriate. Perhaps you will whip a crossword puzzle out of your handbag, and a disgustingly well-chewed biro embossed with the words "BANK OF NEW SOUTH WALES". Maybe it's a sandwich, wrapped in waxed paper, that you'll tuck into with crumb-spraying gusto. You just don't know with old people, do you? You simply can't relax as you would with a normal person for even a moment. Why don't they realise how much of a burden their presence is putting on the rest of us?
The kicker is that I'm as great an offender as anybody, through no actual prejudice (well mostly not, I expect…), but simply a staggering lack of consideration for how something I say I might make somebody else feel.
For example, I'm very interested in people's relationship with drugs. Not the glamorous kind; just the little things people use every day and are the subject of countless amusing social media memes. I'm just intrigued by what people use and why, what different people find more or less appropriate in different situations, and so on.
So for many years, in social situations where the question "Can I get you something?" was answered with "Oh, no thanks. I don't drink." I'd round on the poor person, eyes ablaze with curiosity, and essentially scream "Oh, wow! That's really weird! Why aren't you more normal?"
It shouldn't take a genius to recognise that this line of enquiry is at best tedious, and at worst clearly potentially traumatic for the poor subject. But dear reader, I was that thoughtless idiot.