This dovetails perfectly into the whole Spongebob issue.
The crime that Dobson, et. al., are all a-twitter about is that the organization using Spongebob (and other cartoon characters) in their video to promote the idea of tolerance includes sexual orientation as an area for tolerance. Someone on another message board said that he agrees with this, because the 5-6-7 year olds that he considers to be Spongebob’s core audience don’t even know what “gay” means.
I responded that Spongebob’s audience certainly reaches older than that–hell, I find it entertaining at 29–and that certainly among older elementary school students, “gay” is a common perjorative. (It is by the time they reach my mother’s sixth-grade classroom, at least.)
(The other poster didn’t respond; I may be on his ignore list.)
The point of a week like this is to call attention to a problem, not to solve it for a week. I think it’s a great thing.
If this is too personal, or simply stirs up bad memories, please feel free to ignore. And again, I apologize in advance if this seems doubtful or skeptical in any derogatory way; that’s not my intent.
When you say a “pantload of verbal abuse” … what do you mean? Are we talking about once a month, once a week, twice a week? What was the context? I can easily imagine, say, during a pick-up basketball game or during PE, someone screaming at you that you suck, or you’re a fag, or fat, because you missed a shot - the heat of competition brings out strong feelings with express themselves poorly in adolescent boys.
But if you’re just walking down the hall, minding your own business, are you really saying that kids would go out of their way to scream at you?
I didn’t have it anywhere near as bad as they did, but in my situation people did go out of their way to get at me.
I was fat and socially awkward when I was in sixth grade. I also didn’t have many friends. A bullseye might as well have been painted on me, because other people, people I didn’t know, went out of their way to harass me.
In sixth grade I couldn’t walk between classes without shit happening. I’d get shoved into walls, have insults called out at me, have people knock my stuff to the ground, etc.
In class people would always throw stuff at me, sometimes paper, but sometimes coins and it hurt. People would walk by and knock my stuff off my desk, or take it. I’d have the back of my neck poked with pencils.
What this did was made me have a persecution paranoia. I was nervous around other students, and anything small I took as an attack on me personally.
I don’t blame the teachers because they didn’t know what was going on. I wasn’t very good at telling them, I’d get too emotional and blow things out of proportion.
I didn’t fight back or anything, and one day I just broke out crying. I was sent to the principal and we talked and I told him about all the crap I went through. He alterted the teachers.
It didn’t stop after that, but at least the teachers became more observant. They saw some of the stuff going on in class and stopped it, at least. The rest of that year wasn’t so bad in the classes, but in the hallways it still sucked.
Anyway, this is getting too long and I have a tendency to talk about myself too much, so I’ll not talk about the changes that happened. I’ll just say that by my senior year, very few people picked on me. That’s why I didn’t have it as bad as everyone else.
I’ll give you another short answer, simply b/c I don’t really want to type up a long post dredging up the past. I’m 24 years old, pretty happy with myself now (no thanks to middle school or high school), and there’s simply no need.
For me, middle school was a lot worse than high school (probably a combination of the fact that the school was much smaller than HS, and also the ages of the people involved). I was in middle school from about 1991-1995, and high school from 1995-99.
That Al Franken (or any other non-right-wing commentator) can make the Bush Administration look like a gang of dimbulbs by merely reading the news straight. That’s how eff’ed up they are.
Despite how much it rankles Bush apologists, it isn’t name-calling to state the truth.
Well, I’m about fifteen years back. I suspect that this is the key difference: high school discipline has gotten much more lax, and high schoolers correspondingly more feral. I cannot imagine, in my high school environment, any kid getting away with screaming insults at someone else in the hallway. Maybe for a day or two, but sooner or later a teacher would overhear, and then the consequences would have been severe.
Several other people have chimed in on this, but kids going out of their way to harrass other kids is definitely not hyperbole. A sampling of my own experiences: A couple of my intermediate school classmates used to sneak raw eggs out of their house so they could throw them at me at the bus stop. I was used to getting pelted with food, chewing gum, rocks, marbles, and spit almost every time I turned my back (rarely, if ever, was I able to identify the perpetrators). One guy, who weighed easily twice as much as I did, would follow me around muttering threats under his breath. Pretty much every time I opened my mouth in school during eighth grade, a few kids would start repeating whatever I said in a mocking voice. Another classmate went out of her way to spread an elaborate (and totally false) rumor that the reason why I was so “weird” was because my father sexually abused me. I was rarely addressed by my name – usually as “Bucky O’Hare” (I had extreme buck teeth) or “Bat” (I have no idea where that one came from). The halls of my high school had wide window ledges where students used to sit during breaks; one time, I was sitting there when a whole group of guys came along, grabbed me by the arm, and threw me down on the floor, and then walked off without breaking stride.
For the record, I was in intermediate school from 1988 to 1990 and in high school from 1990 to 1994. The worst of the harrassment occurred during seventh and eighth grades (ironically, I didn’t have to deal with some of the biggest offenders after that because they got accepted to the local science and math magnet school – so much for the dumb kids doing all the bullying), although to some extent it continued until I graduated from high school.
Frankly, I don’t think “No Name-Calling Week” would have had the slightest effect on any of these kids, but I suppose it’s marginally better than looking the other way, which is what most of our teachers did unless someone was physically injured.
Well I graduated high school in '88 and I can tell you that shit was going on then, too. I was fortunate to have been developed a reputation as tough in grade school and middle school so I wasn’t a target; but I had friends who were. Perhaps as a jock you were inured, oblivious or dismissive of it, but bullying has been around for decades Go read the gaybashing thread if you haven’t. Or read it again if you’ve forgotten the reality in it.
I don’t think it has to do with “a gentler time past”.
You know Bricker, when you mentioned that you had been a football player, that said it all for me. Excelling in sports is one of the surest ways to stay above the abuser/victim hierarchy in school.
The abusers aren’t likely to be the atheletes, or members of the more popular cliques. Usually, they become abusers because they also don’t feel like they fit in, and turn aggressive as a way of avoiding becoming victims themselves.
Anyone disagree with that? (I’m sure there are some exceptions to this, but generally speaking)
It would be interesting to hear from posters who might have been considered the abusers in middle or high school. Anyone? Anyone regret his or her behaviour back then?
I only used “Conservative” because it was the term used in the article. I don’t consider these people true Conservatives (or true Christians, for that matter).
Not necessarily. I got it much worse in middle school years at the Catholic parochial school than I EVER did at my public high school. In seventh grade I was pelted with food, paper, gum stuck in my hair. I’d get to school and find my desk trashed with my chair tied to my desk with shoestrings in elaborate knots that had to be cut. I’d walk down the hall and people would step on the back of my shoes so I’d trip. Sometimes my personal things were vandalized (trashing my books or papers).
We’d be standing outside after lunch and all the boys in my class would come charging at me from all directions so I could either run or fall over. People would whisper about me when I was near, but in such a way that they wanted me to hear. I was called a dog, I had lice, I fucked dead people and so did my family (my dad’s a funeral directory). I didn’t shower, I was ugly, stupid, worthless, etc.
I finally stood up to my bullies-it was easy since I had been going to school with them since kindergarten and I hadn’t ALWAYS been hated. By 8th grade, we were all friends again.
In high school, I was bullied in 9th grade, but by 10th I suspect we’d outgrown it. Not that it didn’t go on, I was just no longer a target.
YOU were on the football team. I doubt you saw some of the more nasty, subtle stuff that goes on. Really hideous rumors. My best friend and another girl we hung out with were taunted that they were lesbians. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but fact is-they weren’t, and it was used as an insult). You’d hear about people’s houses getting egged, or being prankcalled and harassed.
It happens, and it’s not exaggerated. I was lucky in that I eventually became just part of the crowd-I wasn’t popular but I pretty much got along with everyone, with some exceptions. For some people, it was a living hell.
OK as far as it goes, annaplurabelle, but I had to walk the hallways to get from class to class every day and I have ears and eyes. I’m saying I would surely have seen or heard some of this stuff, even if I wasn’t part of the “hierarchy.” Maybe the fact that mine was a smaller high school – my class size was less than 160 - had something to do with it. I dunno, but I’m telling you this stuff did not happen at my high school during the years I was there.
And I was not simply a “jock” - I was on our debate and forensics team. I was on our “It’s Academic” team three years running, the last two as captain. That crowd was assuredly NOT jocks, and I never saw anyone get that sort of abuse (or, obviously, dish it out).
