Your opinion of the "anti bullying" videos and news coverage

In My Humble Opinion
1

I thought of making this a poll but think I’d rather have it discussion, and considered it for Great Debates but we’ll see how it goes.
Very Long Personal Testimonial but into a blue font so you’ll know where it ends if you want to skip ahead:

As I’ve mentioned before in- can’t remember which post, but I think it was all of them- I’m a middle aged gay guy who grew up in rural Alabama. Not surprisingly I was bullied in school, especially in public school (which was hell for so many other reasons as well, not the least of which was the lack of any kind of air conditioning in 100 degree weather in the 50 year old building).

I won’t say I was bullied for being gay so much as I was bullied for being different. I’m about as far removed as you can be from Kurt on Glee and still be gay: I’m not particularly effeminate, I’ve never have been remotely into fashionable dress, I’ve never been thin, and I was neither out nor obvious in school. In fact, while I knew I was sexually attracted and exclusively so to guys, if you’d asked me to put my hand on the Bible [back when that meant something] and answer whether I was gay I’d have probably done so and said “No” because I was in denial. For youngun’s it’s hard to convey that there was little to no gay visibility on television in the late 70s/early 80s unless you count Three’s Company jokes and the vaguely gay but mostly asexual Felix Unger vehicle Sidney Shorr and if any TV movie should deal with it it was like as not to be pulled from “flyover” TV or at least appear with lots of disclaimers. One I specifically remember was a a miniseries about Jim Jones(far more current then than 9-11 is now) in which Powers Booth and Brad Dourif had a gay kiss: there were parental advisories before and during the movie and in the newspapers that specifically mentioned the homosexuality.

Anyway, I was bullied and I grew up to be openly gay. It’s possible some of my stereotypical gay qualities were at play: I’m not the least into sports as either spectator or participant, I liked reading historical fiction, I loved showtunes back before I or most of the people I grew up around even associated those with gay (just “weird” or, maybe, sissy). But many of the kids who were bullied- many of them much worse than I was- did not grow up to be gay, openly or (to the best of my knowledge or belief) otherwise. Which brings me to one of the things I object to about the anti bullying ads:

Many, certainly not all but many, treat bullying as a gay issue. It’s undeniably true that gays are picked on in school and probably moreso now than when I was growing up, but they’re far from alone: ugly kids, skinny kids, fat kids, minority kids, you name it- all were fair game. The public school I went to was about 40% black so there wasn’t a lot of race-related bullying- the white jocks and cheerleaders weren’t that stupid- but the bullying was more segregated: the bullying that occurred within the black student body was mirrored by the bullying that occurred within the white student body with a few adjustments- fat black kids weren’t as likely to be bullied by other blacks [unless they were Fat Albert obese] but kids whose complexions were super light or super dark were, while among whites fatties were bullied and while skin tone didn’t matter so much hair and zits were major factors.
Family financial status was also a factor. There were again too many garden variety poor kids of all shades and creeds to be bullied but those who lived in particularly squalid surroundings were. It may help to add here for those who’ve never lived in the country that rural bus routes aren’t like city routes- they can’t drop the kids off on street corners when there aren’t any streets so they dropped you off at your house, and word would get back where and how you lived. There was no real shame- just class cliques- over living in something like this or this, but some kids literally lived in- (you hear the term but rarely see them anymore) tarpaper shacks or beat up airstream trailers long before those were retro cool and marketable. These kids, unless they were mean, hot, or brilliant- and few were- got it really bad.

Rich kids had to worry about individual shakedowns from time to time by poorer kids, but on the whole got off fairly easy. (My own family’s house was large and brick but not what you’d call grand so I don’t think they quite knew where to place me on the socioeconomic pecking meter.)

Anyway, the point is that most of the bullying wasn’t based on sexual orientation but on some other “impossible to change” aspect of existence. While I know that the greater visibility of gays and gay marriage/gays in the military/hate crimes being daily news stories the anti-gay harassment has gotten a lot more vocal and visible, I seriously doubt that gays are the only or even the majority of those bullied now.

So that’s one problem I have with what I know is meant to be well meaning videos by any number of gay and gay friendly celebrities or cyber characters: it seems to mostly take up for the gays.

Another problem I have is that- and again, I understand it’s meant to be very helpful- is that I can see it making the problem worse. Attention being called to it makes some of the victims of bullying seem even whinier or more pathetic to the bullies.

Another is that for those that do market themselves to gay victims of bullying, they seem to be reinforcing the stereotype of gays as helpless and weak, which can actually increase the emotional turmoil of some of the students and will no doubt be used by the anti gays in the military market.

At the same time I do appreciate the “It gets better” meme. I just happen to think there’s got to be another way to spread it, and to take it wider.

Personally I think legislation is the answer: require schools to do more to fight bullying and have clearer definitions of what bullying is. Expel bullies who violate this and make their parents legally liable for their actions. (I’ll admit the annoyance factor is an incentive here: parents might sigh “what can ya do?” at the news their kid is a bully or even their suspension, but require them to take mandatory parenting classes and they’ll probably snatch their kids into line a bit better.)

So what do you think? Do you think the videos and all the emphasis on bullying is going to do any good? Do you think that gays are being too much the focus of antibullying campaigns? And the debate section I suppose: how would you deal with bullying that will attack the bullying itself, not just offer hope of surviving it?

2

nope. it’s all pissing into the wind.

on the surface I can see why one would want that, but there are two problems:

  1. the school can’t catch everything that goes on, and now you’ve just opened them up for civil (and possibly criminal) liability if they don’t react to someone’s liking, and

  2. stuff like that just leads to more “zero tolerance” mindless bullshit that has the effect of excessively punishing everything whether it meets the definition of the offense or not.

3

Yeah, I started to mention that as the greatest pitfall. I can easily see bullied kids being expelled as bullies for some bullshit reason or other.

In my own experience and observations most teachers were all too willing to turn a blind eye to bullying and a few even to encourage it. I doubt this is an insular experience/observation.

My father once famously picked up a bully and put him through an open window early in his career (1950s), a story that followed him everywhere (should be added it was a first floor window 3 feet off the ground and no harm was done and my father was a former Navy boxer) and the boy’s parents approved when they heard. The reputation helped discipline somewhat wherever he was principal. Today for this and for marrying one of his students he’d be put in the stocks for an hour over at CNN, and perhaps well should be, but it was a very very different time.

4

I think it’s a bit too soft.

Yes, I think it’s important to support victims of bullying and let them know “It gets better.” What I think is missing is the other piece…addressing the people *doing *the bullying and telling them to knock it the fuck off. But I don’t think a website of videos with the theme “Stop being a dick!” will make it on Oprah.

5

In my experience, it’s when the bullied finally “grow a pair” and fight back, and then all of a sudden the teachers and school administrators are concerned about violence in the school.

Often enough, they’re protecting some “star” jock douchebag, or one of the kids of the local “elite,” like the bratty punk of the guy who owns the local car dealership, or such.

6

One program I’ve been wondering about is something called…I think Challenge Day? It’s been on TV lately, but I gather it’s been going on for some time. There’s a whole school day devoted to everyone sharing their traumatic experiences and learning to open up emotionally and stuff. Like, everyone stands behind a line and they say “If you’ve ever suffered sexual assault, step across…if you’ve ever been judged for the color of your skin, step across…” and so on. In theory, it’s supposed to make everyone bond and empathize with each other and prevent bullying.

Now to me, this sounds like torture, and giving fuel to bullies. I think I would have skipped school (unthinkable to my geeky little self) rather than have endured that at age 14. I watched a promo on youtube and was practically traumatized just by watching it.

I have no idea if this program is supposed to work or not, so I’d be interested in seeing what people think. I can’t help thinking it’s a program designed by extroverts that makes the popular kids feel like they’ve done something good, while the introverts and the bullied kids get to be tormented and nothing changes afterwards.

I have no clue what my solution would be, though.

7

I think publicly releasing the names and faces of bullies and humilitating them is a good tactic.

8

Holy flurking shit. How can anyone be so stupid as to think that a public confession of having been sexually assaulted will do anything but paint a big neon target on that kid’s back? Bullies aren’t going to hear that she was traumatized, they’re going to hear that she’s “easy.” Hell, even people who are “friends” rarely respond well to finding something like that out.

Bullying should be criminalized as harassment/stalking/assault and, key point, taken seriously as a crime by law enforcement and school administration. I have no idea why it’s not already. But perhaps seeing a few friends get shipped to juvie will have a deterrent effect. Even if not, at least the bullies will be physically separated from their victims.

9

This sounds like another one from the fertile (due to bullshit fertilizer) minds that came up with the one mentioned on Anderson Cooper the other night. An eleven year old kid who was being bullied (who later committed suicide) complained about his bully (or his mom did) and the school’s brilliant “mediation” was to have bully and victim sit together every day at lunch. I’m sure that one seemed fabulous on paper to some people who probably had a Breakfast Club poster on their wall, but it didn’t much help the situation.

I wonder if there has been an upswing in school suicides v. a decline in school shootings of late or if it’s just media reporting. School shootings usually get a week of specials on “bullying is bad, mkay?” as well since often it’s the harassed kids who open fire.

Huge factor here. It doesn’t even have to be the kid of a locally rich or famous family- it can be the kid of a mom or dad who the school board doesn’t want to deal with (not that Kyle Brofloski is a bully, but characters like his mom can make teachers do or overlook damned near anything to avoid them).

10

What what WHAT?

11

Sampiro, have you read any of Dan Savage’s “It Gets Better” related writings?

For anyone who doesn’t know: Savage started the “It Gets Better” Project, a YouTube channel, as a response to recent gay teen suicides. In short, he says he realized that many people have the same initial response to them; that they wish they could tell suffering kids that while they’re still living at home and going to public school, life may suck and there’s nothing the gay community can do to help them, but that as soon as they move out, there IS a community and life does get better. Savage writes for a weekly paper in Seattle and is a frequent TV news (esp. CNN) talking-head guest when they need someone to talk about Gay Issues. He is also my personal [del]Lord and Savior[/del] hero, and a genius stage director.

From his column announcing the project:

So – this particular anti-bullying project wasn’t conceived of as an anti-bullying project, but as an anti-dead-gay-kid project. I don’t think it was meant to affect the bullies at all.

12

We don’t worry about this when we have campaigns against domestic violence or child abuse, do we? Why is that? Why do we not care about making abused children look more whiny and pathetic to their abusers?

13

Perhaps because school bullying and domestic violence/child abuse are completely separate issues. Like embezzling and carjacking both have a perpetrator and a victim and both result in monetary loss, but beyond that there’s little similarity.

14

I KNOW! I think it’s supposed to make everyone see that everyone has suffered something. But it strikes me as the worst possible thing to do.

I wonder if this is something that only people who have been bullied themselves really get, or something. The day after I watched the clips of that show, I told my friend about it. She has teenaged kids, and apparently they enact this horror at our own high school. She couldn’t really see why I was so upset about it. We’re total opposites that way, though–I’m very reserved and don’t like anyone poking into my emotions and mind, and she likes that stuff. She’d be a great counselor. Also it seems obvious to me that she was never bullied like that.

If this happens at our high school, I seriously wonder what I will do when my kids get that age. We homeschool now, but I’d always planned to leave the decision up to them when they hit 9th grade. (I like homeschooling, the math program up through 9th is abysmal, and why throw kids into the hell that is junior high?) Maybe I’ll just take them on a really important family trip that week…

15

Because with domestic abuse, we are willing to actually move against the abuser. With bullies, we aren’t willing to lift a finger to stop it, so all we can do within that self imposed constraint is teach the victims to have a lower profile. Not that it works very well.

If you can’t get out of it, tell them to lie. They don’t owe it to the school to cooperate with their own abuse.

16

Word. I see that situation resulting in lots of lies: those who have been victims of sexual and physical and racial abuse not responding and drama queens who haven’t claiming that they have.

17

I was bullied in elementary/junior high. I wasn’t gay, or fat, or poor. i was small and smart. By second grade, I was in the smallest desk in the school. That desk moved with me for the next couple grades. By third grade, my mother wanted to old em back a year to hope I’d grow enough to be more like my classmates. The principal wanted to move me up a grade because I was advanced. They settled on keeping me in the same grade, but moving me into the highest 8th grade reading and english classes. Obviously, the 8th graders loved having this tiny kid sitting in. But they weren’t the ones that bullied me, it was the kids in my normal classes.

This was a small Catholic school in a small Michigan town. We moved there, and we never really fit in. It was an insular town and everyone was related to everyone else. Except us. So I come into this school were most of the kids had known each other forever. I was small, I spoke differently, and I unknown. I was the youngest of 5 kids, and not a wimp, but physically, I wore the same child’s size 4 school uniform from 3rd grade to 7th grade. One girl used to take me behind the bushes and beat me up every day. One boy and his older brother used to throw lighted matches at me while I rode my bike through town. Taunts and so forth happened. But it wasn’t the school’s fault - I didn’t tell anyone (well, I told my brother about the matches - he took care of them). I felt it was my problem, not theirs. And I knew instinctively that calling in adults would only make it worse. Telling rarely endears you to either the adults (who don’t know how to handle it) or your peers, who see you as a tattling wimp.

In the end, we moved to a big city. I went to a large high school with enough students to find a core group of friends. I wouldn’t say I was in any clique, but none of them minded included me in activities, etc. Then I moved again, as an adult, and never talked to any of them again.

I honestly don’t think there’s much that can be done to combat bullying. As I said, I think telling adults will just get worse repercussions from the bullier (that doesn’t look right, does it?). I do think the only thing you can do is stand up for yourself as much as you can, and realize that you grow out and away from the circumstances. By learning to stand up for yourself, hopefully you’ll prevent falling into a lifelong victim cycle. People sometimes set themselves up for this, and although it’s not their fault, (no more than a scantily-clad woman walking into a biker bar as in The Accused is responsible for her rape, but her behavior plays a part in her assault) they can open themselves up to that kind of treatment from bosses and co-workers and family members. People need to be trained to stand up for themselves. You can only be responsible for your own behavior and the way you respond to what life throws at you, you can’t change someone else.

StG

18

what a load of shit. your entire fucking post is invalidated.

19

How about this: If I leave my door unlocked and a burglar takes my property, the fact that I left my door unlocked takes nothing away from the burglar’s moral blame, civil liability and criminal liability. But my actions were likely to have consequences I very much do not desire. Someone who advises me not to do that is not blaming me but trying to help me.

One really has to distinguish between causation and blame.

20

It’s been remarked that teachers are often quite indifferent to bullying - unless the bullier fights back and disrupts the evil but easy-to-manage social order. I wonder if there’s any way we can get them to care more, to see children as human and the harm of bullying as something that matters and is worth their effort intervening. Perhaps we should have visible sanctions against teachers whenever bullying “goes bad” and results in suicide. This would be a blunt instrument but it’s the only one that’s politically feasible - teacher’s unions will protect their own from routine evaluation unless something really goes off the rails. The visible example might make other teachers care a bit about reducing bullying in their schools.

Ultimately, though, I think a lot of this is structural. As long as school partly functions as a holding pen for kids so that adults can get on with their careers, the desires of the students will take a back-seat to maintaining order with minimal effort. And that means bullying.