Schools, bullying, Facebook and legislation.

Another teen lost to suicide because of bullying

So, my homelife was really variable - sometimes wonderful, sometimes horrendous.

My school life was also variable. I loved schoolwork, enjoyed many of my teachers, and liked being challenged.

I had no friends most of the time.  I was odd, fat, initially christian fundamentalist and strange, poor, MPD, and not always hiding it well, and living in my head to cope with trauma a lot.

My best friends were from books, and starting at about 8 I wanted to be a vulcan so I wouldn't have to feel anything.

I was bullied.

JK- Gr 1 -  Her name was Elever, and she bullied me in the Christian school I went to.  When I left, she told me she didn't hate me.  I had no idea.

Grade 2 -  I went to a school I could walk to when I was 7, I was chased home by bullies, Chris and some other guy, who kept me from getting into my building, and beat me up.

Grade3-7 I was bullied by the gym teacher, and a rich girl named Heather at the gifted program I was bussed to. She and I had a rivalry, but she was clearly better, and we both knew it.

Grade 7, my one friend left, because the people in the school were jerks.

Grade 8 I got sent away (which is the subject of another post, maybe, someday), but I came back to a girl-disaster in my school, and re-friended a best friend from years ago.  We spent the year being chased to the bus, getting mooed at, and being ostracized.  The group accepted her back, but not me.  Maybe it's because I don't forgive and forget.

Grade 9 I survived on auto-pilot, with no friends, attending a "group" for students with difficult home lives - an emancipated minor, two siblings whose parents beat them, and a few others I don't remember.

Grade 10, I switched to a private boarding school - I was the wrong kind of person, not christian enough, and again everyone hated me, but I met my best gay friend who kept me alive for the next 15 years.

Grade 11 Half a year at the boarding school, I try to kill myself, and am expelled, then out to a public school, this time an Academy, so uniforms, and try to get out as fast as possible.  I join the SAC, get some credit for university.

Grade 12 - keep my head down, pass unnoticed, get out. No one hates me, and I make it out.

I used to escape onto the BBS network, and talk to people online.  I used to escape into books.  I used to escape into making friends from other schools, who didn't know the people who were hating me.  I didn't have many, but a few who didn't know what a freak I was.

If I'd had a Facebook with all the hate and rage and bile from the people who were maing my life miserable available not only during my school life, but also all the rest of the time, as well as for the entire world to see, I am not sure I would have been able to compartmentalize things well enough to avoid ending my life.

I attempted suicide once, and almost succeeded.

I self-harmed, I had eating disorders, I hated myself.

I can't imagine having available to me a public forum for other people to help me hate myself.  Especially as a teenager when I was already so incredibly vulnerable.

As a society we need to teach our youth to be better people.

The culture of difference, of "othering", of sameness and conformity, and media bombardment by imagery of perfection - these are all contributors to the issues causing bullying.

Girls gain status in social realms through possessions, boys and bullying each other.
Boys through sports, achievements, possessions including girls and money, and violence.

This is the problem.

Girls are still left with very few "legitimate" avenues of gaining status in our culture, particularly teenage culture, and bullying is one of the ways to gain status.

Achievement needs to be a way to gain peer status among girls. Whether at sports, intellectual pursuits, or other skillsets.

The commodification of "girl power has been a horrifying phenomenon, as it has eliminated the essential ideology behind the original message which was the egalitarian ideology that girls are as good as, and as valued as boys. Girls have the same innate abilities, and the same potential for achievement, and that it is possible to be a girl, and to achieve whatever one wants to, in whatever way one wants to.

The concept of "girl power" has become little more than a motif to be emblazoned with a few flowers onto a toddler t-shirt.

It is appalling.

Girl power needs to be rethought, and re-empowered as the potential for change within adolescent female community as something to create powerful social networks without status deliniation, without harmful class and race boundaries, and without the necessity of gaining power at the expense of another.

The lack of intersectional anaysis including the powerless nature of femaleness and childhood becoming adulthood leaves a gap where lives are slipping through.

Can we legislate the gap away? close a loophole? Put the lid onto the pandora's box opened by the internet's ready availability of blogs, facebook, free hosting, and all the tools available to legitimate authors, as well as those with the intent to do harm?

I don't think so.

I don't know what we can do.  Some people are suggesting work camps, harsh(er) sentencing for bullies, loss of privilege, school sanctions.

I know that when bullying was brought to the attention of the school in my case, they held a "talking circle", and the bullies promised to stop, later threatening me and the other girl with renewed violence in the event of further reporting.

In most cases, it never occurred to me to report it. Bullying was a fairly constant part of my school life, and it was easier to avoid other students than to report it or deal with them. Reporting it often exacerbated the situation, as schools are powerless to deal with violence off school grounds, and parents are reluctant to become involved in what is seen as"normal."

Perhaps in the age of Facebook, where these things are documented, there is greater accountability.