My Little Pony and a young Flammer

[trish]

Indeed, early on we are discouraged from disclosing our true natures to an uncomprehending world of bigotry. I would have thought HA was a place where at least we can find some support. But no. Here we still put up with chronic masturbators telling us that we should’ve known better than to be so flamboyant when we were nine. Our mother’s should’ve have told us.

You can fucking well leave my mother out of it, asswipe.

Seems to me that mildcigar as painted a flaming red target on his back. This whole episode seems like a good occassion for the Mods to talk to him about public and private and what is appropriate in this forum and what is not. That's just Darwinism in action.

Thank you Chaos, Tapatio, thombergeron and ashlyn for your contributions.

[mildcigar_2001]

I was sharing my experience!

Here's an Idea how about I just keep my fucking mouth shut, will that work for you???

Who is real and who is the sock-puppet? Ashlyn or Thombergeron?

[thombergeron]

Sorry you got beat up and called a faggot as a kid, but I had nothing to do with that. Just imagine what would have happened to you if were prancing about with My Little Pony toys in tow.

Your heartbreaking childhood aside, my point was that this Mother and son were merely setting themselves up for even more problems. There are times and places for making stands, but 4th grade probably is not one of them.

I thought I made clear in the original post that the bullying was unfortunate but entirely predictable, and both Mother and offspring should have known better.

You're pretty fucking thick, aren't you? On the contrary, you have everything to do with kids getting bullied. You are quite clearly the problem.

Kids get bullied for liking a certain toy, or being skinny, or being fat, or having a speech impediment, or coming from the wrong family because assholes like you excuse the bullying by blaming the victims. Bullying is not "unfortunate" nor "predictable." For those of us who are not sociopaths, it's entirely unacceptable.

The fact that you went out of your way to post this story on a forum for transgressive people, and then blame the victim of the bullying, is a pretty clear indication that you get your jollies by making people uncomfortable.

The fact that you keep coming back here to insist that the victim and his mother are really the ones at fault makes you a total, unrepentant asshole.

I really hope you don't reproduce. You would make an awful parent, and the world really needs fewer people like you.

[thombergeron]

I was raised in a household where the word "faggot" was used regularly by my stepfather who had zero tolerance for little sissy boi's. I still don't know if he thought he was trying to help me or just enjoyed breaking my spirit. some of my earliest childhood memories were of me and my two sisters play; house, barbie, even dress up - it was fun!

needless to say that when you prance into the living room wearing a dress and holding your sisters hand at the same time - I learned the hard way that you will get your little fanny whipped and be grounded to your room forced to be naked the who time waiting for mom to come home. in my mind, I can still hear her laughing in the living room when my step dad told he why I was being punished.

so you learn early on in life what is and what isn't acceptable and how to hide your girly stash so that no one finds them. and how to hide your emotions, secrets and desires.

I truly hope society will one day wake up. odds are people will keep acting like Nazi's and trans people will keep becoming drug addicts to numb there emotions and conform to society.

it's fucked up, I know!

That's horrible. I'm so sorry that happened to you. I hope you take some comfort in the knowledge that your stepfather was a very unhappy person and clearly wasted his precious time on earth.

Whereas you are thriving.

[bluesoul]

Fourth graders are only as mean and shallow as their influences.

i have to say i completely disagree with this. personally i wouldn't speculate that every kid who was bullying grayson bruce was from a shallow and mean household but rather a lord of the flies group influence. humans by nature are feral. just look on this forum and you'd be hard-pressed to find a thread where people can't accept another's opinion if it's different (in fact, this very thread does just that)

so if we can't even accept one anothers differing opinions/styles etc. what makes you think these kids will? did we also come from mean and shallow influences?

as to what this kid can do. no idea. perhaps if he can explain to his tormentors why he likes my little pony in a way where they can identify with him then it's more likely they'd consider his feelings next time. but i'm no expert on child care or teaching so perhaps i'm coming from a naive place. the only thing i know is that telling them to stop bullying (or banning words like bossy) won't work. at least, it wouldn't have when i was in school

btw: glenn beck stands in solidarity with this kid, yet he's the type i'd honestly have considered as coming from "mean and shallow" influences

[trish]

humans by nature are feral.

I don't even know what you could mean by this. Typically humans do not grow up feral. They're raised by parents and usually within a community. We are social animals. The children in Lord of the Flies are just as mean as Golding could imagine children can be. They are a testament to a writer's imagination, but they are not evidence of human nature.

if we can't even accept one anothers differing opinions/styles etc. what makes you think these kids will?

This plays directly into my claim. Children can do no better than their influences. But if we do better, provide better examples and guide them responsibly, they will do better as well.

But even if we can't eliminate bullying altogether, we can't tell children to hide their identities, to be ashamed of who they are, to slink away and conform on the outside, to be untrue to their fundamental natures and die on the inside.

[mildcigar_2001]

But even if we can't eliminate bullying altogether, we can't tell children to hide their identities, to be ashamed of who they are, to slink away and conform on the outside, to be untrue to their fundamental natures and die on the inside.

It is just interesting to note who tried to bully whom on this thread and who resorted to name calling because they were uncomfortable with other's opinions.

I guess bullying is okay if you are a member of a certain group.

[AdamCaligne]

All I do is lurk, so that's why I have no posts.

The focus on bullying prevention is starting to switch towards aiding the victims instead of constantly punishing the perpetrators. By that I mean instead of punishing ten different kids who are all picking on the same kid for the same reason, they are trying to assist the one kid to either understand why he or she has been targeted or with developing various social skills that can overcome the issue. Please read on before you jump to conclusions.

On a school campus, at absolute best there is a 10:1 adult to child ratio (at absolute BEST). It is impossible to monitor behavior and conversations on every inch of the playground, cafeteria, hallways, RESTROOMS, etc. Even if you're an adult standing right next to the kids, you may not realize that one kid is silently mouthing the words "I'm going to beat you up" to another kid.

The shift in focus on the victims has largely been essentially teaching kids to ignore bullying behavior. Usually if they don't get a response they lose interest. Now if someone is shoving you around or physically assaulting you, that's a different story. But if it is mostly verbal or mental bullying and intimidation (which, as someone who has worked in public education at many levels for a long time, I can assure you it mostly is), it can go a long way if you aim to teach the victims to find ways to get through it.

A good example I have is this 5th grade kid I worked with in an elementary school a couple years ago. He was really quick tempered and all the students knew how to push his buttons. He was also tiny. The administration tried and tried a lot of different things with this class (mostly punishing half the class in various ways) but this kid was always getting into it with someone (girls, boys, much younger kids, etc.), but at the same time he and his parents were always claiming bullying, bullying, bullying. One day in the cafeteria a kid walked by him and asked him if a blind guy had given him a haircut. He completely lost his mind and a minor food fight erupted. Anyway, after this the administration finally got this kid set up to go hang out with the nearby high school football team everyday after school while they practiced. The team took him under their wing, blah, blah, blah, etc. Anyway he became a new person. It was pretty amazing. I talked with him a few months later and he said there was a single thing that changed how he reacted to things. He was telling one of the football players about the haircut incident and the football player said something along the lines of "you should have just said 'of course a blind guy gave me a haircut, is there any other way to get it cut?' ". Something like that. In other words: regardless of the intent, take it as a joke and move on. Interacting with the football team, and learning to not take himself so seriously quite possibly turned this kid's life around. Why wasn't this sappy story in the news somewhere? Because stuff like that happens all the time. It just doesn't make the news because it's not as exciting as some nonsensical thing about a backpack. More than anything though, this kid just stopped reacting to EVERY SINGLE THING. He just ignored it, and the kids stopped bugging him. He eventually got some friends, too.

The point is, there's always going to be someone telling you that you suck at something, whether you're Lebron James or a kid wearing the "wrong" backpack. Based on my experience working in schools I can guarantee you two things: 1) Regardless of how you feel about how the school handled this issue, I'm sure this was a last, last, last resort because this has been an ongoing issue that they are tired of dealing with--not a knee jerk reaction from school administration, 2) The media always gets school stories wrong. ALWAYS.

And how on earth, you ask, is it aiding the victim if you're taking away one aspect of his freedom of expression? Because sometimes you just need to make a decision for a 9-year-old child if he (or his guardians) is unwilling to figure out how to deal with it himself.

[trish]

And how on earth, you ask, is it aiding the victim if you're taking away one aspect of his freedom of expression?

Indeed. How?

Because sometimes you just need to make a decision for a 9-year-old child if he (or his guardians) is unwilling to figure out how to deal with it himself.

This doesn't answer the question. It simply sidesteps it.

[AdamCaligne]

Thanks for reading my post.