The bullied boy: masculinity, embodiment, and the gendered social-ecology of Vietnamese school bullying

ABSTRACT

This article considers the ways in which school bullying is both gendered and embodied. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in two lower-secondary schools in northern Vietnam, the article focuses on the experiences of one ninth-grade boy, who was regularly bullied by his classmates, and whose experiences of bullying appeared to be embodied for all to see. Inspired by Arthur Brittan’s notion of masculinism, Elizabeth Grosz’s use of the möbius strip metaphor for understanding embodiment, and Urie Bronfenbrenner’s conceptualization of the ecological environment, I argue that school bullying needs to be understood not only in terms of the interactions between individuals or groups of individuals, but also in terms of the specific gendered social-ecological environment within which those interactions occur.

KEYWORDS:

• Bullying
• masculinities
• embodiment
• boys
• ethnography
• South East Asia

Introduction

The young boy sitting in front of me seemed nervous. He was small in stature and his body language suggested that he was uncomfortable. He was sitting on the edge of his seat and his eyes kept flitting around the room, checking the windows and the door, which stood slightly ajar. It was afternoon and his lessons were finished for the day. His classmates had long since gone home and we were sitting in an empty room on the top floor of a teaching block, far from his own classroom. Noting his nervousness, I asked if he would like me to close the door. He said ‘yes’, so I got up and closed the door that led out to the balcony.

I had started the interview by reminding him that the interview was confidential and that he could stop it at any time. After a couple of general questions, I told him that I had observed him being hit by some of his classmates and asked him why he thought they targeted him. He said he knew that I would ask this question, and then sought reassurance that the interview was confidential. I assured him that it was. He told me that his classmates bullied him. Later in the interview, I asked him if there was anyone in his class that he disliked. He replied by simply stating, ‘too many’, before once again seeking reassurance that I would not tell his classmates what he said. Even if I had not just spent three months conducting participant observations in his class, I would still have been able to guess that he had been subjected to bullying. He looked like a bullied boy.

This particular boy, who I call Minh,¹ was one of the many students I met during my time conducting ethnographic fieldwork in Vietnam’s third largest city, Haiphong, in 2007–2008. Minh was regularly bullied by his classmates and his experiences of school bullying illustrate not only how school bullying is embodied, but also how gendered experiences of bullying need to be understood in relation to the specific gendered social-ecological environment within which they occur. Despite the vast amount of research conducted into the interplay between masculinity and student relations within schools (e.g. Connell 1989; Gilbert and Gilbert 1998; Kenway and Fitzclarence 1997; Mac An Ghaill 1994; Martino 1999; Mills 2001; Reay 2002), the fields of school masculinities studies and school bullying research have tended to sit apart from one another (Duncan and Rivers 2013). Much of the research that has been conducted more specifically into aggression and school bullying has instead been conceptualized along a continuum, from gender blindness to gender essentialism, whereby either the focus has been on the behaviour of boys or explanations of gender differences have been tied to biology (Carrera-Fernández, Lameiras-Fernández, and Rodríguez-Castro 2016; Duncan and Rivers 2013; Ringrose 2008; Ringrose and Renold 2010).

In this article, I am interested in the ways in which bullying is not only gendered, but also embodied. Rather than simply suggesting that boys and girls engage in different forms of bullying because of the respective sex/gender roles they take on, I consider the ways in which direct and indirect forms of bullying are experienced and how such experiences influence the bullying that occurs through the embodiment of those bullied experiences. In doing so, I discuss bullying in relation to a localized Vietnamese form of what Brittan (1989) terms masculinism and consider how gendered bullying experiences may be connected to the embodiment of those experiences in ways that are reminiscent of Grosz’s (1994) möbius strip metaphor. Drawing on Bronfenbrenner’s (1977, 1979) conceptualization of the ecological environment, I situate individual experiences of bullying within broader micro-, meso-, exo-, and macrosystems.

Aggression, school bullying and masculinity

Early work on school bullying focused almost exclusively on the bullying behaviour of boys, as aggression was seen to be most common among boys (Carrera, DePalma, and Lameiras 2011; Eriksen and Lyng 2016; Ringrose and Renold 2010). Crick and Grotpeter (1995, 710) argued that the notion that boys are simply more aggressive than girls is based on research that focused on more observable overt forms of aggression, rather than the ‘relational aggression’ typically engaged in by girls. In contrast, later research investigating aggression and school bullying found that while boys tend to be directly aggressive (both physically and verbally), girls tend to be indirectly or relationally so (Björkqvist, Lagerspetz, and Kaukiainen 1992; Lagerspetz, Björkqvist, and Peltonen 1988; Olweus 1993). While highlighting sex differences in school bullying behaviour, these early studies did not explicitly discuss gender or its importance to the power relations of school bullying (Duncan 1999).

Having found evidence that girls and boys bully in different ways, some researchers have since focused specifically on the bullying done by girls, with particular focus on relational forms of aggression (Besag 2006; Crothers, Field, and Kolbert 2005; Currie, Kelly, and Pomerantz 2007; Jennifer 2013; Owens, Shute, and Slee 2000; Simmons 2002). These researchers have highlighted gendered distinctions in bullying behaviour and have suggested that such behaviour is thus related to gender norms and values in the broader society. The connection between masculinity and school bullying has thus been explained ‘in terms of cultural representations, values, and social expectations’ (Gini and Pozzoli 2006, 588; see also Felix and Greif Green 2010; Young and Sweeting 2004). This has contributed to blind spots in research and practice, with researchers and educators often focusing on the direct aggression of boys and the indirect relational aggression of girls (Eriksen and Lyng 2016). Some researchers have, however, noted the direct physical aggression of girls (Davies 1984; Duncan 1999) and the indirect relational aggression of boys (Eriksen and Lyng 2016; Swearer Napolitano 2008). Indeed, as Swearer Napolitano (2008, 612) has thus argued, ‘it appears that the “gender dichotomy” in aggression has been oversimplified in both the popular and research literatures.’

Towards a gendered social-ecology of school bullying

While theorizations of socialization and sex roles are a significant improvement on the previously gender-blind discussions of school bullying, they tend to exaggerate the role of individuals and the choices they make and minimize the importance of the power relations within which they are situated (Brittan 1989; Carrigan, Connell, and Lee 1985; Connell 1995). In response to sex role theory, Raewyn Connell and others developed the notion of hegemonic masculinity to emphasize the power relations involved and highlight how gendered norms are enforced and resisted within a patriarchal social order (Carrigan, Connell, and Lee 1985; Connell 1983; Kessler et al. 1985). This theorization has been drawn upon by numerous researchers in order to illustrate how subordinate and marginalized forms of masculinity are policed by boys in schools (Carrera-Fernández, Lameiras-Fernández, and Rodríguez-Castro 2016; Horton 2007; Kenway and Fitzclarence 1997; Renold 2004).

In a similar way, Brittan (1989) coined the term masculinism to distinguish between masculinity and the ideology that upholds male domination. As Brittan (1989, 4) argued: ‘Those people who speak of masculinity as an essence, as an inborn characteristic, are confusing masculinity with masculinism, the masculine ideology. Masculinism is the ideology that justifies and naturalizes male domination.’ As Whitehead (2002, 98) has argued, masculinism can also be thought of as ‘a dominant discourse rather than a dominant ideology.’ For boys, then, the question is not whether to take on a typical male sex role, but rather how to position themselves according to the masculine discourses available to them.

As Whitehead (2002, 110) has pointed out, however, the discourses available to a particular boy are ‘heavily localized and thus constrained by numerous variables such as age, cultural capital, body, health, ethnicity, geography, nationality and, not least, the unique history of that subject as individual.’ In this sense, then, gender intersects with other socially differentiating categories (Crenshaw 1991; McCall 2005). Certain attributes of the body related to gender, age, ethnicity, and so on, may also thus serve to mark it out as different, deviant, and thus potentially vulnerable in that particular local context. In this article, I draw on gender research conducted in the Vietnamese context, in order to situate the bullying of Minh within that localized masculinist framework.

As Whitehead suggests, the ability of boys to do their masculinity in particular ways is contingent on their own corporeality and their unique experiences, both of which are intricately intertwined. Grosz (1994) has suggested understanding the relationship between the body and experience like the outside and inside surfaces of a möbius strip. A möbius strip is a flat figure eight that is twisted once so that the inside and outside of the figure are continuous and merge into each other (Fausto-Sterling 2000; Grosz 1994). The möbius strip provides a useful metaphor for illustrating the ways in which the body and mind are inflected into one another through psychical and social processes, and thus how Minh’s experiences of school bullying, for example, may be inextricably connected to his embodiment of those experiences. The metaphor allows for a consideration of what Swearer and Hymel (2015, 346) refer to as ‘the “chicken or egg” conundrum’ of school bullying, whereby depression and anxiety, for example, may be both predictors and effects of school bullying.

Another way of conceptualizing this is to picture the bullied body as a Russian nesting doll. Bronfenbrenner (1977, 1979) proposed understanding human development in relation to the ecological systems within which they are located and suggested that the ecological environment could be understood like a set of nesting dolls with the individual at the centre, concentrically located within microsystems, mesosystems, exosystems, and a macrosystem. Within this social-ecological model, the microsystem incorporates the relations between individuals and the immediate environment within various settings, such as the home, school and peer group. The mesosystem is an extension of the microsystem and is made up of the interrelations between the different microsystem settings, such as those between the school and home. The exosystem is, in turn, an extension of the mesosystem, incorporating those settings where the individual is not involved, such as the homes of classmates, parent-teacher groups, and the school board. The macrosystem, in contrast, refers to the broader social-cultural context that influences the other systems (Bronfenbrenner 1977, 1979). Numerous school bullying researchers have adopted Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model as a means for expanding discussions of school bullying beyond the individuals involved (Barboza et al. 2009; Espelage et al. 2015; Hong and Garbarino 2012; Swearer and Doll 2001; Swearer and Hymel 2015).

The social-ecological model provides a useful framework for understanding school bullying in relation to gender and embodiment. Doing so, however, requires moving beyond the microsystem, where researchers have tended to focus their attention (Bouchard and Smith 2017; Carrera, DePalma, and Lameiras 2011; Horton 2016a; Thornberg 2015). It also requires a consideration of how gender socialization influences the school bullying of boys and girls in particular socio-cultural contexts. In this article, I consider how school bullying may be both gendered and embodied. In doing so, I discuss the case of Minh as a bullied nesting doll, working from the individual centre to the outer macro-layer, and consider how specific Vietnamese masculinist norms within the macrosystem permeate the other systems and impact on the lived experience of this particular bullied boy.

Method

The findings discussed in this article stem from a long-term ethnographic study conducted in two lower-secondary schools in the northern Vietnamese port city, Haiphong. The two schools were both located within the same district of Haiphong, but the two areas differed significantly in terms of the levels of financial investment. The fieldwork was conducted during the 2007–2008 school year and included 906 questionnaires administered to classes at all levels (i.e. grades six to nine), seven months of participant observations conducted in two ninth-grade classes, ten individual semi-structured interviews with staff, nine friendship group interviews with students, and 30 individual semi-structured interviews with 15 girls and 15 boys from the two classes. The group interviews were conducted prior to the individual interviews, and, while the group interviews were quite general in focus, the individual interviews were more focused on the individual experiences and perspectives of the students being interviewed. In selecting the participants for the individual interviews, I attempted to get perspectives from a range of students, including those who engaged in bullying, those who were subjected to bullying, and those who were perhaps not directly involved but could provide insight into why bullying occurred.

Ethical guidelines were followed and informants were told that they could stop the interview at any time, that their answers would be treated confidentially, and that they would be assigned pseudonyms to help ensure anonymity. In line with other school ethnographers and child researchers, I sought to spend my time with the students themselves and to distance myself from the authoritative role of teachers and other school staff (Davies 1999; Epstein 1998; Mandell 1991; Thornberg 2017). This had obvious ethical implications in terms of whether or not I should intervene in certain situations, and I decided to intervene when a student risked injury or seemed visibly distraught (Horton 2012).

For the purposes of this article, I draw in particular on the observations and interviews relating to Minh. Minh attended one of the largest schools in the district, with over 2,000 students split into half-day schooling. The school was located in a relatively wealthy part of the city, and the school had a good reputation. However, Minh was one of 45 students who constituted what some teachers considered to be one of the ‘worst’ classes at the school, due to the students’ somewhat unruly behaviour.

The bullying of Minh

Minh was one of the smallest boys in the class and was bullied by a number of his classmates. One girl in his class, Chau, suggested that one of the reasons that Minh was bullied was because he was so small that he did not dare to retaliate. Reflecting findings about the importance of size to bullying interactions involving boys (Olweus 1993; Rigby 2008), a number of boys in the class explained that bullying often involves bigger students bullying smaller students who cannot retaliate (Horton 2016b). One of the largest boys in the class told me that his size made school easier because he was not scared of being bullied. As he put it, ‘It’s easier because I’m not scared of getting bullied. Hit me and I’ll hit back immediately. Why would I let it happen?!’ When I asked one of the smallest boys in the class whether it would be good to be bigger, he explained that it would be, because then the other boys ‘wouldn’t be able to hit me and I would be able to hit more boys.’ Likewise, Minh told me that being bigger would be better because ‘even if they hit me, I wouldn’t feel it.’

However, it was also clear that size was not the only factor determining whether boys were bullied or not. Long was one of the biggest boys in the class, and was considerably larger than Hoan, who I sometimes saw hitting Long. When I asked Hoan whether school would be easier if he was bigger, he explained that it would not make any difference and that not being afraid of pain and being ready to retaliate were more important than size per se. Hoan told me that Long usually gave in when he hit him, ‘because he’s afraid of pain.’

Some students explained that Minh was bullied because he was ‘meek’ (hiền lành). As Hoan explained, for example, ‘everyone in the class hits Minh, but he doesn’t dare to hit back. If he hit someone, they would hit back at once.’ In explaining Minh’s perceived meekness, one girl, Thanh, also suggested that Minh’s tendency to cry served to reinforce students’ negative perceptions of him. As she put it, ‘whenever he is hit a little or we curse him a little, he cries. So, the class hates him.’ While Minh did not retaliate by physically hitting boys, he did retaliate, and some students explained that his provocative behaviour was a reason for the bullying. Chau explained that another girl in the class who was quiet and did not seem to have friends was not subjected to bullying because, ‘she does not tease others and grin like Minh.’ Likewise, another girl in the class explained, ‘He is meek and he often speaks nonsense in the class. He asks everything, such as how much money your parents earn each month. It’s nonsense. I hate it, so I hit him.’

As is evident from the above explanations, Minh was regularly subjected to various forms of bullying by both boys and girls. Explanations provided by students pointed to apparently individual factors, including Minh’s small stature, his meekness, and his tendency to provoke his classmates. A number of school bullying researchers have distinguished between passive and provocative victims of bullying. Passive victims are reported to be more anxious and insecure than their peers, and to withdraw or cry when bullied. Provocative victims, on the other hand, are reported to be both anxious and aggressive, to have short attention spans, and to be prone to hyperactivity (Carney and Merrell 2001; Olweus 1993; Smokowski and Kopasz 2005). However, it would be simplistic to characterize Minh as either passive or provocative. Minh’s perceived meekness and provocative behaviour cannot be understood without also considering the social interactions that he was involved in within the microsystem of his peer group.

The bullying of Minh in the microsystem of the peer group

Minh was regularly hit, slapped, pinched, poked, pushed, cursed, threatened and forced to do things by some of his classmates. This often appeared to occur after Minh had provoked the person doing the hitting, slapping, and so on. For example, Minh sat at the desk just in front of Thanh and often turned around and said things to her or took things off her desk, such as books, stationery, or her glasses. In turn, Thanh often responded by hitting or slapping Minh. On one occasion, for example, Minh picked up Thanh’s glasses, held them in front of her and said, ‘ha, ha, ha’, to which Thanh responded by slapping Minh in the face. Another girl in the class, Dao, was perhaps the person who hit Minh most. As was the case with Thanh, Minh often seemed to provoke Dao into doing it. On one occasion, for example, Minh slapped Dao in the arm, to which she responded by slapping him in the face. It seemed to be sore, and Minh’s pained reaction caused her to laugh and ask him if he wants to be hit. During another lesson, I noted that Minh appeared to be trying to verbally provoke Dao. She responded by slapping him in the face, pushing him off his chair and pinching him in the back. She then pushed him off his chair three times. The third time he hurt his leg and was rubbing it when the teacher noticed and told him to stand up. When the teacher was once again facing the blackboard, Minh slapped Dao in the arm, and she responded by poking him in his sore leg. This continued until Dao appeared to have given Minh a dead leg. Finally, Dao hit Minh hard, the teacher noticed and Dao was also told to stand up.

Minh was not only targeted in response to perceived provocation. For example, during a break between two lessons, Minh was lying face down across his desk when Long walked over, shouted his name and slapped him hard in the back. Sometimes Minh appeared to be targeted because of his refusal to service some of the other students in the class. For example, at the start of class one day, Tai, a boy who sat next to Minh, threw his jacket over Minh’s head and hit it hard with open palm a number of times. This caused Minh to cry. Thanh then yanked on Minh’s coat from behind and another boy threatened him. Minh then wiped his eyes, tore some writing paper out of his pad, and gave it to Tai and the other boy.

Minh was also forced to service some of his classmates by going shopping for them at the school canteen. Hoan was one of those students who forced him to go to the canteen, and during a break one day, I observed Hoan giving Minh some money and telling him to go to the canteen. When I later asked Hoan why he got Minh to go to the canteen for him, he told me, ‘It’s easy to ask him for help. He may be afraid that if he doesn’t go, he’ll be hit.’ Hoan was not the only student to get Minh to go shopping for them. While Minh went shopping for some students because of the risk of being hit, he also indicated that he went shopping for Chau in exchange for some degree of protection from some of the bigger boys in the class.

As already mentioned, Minh was often hit, slapped, pinched, poked, pushed, cursed and threatened. In considering his perceived meekness, then, it would appear that this was both an explanation and an effect. Minh was one of the smallest students in the class and his lack of physicality was apparent both to himself and his classmates. As highlighted in the previous section, Minh was highly restricted in his ability to retaliate by hitting the boys in his class, as that would most likely lead to him being hit even more. Many of the times he was hit, he was hit by girls like Thanh and Dao, who he seemed to provoke into doing so. Such provocation perhaps provided Minh with a relatively safe means of retaliating, as retaliating against boys would no doubt have led to more forceful responses.

Influences within the meso- and exosystems

In order to understand the bullying to which Minh was subjected, it is also necessary to consider relations within the meso- and exosystems, over which Minh himself had little influence. Minh told me that the bullying began after his mother had intervened to stop him from being moved from one group to another in the class, because she believed him sitting with a student in that group had negatively affected his schoolwork. Minh explained that his perceived refusal to swap seats had annoyed those students, who had then begun bullying him. Minh’s mother worked on the street selling pâté, and it was noticeable that students made reference to this when threatening Minh. Dao, for example, explained that she would threaten Minh to stop speaking nonsense by telling him: ‘You, stop squeezing pâté out or else you will die now.’

Minh’s explanation about how the bullying began after his mother’s intervention highlights the importance of seating plans and raises questions about the extent to which Minh’s situation could have been positively affected by moving him to another area of the class, or even to another class, and the importance of dialogue between students, teachers and parents within the mesosystem. A number of Minh’s classmates told me that he had been afforded protection by the head teacher of the class after he had been knocked to the floor and had hit his head on the tiles. He had been sent to the local hospital to be checked for concussion, and according to Thanh, the head teacher had responded by warning the whole class that she would defend Minh. Thanh told me that Minh had then taken the opportunity to get back at those students who had previously hit him, but that he had misjudged the situation. As she elaborated, ‘After that he cursed all the students who had hit him before. He thought nobody would dare to hit him, but the whole class couldn’t stand it anymore, so they all joined in and started hitting him.’ Hoan explained that the teacher’s warning made little difference, as Minh would not dare to tell on his classmates if they ignored the warning: ‘Even if we hit him, he wouldn’t dare tell.’

That the head teacher of the class had warned students about hitting Minh but seemed to do little to follow up on his situation highlights the extent to which adults’ ability or willingness to intervene influences bullying relations (Bouchard and Smith 2017; James et al. 2008; Lucas-Molina et al. 2015; Meyer 2008). A teacher’s intervention, or lack of intervention, highlights the importance of interactions within the mesosystem, but also the importance of schoolwide strategies for dealing with bullying within the exosystem. Likewise, while Minh’s mother’s intervention highlights the importance of the mesosystem, adults within the exosystem may also influence the prevalence of bullying. Minh recounted an incident when he was leaving school together with Tai and Hoan, with whom he had earlier been friends. Minh told me that Tai had kneed him a number of times in the leg, and that Hoan had not intervened to help. Minh told his mother about it, who had then talked to Tai’s mother. However, Tai’s mother did not do anything about it, because as Minh put it, she ‘is very protective of her son.’ This is perhaps not surprising considering localized masculinist norms about the appropriate character of boys and the son’s perceived importance to the maintenance of the Vietnamese family. In understanding this interaction, then, it is also necessary to consider the macrosystem and the localized masculinist norms that circulate within it.

Vietnamese masculinity, embodiment and the macrosystem

All of the interactions between Minh and others outlined in the above sections took place within a particular gendered social-cultural context, and thus need to be understood in terms of the macrosystem, which constitutes the outermost layer of the nesting doll. Aged and gendered relations in Vietnam are strongly influenced by Confucianist and Taoist ideas about the differences between males and females. Individuals are positioned within a patrilineal family structure that is connected from son to father to grandfather, and so on back through the ancestral line. Boys are positioned as inside lineage (họ nội) and are perceived to carry the lineage within them. Girls, on the other hand, are positioned as outside lineage (họ ngoại) and are expected to carry on their husband’s patrilineage through the birth of sons (Rydstrøm 2003). The perceived importance of sons is highlighted at an early age, with small boys referred to as ‘penis boy’ (thằng cu) and attention paid to their genitals (Horton and Rydstrom 2011; Rydstrøm 2002). As Brittan (1989, 14) has noted, ‘a boy’s genitals are the first sign of his potential membership of the category male. Such a categorization is not simply a label – it affects the way in which he defines his difference from the category female.’

Generally speaking, boys tend to be afforded more leeway in their interactions and social relations, as their perceived worth to the family is largely secured through their embodied encapsulation of the patrilineage. Girls, in contrast, tend to be more keenly judged on their behaviour, in terms of the extent to which they display moral feminine values, as their worth to the family is less embodied but rather tied up with familial responsibilities, their marriageability, and their ability to provide sons (Liu 2001; O’Harrow 1995; Rydstrøm 2003). Norms about expectations of marriage are present in girls’ daily worlds, even during the lower secondary school years. This was illustrated by some girls teasing each other that they would end up marrying Minh or another boy in the class, Tien. As Minh explained, ‘the girls tease each other about marrying some guy who is not handsome.’

Distinctions between boys and girls are reinforced by Taoist understandings of the different gendered characters of males and females. The bodies of males and females are associated with the complementary gendered forces of Dương and Âm, with male character seen to be ‘hot’ (nóng) and female character seen to be ‘cool’ (lạnh) (O’Harrow 1995; Rydstrøm 2004). Such distinctions are institutionalized in schools through seating patterns, whereby boys are seated next to girls in the hope that girls will ‘cool’ the heat of boys in the classroom (Horton 2015). That Minh was often hit by girls, who also perceived him to be provocative, can be understood in terms of this cooling process. However, it also highlights that gender socialization is not merely a process whereby people take on the sex roles they are allocated (Martin 2010). Hitting is not generally associated with traditional feminine values, and yet in the class I often observed girls hitting boys. One girl explained that most boys yield to girls because they are aware that they are physically stronger than girls, but that girls have to be careful not to make a boy too angry. As she explained, ‘when we pretend to be angry, we hit them, but we have to be careful not to make them too angry.’ Put another way, girls can use force to cool boys but should be careful not to make them overheat, in case they explode (Horton and Rydstrom 2011).

Being gentle towards girls generally appeared to be considered a positive trait for a boy, and some boys pointed to a chivalrous code, whereby boys should not hit girls. However, while being gentle towards girls was perceived positively, a boy should still be prepared to respond with heat towards other boys when necessary. Being gentle should be a decision taken by boys rather than something they do out of fear. Minh not only hit girls but was also perceived to be meek for not responding with heat when hit or threatened by boys. Minh’s explanation that things would be better if he was bigger suggests a degree of bodily dissatisfaction based on his experiences of how size could be useful for the demonstration of masculine heat.

The bullied boy and the gendered social-ecology of school bullying

In seeking to understand the bullying of Minh, it would be simplistic to only consider Minh’s individual characteristics (e.g. his small size, meekness, and provocative behaviour). As a consideration of the microsystem illustrates, Minh was often targeted by his peers and he was restricted in the ways in which he could respond. Minh’s experiences of being bullied were embodied in such a way that his perceived meekness became both an effect and a justification for the bullying. In combination with Minh’s recognition of the limits of his own physicality, his negative experiences appear to have led to lowered self-esteem, something which was noted by those who suggested he was bullied because he was meek. The bullying to which he was subjected was embodied and served to affect his ‘being-in-the-world’ (Csordas 1994, 269). However, the bullying was also influenced by relations at the mesosystem and exosystem levels, in terms of his mother’s intervention, his mother’s line of work, the classroom seating plan, the head teacher’s limited intervention, the lack of schoolwide policy, and the inaction of another student’s mother.

Perhaps most notably, the bullying was influenced by localized masculinist norms within the macrosystem, which informed the bullying in complex ways. Minh’s apparent inability to retaliate by hitting back when hit by his male peers may have meant that provocation and avoidance were perceived by Minh to be the only avenues left open for him. However, in combination with his tendency to provoke some of his female classmates, and to cry when hit, Minh’s perceived inability to retaliate with heat also brought his masculinity into question. Minh was not perceived as sufficiently ‘hot’ within the dominant Vietnamese masculinist discursive framework. Despite entrenched localized masculinist norms about the complementary gendered characters of boys and girls in Vietnam, a number of the girls in Minh’s class were directly aggressive in their interactions with him. Indeed, Thanh and Dao, in particular, hit, slapped, poked, pinched, pushed, cursed and threatened Minh.

While the experiences of Minh presented in this article provide only a snapshot of the bullying of one particular bullied boy, in one specific sociocultural context, they do nonetheless allow for a theoretical reconsideration of the ways in which school bullying is commonly conceptualized and investigated. Here, I have utilized Brittan’s (1989) notion of masculinism, Grosz’s (1994) möbius strip metaphor, and Bronfenbrenner’s (1977, 1979) ecological model as means through which to analyse Minh’s experiences. Research into school bullying has tended to simplistically link sex differences in bullying prevalence and forms to sex roles. While boys are understood to bully both directly and indirectly, girls are largely portrayed as bullying indirectly in relational ways. By reducing gender to a question of sex roles, such discussions of gender differences fail to adequately account for the power relations involved and the ways in which masculinist norms are enforced or resisted. As Brittan (1989, 37) has pointed out, ‘Gender is not static – it is always subject to redefinition and renegotiation.’ Furthermore, gender cannot be simplistically ascribed as if applying equally to all boys and all girls. Rather, it is necessary to consider how gender intersects with other socially differentiating categories, such as age, ethnicity, sexuality, ability, and so on (Crenshaw 1991; McCall 2005; Whitehead 2002).

Typological explanations about passive and provocative victims are somewhat reductive but do nonetheless allude to the links between the experiences of bullying and how that bullying is embodied (e.g. in terms of insecurity, anxiety, and aggressiveness). The distinctions between passive and provocative victims can thus be reimagined through Grosz’s (1994) möbius strip metaphor as a means of illustrating the linkages between the body and the experience of that body, and thus addressing the supposed ‘chicken or egg’ conundrum of bullying research (Swearer and Hymel 2015, 346). Such a reimagining would also entail a shift away from a focus on physical or non-physical forms of bullying towards seeking to understand the ways in which bullying is experienced and embodied.

Bronfenbrenner’s (1977, 1979) ecological model provides a useful framework for investigating bullying. Reimagining the experiences of bullied children as nesting dolls allows for a consideration of how individual bullying experiences are contextually located within a specific gendered social-ecological environment, made up of microsystems, mesosystems, exosystems, and a macrosystem. Each of these systems contribute to the bullied child’s being in the world and thus provide important sources of information about that child’s lived experiences of school bullying.

Acknowledgements

The research was generously funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) and kindly supported by the Vietnam National Institute for Education Sciences (VNIES). I would like to thank everyone who assisted with the research, including the project leader Helle Rydstrom and my research assistant Nguyen Thi Thu Trang. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers of Gender and Education for their helpful comments. Most importantly I would like to thank the teachers and students who shared their experiences of bullying with me. This article is for Minh.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Paul Horton is a Senior Lecturer in Education at the Department of Behavioural Sciences and Learning (IBL) at Linköping University, Sweden. His research has focused on school bullying, power relations, gender and sexuality in the northern Vietnamese contexts of Haiphong and Hanoi. His current research explores the relationships between schooling, gender and school bullying in Swedish schools.

Additional information

Funding

The research was generously funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Styrelsen för Internationellt Utvecklingssamarbete).

Notes

1 For ethical reasons, I have assigned the boy with the pseudonym Minh. All other names in the article are also pseudonyms.