http://youtu.be/2qAvD01RD9E
http://www.StopBullyingShow.com

My life has been deeply impacted by bullying. If I wasn’t able to physically threaten, and when necessary, actively use violence against bullies at school, I don’t know that I’d be here now. In the early 90s, I was able to get away with standing up for myself by loudly blaming the teachers for not doing their jobs and defending my right to self-defense, and having a reputation as a good and smart kid. It didn’t stop the bullying, but it at least dissuaded the assholes from making it physical, most of the time at least. Nowadays there’s zero-tolerance policies towards violence, so I’d probably have been expelled for defending myself against cruelty. 

Obviously, most of the bullying and social exclusion I suffered was not physical. I can’t even begin to express all the ways that being bullied has made me a worse and less capable person, going from a fearless, joyous, creative elementary school kid to a depressed and anxiety-ridden obese kid with an eating disorder in just two years of middle school bullying. It has left me stunted in many ways that I have not been able to overcome even after many years of trying, despite having the blessings of not-inconsiderable intelligence and creativity and a supportive family. The anxiety that I learned has gotten  in the way of my success in most areas of my life, from my love life to my social life to my career, and most certainly my creative pursuits, inspiring me to not try things that I think might be beyond my talents, crippling my self esteem, leading to panic attacks before performances, eventually quitting performing altogether out of avoidance, out of fear of shame and ridicule. Substance abuse issues, years of my life spent smoking weed just to turn down the ‘giving a shit’ function. Having it be a constant struggle to be authentic with people rather than just presenting my carefully crafted amicable-and-smart public persona, and the difficulties with emotional intimacy that fakeness creates even with people that I actually have a lot in common with. 

And what if I hadn’t been bullied? Better grades, better social skills, better physical health, better mental health, better adjusted to this fucked up world? Maybe I’d have gone to Harvard like my grandfather, maybe I’d be a multi-millionaire by now. Maybe I’d be a lot more of an asshole, I don’t know. But I do know that I shouldn’t have been subjected to that kind of torture. No child should have to suffer bullying. It shapes lives, it really does.

P.S. Anyone who reads this and tells me to get over it or take responsibility for my life or whatever can kindly get fucked, thanks. I’m not sharing private shit to give you a chance to deliver a bunch of  half-baked psychobabble pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps advice. How I move forward is my business. It doesn’t change what happened to me or how I’ve processed it thus far, or the importance of moving towards a society of mutual respect.

This has been true for the whole history of humanity, yet here we are.  It was true before the xtians, the muslims and the jews.  It will be true when the fairy stories of religion are actually regarded as fairy stories by everyone.  And we’ll still be here.

Homosexual people are actually a great asset to humanity, those who say otherwise are probably busy reading their holy book and thinking of ways to enter a mythical heaven without doing the real work of being human.

I see people with holy books, I point to global violence. That is all.

The whole point of the ‘It gets better’ meme is the man, who I have a deep affection for now, said this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ax96cghOnY4   It’s a message of support.  Sometimes it’s not enough, sometimes it is.  It’s an example of the best (Joel) and the worst (the rest).  It’s a message.

My experience was the opposite, I was too skinny and male, so I was assumed to be gay and picked on for being thin.  I wasn’t gay, I’ve just been diagnosed as a probable life-long diabetic (at my ripe old age) and I spent a long time at school being very angry and frustrated.School is peer-group normality training for adulthood.  If you don’t or can’t fit in, you don’t get to mate (basic evolutionary principles) but if you join the cheer-leading team, it’s possible.  

If you don’t fit in at school, from my recollections and the rest of my life, you are not a productive member of society.  It’s a training ground; or a Gauntlet. I can’t imagine what you went through, I can’t imagine how you survived with your sanity and identity. 

I nearly killed the macho guy who picked on me so much, I nearly put him in hospital and closed part of the school (I bounced him off every single locker I could find) 

I hoped, as I got older, that this kind of stupidity was being stamped out.  It’s not.  All humans(and children) fear the ‘different, it’s up to teachers to tell kids it’s OK to be gay, or different.  BUT, if they condone it, life is, or can become, a nightmare for ‘different’ kids.

Children, kids, adolescents, even many adults, hate change or difference.  It’s human nature.  Tolerance has to be taught, it’s not a given thing.

All the best  catherinecc.

Seriously though, I’m not surprised.  I’m a SciBioMed (tried to translate for American English), and one of the only truisms I’ve ever seen on a soap was from House.  In fact, it’s the motto: people lie.

I am heart-warmed by this.

Even a decade later, every time I think of that bully, I am filled with the burning fury of pure hatred.  I haven’t even seen the kid since my junior year, but I will never, ever forget his face or how much I wanted to break it.

I feel sorry for Jamey, I wish he hadn’t killed himself.  The world is a worse place that he did.  I feel sorry for his friends and family, and I hope they don’t blame themselves for what happened.  And I want to feel sorry for the bullies.  Whatever is in their environment that has made them like that has stunted their growth and has apparently made them immune to empathy, turning them into engines of destruction.  I’d like to say that being responsible for a tragedy like this would make them reevaluate themselves, but often times it was that lack of conscience that allowed them to prey upon someone else like this to begin with.

It’s all right here: http://hausofjamey.tumblr.com/

It’s very sad but I really dislike seeing inaccuracy in reporting, especially when it seems like facts have been changed to make them seem all the more tragic.

To anyone out there who is in a similar situation: Ignore, ignore, ignore the people making your life hell. No matter how terrible they make you feel, their existence is insignificant in the grand scheme of life. School is temporary. High school parties are LAME. If you never go to a high school party you will not miss anything that one week of university life won’t give you. Popularity is unimportant, in fact when you grow up you will look back with embarrassment and laugh at how much you cared. The world is large and wonderful, don’t let shallow, ignorant people destroy your adventure in it. The best revenge you can ever get on a bully is not being affected by their abuse. They thrive on seeing the pain they seek to create, so don’t give it to them. Give them the finger and move on.

Michelle Obama is fighting against the rise in childhood obesity. Now, you can say all you like that “most [kids] will always be fat regardless of what they eat or how they exercise,” but that can hardly explain the rise, can it? Unless this genetic trait has rapidly spread across the US in the past couple decades. From the graph in my link, childhood obesity went from 4% to 16% since the 60s. So what proportion of those 16% are likely to be obese for genetic reasons?

The point is that Obama is not remotely criticizing obese kids, she is criticizing the attitudes and policies that have caused a 300% rise in the percentage of obese kids in the past four decades.

it DOES get better BUT before it does, WE ALL have to step in and assist those needing our help. gay, straight, green or orange.

If they do so in ways you don’t catch at first glance, maybe it’s because you have your own specialty, about which others might misinterpret your own best intentions.

While it’s true that teasing is nothing in the big picture to adults, to teenagers it truly is the world. It’s an imperative on the schools and parents to manage it better than this, so that we can end up with a world full of *better* adults.

I’d like to see publications like BoingBoing start covering the very specific tactics kids are using to defend themselves against bullies.

Like crossbows and poleaxes?

geekagirl — good on your teachers for taking note and executing wise action those many years ago. Most of the teachers that I know are very well tuned into the situations in their classrooms and the halls around them. Even though the educational bureaucracy may be… bureaucratic… the teachers themselves actually love those kids in the very best sense of the word, and go out of their way to see that stuff like this doesn’t happen. I know that where I live is atypical, but it *can* be done.