http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101008/ap_on_re_us/us_bullying_one_town You would think after the first one there would be a major crackdown on bulling.
Know as a victim of bullying my whole grade and jr. high career i can speak from experiance teachers and faculty do NOTHING. They do that because they think there is nothing. I think there is plenty. I know that alot of bullies get away with because they are important to the school or some bs like that. I think that is wrong.
I think anyone who is caught bulling should be expelled from the school district altogether. But the problem is if you teaah your kids to stand up the bullies could become the bullied in the schools eyes.
Suicide is a pretty clear indicator of mental illness, at least at most legal/medical levels. There are plenty of environmental triggers (such as bullying) that can make those conditions worse, but bullying is probably not the root cause of these kids suicides. Reading the article, three were suicides and one was an accidental drug overdose (of anti-depressents), which I think changes things a bit.
Add in that one of the kids also lost two siblings to suicide or overdose, and you start seeing a much more complex picture than "School allowed kids to be bullied to death!"
Now, schools seldom take serious steps to curb bullying. They should be proactive in stopping that behavior. On the other hand, reading those stories, maybe trying to conform a little bit could have saved these kids some trouble, you know? Dressing all in pink and bringing your plush toy monkey to class isn't exactly behavior to exhibit if you want to avoid bullying.
Nobody gets to be who they really are in high school. We pretty much all got through by trying to be as normal as possible and waiting to get the hell out.
The bullying of the croatian girl is just bizarre to me. I went to a pretty multi-ethnic, immigrant heavy high school, and while we cheerfully called people "boaters" or "yugos", everybody generally got along.
Uhh. *looks at Combine.* *scratches head* You know that every kid in America has this problem? Except me. Because I basically give the person the finger And I walk away.
But yes this is a tragic story. Damn you bullies! *pulls out a chaingun* I will own you!
AbaddonFidelis wrote:sorry I had to be that guy. but there it is.
You didn't have to be that guy. You could have held your tongue. Suppose some relative of these girls are members of this site? You simply have no consideration for other people.
garret wrote:I think anyone who is caught bulling should be expelled from the school district altogether. But the problem is if you teaah your kids to stand up the bullies could become the bullied in the schools eyes.
That is going way overboard. Especially since I'd be willing to beat that at some point everyone has engaged in behavior that could be classified as bullying.
Assuming that school administrators aren't either incredibly lazy or outright cruel (It's a big assumption but work with me here), I think that bullying is a very tough issue to sort out. You have the inherent nature of children "kids will be kids" as well as the educational goal of teaching children to solve their own problems and develop into adults. On the flip side, when you have more sensitive or vulnerable students, the level of behavior they can tolerate easily goes down. I think when you combine allowing too much bullying with more susceptible victims is when you have a problem.
I live near mentor, and it's a pretty white bread, ultra-conformist upper middle class exurb. that's part of it. I know some friends that teach in tonier school districts, and they've said that there is an awareness of which students' parents are important, and you don't lean too heavily on them. Basically the high school hells that get portrayed in media, where highly stratified cultures exist based on economics and/or athletic ability really do exist.
Which is my advice for bullied teens and there parents would focus less on trying to change an entrenched system that has no incentive to change and instead focus on surviving and getting the hell out. As TV's greatest father, Homer Simpson once said, "just be the girl everybody wants you to be"
interestingly enough, at least two of those deaths in Mentor happened after the student in question left the High School, which I think raises even further questions about their organic mental disorders.
I still don't understand bullying. Just make friends with everyone. That's what I do. Never had a bully in my life.
I know it isn't that easy for some people, but how could you let it go that far? Suicide? I would've shot the bully in the face before killing myself....What does a bully do to make a person kill himself? I can't even fathom it.
I still don't understand bullying. Just make friends with everyone. That's what I do. Never had a bully in my life.
I know it isn't that easy for some people, but how could you let it go that far? Suicide? I would've shot the bully in the face before killing myself....What does a bully do to make a person kill himself? I can't even fathom it.
ing bullies are morons....
Wow your lucky. Everyone in my Gaming club was bullied for like 2 years. I had the worst of it because i'm an Aussie.
But yeah its kind a wierd that one of girls that left was killed afterwards. Which means they might of had an disorder.
Seriously? There was a bullying thread a while back and I noticed that most of you guys said you were the bullied, but really?
I guess it helps that I just act chill around everyone. I've noticed bullying often results from segregating a person to be alone, which I don't do....I could easily go hang out with the jocks, or the spanish people, or the ghetto people, or the nerds...Everyone, really. More than once I've gone to a 'Go-Go' with some of my ghetto friends...I dunno. Maybe a white guy keeps the police away or something.
If you look at the article, one of the kids was Bosnian.
I'd imagine that the average Bosnian is fairly "tough." Also, even if she's Americanized, her parents are thoroughly Bosnian, which suggests to be that this isn't really an issue of America raising soft kids.
It certainly is tempting to think so, given everything we see going on with helicopter parents, sensitivity training and the like, but it doesn't really add up.
In fact, another suicide you hear some about in the news, Phoebie Prince, was also an immigrant. So, these aren't soft American kids.
My feeling is that kids have always killed themselves, and only lately have we started trying to figure out a systemic cause for it. Ultimately I think the sensationlistic hand-wringing diagnosis is a product of our "soft" society, but the suicides are actually caused by mental health issues, and problems more complex and difficult than "if only the kids were nicer to each other."
Polonius wrote: Basically the high school hells that get portrayed in media, where highly stratified cultures exist based on economics and/or athletic ability really do exist.
Yep, but it should also be said that academic ability plays a role in some places. My high school contained about 600 kids, and the average PSAE (No Child Left Behind test) was a 22 ACT equivalent. The 5 kids that regularly earned perfect scores on the PSAE (36 ACT equivalent) would show up 2-3 periods late, and receive no consequences.
Bullying is a form of abuse. It comprises repeated acts over time that involves a real or perceived imbalance of power with the more powerful individual or group abusing those who are less powerful.
1.a person who hurts, frightens, or tyrannizes over those who are smaller or weaker
Behaviour by an individual or group, usually repeated over time, that intentionally hurts another individual or group, either physically or emotionally.”
So technically, based on the information provided by Kilkrazy, I would have been considered a "Bully" because I used my intelligence, reading skills and high retention levels to keep my classmates from achieving grade that would have kept them on whichever sports team they played on due to the teacher grading on the curve. The effect being that my actions (scoring 100s on tests, etc...) would have caused "emotional harm" to those individuals. Of course "Intent" would have to be proved, but, in some cases I did intentionally answer all the questions correctly.
It made me a powerful influence in the school because if I chose to, I could, by my grades, keep players off the team. I even made one girl cry.... Because of my grade on something she got her first ever "B" (in her entire school career)... in her senior year.
Bullying victims tend to go down two routes. Either they lash out and become opressors themselves, they keep their willpower but lose their humanity. the otyherse internallise and try to minimise opportunities for opression they become moral people but lose their willpower.
In my experience of bullying, in the long term it goes one of five ways.
1. The Person Ignores the taunting, the bullies give up, and the bullying stops (only occurs if the person has good self-control)
2. The school intervenes, the bullies are chastised/suspended/expelled, and the bullying stops (only occurs if the school is proactive)
3. The victim reacts badly, or loses control after the last straw, and is effectively punished for being bullied, because the bullies cover each other, and the bullying continues (only occurs if the school's punitive system is flawed)
4. The victim reacts badly, or loses control after the last straw, the school notices that the bullies have been giving him a hard time, and the bullying stops (only occurs if the school is fair and open-minded in regards to altercations, or special circumstances)
5. The victim reacts badly, or loses control after the last straw, scares the bejeezus out of the bullies by almost snapping someone's leg with a pool cue, and the bullying stops through sheer terror of it happening again.
Guess which one I was (bearing in mind I'm a 6'2 Rower)
Goliath wrote:5. The victim reacts badly, or loses control after the last straw, scares the bejeezus out of the bullies by almost snapping someone's leg with a pool cue, and the bullying stops through sheer terror of it happening again.
At no point did I lose control. I meant to break his nose.
in my experience, ignoring it sometimes dosent help...
the real problem isnt the school but the school community, see's it as a cowardly thing to do...
I have never seen or personally experienced ignoring a bully accomplish anything but convince them they can do it more and you won't do anything in retaliation.
The only time I've seen bullying truly stop was when person being bullied in some way became a threat to the bully. Either through getting a parent/teacher involved, which brings its own social stigma, or through becoming a physical threat to the bully to the point where they stop for fear of getting their ass beat. That's it. That is my own personal experience of course but it's what I've seen.
Turn the other cheek just gets the other one punched too.
Gwar! wrote:I am amazed people still bully in the US.
Surely the bullies know that one day the bullied WILL snap and M16 their face into bonemeal right?
Right?
Or are US bullies that dim?
My point This isn't 1957. People would probably not hesitate to beat the crap out of you if you bully them. I can't help but think of bullies as fat guys with short hair and hygiene problems...But I'm sure it's more diverse than that
Would anyone consider gang violence bullying? I'm not sure what it's considered...
I don't understand why the bullied don't have that instinct!
I was under the impression that everyone gets bullied one way or the other? Yeah some get bullied more than others but is it that difficult to stand up for youself?
"but NeedsMoreDakka then the bullies will just beat you up " I knew a kid in middle school who was bullied by one kid in particular pretty horribly, one day he had enough and got into a fight with him. He lost, but the other kid actually gave him credit for not taking anymore crap, i dont think anyone really bullied him after that.
I cant stand it when people just allow themselves to get walked all over. If you cant up to someone directly get back at them indirectly AT LEAST.
Tyyr wrote:I have never seen or personally experienced ignoring a bully accomplish anything but convince them they can do it more and you won't do anything in retaliation.
The only time I've seen bullying truly stop was when person being bullied in some way became a threat to the bully. Either through getting a parent/teacher involved, which brings its own social stigma, or through becoming a physical threat to the bully to the point where they stop for fear of getting their ass beat. That's it. That is my own personal experience of course but it's what I've seen.
Turn the other cheek just gets the other one punched too.
This only works if a child encounters a bully, or two buillies. systemic abuse is rather different!!
The idea that you can take them all on is a pointless dream. Also most bullying is not physical its mental. If the peer group is against you and you respond to mental abuse physically the victim not the bully is at risk. Bullying victims are often written off by schools to make life easy for themselves.
This is becoming more common and there have been a number of reports in the press of a vicitim being expelled rather than face a bully. In one infamous case the cleaning lady who reported the bulling of a child to the childs paresnt was sacked, the victim expelled and the bully exonerated. Saying 'you must have provoked him' is easier than dealing with a disruptive child, especially now with declining respect increasded violance and a double helping of PC crap to threaten anyone who tries to discipline an out of control lout.
NeedsMoreDakka wrote:I was under the impression that everyone gets bullied one way or the other? Yeah some get bullied more than others but is it that difficult to stand up for youself?
"but NeedsMoreDakka then the bullies will just beat you up " I knew a kid in middle school who was bullied by one kid in particular pretty horribly, one day he had enough and got into a fight with him. He lost, but the other kid actually gave him credit for not taking anymore crap, i dont think anyone really bullied him after that.
I cant stand it when people just allow themselves to get walked all over. If you cant up to someone directly get back at them indirectly AT LEAST.
cool story, but what do you mean "indirectly"? How would you deal with that kind of problem indirectly? Put his facebook up on 4chan? Tell his friends he has herpes?
There's a limit to what can be accomplished by indirect means. Most likely, he'll find out about it and just bully you more. That leads to a giant waste of effort on your part....
People bully others because they have the belief, whether real or imagined, that they can get away with it. If the victim just sits there passively while they are taunted, teased, hit an/or otherwise abused, the bully feels they have license to continue. They see the victim as submitting to their, real or imagined, superiority.
People outside the situation see this behavior and, if they associate with the bully, join in or, if they identify with the victim, either stand passively by, turn away, or redirect the 'bullying' upon themselves.
Those reporting on the 'rampant bullying' in schools tend to look at the victim and try gain empathy for them. They rarely talk TO the bullies, just about them....
But if you look behind the curtain of bravado and alpha behavior, you will find many 'bullies' are also victims, usually bullied by an elder sibling or parent in some fashion.
But raising pacifist children isn't the way to solve the issue. It goes against human nature. this was a key to the whole Matrix series, and the Serenity movie. Humans need the will to fight, to continue. Extreme pacifism denies this basic human instinct, but even Ghandi found a way to "fight".
The suicides in the OP.... There is more behind them than plain old school bullying. Maybe the reporters need to delve a bit deeper than the sensational headlines and do some real reporting on the causes and effects that led to those people just giving up.
Samus_aran115 wrote:cool story, but what do you mean "indirectly"? How would you deal with that kind of problem indirectly? Put his facebook up on 4chan? Tell his friends he has herpes?
There's a limit to what can be accomplished by indirect means. Most likely, he'll find out about it and just bully you more. That leads to a giant waste of effort on your part....
I was talking along the lines of planting drugs in his locker then telling the school police. Or telling one of your friends in a gang that he made fun of his sister/momma
Then again i grew up in a pretty bad neighborhood so if you live in the suburbs you'll have to settle with gluing random stuff of his together
NeedsMoreDakka wrote:I was under the impression that everyone gets bullied one way or the other? Yeah some get bullied more than others but is it that difficult to stand up for youself?
I cant stand it when people just allow themselves to get walked all over. If you cant up to someone directly get back at them indirectly AT LEAST.
If targeted by systemic abuse, you cant get away from that by toughing it out swinging fists or getting your own back. The system is against you as much as the students.
I don't think its about 'getting away with it' so much as expressing power over others. Its a natural desire, we all do it, even libertarians (they express power in order to prevent others from doing so).
The trick is to ensure that the expression of power doesn't go too far in those circumstances where it shouldn't. We can't have all the chiider thinking this is jyhad, now can we?
Edit: I should say, I was bullied when I was young. I ave the scars to prove it. I reacted by developing physical prowess, and acting a bastard to all that I met. I still have trouble coping with that tendency, but I actually credit the abuse I suffered with making me who I am.
I lashed back at my aggressors but I didn't do it in any kind of smart way. I stood up for myself against groups of asshats who thought it funny to steal my stuff or turn my bag and it's contents inside out. I know fighting groups isn't smart but I didn't care about being beaten just that I could show them that I wasn't gonna take any more crap.
I know that I didn't make the 'right' desicion by turning to violence. But I know that even though i ruined what little good reputation i had arround the school and replaced it with "He's men'al than 'un" that I had stopped them doing it so readily.
What annoys me more is that because I had councilling about my anger and such I got put on my school's special needs register which excludes me from certain duties such as being eligable for being head student not that I'd want to be a head student.
(I'm a 6th former at the same school i went to for secondary btw)
Samus_aran115 wrote:cool story, but what do you mean "indirectly"? How would you deal with that kind of problem indirectly? Put his facebook up on 4chan? Tell his friends he has herpes?
There's a limit to what can be accomplished by indirect means. Most likely, he'll find out about it and just bully you more. That leads to a giant waste of effort on your part....
I was talking along the lines of planting drugs in his locker then telling the school police. Or telling one of your friends in a gang that he made fun of his sister/momma
Then again i grew up in a pretty bad neighborhood so if you live in the suburbs you'll have to settle with gluing random stuff of his together
Ah,so THAT kind of indirect. I see. Well, getting him killed by MS13 probably isn't the best way to deal with him, but it'd be pretty funny!
Tyyr wrote:I have never seen or personally experienced ignoring a bully accomplish anything but convince them they can do it more and you won't do anything in retaliation.
The only time I've seen bullying truly stop was when person being bullied in some way became a threat to the bully. Either through getting a parent/teacher involved, which brings its own social stigma, or through becoming a physical threat to the bully to the point where they stop for fear of getting their ass beat. That's it. That is my own personal experience of course but it's what I've seen.
Turn the other cheek just gets the other one punched too.
This only works if a child encounters a bully, or two buillies. systemic abuse is rather different!!
The idea that you can take them all on is a pointless dream. Also most bullying is not physical its mental. If the peer group is against you and you respond to mental abuse physically the victim not the bully is at risk. Bullying victims are often written off by schools to make life easy for themselves.
This is becoming more common and there have been a number of reports in the press of a vicitim being expelled rather than face a bully. In one infamous case the cleaning lady who reported the bulling of a child to the childs paresnt was sacked, the victim expelled and the bully exonerated. Saying 'you must have provoked him' is easier than dealing with a disruptive child, especially now with declining respect increasded violance and a double helping of PC crap to threaten anyone who tries to discipline an out of control lout.
The idea of fighting back against all of them may be pointless, but if you fight back against one of them and win, then, as in my case, the others may give up.
The only reason I fought back at the time was because I had started taking rowing seriously, and was actually getting quite big, so I was able to scare them.
I was a sensitive kid, soft hearted and a bit shy.
Secondary school knocked that the hell out of me. I was relentlessly bullied by one boy (along with his ensemble of hangers on), who was a year older than me and he was the only black kid in the school, from the age of 13 to the age of 15. He would trip me up, call me names, shout abuse at me, throw rocks at me, spit at me, take my books and tear them up, throw my school bag over hedges and on a couple of occasions, he and his mates would pin me to the floor and suffocate me with my school tie. I had this treatment for 2 years.
I was in the CDT (woodwork) classroom, the teacher had buggered off somewhere and this older kid was staring at me from the queue for his classroom, whispering to his mates and they were all laughing at me. He suddenly ran into our classroom and pinned me against the wall and started threatening me, he spat in my face and rubbed it in.
I threw him backwards, picked up one of the classroom stools and wrapped it across his face. At that time I had snapped, I saw red for the first time in my life, for those of you who've never had that happen, you do see things in actual red. I realised something as I stood over him. I was bigger than him (not taller, I'm a fairly short 5'8) but broader and stronger built, as I'd started rugby the year before and shown an aptitude for it. He was weaker than me. He realised it too, as he looked up at me and I saw his fear. I grabbed that bastard and told him exactly what would happen if he ever crossed me again. He ran out of the school and stayed away for a while. He never bothered me again, in fact, when walking through the town, if I saw him, even with his mates, I'd cross the street to be on the same side and walk right into them. They still called me names, but they were 'nutter' and 'fething psycho' and they were done as I was walking away, never to my face. I had a few more fights in school and college, understanding far better that it's necessary to bear your teeth at certain folks, especially when you're young.
I learnt from school that overwhelming and excessive force will get me left alone and not picked on. It made me a more aggressive person and I'm bloody glad of it. I was not a bully myself, but the 'Don't Tread On Me' analogy is fairly appropriate. I retain a hatred for bullies and a need to scrap with them. My sympathies go to those poor kids who don't get to fight back and instead end up doing things like take their own lives. And I certainly agree that teachers, for the most part, don't do very much of anything about it, but to be fair, a good deal of that can simply be ascribed to them not knowing what was going on and having far too many kids to watch over.
School is warfare, if you lack the firepower to carve your own niche, ally yourself to others who can. Employ intellect to defeat your enemies if you do not have the physical ability to do so.
I had plenty of incidents of bullying growing up here's what I did:
Jackass used to call me names and do whatever he thought he could get away with. He had fake sincerity and acted like we were friends in front of authority then would bug the crap out of me (nothing physical). I ended up very fed up with it so I took one of my sisters tampons and covered it with cherry jelly and smeared it all around in his locker on his books and stuff. Then as he stared in disgust at his locker I walked by and ate a cherry from on top of his books.
He never bothered me again!
Another guy was a poorer student who would steal my lunch from my locker. One dogfood and tabasco sandwich later and that issue was solved as well!
Gwar! wrote:I am amazed people still bully in the US.
Surely the bullies know that one day the bullied WILL snap and M16 their face into bonemeal right?
Right?
Or are US bullies that dim?
That's something I don't get either. Every time I see some kind of school violence, the first thing that comes to my mind is "Yay, we still haven't learned from the past how many massacres now."
The people bullied in the OP, the one girl was being harassed in and out of school constantly from the sound of it, apparently with disgusting phone calls of "You'll be dead in the morning" or "They'll find you after school" that's enough to do someones head in. One was a gay student being bullied, which is a huge blow to the head and self-esteem and such, with how hard it is to even come out to close friends, being tormented over it constantly is way more than enough to just make some people kinda give up.
Orlanth: The one thing I never see in people's recounting of bullying, is what THEY did in order to be selected. That's not to say that you deserved any of it, or any of that sort of nonsense, it's just that you WERE chosen, and the bullies had some reason for doing it.
People tend to want to focus on the bullies, and how they're evil, evil people, but really, they're almost always just normal kids. If we could raise our kids to be better able to navigate their social network, I think that's really the solution. It's not that the victims are "too soft" it's not that the bullies are "evil." It's just that we're not preparing kids well enough to be on either side of that interaction.
For example: When I was in grade school, there was a special ed kid who would periodically be placed in with the rest of the school. In gym class we had to do wrestling, which I was pretty terrible at, and didn't like. This kid was a strange dude, had the strange grade school moustache thing, and I generally found him sorta diquieting. He got paired up to wrestle with me, and I expected to just sorta mess around, take it easy, and get through the class. Instead, he tried very hard, was very spastic, and generally made me angry. I think I felt he was trying to show me up, or prove he was "better" than me, and in my young mind a special ed kid should know he's not "better" than me. So, for a while after that I bullied him with shoves and taunts, until one of his teachers saw it, pulled me aside and told me not to be mean to a special ed kid. It clicked for me at that point that the kid was basically slowed, and being mean to him was ridiculous, and I stopped.
The point here is that this kid, being mentally handicapped, didn't have the social skills to understand how I exepcted him to act, and then to compound the problem, I didn't have the maturity to understand his situation, and instead let my own frustrations and insecurities get taken out on him. Neither of us were "bad people" we just were confused.
Also, I don't think that there HAS to be a "pariah." It happens all the time, for sure, but it's not like a group of kids automatically selects one to beat on.
I have never seen or personally experienced ignoring a bully accomplish anything but convince them they can do it more and you won't do anything in retaliation.
Then you haven't seen somebody actually ignore a bully.
Bullies want a reponse. They want to see that they're exerting power on somebody. If you truly IGNORE them, and give them no indication that they're effecting you, they will move on. If you wince, and hold in the tears, and they can see all that going on, they may feed off of it.
They can go punch on a tree all day. It will not complain. But they don't do that, precisely because it DOESN'T complain.
Probably the WORST thing you can do with a bully is fight back semi-ineffectively. Bullies don't really WANT to be cruel, most of the time, they just want to be powerful. If you fight back in a way that they can rationalize as you "deserving it," then they're going to bully all the more. They've removed guilt from the equation, now it's just them being powerful and against somebody who "deserves it."
This is also a big part of why staff doesn't want to get involved. They probably can't help you. They can threaten the bullies, but then they'll just add "tattle tale" to their list of insults, and find ways to harass you more surreptitiously.
Also, FWIW, all of this applies to "normal" bullies. Which is to say, pretty much everyone at one point or another. Some people have genuine mental problems, and are not mere bullies, but are actually acting out psychological disorders. Normal people don't REALLY want to be cruel.
Well, normal people don't really want to be cruel for the sake of being cruel.
For example, I've been cruel to many people out of a desire to make them act differently.
But then maybe I'm not normal.
But yes, fighting back and failing is far, far worse than not fighting back at all. Just from my own experience, I got far more pleasure out of beating my back-ups than I did from beating position stooges.
Gorgeous Gary Golden wrote:That's something I don't get either. Every time I see some kind of school violence, the first thing that comes to my mind is "Yay, we still haven't learned from the past how many massacres now."
The people bullied in the OP, the one girl was being harassed in and out of school constantly from the sound of it, apparently with disgusting phone calls of "You'll be dead in the morning" or "They'll find you after school" that's enough to do someones head in. One was a gay student being bullied, which is a huge blow to the head and self-esteem and such, with how hard it is to even come out to close friends, being tormented over it constantly is way more than enough to just make some people kinda give up.
The bolded section is called "Communicating a Threat".... If you have a recording of it, and take it to the police, State if you must due to influence from the callers parents, They can trace every call into the house and find the number.... In some states the PARENTS can be charged with the crime their children commit along with the kid. In most states it is a jailtime crime now.
MeanGreenStompa wrote:
School is warfare, if you lack the firepower to carve your own niche, ally yourself to others who can. Employ intellect to defeat your enemies if you do not have the physical ability to do so.
I love you Most of the kids i went to highschool with also were in my middle school, i certainly looked like an easy target, i was never a big kid, but i was scrappy and i was street smart. I was friends with all the "trouble" kids while staying out of trouble myself.
I ended up having to go to summer school one year in highschool and some other kid was in our class but from a totally different city, i havnt a clue why he was there. He had no idea what i was like so being the wrestle jock he let everyone know he was (constantly) he thought he could pick on me. it started with name calling and other insults which i fired right back, but not out of anger, i thought it was funny and thats the kind of thing i was used to. Well he didn't find me calling his names as i found it so one day before the teacher got into the class he came up behind me and put me in headlock (not the kind of "LOL I GOTCHU" kind of headlock) like the seriously trying to choke me kind, so i whipped my head backwards, hitting him mouth hard enough that he didnt have a good grip and i pushed him off. I stepped back and asked what the his problem was. Before he could get into my face again one of my good friends (who happend to be a full member of the Crips) stood inbetween us and started cussing him out, then a few other people i knew joined in sine he was from a different city nobody respected him anyway
Hmm why was I a target for bullying.... Lets see... poor family in a lower middle class burb, wore second-hand clothes, had 2 older sisters, was WAY too light in weight, smart, pre-educated, well read, teachers adored me, Classic "nerd" even in 1st/2nd grade.
Tried to "fit in", didn't work for me. By 8th grade I knew essentially who I was and all.... then my parents started moving every year.. new school, same old blockheads. By 11th grade I was a typical angry young man and just wanted some stability.... 4 high schools in 4 years due to my parents changing jobs does little for social skills. Each time I found a way to make the situation work for me. I found little, quiet, and sometimes Big Violent, ways to make things work for me.
By 12th grade I was the ultimate misfit, But I could hang with nearly any group I wanted to. Yeah, the Debs and Preps still had issues but that was their classlessness showing.
I became who I wanted to be and not what they thought I should be..... In a sense, I made them adjust to me, not me adjusting to them.
I've not had too much trouble with bullying, I generally try to get along with everybody.
However, if I get gak from people, I have no problem with letting them know that I'm not going to let them get away with it.
I'm not big, sort of on the skinny side (5'10 135 lbs) but I've no problem with fighting someone twice my size if they are giving me crap.
Polonius wrote: Basically the high school hells that get portrayed in media, where highly stratified cultures exist based on economics and/or athletic ability really do exist.
Yep, but it should also be said that academic ability plays a role in some places. My high school contained about 600 kids, and the average PSAE (No Child Left Behind test) was a 22 ACT equivalent. The 5 kids that regularly earned perfect scores on the PSAE (36 ACT equivalent) would show up 2-3 periods late, and receive no consequences.
That's also true. I know that's one reason I was never bullied much, every school knew I was very smart and helped out their scores, so the teachers were more inclined to protect me than yet another average student. Being a big kid that wasn't afraid of pushing back didn't help. I roughed one kid up a bit, and my gym teacher must have seen it because he told my parents at a conference. He said he was glad I did it.
I guess it's a different paradigm when I knew that I would never get in trouble for fighting back, while any bully would get suspended. Which is one reason I don't try to deny bullying, even though it never really affected me.
Polonius wrote: Basically the high school hells that get portrayed in media, where highly stratified cultures exist based on economics and/or athletic ability really do exist.
Yep, but it should also be said that academic ability plays a role in some places. My high school contained about 600 kids, and the average PSAE (No Child Left Behind test) was a 22 ACT equivalent. The 5 kids that regularly earned perfect scores on the PSAE (36 ACT equivalent) would show up 2-3 periods late, and receive no consequences.
That's also true. I know that's one reason I was never bullied much, every school knew I was very smart and helped out their scores, so the teachers were more inclined to protect me than yet another average student. Being a big kid that wasn't afraid of pushing back didn't help. I roughed one kid up a bit, and my gym teacher must have seen it because he told my parents at a conference. He said he was glad I did it.
I guess it's a different paradigm when I knew that I would never get in trouble for fighting back, while any bully would get suspended. Which is one reason I don't try to deny bullying, even though it never really affected me.
The opposite of that seemed to happen with me.
I was bullied because I was smart, In year 5 I was getting the marks expected of year 8s, and one of the kids in my year (and by extension his group of freinds) hated me for it.
Phryxis wrote:Orlanth: The one thing I never see in people's recounting of bullying, is what THEY did in order to be selected.
Because it's immaterial to the discussion. Take the kid who liked to wear pink and wear a stuffed monkey on his arm. I'm not to stuck up to admit that I think that's more than a little off and when I was a teen I'd have probably steered clear of him at a minimum. It's pretty obvious why this kid got singled out to be bullied. Same with the Bosnian(?) girl. The reason they got picked out was obvious. However that has nothing to do with it. Wearing pink or talking with an accent is not an acceptable reason for calling someone in the middle of the night and making death threats. In these instances the kids getting bullied, from the story, did nothing to the bullies to warrant the attacks.
They were singled out for the same reason most kids get singled out, they're different and as a consequence outside the bully's social group making them a fair target. Be it for the bully's own sense of power or just to feel like more of a part of their social group by hounding someone who isn't. The target is different and therefore fair game.
It's just that we're not preparing kids well enough to be on either side of that interaction.
That's the problem, you can't. They're kids. They are not mentally and socially developed enough to handle it "like adults." From the perspective of the bullied what are their options? Tell the teacher? Do you remember the social stigma attached to rats? And lord help you if the teacher didn't do anything about it. Now you're a rat and just pissed off the bullies. Do nothing and ignore them? How many 13 year olds do you know that are that stoic? The socially acceptable solutions don't work for kids. They don't have the self control to ignore someone totally and they don't have the long term view to realize that even with the social problems telling the teacher is the easiest way out. So the bullied either knuckle under and internalize it or they lash out.
In my case it was the latter. I got suspended from school three times and one detention for fighting. My parents raised me to try and sort things out peacefully but at the end of the day you don't just take gak from anyone. If they don't drop it, make them drop it. It was a solution to the problem that a kid could handle. Try and talk it out but when they get physical defend yourself.
I have never seen or personally experienced ignoring a bully accomplish anything but convince them they can do it more and you won't do anything in retaliation.
Then you haven't seen somebody actually ignore a bully.
And I would ask you just how many children do you know that are capable of that kind of stoicism?
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Gorgeous Gary Golden wrote:That's something I don't get either. Every time I see some kind of school violence, the first thing that comes to my mind is "Yay, we still haven't learned from the past how many massacres now."
I don't suppose the simple explanation that teenagers are just stupid ever occurred to you?
This entire situation honestly pisses me off. Throughout my entire time in school I'm proud to say that I was friends with just about everyone be it my team mates from the football team to the kids I went to warped tour with. It didn't matter if they where gay or wore pink, it didn't matter if they had a learning disability or an accent. Yes there where things they did that I steered clear of but that didn't stop me from being friends with them. I also tried not to judge them beings as I have gages, tattoos and more predominently play a game consisting of miniatures so I had no room to judge them for what they chose to do.
So to see that this happened just simply isn't right for me and goes against everything I believe as a person. When I read the article and read about how the girls who had bullied the girl with the accent laughed at her during her wake because of the dress she was wearing. It's people like that who just......it's bull. This isn't even close to "we're raising our kids to be weak" a sentiment that I usually agree with because for the most part kids these days are incredibly spoiled in my opinion. That notion has nothing to do with this.
This is pure and simple the results of a failure to listen and act by bolth the the parents and the school. Despite their differances from those around them they where still people, and in no way should they have had to conform to anyones standards nor adapt to better fit in with those around them and action should have been taken.
What is sad and evident by the actions of the girls at the wake is that those who bullied the children who commited suicide probably feel no remorse for what they caused. This leads me to question not the parenting abilities of the bullied but the abilities of those who raised the bullies. In my opinion this is a travesty that should never have happened.
Polonius wrote:Suicide is a pretty clear indicator of mental illness, at least at most legal/medical levels. There are plenty of environmental triggers (such as bullying) that can make those conditions worse, but bullying is probably not the root cause of these kids suicides. Reading the article, three were suicides and one was an accidental drug overdose (of anti-depressents), which I think changes things a bit.
Add in that one of the kids also lost two siblings to suicide or overdose, and you start seeing a much more complex picture than "School allowed kids to be bullied to death!"
Now, schools seldom take serious steps to curb bullying. They should be proactive in stopping that behavior. On the other hand, reading those stories, maybe trying to conform a little bit could have saved these kids some trouble, you know? Dressing all in pink and bringing your plush toy monkey to class isn't exactly behavior to exhibit if you want to avoid bullying.
Nobody gets to be who they really are in high school. We pretty much all got through by trying to be as normal as possible and waiting to get the hell out.
The bullying of the croatian girl is just bizarre to me. I went to a pretty multi-ethnic, immigrant heavy high school, and while we cheerfully called people "boaters" or "yugos", everybody generally got along.
Me and my friends do the opposite of being as normal as possible. We're the ones that yell Waaagh! and Cheese! make random noises at people. Being a nerd is awesome. Acting normal just makes you take bullying harder because you aren't used to it. In fact, when me or any one of my friends are bullied for being an Atheist or a Nerd or something like that, we can always think of a better insult to counter with, so we usually aren't bullied much anymore. People just got tired of us taking fifteen minutes to explain why their insult is stupid. Oh, and to anyone who calls us nerds, we use the response "Hey, that's our word!". lol
But seriously, I can't imagine wanting to kill myself over anything especially bullying. I think kids these days might actually be a bit weak. There are so many weird emo people at my high school. Also a lot of rednecks, too, unfortunately. And also emo rednecks. That is a WEIRD combination.
People want to blame bullying on the bully being an evil monster who just has to be "stopped." This is emotionalism, and not really useful. Bullies are very often normal kids who are just making bad decisions. They're not monsters. They're also a lot more plentiful, and often a lot better adjusted than the person they're bullying. There's often very little to fix.
You're upset that these kids got worse than they deserved. I agree. But it doesn't matter what you think is fair. You solve problems based on what works, not on what you'd like to have work.
I'm not suggesting that the victim is "to blame." Instead, what I'm suggesting is that the goal here is for people to not get bullied. If the victim can be helped/educated/prepared in such a way that they don't become a victim, then nobody gets bullied (or the bullying is less severe), and the victim is less victimized.
You can wish that all the bullies would be punished in some suitable and poetically just way, but that's not going to happen.
That's the problem, you can't. They're kids. They are not mentally and socially developed enough to handle it "like adults."
Well, you can always do better...
But generally, I agree. I think that when you have millions of kids interacting every single day, there are going to be casualties. Some people have mental health issues. Some signs get missed. Bad things happen.
No question we should be trying to do better, but I don't think there's really news here. Kids have always bullied each other, kids have always killed themselves over it. The media is sensationalizing the problem, but it's really not helping to solve it by doing so. I'm sure people will argue that "attracting attention to the problem" will help, but it really won't if it's stupid attention.
And that's precisely what "stop bullying now" is. It's stupid. It's like wishing for "an end to war." It's uselessly impractical. The real answer is much less profound, and much harder. You work on teaching all kids a little more empathy, you work on addressing why a particular kid is acting out, or spotting the kid that's concealing mental health issues, etc. etc.
And I would ask you just how many children do you know that are capable of that kind of stoicism?
Your argument seem to be internally conflicted. You want to have all the bullies act out of character. Because, let's face it, NOT bullying is actually out of character for kids. And there's also a lot of them yet you seem to think that ALL their behavioral issues can be addressed...
And yet the issues of the victim can't? It's ONE person. It's also one person who, generally, is legitimately "odd" compared to the other kids.
Again, NOT trying to blame the victim, I'm simply saying that it seems that a great majority of the time, the most practical fix is with the victim. Why is the victim wearing pink? Why does he feel a need to act out that way? The victim is an immigrant, and they need help fitting in, adjusting to the culture.
At the end of the day, you have to decide if you want "justice done" or if you just want injustice to be reduced.
There's a cinematic appeal to the former, but the latter is both more realistic and better for all involved.
Think about it... Are you going to have somebody follow this victim around, protecting them from each and every person that might potentially mistreat them? Giving little sermons about emptathy to every kid they run across? It's unrealistic.
It's also foolish if the victim really NEEDS help. You should help the victim, not try to go around teaching every single person that they meet how to work around that person's need for help.
It's not the victim's FAULT that they need help. But they still need it.
I was bullied because I came from a ho dunk, redneck, small town, and I had long hair and listened to metal. If you didn't play sports at my school you had to dress like a cowboy and listen to country or nobody liked you and you became an outcast.
How did I fix it? I pulled a knife on the first kid to really try to physically bully me (He tried to hit me with his truck once when I was crossing the street in front of school) after that I was left alone, much like many of the stories given here.
What does this say? Either parents, kids, or teachers, need to Man Up and quit caring about being PC and address the real issues.
That being said for someone to commit suicide over bullying is a complete overreaction which means theres something else going on.
TheBlackVanguard wrote:That being said for someone to commit suicide over bullying is a complete overreaction which means theres something else going on.
Not really. Some cases of "bullying" can be hellish. If you're beaten or threatened with disgusting things day in, day out, by people who *do* do these things to be cruel, it's pretty easy to just lose hope. From there it can be pretty easy, just a day of extra terrible treatment could drive someone to just end it on their own. Through personal experience, when everyone is just against you for whatever reason, when you have no real way to fight back, when the faculty themselves are even against you being able to do anything, it's like going daily to some deep, dark hole that you forget you're even gonna get away from eventually. Some people can just persevere or emotionally shut themselves down to get through it, but some others won't be so fortunate and could just end up some complete and utter wreck.
Phryxis wrote:Your argument seem to be internally conflicted. You want to have all the bullies act out of character. Because, let's face it, NOT bullying is actually out of character for kids. And there's also a lot of them yet you seem to think that ALL their behavioral issues can be addressed...
I am not sure why you think that. More often than not bullies are a very small minority. From what I have seen the bullies are usually more of a minority than their targets.
And yet the issues of the victim can't? It's ONE person. It's also one person who, generally, is legitimately "odd" compared to the other kids.
Again, NOT trying to blame the victim, I'm simply saying that it seems that a great majority of the time, the most practical fix is with the victim. Why is the victim wearing pink? Why does he feel a need to act out that way? The victim is an immigrant, and they need help fitting in, adjusting to the culture.
This seems like a very simplistic view. No offense intended. I do not see the solution being with the victim when such a solution empowers individual bullies to directly effect many peoples lives. Adjusting to whose culture? The larger culture of 'not being poor, weird, or an immigrant'? Dunno bout that.
At the end of the day, you have to decide if you want "justice done" or if you just want injustice to be reduced.
There's a cinematic appeal to the former, but the latter is both more realistic and better for all involved.
I still don't see how that is the case. You're saying that it is not good to blame the targets of bullying, but your solution is to give bullies real power.
I'll give a real bully a fething 2x4 to the head. That sounds good to me, fella in pink can be as pink as he wants.
Think about it... Are you going to have somebody follow this victim around, protecting them from each and every person that might potentially mistreat them? Giving little sermons about emptathy to every kid they run across? It's unrealistic.
I would simply step into situations where I can obviously make a difference. The extent of that in some situations might be no more than calling the police, as running in with a sledgehammer to save the day... isn't really the best idea. But yeah, I don't think you're position is particularly realistic either.
It's also foolish if the victim really NEEDS help. You should help the victim, not try to go around teaching every single person that they meet how to work around that person's need for help.
I think I may be reading too far into what I think you are saying in this post. It seems like you are saying that the best option is for people to hide themselves from bullies. I don't think that actually works in most situations. In a situation where a bully has targeted a specific individual and also suffers from mental illness themselves, there isn't very much compromise. There is one side and the other. One person is being picked on and should not be told to hide out of fear. In many cases that literally means leaving school, and children that are bullied do this more often than you would think.
One person has a psychological predisposition to run from threats. Not all that crazy IMO, and it is the path most travelled by targets of bullies.
The other person has a psychological disposition to be a threat to those that would run. I know whose side I am on. It isn't this side, and I consider this kind of disorder something that should be addressed more promptly that the former. Given that such an individual causes others to commit suicide that would not have otherwise; these 'bullies' should be dealt with first as they have the potential to force many towards suicide. They should be treated as a threat to their classmates.
It's not the victim's FAULT that they need help. But they still need it.
They do need help and in many situations I think that people do help. Not as often as they should.
The bullies need help as well. IMO, nearly as much help as those who would kill themselves in reaction to bullying.
I believe that bullies should be the focus of this issue, not their targets. The solution can come from both sides but I do not feel that the targets of bullies should be held responsible for the intolerable nature of what is often no more than a single angry child. I do not want that individual child to have socially acceptable power over their class mates. Those kids need help before they really hurt someone.
AbaddonFidelis wrote:We appear to be raising some pretty fragile kids these days.
QFT.
I get it, it's hard, and though I'm definitely not a parent, and don't understand the issues behind it, but bullies shouldn't be hard to overcome...
But yes, bullies need to be dealt with nonetheless, but if a bully causes them to end their lives, I can't imagine what they'd do if their significant other left...
I caught a fair amount of gak as a kid, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't dish out a bit as well.
Without knowing more about the story, I can only wonder if the bullying is worse at this school than others, or if there is a higher propensity for mental illness in this area.
Those are the only things that make sense to me, granted it's completely speculative.
Phryxis wrote:I'd imagine that the average Bosnian is fairly "tough." Also, even if she's Americanized, her parents are thoroughly Bosnian, which suggests to be that this isn't really an issue of America raising soft kids.
It certainly is tempting to think so, given everything we see going on with helicopter parents, sensitivity training and the like, but it doesn't really add up.
I'm thinking that it has less to do with the kids being "tough", and more to do with the kids having a lack of options through which they could avoid the people who are tormenting them, or otherwise adapt to the situation. Alternatively, the perception may be that they lack options, even if these options actually do exist. Perhaps an expectation for things to be handled systematically is partially destructive, as it kills individual initiative on the part of the victim or parents? Or perhaps there's an irrational belief that poor social relations need to become good social relations, rather than simply end entirely?
Orkeosaurus wrote:I'm thinking that it has less to do with the kids being "tough", and more to do with the kids having a lack of options through which they could avoid the people who are tormenting them, or otherwise adapt to the situation.
There are options but they are not automatically available to all kids. Some people aren't that good at writing or math, and others aren't that good at working around bullies.
Alternatively, the perception may be that they lack options, even if these options actually do exist. Perhaps an expectation for things to be handled systematically is partially destructive, as it kills individual initiative on the part of the victim or parents?
Hit the bully in the head with a brick? That could be a decent option.
Anyway, I think there are some options available to parents while most others are unavailable to their children. The best a kid can be expected to do is report a situation. It could be that their are a lot of options available to parents, but it those option don't seem to be working. Just because they exist doesn't mean they work.
On that same point, and back to my 'brick to the head option' I think that you'll find most individual initiative on the part of parents to be poorly planned. I would assume that many parents would not deal particularly well with bullies when left to their own methods. It could be messy. I'm just warning you.
Or perhaps there's an irrational belief that poor social relations need to become good social relations, rather than simply end entirely?
Hmm. Could you expand a bit more on this? I'm not sure what kind of solution this would present.
TheBlackVanguard wrote:I was bullied because I came from a ho dunk, redneck, small town, and I had long hair and listened to metal. If you didn't play sports at my school you had to dress like a cowboy and listen to country or nobody liked you and you became an outcast.
How did I fix it? I pulled a knife on the first kid to really try to physically bully me (He tried to hit me with his truck once when I was crossing the street in front of school) after that I was left alone, much like many of the stories given here.
What does this say? Either parents, kids, or teachers, need to Man Up and quit caring about being PC and address the real issues.
That being said for someone to commit suicide over bullying is a complete overreaction which means theres something else going on.
This guy wins. :thumsup:
I swear, what is wrong with some kids...Not you quotee
Some interesting things about bullying from what i've seen
- Every bully is different , the reasons why they bully in the first place are all different.
- Bullys arnt all dumb , they certainly can easily lie to teachers, especially if a group of them gets to cover each other's alibi ( so going to teacher wont always help , because it it fails , it gets worse )
- Not striking back = have bullies that give up? Maybe for some , certainly not for all. Some bullies feed off the weak , and bully "because they can" this type of mentality
is easily seen everywhere. They literally love a sand bag to vent their frustrations thus none retorting target = the perfect target.
Yet of course there are also the other type that others have mentioned in this thread , the sadistic type that feeds off watching their victim suffer.
I don't think anyone here can judge the reactions of the victims as none of us where in their situation. You can't accuratly judge anothers reactions based off of what you would do. Personally I would have done the same as most of you and beat the crap out of the first person who even tried anything physical. But none of us where in their exact situation so while there where deffinitly better options that could have been pursued none of us can say "they had something else going on".
garret wrote:Somehow i should have known this would turn into someone saying kids are to soft.
It's true. Boo hoo, you killed yourself because you got bullied/weren't popular. I had like 4-5 people I would call friends in my last 2 years in HS and I didn't go kill myself because the other 2995 didn't want to chill with me.
Wrexasaur wrote:Hit the bully in the head with a brick? That could be a decent option.
Well, that would resolve the situation pretty quickly!
I was thinking something less extreme, though, and I think what they would have to do would be highly dependent on their specific circumstances. Which is sort of the problem with trying to approach bullying from an abstract standpoint, I think.
I think that you'll find most individual initiative on the part of parents to be poorly planned. I would assume that many parents would not deal particularly well with bullies when left to their own methods. It could be messy. I'm just warning you.
Yeah, I'm sure there would be plenty of bad results arising from it all. But on the other hand, who else can be responsible? It just seems to be, to a degree, out of the scope of what the teachers are able to handle. I mean, they can (and should) stop their own class from being disrupted, but they can't be everywhere at once. And they generally don't have the same sort of "mentor" relationship with the kid that his parents should have (and once again, that's to be expected).
Hmm. Could you expand a bit more on this? I'm not sure what kind of solution this would present.
Well, I sometimes think people are too concerned with trying to get the bully and the victim to "get along" when they'd really just be better off seperated. Of course, this kind of separation can be difficult to achieve, when you have two people going to the same school. A lot of times bullying is thought of as simply being a part of childhood, but I think that part of it also has to do with how much more difficult it is to avoid someone when schools are structured the way they are. (Especially when you have cases where the school districts are totally immutable, and transfers are made far harder than they need to be.)
More often than not bullies are a very small minority.
I guess it depends on where you draw the line.
If you're talking about serious torment, physical beatings, sustained effort to ruin somebody's life, then I agree, bullies are uncommon.
But if you're talking about the "go with the flow" sort of social cruelty it sounds like these kids were suffering from, I think virtually ALL kids do it. Not just all kids, but basically all social animals.
Kids are learning to categorize, they're learning about what's acceptable and what's not, they're generally going through a phase in which they're prone to identify things as "strange" and to pick at them. They're also going through a period of life in which they have very little power and control over their environment, and constantly want to have more. They also have stresses and insecurities they're not very well prepared to deal with.
All of this adds up to bullying behavior.
It's also worth noting that if bullying isn't widespread, it doesn't really "work." If a kid can go to school, and everyone is nice to him except for ONE person, that's really not going to damage that kid's worldview. He'll say "wow, that guy is a dick" and not worry about it. It's only when they start thinking that EVERYONE hates them that they begin to hate themselves, and suicide becomes a risk.
Notice that a lot of these bullying stories involve the victim being mistreated by the authorities as well. Are the authorities evil too? Is EVERYONE evil but the victim? Or is the victim just having trouble understanding what people expect of him?
You're saying that it is not good to blame the targets of bullying, but your solution is to give bullies real power.
How am I giving bullies real power?
That sounds good to me, fella in pink can be as pink as he wants.
This is wrong for two reasons:
First off, you can wish and hope that your idealized version of acceptance is real, but it's not. People who act oddly are quite often targets of mistreatment. I realize you don't think that's right. I agree it's not right. But it's reality. You won't fix it. You certainly won't fix it by just saying it shouldn't be.
Second, this isn't just a guy who wants to wear pink, and that's all there is to it. He's reacting to something, he's overcompensating for something. He needs help. He doesn't just need acceptance. He's crying for help. Help him. Don't just ignore his cry for help and feel proud that you're "accepting." He doesn't want acceptance. That's why he's acting out, he's trying NOT to be accepted, because on some level he hates what he is. People don't kill themselves if they don't hate themselves.
That's an important point: Contrary to what Gorgeous Gary Golden is saying, people don't kill themselves to "end the pain" of being bullied. It's not that it's so TERRIBLE they just can't stand to face it again and kill themselves. They kill themselves because they hate themselves. The bullying may exacerbate that self-hatred, but it still comes down to self-hatred in the end.
I do not want that individual child to have socially acceptable power over their class mates.
I think you have a fundamental confusion over the purpose of school.
We love to emphasize that you should "be yourself." We do it so much that it makes people confused. It's a thing in western culture, particularly America.
The fact is, school is about teaching people to fit in. It's about exerting sustained social pressure in order to make kids into functional members of society. It's about teaching kids to follow direction, respect authority, conform to one another's expectations. That's WHY you go. You learn some stuff, math, history, other crap, but mostly you just learn how to do what you're told, go where you're told, be accountable to society.
I'm not suggesting that we should all be uniform wearing automatons, but the whole "be yourself" obsession is not the primary function of school. On the contrary, it's the "devil's advocate." It's the OPPOSITE of what school is about. It's just a word of caution that while you're learning to conform and fit in, don't totally lose yourself. But still, learn to fit in.
I agree that kids these day are a bunch of molly coddled flour bags. I mean they can't even stand up to a little physical or psychological harassment. You know what the problem is? Parents aren't beating their children enough, that's what's making them soft. If parents would just apply the belt a little more that'd tough 'em and make them a fine soldier in the fight against communism.
I don't think my HS even had a bullying problem. FFS there was a kid who wore a utility belt to school every single day and he got absolutely no flak. On top of that he had a hot gf so that made me really question the laws of reality.
avantgarde wrote:I agree that kids these day are a bunch of molly coddled flour bags. I mean they can't even stand up to a little physical or psychological harassment. You know what the problem is? Parents aren't beating their children enough, that's what's making them soft. If parents would just apply the belt a little more that'd tough 'em and make them a fine soldier in the fight against communism.
I think you'd find, if you did some research, that the two are very often linked.
Not in every case, but enough to say with a fair amount of surety that someone who commits suicide may have had some mental issues.
This has a lot to do with cultural standards.
Bottom line is that a dumbass trying to piss you off is no more than that. When they become a real threat they are no less than criminal by many standards.
Killing yourself is serious fething gak. Children, especially teenagers, go through some crazy phases, and in most cases it is not a long term thing. Attempts to kill yourself and succeeding at it are mentally unstable acts. You have to have a screw loose to try something like that. There are some situations where I really don't blame people, because I would probably have done the same in that situation. Those kind of problems are not something that most kids in developed countries have to deal with.
I am just trying to say that killing yourself after someone mocks you is not a reasonable reaction. It is completely unreasonable.
Oops, it kind of sounds like I am responding to your post, Monster. Just throwing this out there.
Orkeo wrote:Well, that would resolve the situation pretty quickly!
Yeah, bricks are pretty nifty bastards.
I was thinking something less extreme, though, and I think what they would have to do would be highly dependent on their specific circumstances. Which is sort of the problem with trying to approach bullying from an abstract standpoint, I think.
This is a pretty complicated issue.
Yeah, I'm sure there would be plenty of bad results arising from it all. But on the other hand, who else can be responsible? It just seems to be, to a degree, out of the scope of what the teachers are able to handle. I mean, they can (and should) stop their own class from being disrupted, but they can't be everywhere at once. And they generally don't have the same sort of "mentor" relationship with the kid that his parents should have (and once again, that's to be expected).
I think everyone needs to play their part. I can't imagine parents being able to do anything significant or generally rational in most circumstances.
Teachers need to do their jobs. Administration needs to do their jobs. Parents need to be the ones to be in between their children and the chaos that is often involved in adult life. That includes pushing back against institutions that fail to give them serious options in the context of bullying. Parents probably need better resources when it comes to the school, and the school should be providing them many of those options.
I can see quite a few parents liking my brick idea.
Well, I sometimes think people are too concerned with trying to get the bully and the victim to "get along" when they'd really just be better off seperated. Of course, this kind of separation can be difficult to achieve, when you have two people going to the same school. A lot of times bullying is thought of as simply being a part of childhood, but I think that part of it also has to do with how much more difficult it is to avoid someone when schools are structured the way they are. (Especially when you have cases where the school districts are totally immutable, and transfers are made far harder than they need to be.)
In most cases I really can't see many reasons why anyone should be moved besides the bully. In those cases that it does make sense to move the bullies target there should probably be a quick and relatively painless process available. Keeping them separated is a good idea, as in a great deal of cases I can see the bully getting hurt very badly. That reaction from the student, or the parent of the student, could also drag a large part of the school into it.
Amaya wrote:
It's true. Boo hoo, you killed yourself because you got bullied/weren't popular. I had like 4-5 people I would call friends in my last 2 years in HS and I didn't go kill myself because the other 2995 didn't want to chill with me.
Being bullied and not beiong popular are not the same thing. Being bullied means being harassed, not being popular means being relatively insignificant within a given social setting. The fact that you didn't have many friends doesn't indicate that you were bullied, it indicates that you had few friends.
If you're going to puff up your chest,at least have the decency to do so in a way that is predicated on good sense.
More often than not bullies are a very small minority.
I guess it depends on where you draw the line.
If you're talking about serious torment, physical beatings, sustained effort to ruin somebody's life, then I agree, bullies are uncommon.
I believe this really isn't an issue about bullying. I consider this very much an issue of criminality. There are levels of bullying that are clearly criminal and they should be treated as such.
But if you're talking about the "go with the flow" sort of social cruelty it sounds like these kids were suffering from, I think virtually ALL kids do it. Not just all kids, but basically all social animals.
Kids are learning to categorize, they're learning about what's acceptable and what's not, they're generally going through a phase in which they're prone to identify things as "strange" and to pick at them. They're also going through a period of life in which they have very little power and control over their environment, and constantly want to have more. They also have stresses and insecurities they're not very well prepared to deal with.
I agree with you for the most part. In my experience most kids are just loud and often obnoxious. They aren't particularly malicious most of the time. The kids that are malicious need help. Their targets need protection.
It is pretty obvious when kids are being kids, but there is a gray area where it is really hard to have a distinct opinion. Maybe the bullies were stretching the bounds of the law, maybe they found some strange loophole. Most often I think that the kids that are being kids aren't running around picking on one specific kid. They tend to be generally obnoxious all around if they are obnoxious at all. Most kids are just loud in my opinion.
All of this adds up to bullying behavior.
It's also worth noting that if bullying isn't widespread, it doesn't really "work." If a kid can go to school, and everyone is nice to him except for ONE person, that's really not going to damage that kid's worldview. He'll say "wow, that guy is a dick" and not worry about it. It's only when they start thinking that EVERYONE hates them that they begin to hate themselves, and suicide becomes a risk.
Lonely kids can be targeted by small cliques and after a certain point I do consider some actions on the part of bullies to be flatly criminal. I don't really know about this story specifically. It is definitely depressing, though.
There are a few parts that should have raised flags to the schools administration. It seems like a pretty common case of incompetence on the schools part.
Like this.
Article wrote:At school, life was very different. She was ridiculed for her thick accent. Classmates tossed insults like "Slutty Jana" or "Slut-Jana-Vagina." A boy pushed her down the stairs. A girl smacked her in the face with a water bottle.
...
But then the school did this...
Article wrote:When the family tried to retrieve records about their reports of bullying, school officials told them the records were destroyed during a switch to computers. The family sued in August.
Phryxis wrote:Notice that a lot of these bullying stories involve the victim being mistreated by the authorities as well. Are the authorities evil too? Is EVERYONE evil but the victim? Or is the victim just having trouble understanding what people expect of him?
Incompetent authority figures and aggrieved victims that are prone to minor bouts of hyperbole in place of recognizing how complicated many administrations are? WOW. Gosh. LOL.
The victim is evil? Is that what you are saying? The wording here is a bit tricky. Most parties aren't evil. Feth what the headlines say.
How am I giving bullies real power?
If I understand what you said, and I am pretty sure I did, you're suggesting the the targets of bullying need to be the primary actors in resolving a situation. I don't think that is regularly possible without intervention from authority figures. It is depressing when schools don't help kids deal with the problems that such environments create for most children. In saying that the targets of bullying need to be the one to make changes you're suggesting that the bully has no role to play in resolution. Because it is too difficult to do so, or something, which I consider borderline ridiculous.
Creating such an environment suggests that authorities in charge of that environment should take what actions they can to make their campus a safe place for students. Maybe they can't stop a few kids from picking on a bunch of other kids, but I think that is not usually true. Often schools fear reprimand for their actions against disruptive and in some cases criminal students. I don't view those types of tenuous situations as an excuse from responsibility.
This is wrong for two reasons:
First off, you can wish and hope that your idealized version of acceptance is real, but it's not. People who act oddly are quite often targets of mistreatment. I realize you don't think that's right. I agree it's not right. But it's reality. You won't fix it. You certainly won't fix it by just saying it shouldn't be.
You're 100% correct. I will fix it by drop-kicking donkey-caves out of otherwise peaceful environments. Other than that I will stop it by standing up for people that are being bullied when I can. It gets complicated, but most often it isn't hard to tell when you can and when you shouldn't do something. In situations where you shouldn't intervene you can call the appropriate authority figure in to deal with the situation. Hopefully they can.
Second, this isn't just a guy who wants to wear pink, and that's all there is to it. He's reacting to something, he's overcompensating for something. He needs help. He doesn't just need acceptance. He's crying for help. Help him. Don't just ignore his cry for help and feel proud that you're "accepting." He doesn't want acceptance. That's why he's acting out, he's trying NOT to be accepted, because on some level he hates what he is. People don't kill themselves if they don't hate themselves.
Well, we are just going to have to disagree on this. I like to wear boots. Most people don't care that I like to wear boots.
I know plenty of people that like to wear their favorite colors. I see nothing odd about that. The guy that harasses the guy who wears pink has more issues that the guy who wears pink. My guess is that the bully in that situation actually LOVES pink. It is probably their favorite color.
I am not trying to suggest anything here BTW. I am wondering, however, why you think that anyone who stands out hates themselves. Secondly, I know quite a few people that stand out because they like standing out. It isn't always about making a statement. It's often about being yourself and enjoying it. I have respect for that, and little respect for those that would feel it necessary to harass such individuals.
Your reasoning here confuses me, quite frankly. It is a bit odd. Are you crying out for help? Do you need a hug?
Just kidding.
But yeah, the pink-shirt dude sounds like a pretty awesome guy.
Article wrote:Eric Mohat was flamboyant and loud and preferred to wear pink most of the time. When he didn't get the lead soprano part in the choir his freshman year, he was indignant, his mother says.
He wore a stuffed animal strapped to his arm, a lemur named Georges that was given its own seat in class.
"It was a gag," says Mohat's father, Bill. "And all the girls would come up to pet his monkey. And in his Spanish class they would write stories about Georges."
Mohat's family and friends say he wasn't gay, but people thought he was.
Dude sounds like a fething mac. That's right, pet my monkey and write stories about it in class. Give my monkey his own seat.
That's an important point: Contrary to what Gorgeous Gary Golden is saying, people don't kill themselves to "end the pain" of being bullied. It's not that it's so TERRIBLE they just can't stand to face it again and kill themselves. They kill themselves because they hate themselves. The bullying may exacerbate that self-hatred, but it still comes down to self-hatred in the end.
Mentally unstable people do not automatically hate themselves. On that same point they are often not in a state of mind where those kinds of rationalizations actually make much sense. They don't usually make sense, because the person is unstable and mentally ill. Deranged to the point at which suicide is considered a reasonable reaction to ridicule. It fething isn't, and that is why they are unstable. It isn't because of some sort of generalization that all there is to this is self-loathing.
I think you have a fundamental confusion over the purpose of school.
Or something... This was an odd comment, mate.
We love to emphasize that you should "be yourself." We do it so much that it makes people confused. It's a thing in western culture, particularly America.
The fact is, school is about teaching people to fit in. It's about exerting sustained social pressure in order to make kids into functional members of society. It's about teaching kids to follow direction, respect authority, conform to one another's expectations. That's WHY you go. You learn some stuff, math, history, other crap, but mostly you just learn how to do what you're told, go where you're told, be accountable to society.
That is based on abstract reasoning and it does not hold true in all school environments. The only generalized conclusion I can come to is that school does have the secondary purpose of keeping kids busy. Are we talking about elementary school here? In high school there are many types of education occurring. Learning how to work with your peers and authority figures is the only socialized general education. You learn how to work with what is presented to you, and often enough that type of environment isn't actually presented until college level education.
I'm not suggesting that we should all be uniform wearing automatons, but the whole "be yourself" obsession is not the primary function of school. On the contrary, it's the "devil's advocate." It's the OPPOSITE of what school is about. It's just a word of caution that while you're learning to conform and fit in, don't totally lose yourself. But still, learn to fit in.
I am not entirely sure why you are so convinced that this is the case. School is a building. It is a place where people go. Some schools may focus on this type of education more than others, but for the most part it is a pretty mixed bag. Different administrations have different goals. They care about and pursue different goals.
I think I've been pretty explicit that I'm not saying that.
If I understand what you said, and I am pretty sure I did, you're suggesting the the targets of bullying need to be the primary actors in resolving a situation.
No, I'm not saying that. Authority figures will most likely need to intervene. However, they will get the most mileage out of intervening with the victim, figuring out what the victim needs in order to interact more positively with their peers.
And don't get me wrong, there are lots of situations where kids get bullied and there's nothing wrong with them. It's just that these events are typically random, circumstantial, and have no real impact on the victim. We're talking about suicides, and these are the sorts of situations where the bullying is systemic, prolonged, and due to profound social dysfunction in the victim.
I will fix it by drop-kicking donkey-caves out of otherwise peaceful environments.
So you're going to go to the local highschool and enact violent vigilante justice on bullies, because the people whose actual job it is to keep the peace aren't doing it to your satisfaction?
Enjoy jail. Lots of bullying there, in case you didn't know.
Gotta stop thinking in terms of young adult fiction. Fantasizing about rushing to some poor kid's aid is fantasy. The bullies aren't going to "get their comeuppance" and end up in a special circle of Dante's inferno for bullies. They're mostly just going to progress through highschool, mature somewhat, etc. etc.
I am wondering, however, why you think that anyone who stands out hates themselves.
I don't think that. I think that this kid who wore pink PROBABLY hated himself, given that he killed himself. I further think that he was wearing pink not out of a simple fondness for pink, but because he was seeking to "force the issue."
It's the "killing yourself" bit that stands out. It means that the kid had serious issues. It's VERY likely that any odd things he's doing are a manifestation of those issues. That's why I said, specifically, that it's NOT about the wearing pink thing.
Mohat's family and friends say he wasn't gay, but people thought he was.
Come on. The dude is gay. He's gay, he hates it about himself, he's struggling with it. His parents wouldn't accept it, and now they're trying to blame bullies for killing his kid, when their own refusal to accept him is what killed him. Take it with a grain of salt, but I'd bet money on it.
Mentally unstable people do not automatically hate themselves.
I didn't say the do. I said that people who kill themselves hate themselves.
The exception to this is people who are terminally ill, or in severe physical pain. This is not what we're dealing with in these suicides, however.
In high school there are many types of education occurring.
Sure, and I said as much. They're teaching you a lot of things, but above all, they're trying to teach you to be a functioning member of society. They're trying to prepare you to go out in the workforce and do a job.
Different administrations have different goals. They care about and pursue different goals.
They all weight things differently, but at the end of the day the primary point of concern is to prepare kids to function in society.
I think I've been pretty explicit that I'm not saying that.
No worries.
If I understand what you said, and I am pretty sure I did, you're suggesting the the targets of bullying need to be the primary actors in resolving a situation.
No, I'm not saying that. Authority figures will most likely need to intervene. However, they will get the most mileage out of intervening with the victim, figuring out what the victim needs in order to interact more positively with their peers.
In situations where one person is being bullied by many I agree. In situations when individuals or groups are bullying many I completely disagree. As I would expect most criminal bullies to be far outnumbered by their targets I would have to say that I generally disagree with you here. As you have stated 'what the victim needs' I don't entirely disagree with you, and I recognize that in some situations working mainly with the bullies target makes the most sense.
I do not think it is a good idea to always deal with bullying in the same way. An effective system needs to be flexible so it can deal with different contexts.
And don't get me wrong, there are lots of situations where kids get bullied and there's nothing wrong with them. It's just that these events are typically random, circumstantial, and have no real impact on the victim. We're talking about suicides, and these are the sorts of situations where the bullying is systemic, prolonged, and due to profound social dysfunction in the victim.
Agreed for the most part. Not on all of your opinions of course, but definitely on the context illustrated by this part of your post.
I think we agree on this issue a lot more than you might prefer.
I will fix it by drop-kicking donkey-caves out of otherwise peaceful environments.
So you're going to go to the local highschool and enact violent vigilante justice on bullies, because the people whose actual job it is to keep the peace aren't doing it to your satisfaction?
Why yes, that is exactly what I said.
Wrex wrote:Other than that I will stop it by standing up for people that are being bullied when I can. It gets complicated, but most often it isn't hard to tell when you can and when you shouldn't do something. In situations where you shouldn't intervene you can call the appropriate authority figure in to deal with the situation. Hopefully they can.
Phyxis wrote:Enjoy jail. Lots of bullying there, in case you didn't know.
Why is this happening to me?
I don't think that. I think that this kid who wore pink PROBABLY hated himself, given that he killed himself. I further think that he was wearing pink not out of a simple fondness for pink, but because he was seeking to "force the issue."
It's the "killing yourself" bit that stands out. It means that the kid had serious issues. It's VERY likely that any odd things he's doing are a manifestation of those issues. That's why I said, specifically, that it's NOT about the wearing pink thing.
Clear enough for me. I think we pretty much agree here. I mean, you are carrying some interesting cultural undertones in these statements, but that aside I agree with you.
Come on. The dude is gay. He's gay, he hates it about himself, he's struggling with it. His parents wouldn't accept it, and now they're trying to blame bullies for killing his kid, when their own refusal to accept him is what killed him. Take it with a grain of salt, but I'd bet money on it.
I put 20 bucks on the kid being a playboy mastermind. If he hadn't topped himself he would have had a villa in Spain where his monkey could sit wherever the hell it liked.
Were really bad people, Phryxis.
I didn't say the do. I said that people who kill themselves hate themselves.
It could have been seen to be the case taken with several of your other points. Dunna matter though, you made yourself clear here.
The exception to this is people who are terminally ill, or in severe physical pain. This is not what we're dealing with in these suicides, however.
Correct.
Sure, and I said as much. They're teaching you a lot of things, but above all, they're trying to teach you to be a functioning member of society. They're trying to prepare you to go out in the workforce and do a job.
Sort of? I'm not sure I have an opinion on this. I'm not sure it really happens that way. I still consider school an relatively empty box. It is a place that people go. They do stuff there. The stuff they do isn't necessarily the stuff that another school box might do.
They all weight things differently, but at the end of the day the primary point of concern is to prepare kids to function in society.
Again, sort of. I really don't consider the issue as easily interpreted as you suggest. In many ways I consider this specific subject vastly open to interpretation.
I see a cat. No, wait... I see a panda. Definitely a panda.
In situations where one person is being bullied by many I agree. In situations when individuals or groups are bullying many I completely disagree.
I think the former situation is the only one of any real relevance.
Everyone gets bullied at some point. It's not a big deal. Nobody kills themselves over the occasional negative interaction. It's the situation where somebody is being ostracized and harassed by EVERYONE that real problems occur.
That's why I keep going back to the victim being the real focus when it comes to intervention. Either EVERYONE is evil, or it's the victim that needs the help.
I really don't consider the issue as easily interpreted as you suggest.
Well, it is, and it isn't.
The core functionality of early school is to socialize kids and teach them how to think. Over time it turns more and more into education, but pretty much through high school they're just trying to get you integrated into adult society. That's just how it is...
But beyond that, there's a lot going on. Some schools are trying to get MORE done than just that. They might be trying to teach performing arts, or liberal arts foundation, or military discipline, or whatever else...
But the one thing that all schools are trying to do, the one common function, is to prepare kids to live in adult society.
In situations where one person is being bullied by many I agree. In situations when individuals or groups are bullying many I completely disagree.
I think the former situation is the only one of any real relevance.
Everyone gets bullied at some point. It's not a big deal. Nobody kills themselves over the occasional negative interaction. It's the situation where somebody is being ostracized and harassed by EVERYONE that real problems occur.
This is a possibility, but I see no reason why an effective system for dealing with bullies would avoid addressing the problems the bullies have as well. They have problems that should be worked on, and focusing on the internal factors of their targets doesn't do much to disprove that. It doesn't really seem to do anything to disprove that.
Given that you do not believe the victims could be protected I assume you are working from that foundation. I happen to think that a lot could have been done to prevent girls being pushed down stairs and being hit in the face with water bottles. Unless those statements were false and nothing of the sort happened. If it did though, pushing someone down a set of stairs because you think their accent is funny... well, that is fething crazy, and criminally so.
The schools administration could be seen as criminally negligent, and it will be interesting to see what happens to them.
That's why I keep going back to the victim being the real focus when it comes to intervention. Either EVERYONE is evil, or it's the victim that needs the help.
Or there are other options presented by this subject. I agree that the victim does need support, but I will add again that I feel that the bullies are often in need of their own help. Both sides need help, because for the most part I think that this usually comes down to one person doing something really stupid, and often criminal, while the target of those actions may react negatively as well. The kid that pushed the chick down the stairs sounds like a bastard in need of serious support. That support can take many forms, and in many cases might separate the student from other students that choose not to push people down stairs...
I really don't consider the issue as easily interpreted as you suggest.
Well, it is, and it isn't.
The core functionality of early school is to socialize kids and teach them how to think. Over time it turns more and more into education, but pretty much through high school they're just trying to get you integrated into adult society. That's just how it is...
But beyond that, there's a lot going on. Some schools are trying to get MORE done than just that. They might be trying to teach performing arts, or liberal arts foundation, or military discipline, or whatever else...
But the one thing that all schools are trying to do, the one common function, is to prepare kids to live in adult society.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure that I don't really want to jump into this tangent. We can generally agree to disagree.
My opinion is that the one common function is that it keeps some kids busy, and tries to do so with the rest as well.
I happen to think that a lot could have been done to prevent girls being pushed down stairs and being hit in the face with water bottles.
I dunno, I don't.
Kids are not without cunning, they're just immature. They're good at doing things and not getting caught. It's pretty much their primary skillset, really.
I find the tone of all these articles to be a bit ridiculous. "Oh! They hit her in the FACE with a WATER BOTTLE! WHY DID NOBODY STEP IN!!!!!!ONE!!!" Because it happens ALL THE TIME.
I mean, we all went to high school. We all saw kids get beat up. Even though this is not a good thing, a lot of it is fine. I can recall guys who essentially "wanted" to get bullied, so that they could show their peers that they were tough. I had friends who started things with older kids, got smacked around, then the younger guys all respected him more for being "tough" or whatever.
Girls brawl too. People brawl. It's whatever. It doesn't mean a suicide is on the way.
that is fething crazy, and criminally so.
Meh, sorta. I mean, yes, you're not allowed to punch somebody in the face. That's illegal.
But, at the same time, it's not. People do it ALL the time, and nothing comes of it. In general, I think we've become an excessively litigious society. If somebody gets punched a couple times, it's really not a big deal. Nobody needs to go to jail over it.
If you walk up to somebody and break their jaw for no good reason, ok, let's have an assault charge.
But if two people just sorta flail around, maybe somebody gets a swollen lip, especially if they BOTH wanted in on it, then why does that need to be illegal? Two people scrapped, not a problem.
Pushing a girl down some stairs... I dunno, I'd have to see it happen. It could be horrifying, it could be minor. If she falls down a flight of 25 concrete steps, cartwheeling all the way, that's pretty egregious. If she just sorta slips down 2 or 3 and bruises her elbow, then whatever. It's not criminal.
I feel that the bullies are often in need of their own help.
Certainly possible, but I dunno... We've got some disagreements here.
You seem to think it's a small number of people, I tend to think it's basically "everyone." If it's a small number of people, yes, intervention makes a lot more sense. It's both more practical, and also more likely that the people actually need help.
For me it comes down to impact...
Is working with the bullies going to do much? I don't really think so. I think most of these people will eventually just grow out of it, and move on with life, and be normal, if slightly less empathic than average. They don't really NEED any help, they're just the run-of-the-mill human failings that the victims are beating their heads against. You don't really need to do anything for them.
Look at these victims...
There's a kid that's obviously gay, obviously denying it publicly, and obviously has idiot friends/parents who say "oh, he's not gay, he said so, I'm totally supporting him by helping him hold the closet door shut." I don't care how nice you are to him, or how good your intentions are. His own PARENTS are probably the primary reason he killed himself, and they LOVE the kid. How nice can we teach bullies to be, if his own parents weren't nice enough?
Similarly we've got a girl with a thick accent, which means she didn't grow up here, which means she's been thrust into a totally unfamilliar society, probably with a language barrier, right at the point in her life when she's most fragile and impressionable. That's why she had problems.
Plus, when you're a kid, you're just STUPID. You don't know what's going on, you don't know what you're feeling, you don't know why you're doing the things you're doing.
There was a girl I went to school with, who moved over from Russia. She took a liking to me, but because I was a kid, and was vaguely aware that she was different, and not cool, I was basically just mean to her. Since pretty much everyone was mean to her, I guess she didn't see me as being any meaner. Or maybe she knew I was flirting with her, whcih may have been what I was doing, but I was too stupid to really know. I had no idea why I wanted to be mean to her, it just was what I came up with at the time.
Later on, maybe age 16 or 17, she asks me to prom. I had a girlfriend at the time, so I said no, but was totally put off by the idea. "Ugh, no, you're the weird Russian girl!" I was totally psyched to get out of it.
Then, maybe five years later, I run into her. I've grown up enough by that point to actually perceive reality, and I realize this girl is beautiful. In fact, she had worked as a model for a few years after high school. So I go over to her apartment (which she shares with her fiancee) and I learn about how she's a successful professional, very classy gal. She also basically informs me that she was asking me to prom in order to [edit edit edit], and she had to ask some other kid instead, and he was very bad at [edit edit edit].
So, basically, I was a kid, I was presented with a beautiful girl who wanted to [edit] me, and all I could really come up with was to be mean to her, and think she was ridiculous because she was Russian.
Kids are stupid. You're not going to talk to sense into them. All you can do is figure out which ones REALLY need help, and try to give it to them. The other ones are just sorta churning and flailing around, being mean to anything they don't understand, because it's literally the best they can come up with. You just need to shelter the fragile ones from that reality, because no amount of sensitivity training is going to make a teenage clod less of a teenage clod.
Well now days parents tell you to tell a teacher or the principal what the hell is that going to do? nothing drive more kids to pull off columbine stuff or kill them selves. Screw that take things into your own hands beat that bullies arse one time guarunteed he will never mess with you again kick in the nuts something kids are such pussies these days its BS teach your kids self defense but these kids offing themselves is natural selection they clearly couldnt survive the bully being the one more fit does its the weeding out process if our fore fathers bowed to the bullies of their time aka great britain we wouldnt have this country
Yes my grammar is horrible I'm stuck with a comp that doesnt auto correct for me sorry. I'm not from Austin I just live here I was born and raised somewhere completly different. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion you might not like mine, but maybe just maybe if we taught our children self defense and I'm not talking about just walking up to someone and kicking butt. If your being picked on by a bully try and tell a Teacher or the Principal see if that works they wont do anything. I learned this first hand I was bullied for six months my second grade year and I got tired of not doing anything back, so I stood up to my bully and beat the crap out of him one day and nobody messed with me ever again now a kick in the nads is a low blow... but if thats what it takes for some kids by all means but I'm not telling people to teach their kids self defense so they become bullies themselves stand up for yourself if you dont nobody will. But it is true the kids who killed themselves thats sad very sad but they were the weakest link and they let the bully win and he continues to live and bully others while they are now 6 feet under I should have written out my first post better
BloodDrop101X wrote:Yes my grammar is horrible I'm stuck with a comp that doesnt auto correct for me sorry.
I know its a radical solution but you could actually correct yourself, rather than relying on a computer to do so.
Not to be too snarky but this is primarily a sight-orientated experience right here on these forums; poorly formatted, spelt and grammatically flawed posts tend to be ignored and / or flamed.
TheBlackVanguard wrote:I was bullied because I came from a ho dunk, redneck, small town, and I had long hair and listened to metal. If you didn't play sports at my school you had to dress like a cowboy and listen to country or nobody liked you and you became an outcast.
How did I fix it? I pulled a knife on the first kid to really try to physically bully me (He tried to hit me with his truck once when I was crossing the street in front of school) after that I was left alone, much like many of the stories given here.
What does this say? Either parents, kids, or teachers, need to Man Up and quit caring about being PC and address the real issues.
That being said for someone to commit suicide over bullying is a complete overreaction which means theres something else going on.
This guy wins. :thumsup:
I swear, what is wrong with some kids...Not you quotee
The major bully in my junior high days no longer walks, I ended up breaking his back. I am not proud of this at all however, the point is no one should have to go this far to stop a bully. Ironically this "former" bully and I are now great friends even he says that "he wishes that teachers would have stepped in and set him on the right track instead of ignoring it." There is definately no way for the victim to win, if the tell the "authorities" then they may stop things in school but not outside and are seen as a "tattletail" if they fight, they get into heaps of trouble themselves (trust me I know from experience) All if this bullying and the results are getting pretty close to another Columbine. When victims have enough there are two options, 1 kill themselves (as it truly never stops) or 2 kill the bully. This is the options most victims see as their only 2 options. the question I have is why does it have to get to this point?
Violence is the last thing I want now days but talking it out does not work anymore and teachers dont care, and if you only have to be violent once like me where it takes care of things like this for the rest of your life then do it. Something other than committing suicide my father did this its the weakest thing you can do we need our youth.
BloodDrop101X wrote:Violence is the last thing I want now days, but talking it out does not work anymore and teachers dont' care. If you only have to be violent once like me where it takes care of things like this for the rest of your life then do it. Something other than committing suicide my father did this its the weakest thing you can do we need our youth.
..I am going to try and understand what you said here. And yes, please. Learn some grammar...my mind hurts trying to read these posts and turn them into proper English. It's really quite sad if you can't type in proper grammar without Word giving you a little squiggly green line telling you what's wrong.
But in laymans terms you've been saying:
1) Bringing it up with teachers and other authority figures doesn't work.
2) Violence should be the response when faced with violence.
3) Suicide is weakness, and those who commit suicide are weeding themselves out of the genetic code.
Hopefully this makes it easier for later posters responding to you, but onto my own .02 cents. It may just be because I spent my school boy years in relatively high end and sheltered Silicon Valley private schools, where the worst thing that happened ever was kids boinking in the bathroom or cracking some pipes, but in my experience any reasonable authority figure has been a good ally when it comes to bullying. Don't go running to a teacher or principal you don't know, because they are no doubt the type who would brush you off to make their own lives easier for themselves. Go to a teacher you know. They might actually see you as more than Student #1823, and care about what's happening as such.
Violence is, of course, a last case resort. I'm all for kid's defending themselves with their fists if they have to, and I dislike how the trend seems to be towards eschewing violence all together as a possible solution. I mean....this really isn't something where we can cast a blanket judgment down at all, can it? The term 'bullying' itself is hard to define, and some of the things that could be consider bullying could just as easily be teasing jokes between two close friends. The only way to judge the validity of a violent response is on a case by case basis, which is hard to do, especially with educational systems dealing with thin funds as is.
I'm really trying here guys I have dyslexia really bad, so typing or writting anything for me is hard and I need the help of the auto-correct stuff it really helps. I'm sorry I have such bad grammar. I really didnt mean to be such a jackarse about this its really saddening that these kids took their lives, we really need to do something about situations like this. Unfortunately violence sometimes is needed but only in dire situations like this.
Kids are not without cunning, they're just immature. They're good at doing things and not getting caught. It's pretty much their primary skillset, really.
I find the tone of all these articles to be a bit ridiculous. "Oh! They hit her in the FACE with a WATER BOTTLE! WHY DID NOBODY STEP IN!!!!!!ONE!!!" Because it happens ALL THE TIME.
It shouldn't happen all the time as that is clearly assault. I would argue that it doesn't actually happen all the time, because most kids are simply not that malicious.
I'm walking down the street and I see a guy who is speaking in a foreign language. I throw a water bottle and hit him in the face. That action would make me a fething criminal.
You can talk about how kids can't be held responsible for their actions, but this story occurred in a high school. I can stretch your argument pretty damn far unless you clarify what is not okay to throw. Does it have to be soda can before it is dangerous? We ain't talking about spitwads, man.
I mean, we all went to high school. We all saw kids get beat up. Even though this is not a good thing, a lot of it is fine. I can recall guys who essentially "wanted" to get bullied, so that they could show their peers that they were tough. I had friends who started things with older kids, got smacked around, then the younger guys all respected him more for being "tough" or whatever.
Girls brawl too. People brawl. It's whatever. It doesn't mean a suicide is on the way.
Suicide is usually the last thing a kid would think about in those types of situations. That still doesn't make any of this okay. You can call it normal, but I can call a lot of things normal while pointing at the other kids. BUT LOOK WHAT THEY DID! THIS ISN'T FAIR!
Meh, sorta. I mean, yes, you're not allowed to punch somebody in the face. That's illegal.
But, at the same time, it's not. People do it ALL the time, and nothing comes of it. In general, I think we've become an excessively litigious society. If somebody gets punched a couple times, it's really not a big deal. Nobody needs to go to jail over it.
This is not what we are discussing. No one was punched in the face, and if they were the administration should have treated them as they treated the kid who tried to help out pink-shirt guy. He punched a bully in the face and was suspended for it. No possible reprimand? Fething nonsense. It shouldn't be regarded as okay because you consider it normal. A lot of people consider a lot of different things normal. Most of those things don't involve physical assault. It isn't normal to talk to plants, but it also isn't criminal.
We can talk about what 'normal' really means, but meh.
If you walk up to somebody and break their jaw for no good reason, ok, let's have an assault charge.
Definitely.
But if two people just sorta flail around, maybe somebody gets a swollen lip, especially if they BOTH wanted in on it, then why does that need to be illegal? Two people scrapped, not a problem.
That is not what we are discussing here. There was no brawl. A teenage girl was pushed down stairs and hit in the face with a water bottle. I see no reason that you wouldn't care unless you simply don't empathize with people in her situation. Saying it is normal is not an excuse, and going off on tangents about fist-fights isn't either. There was no two to tango here; a girl was pushed down a set of stairs.
Pushing a girl down some stairs... I dunno, I'd have to see it happen. It could be horrifying, it could be minor. If she falls down a flight of 25 concrete steps, cartwheeling all the way, that's pretty egregious. If she just sorta slips down 2 or 3 and bruises her elbow, then whatever. It's not criminal.
I draw the line at pushing people down any length of stairs. People don't have to break their neck for it to be criminal.
Did you know that if you hit your head on concrete after falling down two stairs, NOT EVEN THREE, that it can actually split open?
'If she sorta slips... and bruises her elbow'. I mean really man, who in the feth are you kidding here? Oh, sorry mate, pushed you down a few stairs but you actually just slipped and it doesn't matter because you bruised your elbow. Wrong. That is the kind of ridiculous excuse that hit and run drivers use.
Certainly possible, but I dunno... We've got some disagreements here.
You seem to think it's a small number of people, I tend to think it's basically "everyone." If it's a small number of people, yes, intervention makes a lot more sense. It's both more practical, and also more likely that the people actually need help.
I definitely disagree here. When it comes to the criminal actions that I am discussing it IS usually one or two people. While the mental abuse some kids may suffer could trigger serious mental instability it usually takes a moron trying to physically injure them to get the point across. That moron was the kid who PUSHED her down the stairs. She didn't 'actually just slip', chances are she was pushed.
For me it comes down to impact...
There was a sickening cracking sound a few feet away. It was followed by a bloodcurdling scream. Blood poured out of the girls head while kids surrounded to point and stare.
The police and ambulance arrive shortly after. "Whoever did this is going to face serious consequences", said the principal as he ran through the front doors of the school.
Is working with the bullies going to do much? I don't really think so. I think most of these people will eventually just grow out of it, and move on with life, and be normal, if slightly less empathic than average. They don't really NEED any help, they're just the run-of-the-mill human failings that the victims are beating their heads against. You don't really need to do anything for them.
You fail to understand what I mean when I say support. That can take many forms and is often not happy-go-lucky fun time dance routine #2.
And no, it is usually not the target that chooses their bully.
Look at these victims...
How about we stop doing that, eh? I am a bit tired of your suggestions on this part. They are in many cases a bit disrespectful. Don't get me wrong I joked with you about something I probably shouldn't have, but I do not agree that we need to focus on the bullies targets. I have made my opinion relatively clear, and I am quite sure as you are that we just disagree on a few things.
Due to the complex nature of this problem I feel that the best option is to focus on helping the bullies targets (who are not always victims, and sometimes violently reactionary) while at the same time recognizing that there are ways to help kids deal with their malice and anger. I'm saying that both need help and both can get it.
BTW, Straight men can wear pink and call out for attention. They are usually called hipsters. I get your argument on this point, but I don't really agree with you all that much. I find your conclusions to be presumptuous.
So, basically, I was a kid, I was presented with a beautiful girl who wanted to [edit] me, and all I could really come up with was to be mean to her, and think she was ridiculous because she was Russian.
That sucks. I do not mean this as a personal attack but most teenage boys would jump on that like oil in a frying pan.
Moral of the story, don't be mean to hot chicks when they are trying to [edit] you. Hmm... [edit] sounds a bit violent in this context. Yeesh.
Oh yeah baby, [edit] me all night. LOL.
Kids are stupid. You're not going to talk to sense into them. All you can do is figure out which ones REALLY need help, and try to give it to them. The other ones are just sorta churning and flailing around, being mean to anything they don't understand, because it's literally the best they can come up with. You just need to shelter the fragile ones from that reality, because no amount of sensitivity training is going to make a teenage clod less of a teenage clod.
Who said anything about sensitivity training? I am saying that support needs to be offered, and in many cases the support for students that harass other students physically should often be suspension or expulsion. In my experience this is not a new idea. Unfortunately there are circumstances where the worst cases are left to their own devices until they do something like pushing people down stairs. I say support, because I consider protecting the kid from their own malice by seperating them from other children a relatively good idea. In that time where the dangerous bully is suspended or kicked out of the school they can go to a shrink and talk about why they push people down stairs. Giving the opportunity to get support is support in itself. Perhaps in an abstract way, but I do consider this an issue of helping the bully so that in most cases those kids recognize that pushing people down stairs IS FETHING CRIMINAL. Do not pass go, do not collect 200$.
I assume if the faculty experienced the same form of assault they would just stand up, laugh jovially, pat the kid on the head, and say "You're lucky that I just bruised my elbow, but because that was all that happened I'll let you enjoy the rest of your day. Don't go pushing anyone else down stairs, ya hear!" And then then walk away continuing to laugh jovially.
It shouldn't happen all the time as that is clearly assault.
Well, it's a tangent, but as I said before, I don't think we need to criminalize minor physical violence. Smacking somebody in the face with a water bottle is unpleasant, but it's also not going to result in real injury. Shoving somebody down some stairs is different, I understand, but I'm just trying to register an objection to your stance on "assault." I think you're being overly sensitive, both in terms of practicality, and in terms of how the law is actually enforced.
These things are about moderation and nuance, and picking the right response to a difficult situation. You've climbed up onto the moral highground, and you're casting lightning bolts of judgement. "Assault!" "CRIMINAL!" "EXPULSION!"
It's unhelpful. I know you feel righteous indignation that people were bullied, but it's not helpful. Have some restraint. There's a difference between smacking somebody with a water bottle, and shoving somebody down a flight of concrete steps. When you label it all as "CRIMINAL" you lose the ability to make considered decisions.
As I described earlier, I shoved and slapped a special ed kid in grade school. A teacher pulled me aside and said "don't" and I realized I shouldn't, and I stopped. In your world, I go get booked, and I probably come out pissed off, and looking to take it out on that same kid.
There's a lot to be gained by being 'cool' to a kid. I got caught doing something wrong, and I knew it. The teacher could have thrown the book at me, but he didn't. He just said "don't do that." I realized he was being cool to me, it made me respect him and his judgement, and it helped me process the fact that I was being uncool. Problem solved.
You're not solving problems, you're just living out vigilante wet dreams. It's not helpful.
You can talk about how kids can't be held responsible for their actions, but this story occurred in a high school.
I didn't say this. Kids can and should be held responsible for their actions.
All I'm saying is that smacking somebody in the face isn't some great responsibility. It stings for a few seconds, it's over. It's not "assault." The only way it becomes "assault" is if the victim presses the issue with the police, which they shouldn't do. There are better ways to solve it, and two wrongs won't make things right.
That still doesn't make any of this okay. You can call it normal, but I can call a lot of things normal while pointing at the other kids.
I'm not saying it's ok, I'm saying that it's not something that needs to be addressed in the work of preventing suicide. That's what we're talking about, preventing suicide. You're saying that somebody needs to step in when physical violence occurs, then we'd not have these suicides. I'm saying that that solution won't work, because kids are good at hiding their violence, and even when they don't, it's generally irrelevant scuffling.
It shouldn't be regarded as okay because you consider it normal.
I feel like you've got a "normalcy" chip on your shoulder. You seem to see a lot of what I'm saying as an appeal to conform, and you seem to think that's a very bad thing. I promise, though, I'm not telling you how to act, and I'm certainly not telling you that you have to act a certain way so you can be "normal."
What I'm talking about is practicality. I'm not saying it's ok to punch somebody in the face. I'm saying it's so commonplace, that if we punished it every time it happened, we'd have 50% of the teenage male population in jail for assault. That's not a useful way to run a society.
I mean really man, who in the feth are you kidding here?
I'm not kidding anyone. I'm saying I wasn't there. I didn't see these stairs, I didn't see the push. All I know is that the event is being discussed in the same context as getting smacked with a water bottle, which is trivial. People don't usually say "well, they stabbed him 15 times with an ice pick, and then also gave him a purple nurple." The nurple doesn't even register.
These articles are all about sensationalizing bullying. They're trying to make it bigger, more evil, and more dramatic than it is, precisely because it strikes a chord with readers like you. I'm taking their sensationalism with a grain of salt.
I didn't see the stairs, I didn't see the push. It might have been awful. Or, it might have been reasonable for the pusher to assume that he was doing nothing more than scaring the girl. I wasn't there.
All I'm trying to do is point out what we know, and what we don't know. You seem to think you KNOW that this stair pushing incident was an act of criminal malice. You don't know that. I'm not saying it wasn't. I'm just saying you don't know. If you think it's a safe assumption to make, go for it.
But, as I've said already, as you make those assumptions, you seem to have a lot of righteous indignation built up over this stuff, which is causing you to get very draconian in your legal judgements. You're making minor slights into assault charges in a way that's impractical an unhelpful. Don't confuse emotion and outrage with wisdom and judgement.
I do not agree that we need to focus on the bullies targets.
Well, then you're wrong.
A healthy, well adjusted person will not kill themselves. They will not kill themselves even after extensive bullying.
The core reason these kids killed themselves was NOT the bullying. It was because they were fundamentally unhappy, and nobody saw it, nobody stepped up to help them in the way they needed help.
Honestly, that's why I find these articles so infuriating, and I take such a strong stance against the arguments you're making. Your whole agenda is to criminalize the actions of the bullies, demonize them in the strongest terms possible, punish them for their misdeeds. It's romantic cinematic justice, but it's not useful.
The real issue here is that kids with emotional problems are not being helped. Take the gay kid. He's gay, he's closeted, nobody is helping him understand himself, understand his feelings, help him get to where he needs to be. They're just keeping him in the closet, assuring one another he's not gay, he's just TOTALLY gay. Then he can't take it anymore and kills himself. Instead of asking how they let him down, his friends and family look for somebody to blame. It was the bullies!
No. It wasn't. It was the cowardice of his friends, family and teachers.
You're repeating it. You're doing the exact same thing that killed the kid. He doesn't want you to accept his wearing pink. He wants you to accept him being GAY. What do you say? "Sounds to me like he's a mack, he's not gay at all!" That's NOT helping him. That's killing him. Everyone patted themselves on the back for accepting the zany quirks of the odd, but TOTALLY not gay kid. We're all so open minded and tolerant! And he's dead. Good job.
You're so hung up on being nonjudgemental that you're incapable of good judgement. If a kid wears pink, sings soprano, and says he's not gay, THAT DOESN'T ADD UP. Somebody needs to step up and recongize that the kid isn't processing things correctly, and needs some assistance working it out.
As they say, "don't be so open-minded that your brain falls out." Your brain has fallen out, and tumbled down a flight of stairs.
zarathos wrote:The major bully in my junior high days no longer walks, I ended up breaking his back. I am not proud of this at all however, the point is no one should have to go this far to stop a bully. Ironically this "former" bully and I are now great friends even he says that "he wishes that teachers would have stepped in and set him on the right track instead of ignoring it." There is definately no way for the victim to win, if the tell the "authorities" then they may stop things in school but not outside and are seen as a "tattletail" if they fight, they get into heaps of trouble themselves (trust me I know from experience) All if this bullying and the results are getting pretty close to another Columbine. When victims have enough there are two options, 1 kill themselves (as it truly never stops) or 2 kill the bully. This is the options most victims see as their only 2 options. the question I have is why does it have to get to this point?
QFT , i think many people just simply fail to realize how brutal bullying activities can get simply because they only seen the light cases.
avantgarde wrote:I agree that kids these day are a bunch of molly coddled flour bags. I mean they can't even stand up to a little physical or psychological harassment. You know what the problem is? Parents aren't beating their children enough, that's what's making them soft. If parents would just apply the belt a little more that'd tough 'em and make them a fine soldier in the fight against communism.
I see what you did there.
I don't.
Agree with avantgarde though. I'm going to raise my kids to be motorcycle bikers. Give them a leather jacket, a Zippo, a wallet and a pocket knife for every birthday until they're ten. At 18, I'll buy them each a Harley. No drugs though. Drugs gets their hog taken away for a month. No haircuts either. I'll force them to have hair as beautiful as mine and consequently, Dave Mustaine.
Oh..Well, If I have a girl....Actually, the same thing. except she'd get leather pants too.
What was I talking about
Ah yes, my point: Kids need to learn how to deal with conflict at an early age, but not too much so they get crazy when they're older. Stop cuddling with your son and punch him in the face. Then force him to kick your ass. That makes a cool kid
It shouldn't happen all the time as that is clearly assault.
These things are about moderation and nuance, and picking the right response to a difficult situation. You've climbed up onto the moral highground, and you're casting lightning bolts of judgement. "Assault!" "CRIMINAL!" "EXPULSION!"
No I'm not. Apologies if I have misinterpreted your opinion, but that is certainly not what I am suggesting.
You're not solving problems, you're just living out vigilante wet dreams. It's not helpful.
We're talking past each other and this has officially become a waste of time.
All I'm saying is that smacking somebody in the face isn't some great responsibility. It stings for a few seconds, it's over. It's not "assault." The only way it becomes "assault" is if the victim presses the issue with the police, which they shouldn't do. There are better ways to solve it, and two wrongs won't make things right.
I disagree. I can ignore a person, but when they physically assault me my options are very limited. This holds true for a student as well.
You're saying that somebody needs to step in when physical violence occurs, then we'd not have these suicides
No I'm not. Offer support to both sides, and if the bullying side is in fact the entire school as you suggest, make it entirely clear that violence is not acceptable.
What I'm talking about is practicality. I'm not saying it's ok to punch somebody in the face. I'm saying it's so commonplace, that if we punished it every time it happened, we'd have 50% of the teenage male population in jail for assault. That's not a useful way to run a society.
How common place? Anyway, you're stretching my argument to the extreme. I haven't suggested that.
I'm not kidding anyone. I'm saying I wasn't there. I didn't see these stairs, I didn't see the push. All I know is that the event is being discussed in the same context as getting smacked with a water bottle, which is trivial. People don't usually say "well, they stabbed him 15 times with an ice pick, and then also gave him a purple nurple." The nurple doesn't even register.
Pushing a girl down some stairs... I dunno, I'd have to see it happen. It could be horrifying, it could be minor. If she falls down a flight of 25 concrete steps, cartwheeling all the way, that's pretty egregious. If she just sorta slips down 2 or 3 and bruises her elbow, then whatever. It's not criminal.
I suppose I get what you're saying, but I disagree in general simply because pushing people down any set of stairs is extremely malicious. I do not believe that the action should have to seriously injure someone before it becomes criminal. I consider the attempt criminal, and I doubt that most courts would flatly disagree with me.
These articles are all about sensationalizing bullying. They're trying to make it bigger, more evil, and more dramatic than it is, precisely because it strikes a chord with readers like you. I'm taking their sensationalism with a grain of salt.
I don't see how I am stopping you from doing that. There are a lot of stories about this subject. I have personally talked to people that suffered greatly at the hands of real bullies. Not the kind of bullies that taunt you. These are the kind of bullies that ARE criminal. I do not understand how you are taking my arguments to such blatant extremes. It seems like your arguments can be seen to defend some of those criminals.
I will add, again, that I am not trying to misinterpret your statements. I could be reading too far into what you are saying, but given your other opinions I am not entirely sure that is true.
As they say, "don't be so open-minded that your brain falls out." Your brain has fallen out, and tumbled down a flight of stairs.
Okay, I will choose not to take this as an insult. Have a good day mate. I'm tired of discussing this issue with you, and I feel we disagree on many things.
I'd prefer that you would avoid bringing my character into all of this, as I have not done so in your case. Where it was unclear I have attempted to make sure that you understand I am not trying to discuss your experiences. There is a bunch of stuff going on here, and I have gak to take care of.
TheBlackVanguard wrote:I was bullied because I came from a ho dunk, redneck, small town, and I had long hair and listened to metal. If you didn't play sports at my school you had to dress like a cowboy and listen to country or nobody liked you and you became an outcast.
How did I fix it? I pulled a knife on the first kid to really try to physically bully me (He tried to hit me with his truck once when I was crossing the street in front of school) after that I was left alone, much like many of the stories given here.
What does this say? Either parents, kids, or teachers, need to Man Up and quit caring about being PC and address the real issues.
That being said for someone to commit suicide over bullying is a complete overreaction which means theres something else going on.
This guy wins. :thumsup:
I swear, what is wrong with some kids...Not you quotee
I'd prefer that you would avoid bringing my character into all of this, as I have not done so in your case.
It's not my intention to bring your character into this, at least not in a negative way.
If anything, I think you're suffering from an 'excess' of compassion or empathy. You don't have a poor character, you have a character that's SO focused on fairness, SO focused on acceptance, that I think it's actually backfiring against your own goals and ideals.
You're basically trying to be TOO nice, and TOO noble. It's not evil, it's just impractical.
For example...
You feel so badly for the victims of the bullying, that it leads you to demonize the bullies beyond what's really necessary or correct. You're willing to be unfair to people in your rush to ensure fairness.
You want so badly to give people their space, that you won't second guess anything anybody says. When the pink kid acts completely gay, but says he's not, you just take that at face value and accept it, rather than making a judgement. You're so unwilling to question others, you don't even do it when it's to their benefit.
This is really a classic problem in the west these days. We've gotten so "tolerant" that we refuse to make judgements of any kind anymore. In some cases, this is good. It allows us to be accepting of people's differences. In the case of this pink kid, it's bad. People refused to judge what he was doing to the point that it was basically just ignored. That didn't help him.
Everything is about balance. I feel like you're pushing the pendulum too far away from social control and judgement.
I'd prefer that you would avoid bringing my character into all of this, as I have not done so in your case.
It's not my intention to bring your character into this, at least not in a negative way.
I suppose I jumped to conclusions on that bit.
If anything, I think you're suffering from an 'excess' of compassion or empathy. You don't have a poor character, you have a character that's SO focused on fairness, SO focused on acceptance, that I think it's actually backfiring against your own goals and ideals.
You're basically trying to be TOO nice, and TOO noble. It's not evil, it's just impractical.
Hmm...
Well, I can agree with you in part here. I do lean towards idealism where pragmatism might work much better.
For example...
You feel so badly for the victims of the bullying, that it leads you to demonize the bullies beyond what's really necessary or correct. You're willing to be unfair to people in your rush to ensure fairness.
I don't actually feel that I have been demonizing bullies. Perhaps I was a bit muddy in my posts, though.
It is not my intention to run around screaming at people while wielding a broad brush. My opinion is that a person who has taken violent action against another person should be reprimanded in some way. Not to say that one must suspend every kid who ever shot a spitball at the teacher, because that would be a bit mental in itself. I'd like to bring in some outside information regarding all of this but I have done more than enough studying for today. I'll definitely drop what relevant information I can within the thread.
It'd be interesting to see how such actions as the a water bottle situation have been dealt with in general. I get your point in general on that. Was it empty? I am not actually sure about that. If one of my cousins were to have a full can of soda thrown at their face I would get pretty fething angry about it. If one of my cousins were to throw a can of soda at another kid I would be nearly as angry with them, but with different reactions involved.
Long story short I do not think it is unreasonable to suspend or expel a kid for pushing someone down stairs. It MAY depend on the stairs in question, but in general I can't see how such an action would merit no punishment at all. I just don't think that way. There may be circumstances where the level of reaction from authorities could be thrown into serious question. This is where I bring up my previous point about a flexible system that deals with bullying. A system designed to deal with specific circumstance.
This brings up issues of cost, but whatever.
You want so badly to give people their space, that you won't second guess anything anybody says. When the pink kid acts completely gay, but says he's not, you just take that at face value and accept it, rather than making a judgement. You're so unwilling to question others, you don't even do it when it's to their benefit.
I'm just going to disagree with you here. I have no serious grounds to base that presumption on.
As with the case of dealing with bullying on a specific basis I do not assume that each situation is the same. I can usually spot people with issues quite far off. It gets complicated when you start guessing what those issues are. In most cases I don't feel that it is my business, and in the case of a friend I would not jump to outing them. A question or two may be well placed, but it is not reasonable to assume that I know all that much about even the best of friends.
People hide stuff, and much of the time they aren't hiding what you think they are. Don't get me wrong, it is entirely possible that Mohat was gay. I really have no idea. You can have as many assumptions as you wan't. I'm not trying to stop you.
This is really a classic problem in the west these days. We've gotten so "tolerant" that we refuse to make judgements of any kind anymore. In some cases, this is good. It allows us to be accepting of people's differences. In the case of this pink kid, it's bad. People refused to judge what he was doing to the point that it was basically just ignored. That didn't help him.
Wait... People as in who? I guess you are talking about the people closest to him, but I'm not sure. It seems relatively obvious that not everyone held their judgment in reserve.
It is possible that Eric Mohat was gay. I know some very flamboyant people that may be a more sexually flexible than I am, but I do not assume they are homosexual because of it.
You are talking about a very in-depth tangent that I really don't have the time to discuss for quite a while. Realize that I do not actually think you are 100% wrong in some of your assumptions, but you would have to explain your position a bit more before I could agree. You can be seen as correct in some ways, but incorrect in others. Your position seems a bit convoluted, and I don't mean that negatively.
Everything is about balance. I feel like you're pushing the pendulum too far away from social control and judgement.
With balance comes the recognition that a scale is often tipped to one side over another. There are few scales that actually balance perfectly, and in many ways there aren't any social constructs that actually balance out like that at all.
Perhaps my position is a bit idealistic. Overall, sometimes I feel that one has to push much harder than you would think necessary to achieve your goals in their entirety. There is a point where I would not want further force to be applied. It does get a bit silly after a while. This is NOT that point, and I have not yet seen any argument to prove me wrong. You do bring up some interesting issues. I'll definitely give you that.
Again, though, I feel that this is a delicate issue that needs to be looked at from many perspectives. Even the unreasonable perspectives should be studied to some degree. I do not consider your opinion to be all that unreasonable. My statement on this point is more about the extremes of this issue. I do not think that either of us are particularly far into one extreme or another.
My opinion is that you can offer support to bullies and their targets alike. It isn't a matter of me suggesting exactly what that would be in every situation imaginable. I just feel that in a great deal of circumstances both parties can benefit from varied forms of support, and the whole school can benefit from that as well. Not to say that every kid needs to see a therapist or anything like that. It could be a matter of every kid having the opportunity to gain support through their school, but again we are talking about systems that are in all likelihood far beyond what an average school could manage.
If a system can only effectively offer support to one group then that group should definitely be the most vulnerable children. No doubt. In some cases those children can be both the target of bullying in one environment, and the bully in another. I don't have any information to back this up, but it wouldn't surprise me if the most serious cases of bullying involved a bully of this kind. There are problems with throwing around terms like bully, though.
AbaddonFidelis wrote:sorry I had to be that guy. but there it is.
You didn't have to be that guy. You could have held your tongue. Suppose some relative of these girls are members of this site? You simply have no consideration for other people.
Don't be so emotional. I'm not in a position to help any of the people who were hurt by bullying. If I were my advice would be something to the effect of "fight back, whether you win or lose you'll be sticking up for yourself." ofcpurse bullying is a problem and i wish teachers and administrators could handle it more effectively. OP solicited opinions and he got some. That mine is offensive to your personal sensibilities is regrettable, but it is not a violation of any dakka rules. If you find these conversations so disturbing that you can't participate without losing your cool and sending me nasty PMs, maybe you shouldn't participate.
AF
If you were.... you wouldn't need to abuse your position as a mod to get your point across. Whatever man. It's your sand box. You don't have any more power than I choose to give you by..... participating. Ciao
My opinion is that a person who has taken violent action against another person should be reprimanded in some way.
I agree, it's a bad thing to be violent for no good reason. I'm merely saying that the police don't have to be involved, and words like "criminal" and "assault" aren't necessarily merited in all cases. This is what I'm calling "demonizing." It's perhaps a stretch for that word, but basically it seems as though you're trying to accentuate the negatives of the bully with these words, and I'm saying it's not always appropriate to do so.
Long story short I do not think it is unreasonable to suspend or expel a kid for pushing someone down stairs.
No question at all, could be very reasonable. But, as I said, it's really a matter of what the push was like, what the stairs were like, etc.
To me, if you mention "smack with water bottle" and "push down stairs" in the same sentence, then the push couldn't have been that bad. It'd stand on its own, otherwise.
Still, falling down stairs is dangerous. It's quite possible it was bad enough to merit suspension, expulsion, whatever.
A question or two may be well placed, but it is not reasonable to assume that I know all that much about even the best of friends.
Well, neither of us knows this kid, and we never will, because he's dead.
To me, it seems pretty obvious. Wearing pink, singing soprano, monkey named Georges... The kid is gay. Can't prove it, I realize I'm not an authority, but it seems pretty obvious.
Now, I understand, you want to be reasonable, you want to take the kid's assurances of heterosexuality in good faith, and give him the benefit of the doubt. Ok, cool. What if you could have saved his life by NOT doing that? How reasonable is it then?
Or, think about it in reverse... One day you see a guy yelling at a girl, getting in her face and calling her some really mean stuff. Based on what you've said, I'm assuming you're going to get in the middle, try to break it up, maybe "drop kick" this bully. But how do you know that girl didn't just beat up that guy's little sister? How do you know she didn't do something awful, and he's intervening just the way you now want to?
Maybe a bit contrived, but it's a WHOLE lot more likely than Mohat not being gay.
The point I make here is that you're somewhat selective in when you choose to refrain from judgement, and when you don't.
Wait... People as in who?
People as in the American mainstream.
There's an odd sort of cognitive dissonance going on with homosexuality here. It's like everyone is ok with people acting gay, but not really ok with people BEING gay. I mean, if the kid acts gay, he's gay, right? Oh, no, I wouldn't want to ACCUSE him of being gay! That'd be mean!
Why? Why is it mean to assume somebody is gay if being gay is fine?
Personally I think it's because America is, in a majority, homophobic, and is being bullied into silence on that subject by a relatively small minority of vocal activists. They're so bullied that they actually BELIEVE they're not homophobic, when at their core, they are.
My opinion is that you can offer support to bullies and their targets alike.
I agree. There are a class of people, which we've discussed, who have SERIOUS problems with cruelty, insecurity, whatever. They're acting out in ways that are desctructive to others, rather than destructive to themselves. They'd certainly be termed "bullies" and they certainly need help.
That said, I think that the GREAT majority of kids who are "bullying" are just normal kids, much in the way that the GREAT majority of victims of bullying are also normal kids. They're really all the same people, at different times, and they don't really need any special attention.
The thing is, though, the "extreme bully" mentioned above, the one that needs help... He's not likely to kill anybody. But the "extreme victim" is the most likely to kill somebody, namely themselves. That's why I think they need to be focused on more than anybody else. They're the greatest risk.
Bullying is one problem that has been around a long time. There are more school interventions in place for this than when I was a child. However, this is not the only problem to discuss. As someone expressed earlier, bullying is not the cause of the suicides. Neither is video games or heavy metal music. The media used to blame Ozzy Osbourne music for teen suicides, now they are on about the "bullying epidemic".
Sadly, teen suicide is not a new problem. The major physical changes that are going on in their bodies make teens vulnerable to depression. Their hormones are in an uproar and similar to PMS or postpartum depression. That is, teenagers are not in their "right" minds. More interventions to spot the warning signs for teen depression and suicide need to be instituted. For example, Education for parents and teachers, programs to make help readily and discreetly available, etc.
utan wrote:Bullying is one problem that has been around a long time. There are more school interventions in place for this than when I was a child. However, this is not the only problem to discuss. As someone expressed earlier, bullying is not the cause of the suicides. Neither is video games or heavy metal music. The media used to blame Ozzy Osbourne music for teen suicides, now they are on about the "bullying epidemic".
Sadly, teen suicide is not a new problem. The major physical changes that are going on in their bodies make teens vulnerable to depression. Their hormones are in an uproar and similar to PMS or postpartum depression. That is, teenagers are not in their "right" minds. More interventions to spot the warning signs for teen depression and suicide need to be instituted. For example, Education for parents and teachers, programs to make help readily and discreetly available, etc.
You have a point. The youngins are O So Moody and everything is a Big Damned Deal. they just radiate hormones.
My opinion is that a person who has taken violent action against another person should be reprimanded in some way.
I agree, it's a bad thing to be violent for no good reason. I'm merely saying that the police don't have to be involved, and words like "criminal" and "assault" aren't necessarily merited in all cases. This is what I'm calling "demonizing." It's perhaps a stretch for that word, but basically it seems as though you're trying to accentuate the negatives of the bully with these words, and I'm saying it's not always appropriate to do so.
I say criminal because I consider the actions I was talking about to be criminal. It seems that you take offense to the words even though I made clear that I do not feel the term 'bully' is a particularly specific one. Don't get me wrong though, I get what your saying here.
Don't think on it too much.
Long story short I do not think it is unreasonable to suspend or expel a kid for pushing someone down stairs.
No question at all, could be very reasonable. But, as I said, it's really a matter of what the push was like, what the stairs were like, etc.
To me, if you mention "smack with water bottle" and "push down stairs" in the same sentence, then the push couldn't have been that bad. It'd stand on its own, otherwise.
Still, falling down stairs is dangerous. It's quite possible it was bad enough to merit suspension, expulsion, whatever.
I don't entirely get your point in sentence two here... whatever, though. Dunna matter.
I'm glad you generally agree with me about people being pushed down stairs.
A question or two may be well placed, but it is not reasonable to assume that I know all that much about even the best of friends.
Well, neither of us knows this kid, and we never will, because he's dead.
To me, it seems pretty obvious. Wearing pink, singing soprano, monkey named Georges... The kid is gay. Can't prove it, I realize I'm not an authority, but it seems pretty obvious.
It may seem pretty obvious, and I have not said you're actually wrong, but it doesn't seem all that obvious to me. I have known some really out there people. Attention grabbing raving lunatics if the fancy strikes them. By your standards I assume that you think something is wrong with them. There probably is. Beyond that I really couldn't tell you what specifically is wrong, and I certainly couldn't tell you how to go about addressing those problems.
I just don't fething know. People are really complicated. A+B=C just doesn't work most of the time.
Now, I understand, you want to be reasonable, you want to take the kid's assurances of heterosexuality in good faith, and give him the benefit of the doubt. Ok, cool. What if you could have saved his life by NOT doing that? How reasonable is it then?
I said that I do not know, but did not hesitate to suggest that you could be wrong. That is all.
How do you know she didn't do something awful, and he's intervening just the way you now want to?
Is he pushing her down a set of stairs? Can I do something immediate about it, or are my options limited to calling emergency services as soon as I notice what is going on?
Maybe a bit contrived, but it's a WHOLE lot more likely than Mohat not being gay.
Yep, maybe sounds about right.
The point I make here is that you're somewhat selective in when you choose to refrain from judgement, and when you don't.
Such is the case with pretty much every person on the planet. Welcome to the club.
Wait... People as in who?
People as in the American mainstream.
Gotcha.
There's an odd sort of cognitive dissonance going on with homosexuality here. It's like everyone is ok with people acting gay, but not really ok with people BEING gay. I mean, if the kid acts gay, he's gay, right? Oh, no, I wouldn't want to ACCUSE him of being gay! That'd be mean!
Why? Why is it mean to assume somebody is gay if being gay is fine?
Beyond the case of people in what you consider to be Mohat's situation I am not entirely sure I see the problem here.
It is their decision. From what I know most people come out when they feel comfortable doing so. It is unfortunate that some people would have so much inner hatred that they would resort to killing themselves over it. I can't solve everyone's problems. I certainly support the concept of coming out, but I also understand that there are some very thorny issues surrounding the subject.
I mean, it sounds like you want to be pragmatic. I would elaborate but I want to know a bit more about what you are suggesting with the term 'accuse'.
Personally I think it's because America is, in a majority, homophobic, and is being bullied into silence on that subject by a relatively small minority of vocal activists. They're so bullied that they actually BELIEVE they're not homophobic, when at their core, they are.
What...
That was a jump. A pretty hefty one at that.
Hey, don't get me wrong, that was a pretty good hook. Makes you think at the very least. Kinda subtle too. I will tell you that I regard your statements on this point as similar to your suggestions about the existence of racism. I am not trying to stop you from having those opinions. Own them.
My opinion is that you can offer support to bullies and their targets alike.
I agree. There are a class of people, which we've discussed, who have SERIOUS problems with cruelty, insecurity, whatever. They're acting out in ways that are desctructive to others, rather than destructive to themselves. They'd certainly be termed "bullies" and they certainly need help.
That said, I think that the GREAT majority of kids who are "bullying" are just normal kids, much in the way that the GREAT majority of victims of bullying are also normal kids. They're really all the same people, at different times, and they don't really need any special attention.
I get your point on this as well. What I don't agree with about this is where many people can 'do just fine', because they would benefit greatly from receiving help. I don't want psychs pulling people out of class at random and testing them for god knows how long. It just isn't a bad idea to offer some form of support to kids who want and/or need it.
If a kid would have gone on to have their own business because they weren't bullied, is that not something we should try to support? What if the bully received support and went on to be a great father and a generally admirable citizen if they received support; is that not something we should try to support.
This may sound a bit softy-feely, but I genuinely believe you can make the world a better place by helping out those in need. I don't think that everyone wants that help, nor could they receive it if they wanted to. Some people can better themselves, and in my opinion they should be given the opportunity.
The thing is, though, the "extreme bully" mentioned above, the one that needs help... He's not likely to kill anybody. But the "extreme victim" is the most likely to kill somebody, namely themselves. That's why I think they need to be focused on more than anybody else. They're the greatest risk.
On average you may be right. I don't have any information to have any opinion beyond what I have suggested so far. I don't know how much support any given party should receive, but I do feel that all parties involved should see some part of their issues resolved. And again, I do believe that targets should receive support before bullies on most occasions.
It depends a lot on circumstance.
Yeah, you dragged me back in to this conversation and you did a pretty good job of it. I don't agree with what you have to say on some of these points, but you make interesting and pretty well composed arguments. Hopefully I have made my opinion regarding some of this clear.
By your standards I assume that you think something is wrong with them.
No... Again, it's about the kid KILLING HIMSELF. My standards is that if somebody kills themselves, then something was wrong with them.
If a kid acts totally gay, but says he's not gay, then whatever. Maybe he's not. I know people like that. If they seem generally happy with their life, then whatever they can seem how they want to seem, be how they want to be.
But then if they kill themselves, that throws up all sorts of flags. Then you have to ask what it was all about. If the person exhibits obviously conflicted behaviors, do those behaviors not predict the conflict that caused them to take their own life?
Consider: A guy gets divorced. He says he's ok, but he becomes progressively more distant and listless. Insists he's ok, just tired from work. Ok. Then he kills himself. You're telling me that you're not gonna assume, right away, that it probably was the thing with the divorce that pushed him over? "Oh, he said that wasn't an issue, must not be." No way. You think about what conflicts there were in the person's life, what stresses they were responding to. Chances are, by the time somebody is killing themselves, they've put out a LOT of signals.
I would elaborate but I want to know a bit more about what you are suggesting with the term 'accuse'.
Well, think about the previous example. If a friend just had a divorce, and seemed down, would you hesitate to ask if they were upset? Probably not. You'd think "this guy seems upset," and you'd have no problem asking them as much, and if you can help.
So why is it such a bad thing to ask somebody if they're gay? It's supposed to be fine to be gay, so why would it be upsetting to ask them? People take it as an accusation. An insult. "Are you gay?" That's literally an insult.
So, my point here is that we're at a strange place with regards to homosexuality. We're supposed to think it's totally fine, but at the same time we have to understand that asking somebody if they're gay is an insult. It doesn't make much sense.
But, notice what it's done here... You seem like a pretty concerned sort of dude. You like the idea of helping people out. I can picture you asking somebody if they're upset about their divorce, trying to help them through it. Then, along comes Mohat. He's clearly got some conflicts going on that don't add up. But you don't want to say anything, because it'd be politically incorrect to quiz somebody about being gay.
"Who CARES if he's gay, you homophobe! Leave him ALONE!" So you don't ask.
And what did political correctness do for us? It prevented a real discussion about real issues a real kid was facing.
Instead of being able to just talk through it, everyone had to pretend reality didn't exist. "Oh, he's dressing in pink, singing soprano... But he's not gay! And who am I to judge?"
That's what political correctness is all about. Denying people access to reality. It killed that kid.
That was a jump. A pretty hefty one at that.
Well, how else would you explain the fact that we as a society have decided it's ok to be gay, but also insulting to be asked if you're gay?
It just isn't a bad idea to offer some form of support to kids who want and/or need it.
Sure, that's fine. All I'm saying is that virtually ALL kids do some bullying, and virtually ALL kids get bullied. Low grade stuff. "I'm older than you," type stuff. Making fun of somebody for tripping in the lunch line. It's minor, it passes. The victim's feelings are badly hurt, but they get over it.
They don't REALLY need help with that. In many ways, it's a good experience for them to learn to absorb and process negative emotions on their own. Big part of growing up.
But, beyond those kids, there are people with genuine social disorders who are looking to be violent to others, or to themselves. Both these types need help, but the kids that are violent to themselves, I think, are a bigger risk (obviously only to themselves, though).
People tend to kill themselves when they feel alone, and like nobody can understand them.
It seems like Mohat had some friends, people who liked his style, and played into it. Those are the people rushing to his defense, saying he was a great guy, not gay.
Ok, so picture a day in his life...
He's in class, acting completely gay, because he is, and he wants it out there and for people to accept it, because it's important to human beings to be understood and accepted.
A bully comes up. "You're gay." Which is true. But the bully is saying it SPECIFICALLY to be clear that he does NOT accept it. He may as well have just said "I don't accept you." Message delivered.
But then one of Mohat's buddies rushes to his defense. "Shut up, he is NOT gay!"
What did that person just tell Mohat? They're his friend, and even THEY don't accept that he's gay. They think it's an insult to be gay, so they reject the idea as such.
So nobody accepts Mohat. Not the bullies, not his friends and family. Even people who care about him don't accept him.
It's actually the people that care about him that have to hurt the most. Some people are just dicks. They'll refuse to accept you just to hurt your feelings. People can deal with that. But when your friends and family can't accept you? There's nobody who can love you or care about you more than them. If they can't accept you, NOBODY can accept you.
By your standards I assume that you think something is wrong with them.
No... Again, it's about the kid KILLING HIMSELF. My standards is that if somebody kills themselves, then something was wrong with them.
It definitely reads like you are talking about much larger issues than this one case.
If a kid acts totally gay, but says he's not gay, then whatever. Maybe he's not. I know people like that. If they seem generally happy with their life, then whatever they can seem how they want to seem, be how they want to be.
But then if they kill themselves, that throws up all sorts of flags. Then you have to ask what it was all about. If the person exhibits obviously conflicted behaviors, do those behaviors not predict the conflict that caused them to take their own life?
Definitely. If I agree with anything you said so far this is most definitely it. I agree with you because flags are being thrown up. Really noticeable flags.
I don't actually have the experience to read those particular flags. You can call that handing my power to authority if you want. I don't feel it is, but you may given what I consider to be your general position so far.
Consider: A guy gets divorced. He says he's ok, but he becomes progressively more distant and listless. Insists he's ok, just tired from work. Ok. Then he kills himself. You're telling me that you're not gonna assume, right away, that it probably was the thing with the divorce that pushed him over? "Oh, he said that wasn't an issue, must not be." No way. You think about what conflicts there were in the person's life, what stresses they were responding to. Chances are, by the time somebody is killing themselves, they've put out a LOT of signals.
I don't actually consider that analogy to be particularly accurate. The person you bring up had a relationship that I was aware of. Interaction between themselves and another person took place. Romantic interactions took place; one could guess that they stopped taking place long before the relationship ended, but that is neither here nor there.
My point is, do you know how to step in and tell the person word for word what their flags are saying? Very few people are good at that. I am only good at it in very specific circumstances. People are fething confusing most of the time. I can read facial expressions and get an idea of what they may be thinking. Problem is, I am not trained to read emotions to the extent where I can interpret messages that people send through them; explicit messages where you can see that clearly through their defenses.
You know what people do a lot of? They read facial expressions wrong. You may know that someone is happy or sad, but I'll be good god damned if you really know why.
Now, it is important to note beyond what I have said that the situation you bring up has a lot more literalism tied to it. A man just broke from a long-term relationship that represented a very significant part of their lives. It would be less difficult, in my opinion, to say that suicide under these circumstances is easily deciphered as a clear message that all of us should be able to see. It is easier for me to agree with you on this point, but I do not feel that it ties particularly well into our current discussion.
Our current discussion covers much more subtle issues in my opinion.
I would elaborate but I want to know a bit more about what you are suggesting with the term 'accuse'.
Well, think about the previous example. If a friend just had a divorce, and seemed down, would you hesitate to ask if they were upset? Probably not. You'd think "this guy seems upset," and you'd have no problem asking them as much, and if you can help.
Makes sense, but I still disagree on the grounds of your analogy being a bit misplaced.
So why is it such a bad thing to ask somebody if they're gay? It's supposed to be fine to be gay, so why would it be upsetting to ask them? People take it as an accusation. An insult. "Are you gay?" That's literally an insult.
Yeah, I get it. Just wanted to make sure I wasn't reading you wrong.
People who are gay may not even understand what that means. Especially in the case of teenagers they may not even understand what their sexuality is.
Confusion is a bitch. I think that many people have questioned their sexuality on grounds that go far beyond distinctions of gay/straight. Most people have done so in one form or another. I would suggest that sexuality IS the driving force in our minds. It is what we think about. Not to say all you are here to do is get laid, but it definitely seems to work it's way into just about everything we do.
There is a reason so many architectural structures are sexual. We interact with those structures on a daily basis. Not to say you are inside of a giant boob, or a massive wang, but sexuality is an intrinsic part of human life.
So, my point here is that we're at a strange place with regards to homosexuality. We're supposed to think it's totally fine, but at the same time we have to understand that asking somebody if they're gay is an insult. It doesn't make much sense.
There is a lot in this statement, and where I said that in a questioning tone before, I do not do so here.
I could pick on your use of the word 'we', but it just isn't necessary. What you said here is very important.
But, notice what it's done here... You seem like a pretty concerned sort of dude. You like the idea of helping people out. I can picture you asking somebody if they're upset about their divorce, trying to help them through it. Then, along comes Mohat. He's clearly got some conflicts going on that don't add up. But you don't want to say anything, because it'd be politically incorrect to quiz somebody about being gay.
At this point I will ask you what person the divorced man was in my life. Are you talking about a close family member or a random dude on the street?
Again, I consider your analogy relatively misplaced.
"Who CARES if he's gay, you homophobe! Leave him ALONE!" So you don't ask.
I can't actually respond to this as I still disagree with your premise.
If you are correct in your assumptions then it is unfortunate people close to Mohat did not ask him those questions. To be frank, it certainly sounds like they did.
You are talking about questioning a persons sexuality. It really isn't most peoples business what a persons sexual preferences are, unless those preferences present a threat to others.
There is a harassment, and then there is trying to help a friend or a family member. It is pretty offensive that you would turn and blame the family for their child's suicide. It really didn't seem anywhere near that simple, and it usually never is. They were not necessarily responsible for the instability of their child.
And what did political correctness do for us? It prevented a real discussion about real issues a real kid was facing.
Or it didn't, and you're trying to make a political point. Accuse me of the same as much as you'd like.
Instead of being able to just talk through it, everyone had to pretend reality didn't exist. "Oh, he's dressing in pink, singing soprano... But he's not gay! And who am I to judge?"
That's what political correctness is all about. Denying people access to reality. It killed that kid.
Or it didn't, and you're trying to make a political point.
That was a jump. A pretty hefty one at that.
Well, how else would you explain the fact that we as a society have decided it's ok to be gay, but also insulting to be asked if you're gay?
You should read a bit more into the context of this issue. Asking and accusing are not the same things, and in situations involving close friends and family the whole situation shifts into an entirely new light.
In most situations I would guess that the question of sexuality pertaining to an individual, is discussed within a family or close group, and is addressed through those interactions.
Perhaps Mohat was gay, but he also had a loving family that DID talk to him about most of this in any way they could. Maybe they were not clear enough as to promote a sense of self that would override his self hatred, but I would not promote the idea that the family, and further all of us is at fault for this kids death. It is unfortunate and I wish he had received whatever help he did need.
It just isn't a bad idea to offer some form of support to kids who want and/or need it.
But, beyond those kids, there are people with genuine social disorders who are looking to be violent to others, or to themselves. Both these types need help, but the kids that are violent to themselves, I think, are a bigger risk (obviously only to themselves, though).
They are a more direct risk to themselves, and as I suggested earlier I do think that one 'bully' can present a larger risk than any target could. You could argue that by virtue of violent reaction many targets discredit that concept. I disagree.
People tend to kill themselves when they feel alone, and like nobody can understand them.
It seems like Mohat had some friends, people who liked his style, and played into it. Those are the people rushing to his defense, saying he was a great guy, not gay.
Ok, so picture a day in his life...
He's in class, acting completely gay, because he is, and he wants it out there and for people to accept it, because it's important to human beings to be understood and accepted.
A bully comes up. "You're gay." Which is true. But the bully is saying it SPECIFICALLY to be clear that he does NOT accept it. He may as well have just said "I don't accept you." Message delivered.
But then one of Mohat's buddies rushes to his defense. "Shut up, he is NOT gay!"
What did that person just tell Mohat? They're his friend, and even THEY don't accept that he's gay. They think it's an insult to be gay, so they reject the idea as such.
So nobody accepts Mohat. Not the bullies, not his friends and family. Even people who care about him don't accept him.
It's actually the people that care about him that have to hurt the most. Some people are just dicks. They'll refuse to accept you just to hurt your feelings. People can deal with that. But when your friends and family can't accept you? There's nobody who can love you or care about you more than them. If they can't accept you, NOBODY can accept you.
That conclusion is step 1 to killing yourself.
Thats... a very well thought argument, and is probably a good representation of what happened. If the kid feels that even his closest friends won't accept him thens that going to be damn near impossible to live with. They're have been various times when i've considered offing my self, but it was the fact that i had friends and family i could trust in. IF they werent there i don't know what i would've done
People tend to kill themselves when they feel alone, and like nobody can understand them.
It seems like Mohat had some friends, people who liked his style, and played into it. Those are the people rushing to his defense, saying he was a great guy, not gay.
Ok, so picture a day in his life...
He's in class, acting completely gay, because he is, and he wants it out there and for people to accept it, because it's important to human beings to be understood and accepted.
A bully comes up. "You're gay." Which is true. But the bully is saying it SPECIFICALLY to be clear that he does NOT accept it. He may as well have just said "I don't accept you." Message delivered.
But then one of Mohat's buddies rushes to his defense. "Shut up, he is NOT gay!"
What did that person just tell Mohat? They're his friend, and even THEY don't accept that he's gay. They think it's an insult to be gay, so they reject the idea as such.
So nobody accepts Mohat. Not the bullies, not his friends and family. Even people who care about him don't accept him.
It's actually the people that care about him that have to hurt the most. Some people are just dicks. They'll refuse to accept you just to hurt your feelings. People can deal with that. But when your friends and family can't accept you? There's nobody who can love you or care about you more than them. If they can't accept you, NOBODY can accept you.
That conclusion is step 1 to killing yourself.
If you are correct then it is unfortunate that Mohat ended up in such an endless lack of self.
I am not sure that is what happened, and it is still entirely possible that Mohat was just a flamboyant guy who suffered from mental illness.
He could have been gay or straight, but your argument puts an awful lot of responsibility on other kids that were close to Mohat. The guy needed help, but there is no reason to assume that any of his friends or family was capable of providing that support. It is a sad story and I do not know why he chose to kill himself. If your example can stand to help some people that is a good thing.
You're a pretty quick cat, Phryxis. Have a good one.
People tend to kill themselves when they feel alone, and like nobody can understand them.
It seems like Mohat had some friends, people who liked his style, and played into it. Those are the people rushing to his defense, saying he was a great guy, not gay.
Ok, so picture a day in his life...
He's in class, acting completely gay, because he is, and he wants it out there and for people to accept it, because it's important to human beings to be understood and accepted.
A bully comes up. "You're gay." Which is true. But the bully is saying it SPECIFICALLY to be clear that he does NOT accept it. He may as well have just said "I don't accept you." Message delivered.
But then one of Mohat's buddies rushes to his defense. "Shut up, he is NOT gay!"
What did that person just tell Mohat? They're his friend, and even THEY don't accept that he's gay. They think it's an insult to be gay, so they reject the idea as such.
So nobody accepts Mohat. Not the bullies, not his friends and family. Even people who care about him don't accept him.
It's actually the people that care about him that have to hurt the most. Some people are just dicks. They'll refuse to accept you just to hurt your feelings. People can deal with that. But when your friends and family can't accept you? There's nobody who can love you or care about you more than them. If they can't accept you, NOBODY can accept you.
That conclusion is step 1 to killing yourself.
If you are correct then it is unfortunate that Mohat ended up in such an endless lack of self.
I am not sure that is what happened, and it is still entirely possible that Mohat was just a flamboyant guy who suffered from mental illness.
He could have been gay or straight, but your argument puts an awful lot of responsibility on other kids that were close to Mohat. The guy needed help, but there is no reason to assume that any of his friends or family was capable of providing that support. It is a sad story and I do not know why he chose to kill himself. If your example can stand to help some people that is a good thing.
You're a pretty quick cat, Phryxis. Have a good one.
Many people are different than others. Young kids are more sensitive than adults and take insults more seriously (even if the bully does or doesn't mean it) As we get older we mature and take insults less seriously and endure them. We don't dwell and cry over them as young kids do. Adults get fired up and insult back, but they don't cry over insulting words.
In other words. Teens are weaker in emotion than adults.
I don't actually consider that analogy to be particularly accurate.
It's just a comparison to give context. It's not meant to be deeply accurate, it's just meant to give you a perspective to consider. Mainly I wanted you to think about how you'd feel about asking somebody if they're sad about a divorce, vs asking somebody if they're gay.
Seems to me that most people would have minimal trouble with the former, and considerable trouble with the latter... Because:
Asking and accusing are not the same things
Even an innocent question can become an accusation if it's sufficiently serious. If you just randomly said to somebody, "hey, have you ever had inappropriate sexual contact with a child," they're not just gonna say "nah," and keep watching the baseball game. They're gonna say "no, and what the hell are you even asking me that for?"
"Are you gay," is that sort of question. It implies that, to you, it's within the realm of possibility that the person is gay. If being gay was totally fine, then that wouldn't be an insult. But, really, people DON'T think it's ok, no matter how much they pretend. So if you ask, you're slightly accusing them, and even the slightest accusation is offensive to some people.
Or it didn't, and you're trying to make a political point.
I'm not really trying to make it political. I wanted a less controversial phrase than "politically correct" but there isn't one. Bottom line, there is a lot of social baggage around homosexuality, and that social baggage stilts the conversation in ways that are not helpful. That's my point, not like "Barack Obama killed this kid!!!!"
If you are correct in your assumptions then it is unfortunate people close to Mohat did not ask him those questions. To be frank, it certainly sounds like they did.
It sometimes takes more than just asking... And more than just once.
Consider:
Bully: "Hey, Mohat, you're gay!"
Mohat: "F U, Biff."
Bully: "Ha ha."
Mohat Friend: "What a jerk."
Mohat: "Totally."
Mohat Friend: "Yeah. I mean, you're not gay, right?"
Mohat: ".... Yeah, right."
Know what I'm saying?
Plus, life happens when you're least prepared. Mohat is struggling with being gay. He goes to school one day, he's READY to come out. He just wants it to come up so he can say "you know, I think I am." But it doesn't come up. Mohat is sad, but moves on.
Then it's finals, and Mohat is stressed. He's worried about his grades, he's feeling a bit beat down. One of his friends is worried he's upset about bullying, and asks, very kindly, if Mohat is gay. He wants to say he is, but he just doesn't have the energy to take that step, that day. And so on it goes. And the friend doesn't ask again, and Mohat realizes he's further trapped himself beyond the possibility of acceptance.
He could have been gay or straight, but your argument puts an awful lot of responsibility on other kids that were close to Mohat.
Depends how you define responsibility. I think, realistically, they were the only ones who had a chance to save him. So that's a pretty big responsibility. But it's not like I think poorly of them for failing to live up to it. It sounds like a tough deal.
Even an innocent question can become an accusation if it's sufficiently serious. If you just randomly said to somebody, "hey, have you ever had inappropriate sexual contact with a child," they're not just gonna say "nah," and keep watching the baseball game. They're gonna say "no, and what the hell are you even asking me that for?"
"Are you gay," is that sort of question. It implies that, to you, it's within the realm of possibility that the person is gay. If being gay was totally fine, then that wouldn't be an insult. But, really, people DON'T think it's ok, no matter how much they pretend. So if you ask, you're slightly accusing them, and even the slightest accusation is offensive to some people.
Just say some people and I really don't have an argument against this. I could ask you who you think those people are in general, but you would not be obligated in any way to provide a specific answer.
Or it didn't, and you're trying to make a political point.
I'm not really trying to make it political. I wanted a less controversial phrase than "politically correct" but there isn't one. Bottom line, there is a lot of social baggage around homosexuality, and that social baggage stilts the conversation in ways that are not helpful. That's my point, not like "Barack Obama killed this kid!!!!"
Fair enough.
If you are correct in your assumptions then it is unfortunate people close to Mohat did not ask him those questions. To be frank, it certainly sounds like they did.
It sometimes takes more than just asking... And more than just once.
Consider:
Bully: "Hey, Mohat, you're gay!"
Mohat: "F U, Biff."
Bully: "Ha ha."
Mohat Friend: "What a jerk."
Mohat: "Totally."
Mohat Friend: "Yeah. I mean, you're not gay, right?"
Mohat: ".... Yeah, right."
Know what I'm saying?
Makes sense, but I will still add that neither of us know. Mainly because I feel that this is much the same argument you presented before.
I'll add that I do not see most friends reacting in the way you lay out here. You have added that the friend is now asking after such an incident, whether they are actually gay or not. In some ways that is exactly what you seem to want them to do, although, you may not see it as a good idea that they should ask right after such an incident.
There is a bit of a contradiction here in my opinion.
Plus, life happens when you're least prepared. Mohat is struggling with being gay. He goes to school one day, he's READY to come out. He just wants it to come up so he can say "you know, I think I am." But it doesn't come up. Mohat is sad, but moves on.
Then it's finals, and Mohat is stressed. He's worried about his grades, he's feeling a bit beat down. One of his friends is worried he's upset about bullying, and asks, very kindly, if Mohat is gay. He wants to say he is, but he just doesn't have the energy to take that step, that day. And so on it goes. And the friend doesn't ask again, and Mohat realizes he's further trapped himself beyond the possibility of acceptance.
How often do you think this happens?
I would guess that people knowing they are gay while in many ways hiding it, is an issue that is much more present in our culture.
Maybe Mohat KNEW, and killed himself for reasons that still connect to his inability to be mentally stable. It would seem probable that if Mohat were in fact gay, and confused about it, what you consider to be the probable actions of those close to him triggered his suicide. I don't believe that is necessarily the case here.
You can speak of their inaction playing a big part in his mental instability, but it is no more than speculation.
He could have been gay or straight, but your argument puts an awful lot of responsibility on other kids that were close to Mohat.
Depends how you define responsibility. I think, realistically, they were the only ones who had a chance to save him. So that's a pretty big responsibility. But it's not like I think poorly of them for failing to live up to it. It sounds like a tough deal.
Were on the same chapter here. Not quite the same page, but I think we have similar concepts going on.
I don't know that what Mohat's sexual preference was. You simply take a step further and accentuate the probability of him being gay, and suffering from confusion because of it.
I don't know how most people come out of the closet. In general it would not surprise me if there was some similarities in the fact that those closest to them chose to discuss the issue. Perhaps they discussed it amongst themselves and each person asked separately, but maybe they didn't. Maybe the action of coming out of the closet is usually taken by the individual in question, when they feel they have found a good environment to do so in.
Beyond this I think that many people believe that it really is up to the person to make that decision, and they will welcome them with open arms irrespective of any distinctions. You seem to feel this is not a regular occurrence, and I happen to disagree with you at least in part. Families work in different ways, and they do not always take recognizable forms.
Where some families may respect the sexual preference of their children, others may outright deny the existence of it altogether. Further, others may decide that it is up to them to decide for the child, and that is probably for quite a few reasons, many of which I assume to be rotten ideas. Rotten in the fact that I do believe that things have changed DRASTICALLY, and while there are still problems left to address, I believe that things will continue to change for the better.
Discussing this issue in general will help promote that change.
I do have a hard time putting your opinion on this together with some of your opinions on separate issues, though.
ing bullies are morons....
This isn't 1957. People would probably not hesitate to beat the crap out of you if you bully them. I can't help but think of bullies as fat guys with short hair and hygiene problems...But I'm sure it's more diverse than that 
" I knew a kid in middle school who was bullied by one kid in particular pretty horribly, one day he had enough and got into a fight with him. He lost, but the other kid actually gave him credit for not taking anymore crap, i dont think anyone really bullied him after that.
