bullying and the 105%

[rm]

Bullying happens for lots of reasons.

These include:
- bullies choosing to bully.
- cycles of abuse.
- biological impulses towards hierarchy.
- cultural glorification of violence.
- cultural shaming of various traits and interests.
- adults who look the other way.
- childhood and adult fears about identity and fitting in.
- features that people who are bullied can't change.
- features that people who are bullied shouldn't be asked to change.
- features that it may be reasonable to suggest people who are bullied address.

But when I was bullied as a kid, and prank calls came to my house calling a "cock-sucking whore," let me tell you the right response, when I was TWELVE and at an all-girls school, was not for my father to ask me what I had done to deserve this.

*

I'm one of those people who tries hard to live life at 105%. I realize that's a privilege to a given degree, but I do also think -- perhaps wrongly and ruthlessly -- that everyone's always got another tiny, extra sliver of fucking effort to give.

But it's not a damn obligation.

And while I am also always about strategy and pragmatism and survival, because those are my choices and my nature, victim-blaming is always wrong.

Which is why I find this post from theferrett upsetting. And his response to my (very possibly distressing for many) comment even more so.

*

I have made the choice, more literally than most people, over and over again, not to change my name, not to change my face, and not to run away from home.

Would you like me better if I was named Heather? How about Aleksandra? Andrea? Jenny? When I joined SAG, I thought long and hard about these things, and it was a terrible moment. Look, it's my actual job to make people like me.

You know who doesn't have that job? Some random eight-year-old who isn't beautiful, who has "weird" interests, who's a different race than her classmates, who has non-gender confirming hobbies, who's too smart, who has a difficult home life, who lives with a disability, etc., etc., etc.

So don't fucking tell me I didn't work hard enough not to be bullied. Or that I should have just worn a pretty dress. Or not been sick. Or tried not to learn things. Or made my parents name me something else.

I lived. That was, in this regard, all the work I was ever supposed to have to do.

Comments

I totally hear you

[ex-serenejo.livejournal.com]

As I said to supergee in his DW thread, where he says "It seems to me that one can discuss techniques of avoiding armed robbers without denying that armed robbery is entirely the perp's fault, no matter how many or how few of the techniques the victim took advantage of. This approach strikes me as the only good way to discuss the victim's role in both rape and bullying." (http://supergee.dreamwidth.org/376370.html):

I will read rm's thoughts in a minute, but it seems to me that the *way* it's discussed can't be divorced from the *when*, and from the other contexts, such as how much dismissiveness is involved. The victim's role in rape and bullying, as you put it, is a delicate and painful issue for them (read: us), and focusing on what they could (usually presented as "should") have done to mitigate the pain (and, often, horror) is something most people cannot pull of without being clueless, offensive, hurtful gits. As someone who was lucky enough to survive being raped and nearly murdered, I have VERY little patience for these kinds of discussions, not because I don't think there are varying levels of wisdom of a number of personal-protection strategies, but because I have spent the 20 years since the day I was attacked dealing with idiots who claim that they're just trying to protect people like me when they put the (implicit or explicit) onus of protection onto the victim.

Re: I totally hear you

[ex-serenejo.livejournal.com]

"pull off", of course, not "pull of"

Re: I totally hear you

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

"Try being less female" or "try being less black" or "try being less disabled" or "try being less gay" or similar really wouldn't be helpful strategic discussions, though. Not only are they morally abhorrent, they're pragmatically useless.

This is the problem that pantryslut identified upthread; the white cis man who experienced bullying because of being a nerd or whatever trying to school the rest of us on how to pass.

Re: I totally hear you

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

Try being less female" or "try being less black" or "try being less disabled" or "try being less gay" or similar really wouldn't be helpful strategic discussions, though

by which I mean "why doesn't supergee get this", not why "why doesn't serenejournal get this."

Many people who self-identify as Mr. Spock are often highly illogical.

Re: I totally hear you

[ex-serenejo.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's how I read you, but thanks anyway for the clarification. supergee is a friend of mine, but his language made me fume nonetheless. (She said, knowing full well that people in this thread are aware that sometimes the ones who want me to be less female or less queer or less whatever so I won't be harmed are my friends or family.)