My History of Violence.

I assume everyone has seen or at least heard about these videos of a high school boy confronting a bully. I’ve been watching them over and over. It’s — understatement! — an emotional ride, as I imagine it is for most queer people who were once high school kids, and I admit that’s why I’m a little obsessed with it, but it’s interesting on many other levels as media, as popular culture.

There’s the whole wooly conversation about who witnesses these moments of crisis in people’s lives, about surveillance, about virality, about how bullies have access to a large audience, but also the bullied have access (without or without consent) to a large audience. Smarter, more patient people than I study this stuff.

But something that fascinates and puzzles me is the “performance” of the kid (and I suppose performance more generally in heightened moments like this). I keep coming back to the boy’s affect as he threatens the bully, which is very different from his (natural?) affect in the talk show appearances:

“Back the fuck up out my face, now, ‘cause I’m not playin’ witchoo.”

“Call me a fag one more fuckin’ time and I will pop yo ass.”

“Wassup?” “Wassup?” “Wassup bitch?”

Being careful not to get myself in trouble here, is his affect and language not a performance of a black stereotype? And why? Is there a general perception that this “gangsta” stereotype is intimidating? Is that a go-to “threatening character,” like how a kid in the 1920s might have taken on an exaggerated Al Capone-type demeanor?

I’m not suggesting it’s a conscious choice this boy made, and I’m definitely not accusing him of some kind of racist blackface performance. A charge like that would, I think, overshadow most of what’s interesting in the analysis of his performance. Complicated, for sure, and of course part of the larger topic of white people and hip hop, cultural appropriation, and white kids more generally adopting so-called urban black affectations.

I also wonder — though I suspect here that I’m stretching it a bit — how the possibility of this moment being videotaped and broadcast (whether or not anyone involved has specific knowledge at the time that they are being recorded, but it’s just a thing that happens these days so it must register somewhere in people’s minds) might affect the performance.

When I was in 5th grade, there was a boy named Bobby Tate who tormented me relentlessly. (He was in my class nearly every year from 1st grade, so it had been going on for a long time.) I don’t remember what he said, what he called me. I know it wasn’t “fag.” I don’t remember hearing that word until at least 7th or 8th grade, but maybe “sissy”? I did my best to ignore him — Is “ignore a bully and he’ll go away” the worst advice ever in the history of childhood? — but I think that only encouraged him. I was miserable. One day, I don’t know what if anything was different that day, I exploded. I jumped him. We scuffled and ended up with him behind me with his arms wrapped tightly around my waist trying to take me down. I managed to pull one of his arms off me and I began twisting it with all my strength. He let go, and I kept twisting his arm as hard as I could. He screamed with pain and begged me to let go. I did. He never bothered me again. I was happy to have resolved the situation, but shaken by my rage.

When I was a sophomore in high school, a boy named Bill Conrad took a mind to walking behind me in the hallway and muttering epithets. Again, I don’t think he used any f-words, but I do remember that a favorite was “woman.” (Try and tell me homophobia and misogyny aren’t the same damn thing.) Interesting background on Bill Conrad is that in 8th grade, both of us fairly often came up with excuses to get out of gym glass. We weren’t friends, but I remember feeling some solidarity in those moments sitting on the bleachers together while the other kids played basketball. (I don’t remember what our excuses were, but I’m guessing the teacher was just glad to have a reason to not deal with us. Bill Conrad was the fat kid, I was the fag.) So, anyway, I have no idea why he chose me to torment, but it went on for weeks, and finally one day I turned around and said, “You’re FAT!” and that was the end of that.

I have mixed feelings about responding to hate with violence, but I’m generally against it. I actually feel much less regret about the physical violence toward Bobby Tate than the psychological violence toward Bill Conrad. But in the case of Jordan Steffy, is socking that little asshole in the face a level of violence to be concerned about?