What I Think I Think

[Beguile's Mistress]

It's just a thread where I can post some thoughts and commentary.

National Anit-Bullying Awareness Month - Do You?

[Beguile's Mistress]

October is National Anti-Bullying Awareness Month.  I didn’t know that.  An email I received from a news feed service clued me into this and really got my head spinning.  The subject of the story is a woman who is the weather reporter on a television station and is overweight.  She received an email from a casual viewer commenting on her appearance and the fact that she is an image and role model for people who watch her.  The writer stated that she has a responsibility to improve her appearance in order to be a positive influence.

My opinion of the email and the personality’s response is a subject for another time and even though I feel both fall into the category of bullying I’ll reserve comment.

What is pecking away at me is the prevalence of bullying of all sorts in everyday life.  Service providers bully customers and customers bully service providers.  Aggressive drives use speed and their vehicles to bully other drivers and neighbors bully neighbors for all sorts of reasons.  Bullying seems to range anywhere from bad manners to blatantly violent acts and attitudes.  I examined my own life and behavior to see if I could be considered a bully and sadly I found that I could.

There are many situations where we walk a fine line between objective comment or critique and actually bad-mouthing someone.  Bad-mouthing isn’t a particularly elegant way of describing the action but I do find it highly appropriate.    We take the need to make and evaluation of someone and their performance or offer and opinion and apply the most scathing terms possible.  Doing this on our own is one thing but entering the conversation with like remarks or egging someone on to speak in the same vein appears to be all too easy.

It’s true that this is a judgment call.  We want to make sure our opinion is heard so we employ the dramatic and the colorful and the rude and unkind words.  Our excuse would be that it needs to be said and I’m sure in most cases it does but it doesn’t need to be done in harmful and hurtful ways.  I can see where I’ve done it and where I need to work on correcting that behavior.  It’s not my place to criticize others but examine your own behavior.  If the words you use to comment on someone or offer an opinion are critical, snide, sarcastic, demeaning, dismissive or something you wouldn’t say to their face you shouldn’t be saying them behind their back either.

I actually find myself feeling ashamed that I do this.

Observe National Anti-Bullying Awareness Month by looking for ways to stop your own bullying behavior.  A tree may or may not make a noise if it falls in the forest and there is no one there to hear it but we hear our own words and we know what bullying is.

[Mr Self Destruct]

October isn't National Bullying Awareness Month.  It's National Breast Cancer Awareness Month.  Taking away from the importance of a disease like cancer for what could be considered a 'social disease' is morally corrupt, in my point of view.  People don't die from bullying, unless they off themselves because of said bullying.  And let's be real...if someone feels the need to commit suicide as a means of coping with bullying, rather than sticking up for themselves and fighting back, that person's outlook on their own life and their own self worth is skewed from the start, and not solely the fault of the bully.

I hate this anti-bullying movement.  It's only another method for everyone to coddle those who don't need it.  I was bullied throughout (and when I say throughout, I mean the entirety of my middle and high school years) my youth for being overweight.  Yeah, I even was the victim of violence by schoolyard bullies.  But those beatings made me stronger.  Those words and taunts made my skin thicken.  And when enough was enough, I fought back...and slowly but surely, those bullies went away.  And I was left, stronger for my trials, and not because any kind of anti-bullying movement was trying to protect me from life.

[Beguile's Mistress]

It's interesting that you should mention the observance of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month in this thread because it so happens I've lost people to both breast cancer and bullying.  A lovely woman, the mother of three children who now live with their grandparents, died of breast cancer that went undetected and a young man was buried today who died from an overdose that he was bullied into taking.  Some girls that didn't like his sister thought they would get back at her by making her brother a drug addict; something they read about in a blog.  I was bullied in high school, too, because of my mother.

Breast cancer is something that can hopefully be cured given enough time and money and bullying is something that can be controlled given enough time and education.

Something else that I find interesting is the way people deal with challenges like being bullied as a child.  Some find understanding and peace later in their lives and seek to help others deal with the effects of bullying and the causes while others let their bitterness or other negative feelings rule them, take control of them and in the end let the bullies win.

Thank you for your comment.  I always appreciate people offering other points of view.

[Stattick]

October isn't National Bullying Awareness Month.  It's National Breast Cancer Awareness Month.  Taking away from the importance of a disease like cancer for what could be considered a 'social disease' is morally corrupt, in my point of view.  People don't die from bullying, unless they off themselves because of said bullying.  And let's be real...if someone feels the need to commit suicide as a means of coping with bullying, rather than sticking up for themselves and fighting back, that person's outlook on their own life and their own self worth is skewed from the start, and not solely the fault of the bully.

I hate this anti-bullying movement.  It's only another method for everyone to coddle those who don't need it.  I was bullied throughout (and when I say throughout, I mean the entirety of my middle and high school years) my youth for being overweight.  Yeah, I even was the victim of violence by schoolyard bullies.  But those beatings made me stronger.  Those words and taunts made my skin thicken.  And when enough was enough, I fought back...and slowly but surely, those bullies went away.  And I was left, stronger for my trials, and not because any kind of anti-bullying movement was trying to protect me from life.

You hate the anti-bullying movement? You think that bullying makes the tormented person stronger?

I knew a kid once. He was being bullied. He didn't fight back because his fundamentalist religion forbid it. He was also a hemophiliac. So that meant that every blow he suffered from the bullies left a big, nasty bruise that took forever to go away. I knew another kid. He was bullied because his legs were malformed. He had to wear leg braces and walk with crutches. I've seen developmentally disabled kids bullied. I've seen kids bullied for being openly religious. I've seen a black kid being tormented by nearly every member of his own class, because he was black and the rest of us were white. I've known of the elderly being bullied.

How you can be against the anti-bullying movement is literally beyond me. I don't think there's anything more I can say to you that wouldn't get me in trouble with the staff.

[Nadir]

I think you'd be interested in this video, BegMi. It's focused on how women attack other women in particular, but can be applied to other genders too.

GIRL ON GIRL HATE

[Callie Del Noire]

October isn't National Bullying Awareness Month.  It's National Breast Cancer Awareness Month.  Taking away from the importance of a disease like cancer for what could be considered a 'social disease' is morally corrupt, in my point of view.  People don't die from bullying, unless they off themselves because of said bullying.  And let's be real...if someone feels the need to commit suicide as a means of coping with bullying, rather than sticking up for themselves and fighting back, that person's outlook on their own life and their own self worth is skewed from the start, and not solely the fault of the bully.

I hate this anti-bullying movement.  It's only another method for everyone to coddle those who don't need it.  I was bullied throughout (and when I say throughout, I mean the entirety of my middle and high school years) my youth for being overweight.  Yeah, I even was the victim of violence by schoolyard bullies.  But those beatings made me stronger.  Those words and taunts made my skin thicken.  And when enough was enough, I fought back...and slowly but surely, those bullies went away.  And I was left, stronger for my trials, and not because any kind of anti-bullying movement was trying to protect me from life.

So, given by your logic, it's MY fault for getting bullied when I was the American kid of Scotch Prtestant decent in an Irish Catholic school and that I brought on all the beatings I deserved because I couldn't stand up to six kids at a time? My crooked nose and bad knee disagree.

I doubt I would have survived another year in that school and as it was I was very antisocial for years afterwards. I HID from contact and when we moved back to the states I continued to do so. A habit that along with a move into a rural area and three nasty years of dealing with the 'he's a fag' rumors meant I passed on a lot of things. Two proms, every school event after the first one I went (broken glasses and a bloody nose for standing up for myself). Growing 8 inches and massing up nearly 70 pounds, along with literally slamming one would be bully's head into a wall AFTER he sucker punched me (otherwise I would have been expelled) were the only reason I survived high school. Years later when I broke my hand I was shown literally dozens of boxer fractures from the fights I'd gotten in.

During all this time, there was a little voicem in my head telling me it would be easier just to go to my dad's gun cabinet, stick one of the guns in my mouth and make the pain stop. To this day I don't know how I didn't. Or how close I came to snapping one camping weekend when kids from another troop threw rocks, limbs, even tent poles at my tent for one entire night. I nearly shot one of them with my bow to make them stop (I had brought it to do a flaming arrow shot for the pagent we were doing and had it in my foot locker)

Bullying IS a problem. And thanks to the PC movement we have even fewer options to stop it now. And consider the Internet, can you image being 40 and finding images of you being shamed or beaten up DECADES after it s done?

[Beguile's Mistress]

I think you'd be interested in this video, BegMi. It's focused on how women attack other women in particular, but can be applied to other genders too.

GIRL ON GIRL HATE

Thank you!  That is a great message and I really appreciate you posting the video here. 

What I hope is that everyone could see it and apply that message to their own life and the groups they belong to.