I figured this might get some disagreement, so I put a pug thing on it. I think that's the right one. 
So I saw on MSN today that Jamey Rodemeyer has committed suicide. He was one of the gay teens involved with the "It Gets Better" project, where celebrities and politicians got on camera to tell gay teenagers that bullying is bad (mmkay) and that they just need to stick in there because it gets better... they promise. What are some of the ways to deal with bullies? Fighting isn't right, violence is never the answer. Nonviolent ways are best to deal with bullies - otherwise you stoop down to their level. Right?
Wrong. I am all pissy about this backwards-ass movement so I am going on a rant about it. I'll preface this by saying that nonviolent methods are GREAT... until they don't work. Understanding, communicating, avoiding the problem, telling them to stop, running to teachers. It's fine to do those depending on the situation, but it's a load of shit to say that you should NEVER respond with attacks of your own.
It gets better. We do not need to teach our children how to fight back against bullies, we need to eliminate bullies. You cannot eliminate bullying, just as you cannot eliminate anger. The advice given to gay teenagers who are getting bullied is to "find those who care about you and stick with people you trust who like you for who you are." and "things will get better." Hope for the future.
What would you tell a teenager who was being molested to do about it - if they didn't have the police to turn to? Would you say to try to avoid fighting, because fighting is bad? To just stick in there and wait, because eventually you'll be able to move out and it will get better? To spend more time talking to teachers who care, and it doesn't matter if they see their assaulter once or twice a day... as long as they spend more time everyday with people who care.
We are telling kids that fighting against someone's attacks is wrong, whether either attack is verbal or physical. We need to get rid of aggressors, of bullies, of people who take advantage and are cruel to others. The assertion that we can rid the world of that is completely absurd. It's as absurd as saying that we can rid the world of war. It's a pipe dream - nice to imagine, but completely unrealistic.
So we're teaching children that it's wrong to fight back, and it's good to wait for things to get better. What options does this leave them? They can fight back and get in trouble and get told they're wrong, which is disempowering and negative - or - they can sit and take it and suffer and run away whenever they can, which is disempowering and negative. This sounds familiar to me... ahhh, yes. Learned helplessness.
From Wikipedia: Learned helplessness, as a technical term in animal psychology and related human psychology, means a condition of a human person or an animal in which it has learned to behave helplessly, even when the opportunity is restored for it to help itself by avoiding an unpleasant or harmful circumstance to which it has been subjected. Learned helplessness theory is the view that clinical depression and related mental illnesses may result from a perceived absence of control over the outcome of a situation.
So their will to fight against the situation has finally been beat out of them from, time and time again, being put in a situation where they are told they cannot fight when they are being attacked. What is the last option of control available someone who feels that, based on their past few YEARS of experience, their world will not change? Suicide sounds like a pretty viable answer.
I wonder if he'd ever been in a fight, and what his parents might have told him. I suppose they would have gotten upset with him and said "You need to work on getting along with other people. You need to learn how to talk to them without fighting or arguing." Such advice works poorly against bullies. Maybe they advised him to "act like you don't care, and don't show them that what they're saying hurts you." I assume he'd gotten that advice from somewhere, because he did do that. He put on a marvelous facade of being fine to everyone around him, including his parents. However, while one can lie to others... lying to one's self is much more tricky for some of us.
To his credit, Jamey's father said "They have to teach their children to stand up for themselves and their friends and stop the bullies from bullying people." This was quickly taken back by the end of the news story, where the narrator says that "Tracy and Tim think Jamey was put here to show people that being different is OK and bullying is wrong, and perhaps more of a problem than any of us realize."
Yes, exactly. That is exactly what is life showed. Oh... wait... That's not it at all, is it! If anything, the message is this: "If you are different, you will be persecuted by people. Your situation may change as the years pass, but if your PRESENT situation is unacceptable you can either choose to do nothing and suffer while waiting for externals to change, or you can do something about it now. Some of the people who choose to sit and do nothing will choose suicide over enduring."
If there's one good thing to be said about the It Gets Better movement, it would be that the message could actually help those who are suffering in ways harsher than just a mild inconvenience, just not as its originators intended. By telling those who are suffering that they should sit and remain in suffering and let their only salvation be that "the future will be different", there is a chance that some of those hearing the message will finally understand that they cannot rely on anyone to tell them how to deal with it - they'll have to figure it out for THEMSELVES. So when the gay kid gets told "Don't use physical violence against a bully who hits you for being gay, go to a teacher instead! Violence isn't the answer!" they can respond with an immediate "Fuck you" and can learn how standing up for one's self physically can get the not-affected-by-words bully (I'd say these are more common than not) to back down.
I'd change the "It Gets Better" videos to be done by The Joker from The Dark Knight and Tyler Durden of Fight Club with a mocking grin. By Mersault from The Stranger and Zarathustra via Nietzsche with a load of sarcasm. By Oscar Wilde and Alex DeLarge. Then maybe that message would carry through with a bit more of the correct context.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Pb1CaGMdWk
How awful. How wrenching and awful.
So I saw on MSN today that Jamey Rodemeyer has committed suicide. He was one of the gay teens involved with the "It Gets Better" project, where celebrities and politicians got on camera to tell gay teenagers that bullying is bad (mmkay) and that they just need to stick in there because it gets better... they promise. What are some of the ways to deal with bullies? Fighting isn't right, violence is never the answer. Nonviolent ways are best to deal with bullies - otherwise you stoop down to their level. Right?
Wrong. I am all pissy about this backwards-ass movement so I am going on a rant about it. I'll preface this by saying that nonviolent methods are GREAT... until they don't work. Understanding, communicating, avoiding the problem, telling them to stop, running to teachers. It's fine to do those depending on the situation, but it's a load of shit to say that you should NEVER respond with attacks of your own.
It gets better. We do not need to teach our children how to fight back against bullies, we need to eliminate bullies. You cannot eliminate bullying, just as you cannot eliminate anger. The advice given to gay teenagers who are getting bullied is to "find those who care about you and stick with people you trust who like you for who you are." and "things will get better." Hope for the future.
What would you tell a teenager who was being molested to do about it - if they didn't have the police to turn to? Would you say to try to avoid fighting, because fighting is bad? To just stick in there and wait, because eventually you'll be able to move out and it will get better? To spend more time talking to teachers who care, and it doesn't matter if they see their assaulter once or twice a day... as long as they spend more time everyday with people who care.
We are telling kids that fighting against someone's attacks is wrong, whether either attack is verbal or physical. We need to get rid of aggressors, of bullies, of people who take advantage and are cruel to others. The assertion that we can rid the world of that is completely absurd. It's as absurd as saying that we can rid the world of war. It's a pipe dream - nice to imagine, but completely unrealistic.
So we're teaching children that it's wrong to fight back, and it's good to wait for things to get better. What options does this leave them? They can fight back and get in trouble and get told they're wrong, which is disempowering and negative - or - they can sit and take it and suffer and run away whenever they can, which is disempowering and negative. This sounds familiar to me... ahhh, yes. Learned helplessness.
From Wikipedia: Learned helplessness, as a technical term in animal psychology and related human psychology, means a condition of a human person or an animal in which it has learned to behave helplessly, even when the opportunity is restored for it to help itself by avoiding an unpleasant or harmful circumstance to which it has been subjected. Learned helplessness theory is the view that clinical depression and related mental illnesses may result from a perceived absence of control over the outcome of a situation.
So their will to fight against the situation has finally been beat out of them from, time and time again, being put in a situation where they are told they cannot fight when they are being attacked. What is the last option of control available someone who feels that, based on their past few YEARS of experience, their world will not change? Suicide sounds like a pretty viable answer.
I wonder if he'd ever been in a fight, and what his parents might have told him. I suppose they would have gotten upset with him and said "You need to work on getting along with other people. You need to learn how to talk to them without fighting or arguing." Such advice works poorly against bullies. Maybe they advised him to "act like you don't care, and don't show them that what they're saying hurts you." I assume he'd gotten that advice from somewhere, because he did do that. He put on a marvelous facade of being fine to everyone around him, including his parents. However, while one can lie to others... lying to one's self is much more tricky for some of us.
To his credit, Jamey's father said "They have to teach their children to stand up for themselves and their friends and stop the bullies from bullying people." This was quickly taken back by the end of the news story, where the narrator says that "Tracy and Tim think Jamey was put here to show people that being different is OK and bullying is wrong, and perhaps more of a problem than any of us realize."
Yes, exactly. That is exactly what is life showed. Oh... wait... That's not it at all, is it! If anything, the message is this: "If you are different, you will be persecuted by people. Your situation may change as the years pass, but if your PRESENT situation is unacceptable you can either choose to do nothing and suffer while waiting for externals to change, or you can do something about it now. Some of the people who choose to sit and do nothing will choose suicide over enduring."
If there's one good thing to be said about the It Gets Better movement, it would be that the message could actually help those who are suffering in ways harsher than just a mild inconvenience, just not as its originators intended. By telling those who are suffering that they should sit and remain in suffering and let their only salvation be that "the future will be different", there is a chance that some of those hearing the message will finally understand that they cannot rely on anyone to tell them how to deal with it - they'll have to figure it out for THEMSELVES. So when the gay kid gets told "Don't use physical violence against a bully who hits you for being gay, go to a teacher instead! Violence isn't the answer!" they can respond with an immediate "Fuck you" and can learn how standing up for one's self physically can get the not-affected-by-words bully (I'd say these are more common than not) to back down.
I'd change the "It Gets Better" videos to be done by The Joker from The Dark Knight and Tyler Durden of Fight Club with a mocking grin. By Mersault from The Stranger and Zarathustra via Nietzsche with a load of sarcasm. By Oscar Wilde and Alex DeLarge. Then maybe that message would carry through with a bit more of the correct context.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Pb1CaGMdWk
How awful. How wrenching and awful.
