I would advise you to stay away from that message board. It doesn’t seem to be populated with intelligent people, to say the least. In fact, I think I see Phaedrus in there. No kidding.
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3ae54a3b14c8.htm
Take a gander at post number 11. Looks to be our Phaedrus, if I say so myself. Let that be a warning to ye.
I think I’m going to be sick.
Think that’s bad? They actually TRACKED me down to the SD People Pages! :eek:
Nice stalkers, eh? No, I didn’t post even my e-mail, someone did a search, found me here, my picture on the SDMB PP, and a few guestbook entries I made on an anti-reagan site. Perhaps JDT will pop up next?
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3af2fd49474d.htm
Well, Mods, wadda ya know? I’m just here to post anti-Reagan propaganda! Never mind that this place is a 2nd home to me…:rolleyes:
I just thought of something-I hope to god they don’t follow me here. I mean, I went there after seeing an article that pissed me off, and yeah, it’s their site, but it’s so ignorant, like the Left Behind boards sometimes, I couldn’t resist refuting a few points. I wasn’t trolling. Just looking for a good debate/argument type thing.
Seriously, I NEVER ever mentioned my connections to the SDMB, now I’m afraid they’ll follow me here and I’ll get in trouble!
Mesa so sowwy!
Feminazi= feminist + Nazi. Yet the word has nothing to do with Hitler and Nazis. I’d love to argue semantics with this person.
As one with lines on my knuckles and black marks on my record for fighting back, I don’t think more violence is the answer. To respond to such antisocial behavior and outright torment that takes place in our nation’s schools on a daily basis with violence is ridiculous. Inevitably the victim has less support, poorer martial skills, and, most important of all, less of the sadistic cruelty that is alarmingly common in young Americans. Fight back. Let them drag you down to their level, the lowest common denominator. You’ll lose when it goes before school authorities, because they’d rather have psychopath who goes with the flow than someone who dares to show any sort of intellectual independence. And in a modern American school, from elementary right up to high school, has plenty of people willing to step right up and take any subdued bully’s place. You’ll fight for most of your school career.
Maybe I’m wrong, maybe more violence is EXACTLY what we need to solve the problem. These bullies don’t need correction, they don’t need to be made to stop, they need someone to beat them to within an inch of their life every time they even look crosseyed at another person. The solution to violence is more violence, and a policy of escalating violence is the best possible answer to any problem. See? You CAN learn something in an American school.
GOD I’m glad I got out of school alive.
Guinastasia,
You did the right thing to get involved in that message board, as moronic as it is. I too was insulted when mention was made, more than once, how a particular mental condition is “bullshit,” (I believe by the same fucker who made some prediction that the kid will turn out to be gay). Of course you should consider that you can’t win any of these bigoted ignoramuses over but you just had to say something. I myself have had experience with people telling me that my mental illness is just a fabrication, that the “doctors will tell you that you are ill just so that they can keep you sick and then make more money.” FUCK OFF! It really hurts your self-confidence when you are told something like this, stupid as it is. For me, it just makes me a bit confused when someone actually is supportive and understanding. If anything, this young man, having a mother who understands his condition and is supportive, has a better chance for a productive life than were she cynical and condemning.
P.S. Maybe I should sue my doctor for “keeping me sick all these years.” The bastard!
Some of those folks in the FreeRepublic are quite something. Maybe we should sick JET on them?
How about it JET? I’d be curious to see how they react once they realize that you are serious in your statements supporting extreme violence, given that they are generally supportive of mild violence.
I wouldn’t worry about it. Most in the thread were not expousing anything really off the wall. Only a few were, shall we say, disturbing. Given the wide variety of views expoused in SD, if they follow, I doubt if they will make a ripple, and where they present false generalizations I expect they will be quickly shot down.
I have to wonder about the expreience base of the posters in the thread, for they went on and on about ADHD and the victims, stating that ADHD was nonsense. They never picked up on the problem of the most serious bullies often having ADHD.
Most young offenders whom I have represented have been diagnosed with ADHD. I submit that if ADHD was recognized and treated earlier, and was handled better by teachers and parents, then there would be fewer incidents of serious bullying.
Guin–I’ve been chomping at the bit for the last two days to jump in over there and join the fight. I’ve held back due to my lack of desire to start another LBMB-style board war, the general futility of it all, and the fact that you’re holding your own quite nicely.
I think this sums it up quite nicely:
You and I and the collective Liberal Caucus of the SDMB could go over there and demonstrate that we are intelligent, productive members of society, and it wouldn’t matter. We’re liberals, and liberals are evil stupid pinko commies. Black and white.
I was going to go through and offer my response to some of the more inflammatory comments, but I can’t even narrow it down appropriately. (I did copy their list of “Truths About Liberals”, so I can respond for journal purposes. Maybe I’ll post my response here if I get it done.) Suffice it to say that I am glad these people seem to have gathered in one place on the Web, so I can avoid them en masse.
As for you, however–you have gone above and beyond the call in the fight against ignorance. Cecil would be proud.
Dr. J
I truly despised public school due to the bullying. I was not picked on any more than any other child, and much less than some, but I found the whole environment horrid.
The class ahead of me was composed of children with a number of problems, including ADHD and development a delays. By the end of public school, they were all in and out of the court system, and two principals and several teachers had been fired for incompetence.
My parent’s solution was to pull me out of the public system and place me in a private school where bullying was not tolerated. Wow! What a wonderful experience that was. I blossomed into what would eventually become an athlete and a scholar, and can honestly say that the school made a lasting difference in my life for which I will always be grateful. Most importantly, the private school helped me and my fellow students develop a sense of self confidence and a respect each other. The older students acted in supervisory roles, learning about responsibility, and we younger students enjoyed the benefits of knowing that we were members of a supportive community, rather than as terrorized children floating about unprotected in an ineffectual public system.
One of the public school bullies was moved over into my private school by his parents, but his behaviour did not get him very far. My having learned that no one has the right to assault another, when he came after me (he seriously tried to claw out my eyes when I caught him stealing out of my locker) I fought back for the first and last time in my life. After he was released from the hospital and returned to school, he was disciplined and expelled for bullying and stealing. The interesing thing is that when I took him apart it was not at all in anger. I distinctly remember feeling discouraged that he would not stop struggling, and feeling extremely sad that it had come to blows (it is hard to convey the extreme distaste I have always had for violence). Afterwards I was very grateful that the school respected my decision to defend myself and took steps to ensure that the bully would never darken our doors again. The headmaster even met with our class, shook my hand and commended me for my action, and spoke at length about the importance of not bullying and the importance of never having to be afraid of anyone. In short, although the circumstances necessitated my acting, the school had already been seriously addressing the problem of the bully’s behaviour, and the headmaster made very clear that what I had done was as a member of the school community and had the support of the school community, despite the violence obviously being regrettable. I was drawn within the supportive community and offered respect and protection, rather than cast loose on my own. Had this happened in the public system, I expect that the school would have ducked the matter and let the courts handle it.
By highschool I was back in the public system (my folks were not rich), but having learned what is proper and what is not, and having developed the confidence to demand appropriate behaviour, I never had any difficulty. Neither did any of my peers who also came over from the private school into public highschool. The public system was still a mess (in one year my highschool had a bombing, a murder – head kicked in, a number of aggravated assaults, and the hiding of the loot from a bank robbery), but none of the bullies ever went near me. Some ignored me, and some tried to befriend me, but none crossed me. It was not because of any threat of physical retaliation by me (I simply do not have a macho button), but rather it was the way I carried myself – plain old self confidence. Thanks to my private school experience, I made it through public highshool unscathed, though I am sad to say that many of my friends did not.
What conclusions did it leave me with? Obviously that bullying must not be tolerated at all. But also that what today is called zero tolerance is not enough. Schools must provide an environment in which children are not in fear of bullies, and just as importantly are not in fear of either dealing with bullies or demanding that the school deal with bullies. Children need to develop a sense of self confidence in themselves and confidence in the system which will empower them to define for themselves what is acceptable, and to then demand respect from their peers and action from their teachers. I don’t think that many children can develop such a sense of self confidence and empowerment in a public system which tolerates low level aggression on school property despite a guise of zero tolerance, which does not offer absolute protection from known bullies, and which does not address bullying which takes place off school property. My hat goes off to the teachers and administrators of those schools that do.
I have to wonder what happened to so many of my childhood friends in public school who were terrorized on a daily basis and never had the chance to escape. Some made it through OK, but others never seemed to get off the ground. In particular, I wonder what happened to those who were bullied the worst, for example the little girl named Linda, but who was known as Deadweed, who since kindergarten was taunted and denigrated without mercy, and who by grade two was being regularly beaten by the bullies, all because she lived on a chicken farm. She was a neighbour, and I remember her as being a bright and nice person when I visited, but who at school never said a word, never lifted her head, and never had a single friend. I later learned that she dropped out of highschool. She was no more than cannon fodder for the bullies, and was totally dehumanized by them. I hope that she has psychologically survived, but in all honesty, I would be very surprised if she has. She deserved better. We all deserved better.
And as far as that crap on the FreeRepublic board about the solution to bullies being that children should learn to expect to be bullied until they physically fight back? It is greatly disheartening, for it confuses self confidence and empowerment with violence, it accepts a terrible systemic problem as being both normal and unvoidable, and it creates a self-feeding cycle of frustration and aggression. It will perpetuate a world in which children like Linda will continue to be Deadweeds, without hope and without dignity. It is so very, very saddening.
Well said, Muffin. Kids do deserve better; all kids deserve at least a chance to fulfill their potential.
Muffin, that brought tears to my eyes.
It would be kinda funny if they came here-but I wouldn’t encourage it, because I have too much esteem for our mods, and I wouldn’t want them to go through that. (Although, who here wouldn’t LOVE to see David and Gaudere tear them a new one…). No, their ignorance would be turned on them.
Seriously, I think Wildest Bill would be the most likely candidate to go over there-he’s a conservative, but he considers me a friend, so it would be amusing, to say the least. Bill, if you’re reading this, how 'bout it, old buddy?
[refrains from mentioning her physical and mental abuse at the hands of bullies in full, as it’s long, pointless and would turn all too easily to whining.]
There were two main groups of people who used to pick on me: the kids here at the trailer park and the kids at school. The trailer park kids beat me up physically, threw rocks at me, tried to roll me through the cowshit in the corn fields every time they lay down manure. I tried fighting back and every single time I got my ass kicked. I fractured my ankle in one of those fights… well, running away from one of them with a black eye and a split lip. They were throwing rocks; I slipped and fell in the road. That was when I finally had to tell my parents. THey went to the other children’s parents and of course were met by “Well, your daughter must have deserved it.” When the kids started beating me up on the bus, mom and dad went to the school. The principal called me down (without my parents there, of course), then called down the other kids; of course the rest of them all said I’d started it, and it was five or six against one, so the principal himself decided I must have deserved it, and I got suspended for fighting while they got off scot-free. This went on for three years.
Finally I was bigger and stronger (I went from a useless pudding of a bookworm to the muscular farm-girl bookworm I am now when I got into puberty) and I faced down the oldest of my tormentors, a kid named Carl. He was a year older than me and would’ve beaten my ass in for me again, except that I decided not to fight fair. We grappled in the streets, both of us getting some good punches in, and finally I realized I was losing so I kicked him in the balls twice and left him in the street.
He tried to fuck with me a couple other times but I kept kicking him in the balls so finally he decided to leave me alone. And once word got around that I was a ball-kicker the other boys left me alone, too.
The kids at school continued to mentally torment me for years (right up until high school, actually, and I was depressed until last spring because of it; I finally faced the ghosts), but I couldn’t very well kick my entire grade in the nuts, eh?
Anyway, the getting beaten up every day was horrible enough. What made it worse was the parents and the school saying I’d brought it on myself - that it was MY fault I was getting picked on. That’s the worst thing you can say. It’s horrible.
Yeah, but you could try…
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3af667dc7feb.htm
If THIS doesn’t push some tempers over the edge.
I just wanted to cry when I read this. This is so nasty and just plain wrong. I mean come on! Yeah, gay=child molestor. That’s just so evil-these people are so stupid!
I would LOVE to sic Esprix and Hastur on these assholes. Hehehehehehehe…that would so fucking rock!
Consider my temper pushed, but I will not be rejoining them in debate, I’m afraid - some people simply aren’t worthy of enlightenment, let alone my personal guidance in the matter. Besides, as has been stated, by just mentioning I’m gay (let alone coming down on the “wrong” side of the issue) is enough for them to ignore me anyway, so why bother? I have more worthy pursuits to occupy my time, not the least of which is the SDMB, thankyouverymuch.
“I don’t have time to be your personal educational experience.” - Steve Capsuto
Esprix
Okay, fair enough-for the record, I wasn’t really asking you guys to go over there-although it would be funny if they came here.
I don’t know, I’m just so fucking bored right now. I have NOTHIGN to do!
Guinastasia when everyone came back attacking your Hard Truths about conservatives it really deserved a WHOOSH. I mean it went so far over their heads that NASA was tracking it. It is unbelievable that anyone would buy such ridiculous generalizations about a group of people.
When they were saying how “so true” it was they were really saying, “I have never met or talked with a liberal, but this list fits very well with my notion of liberals that I get from Rush and from my own worst fears.”
I might go over there with the name Peter, and start talking about how mixed fabrics are the mark of the beast and people who wear them are followers of the antichrist.
(not to mention claiming to have visions and speaking in tongues)