Yet Another Topical Rant

[thessalian]

I will not stand for this

Everyone Feels This Pain
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Even if we were still in the heyday of colour-bars-for-causes, where any given friends list looked like a Life Savers display, I'd still be doing this one. I think most of the people I know could relate to this particular issue -- namely bullying.

This may sound cruel, but I think the worst thing about being the target, particularly when I was living in Bumblefuck, NJ, was that there were people who were ... well, I hesitate to say it, but better targets. A lot of kids, usually boys, would call me fat -- repeatedly, with as much invective as Good Little Suburban Yuppie Types who won't use the word 'fuck' can muster. And I was. Hell, still am. The thing was, though, that there were at least two girls in school who weren't just fat but gargantuan. I mean the kind of morbid obesity that you just know is going to kill these kids at 30 if they don't go on a diet or get their stomachs stapled or something. And yet these girls were left alone, and I was the one they picked on. Now, I don't know if the bullying was on other factors and the 'fat' thing was just an excuse, or if they actually knew what they were doing. After all, being called fat is bad enough, but being called fat when compared to the female equivalent of Lard Ass Hogan is the ultimate blow; really distorts your body image and makes the whole thing hopeless. Results were the same either way.

The other thing that seemed completely random was the physical violence. It was different when the resident bad-girl did it -- girls beating up on girls is ... well, not expected, but at least it's perceived as something like a fair fight. What I didn't get was the guys; most guys don't beat up on girls. When guys want a punching bag, they tend to pick on their own gender, but for some reason, no one in my year bothered with any of that. Instead, they just waited until gym class and then beat the living crap out of me with impunity.

It lives with you, that's the problem. All the name-calling and slights and hurtful 'practical jokes', the vandalism and outright theft, the violence ... ten years of it is going to live with you. Making peace with it is one thing; forgetting entirely is something else. And some people don't even manage to make peace with it, because some things you can't without a lot of therapy or intense efforts of will. You have to admire the people who get through it alive, at least a little.

You also have to admire the people who'll stand up, draw a line in the dust and say "no further". I like to think I did that in school; I tried, anyway. I had two male friends -- one in grade school, one in Bumblefuck -- who got picked on almost as much as I did, and while I wouldn't stand up for me at the time, I'd fight like hell for them. Then when I was fifteen, I started fighting for myself as well; there was no one else to fight for, and I had the idea by then that it was fight or die. I wasn't ready to die, so I fought -- and surprisingly, I got some respect. People looked closer at that fat kid with the weird clothes and the fucked-up taste in music because, shit, she slammed some varsity guy's head into the turf at 'touch' American football; that's new! Turned out I was interesting to them, and they kind of liked it. Took them long enough, but then, it took me long enough, too.

Anyway, the point is that I won't stand for it. If you need to grind someone into the dirt to make yourself feel big, then you deserve a good hard smack across the face and the most vituperative bitch-rant I can provide -- and that's probably enough vitriol to burn your face off. We're not in the jungle anymore, people -- diversity is what keeps us alive and on top. Destroying a valuable member of your 'pack' just because they look different is not a viable option; having someone different among you won't attract predators because we don't have any. And why? Because we supposedly embraced diversity, that's why.

*sigh* Anyway. Bullying sucks. Don't do it, or I'll kick your arse. And if that sounds like bullying ... well, I'm against bullying but I never said anything about hypocrisy.

Comments

[nadriel.livejournal.com]

Hear, hear. I was "fortunate" enough to go to a grammar school, where they prevented physical bullying. Instead I was stuck in a school with a lot of fairly bright kids with that wonderful pack mentality children show, and with them having no other bullying options than the social and mental ones. Still, I survived. And some day, I may even heal up the last few mental scars.

[aberrantangels]

Bullying sucks. Don't do it, or I'll kick your arse. And if that sounds like bullying ...

Doesn't sound like it to me. Ayn Rand, in one of the sensible observations that make so many people assume her entire philosophy must be sensible, said that force should only be used in retaliation against those who initiate it; that's all you seem to be proposing to do.