The Critical Interrogation of a Category: An Interview with Jack Halberstam

One of the perverse side effects of the anti-bullying discourses circulating through the American cultural imaginary has been the appropriation of bullying rhetorics by conservative pundits and politicians. As I completed work on this interview, a state senator from Tennessee argued that the “gay rights community are the biggest bullies in the world” because of their criticism of his legislation prohibiting any mention of LGBTQ people in public schools. A quick search on Google would suggest, ironically, that LGBTQ people are actively bullying Chick-fil-A, the Boy Scouts of America, Rick Santorum, and even the Roman Catholic Church. Accusations of bullying are not exclusive to proponents of gay rights, but extend to pro-gay liberals more generally. The rhetoric of bullying has become a staple of national politics, with conservatives such as Eric Cantor, Jim DeMint, Nikki Halley, Mitch McConnell, and Newt Gingrich all decrying President Obama as a “bully.” Governor Scott Walker asserted that he would not be bullied by unions just before he attempted to dismantle collective bargaining rights. Conservatives rushed to the defense of Sarah Palin, who was supposedly being “bullied” by Tina Fey and Julianne Moore at the Golden Globes because they had won awards portraying her. A new book by conservative Ben Shapiro, Bullies, argues the Left is not against bullying at all, but seeks to divide Americans with cultural issues such as gay rights.

I raise these examples to highlight the need for an on-going interrogation of the category of “bullying” and its manifestations in public culture. The consistent embrace of “bullying” by rabidly anti-gay politicians illustrates both the success of anti-bullying campaigns and the need to more carefully investigate the ease with which they are espoused. Even as this conservative appropriation oddly positions the GOP as queers themselves, projecting a defenselessness against a political juggernaut of people whose rights they consistently keep at bay, the repeated rhetorical attempts at situating themselves as victims raises questions about the ways bullying is constituted and occasionally contorted. Whereas conservative narratives are relatively transparent in their political opportunism, other bullying discourses run the risk of being naturalized without scrutiny, overlooking the nuances of bullying and the complicated variables that contribute to its various materializations. Of course, to argue that we should more forcefully analyze such narrations is not to say that bullying is not a problem that requires immediate attention. It most certainly is. Nonetheless, the apparatus of “bullying” has come to occupy a prominent place in our institutional and everyday discourses precisely because it is ubiquitous, effective, and frequently left without critical rumination. But, as the above instances highlight, bullying can take on a variety of meanings depending on the audiences, contexts, and acts defining its boundaries.

It is in this spirit of critique and evaluation that QED approached Jack Halberstam, a professor at the University of Southern California and author of numerous books about gender and queer theory to chat with us about the on-going problematic of bullying and its relation to LGBTQ lives. Halberstam has been critical of the “It Gets Better” campaign, for example, arguing that it produces a feel-good message that does not communicate adequately the harsh realities confronted by LGBTQ people. Halberstam is also skeptical of narratives that pose a causal relationship between bullying and suicide, suggesting that a deeper and more nuanced understanding of heterosexism and masculinity in context must be explored to fully process the phenomenon of bullying.

Halberstam is correct to suggest that scholars and activists must continue to scrutinize understandings of bullying and the ways they come into being. To be critical of these forms is assuredly not an easy task. When confronted with stories of young people who have taken their lives, it can be arduous to reassess explanatory narratives that are retorting violent forces that harm queer youth. While putting the finishing touches on this interview, the national news media again focused on the death of two young teens who committed suicide after reporting confrontations with bullies in the weeks prior to their deaths. The first was a 15-year...