Is teasing endangered? You might think so if you were one of the many who caught a look at this weekend's New York Times' magazine feature "In Defense of Teasing," (reg. required) an impassioned plea to preserve the ancient "art" of poking fun at others. If I sound sarcastic you'll have to forgive me (heck, if you're the article's author you may even commend me.) While I find the historical evidence, literary allusions and psychological analysis that supports the article's argument fascinating, I still have some trouble with the main conceit that we as a society are somehow trying to "banish" teasing altogether and must be stopped before it's too late.

Citing the recent spate of "high-profile school shootings and teenage suicides” as the cause for our collective heightened sensitivity, Dacher Keltner, a Psychology professor at UC Berkeley, seems to suggest the precautionary measures that schools and parents have adopted are an overreaction. But are they? Or, are the zero-tolerance policies and strict monitoring of classroom roughhousing just a means of reinforcing the distinction between teasing and bullying?

Interestingly. Keltner draws an analogy between teasing/bullying and flirting/sexual harassment, noting that both negative behaviors stem from violent tendencies, whereas the former is rooted in play. From the New York Times article:

But bullying is something different; it’s aggression, pure and simple. Bullies steal, punch, kick, harass and humiliate. Sexual harassers grope, leer and make crude, often threatening passes. They’re pretty ineffectual flirts. By contrast, teasing is a mode of play, no doubt with a sharp edge, in which we provoke to negotiate life’s ambiguities and conflicts…

So, what’s the harm in defining those crucial differences with hard and fast rules, whether it be at school or in the workplace? Personally, my mind keeps wandering back to the era of “Mad Men,” where “anti-sexual harassment policies” were an unknown concept. I'd like to ask Keltner whether he thought sexual tension or even office romances have ceased to exist as a result of this modern development. Actually, what I’d really be curious to hear is Keltner’s answer to the question he raises himself at the end of this excerpt:

Still, it’s hard not to remember why teasing has a bad name when it results in what sounds an awful lot like humiliation. In situations where power asymmetries exist, as they do in a frat house, how do we separate a productive tease from a damaging one?

Categorized under: Tweens

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