My Love-Hate Relationship with Bullying (Perfectly Imperfect 4)

I’ve got this love-hate relationship with bullying.

Not bullying itself, mind you; bullying is always, always, always wrong, no matter who’s getting bullied or who’s doing the bullying. I hate bullying.

I hate bullying sometimes, too, although there are also times I love it. But I hate bullying itself. To clarify: I both love and hate the term bullying. The act of bullying, that I simply hate.

I both love and hate the term bullying, especially when it’s applied to adults. I love the term because it reminds us just how infantile the oppressor is behaving. After all, we anticipate that kids might be given to bullying, but not adults. It’s something we expect to see on the playground, not in professional settings. Bullying reminds us that the man or woman who’s being a bully – whether it’s toward another adult or, worse, a child – is acting like a little kid.

Case in point: the current loathsome situation of the Miami Dolphins of the National Football League. It’s drawn a ton of press coverage, even by national news outlets that don’t usually pay attention to the sporting world. What’s happened, in short, is that one of the older players and official team leaders, Richie Incognito, allegedly caused such emotional distress over many months to a second-year player, Jonathan Martin, that Martin left the team. A recorded voice message and several saved text messages from Incognito, who is White, to Martin, who has both White and Black ancestry, have compelled the Dolphins to suspend Incognito. The voice message, including offensive words, goes like this, per ESPN Grantland’s Brian Phillips:

Hey, wassup, you half-nigger piece of shit. I saw you on Twitter, you been training 10 weeks. [I want to] shit in your fucking mouth. [I’m going to] slap your fucking mouth. [I’m going to] slap your real mother across the face [laughter]. Fuck you, you’re still a rookie. I’ll kill you.

Some observers, and even some players and other people currently associated with the NFL, have come down hard on Martin. They’ve called him a coward. They’ve demeaned his manhood (and insulted all women everywhere) by saying that football is a man’s game and if you can’t hack it, get out. They’ve even likened him to one child tattling on another.

Here’s where I love the term bullying, as applied to grown-ups. Bullying takes us back to the schoolyard playground. If the details that have been reported are true, it’s not Martin who’s acting like a kid; it’s the one doing the bullying, Incognito. He, as the bully, should be the one whose emotional maturity should be called into question.

And he’s not the only one. There’s a report that the Dolphins’ general manager told Martin’s agent that he should punch Incognito to get him to back off. I mean, really? I know this is American football, and that grown men are pushing and shoving each other as part of the sport. But punching, even on the field, is a penalized offense, sometimes resulting in player suspensions. Off the field, the GM’s encouragement to Martin to put up his dukes in a locker room smackdown reflects juvenility at the highest levels of the organization.

That’s why I love bullying, the term, when applied to grown-ups; it reminds us of the oppressor’s immaturity. But I hate it when applied to grown-ups, too. That’s because just to even say “Jonathan Martin was bullied” still makes a lot of us imagine the 6’ 5”, 300-pound Martin as little more than a helpless child, unable to respond to his tormentor with anything more than, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.”

A better term for describing Incognito’s actions toward Martin is actually abuse, of the verbal and emotional kind. And what do we call people who’ve been abused? Not victims, but survivors. It takes strength to withstand demeaning comments and acts. And it takes guts to remove yourself from a situation that is unhealthy for you, knowing that some folks will blame you for it. Such appears to be Jonathan Martin’s experience. He’s no weakling; he’s a survivor and a warrior.

But even the term abuse doesn’t take into account the organizational aspect of what’s happened in Miami. There is another that does: workplace mobbing. This occurs when several members of an organization or corporation repeatedly undermine, demean, and humiliate a colleague, until that colleague either resigns or is fired. Dr. Maureen Duffy, a family therapist and author of the book Mobbing: Causes, Consequences, and Solutions (Oxford Press), writes on her blog, “The consequences for victims of mobbing are usually devastating. For its victims, mobbing affects physical health, psychological and emotional health, relationships with family members, and, for workers, financial health.” She continues:

Mobbing is different from bullying because the workplace or school organizations are also involved, either through failure to act to protect their members when they have a responsibility to act, or through “blaming the victim” and joining the attack in progress on the victim, usually acting through official, bureaucratic channels. Secrecy and lack of transparency among organizational leaders and the presence of a hostile workplace culture are common indicators of mobbing-prone organizations.

Now, it’s true, as many have pointed out, that the whole story within the Miami Dolphins’ organization has yet to be told. But the details that have been reported thus far, if also true, are lining up as a classic case of workplace mobbing. Consider that Dolphins coaches reportedly asked Incognito to toughen up Martin, and that in recent days, several Dolphins teammates have publicly supported Incognito over Martin.

I feel strongly about such situations, because I’ve also experienced workplace mobbing. Some of you know that I used to serve as an evangelical Christian minister. It’s something I did full-time for more than a dozen years. But in my previous church, which was my workplace as well as my place of worship, I experienced mobbing over the course of my last three years of service. Even after the situation became highly toxic, I stayed, because mine was the only income my family had. Eventually, some church members with significant institutional authority gave me an ultimatum, requiring me to sign a document that would have brought significant harm to my future ability to provide for my wife and daughters. So rather than sign it, I turned in my resignation. One would hope that a faith community would be safe from such abuse. This church, sadly, was not. (But I am glad to say that my current church, in which my family and I are simply members, is indeed a safe place!)

How does this relate to raising my daughters? I want to teach my girls to oppose bullying and mobbing of every sort. I want to help them grow into courageous advocates for folks around them who are getting demeaned and humiliated. I’m guessing that Jonathan Martin would have liked one of the team leaders to step in and back him up, demanding that Richie Incognito cease his extreme behavior. I know I really needed a senior leader in my previous church to join me in holding my harsh critics to genuine public account for their behind-the-scenes machinations. I’d love for my daughters to become such compassionate and courageous people.

And of course, if that’s my goal, then I need to model it, too. How about if you and I resolve together anew, today, that we will do what we can to prevent bullying and mobbing of any and every kind, whenever we see it?

That would be a different kind of love-hate relationship: loving folks who are getting hated on!