Bullying is everybody's problem

I wrote this shortly after Rehteah Parsons died. I use writing as a way to blow off mental steam about stuff that makes me really angry, especially social justice issues. 

 Bullying is everybody's problem

Another kid is dead because of bullying. Everyone is angry and demanding answers. How could this happen? Why didn't anyone step in? Who failed?

People want heads on stakes.

So how did it happen? The short answer is because we as a society sit back and let it happen. We even facilitate it, and this is why:

Kids are mean, but we don’t like to think so

Everyone likes to think of childhood as a time of innocence and wonder. Children are perfect and adorable; untainted by life. Truth is, kids are born mean. A recent study by the University of British Columbia show infants as young as nine months want individuals who share their tastes to be treated well by others, but want those whose tastes differ from their own to be treated badly.

This only gets worse as they get older. By the time they are rounding out their elementary school education, they've fully learned to determine who is like them and are more than capable of exacting their own punishments on those who are not. Carrying on to junior high means more personal freedoms, extracurricular activities and more opportunities for bullies to continue the abuse. By the time bullied kids reach high school, the only hope is to go to a bigger school where greater numbers lower the probability of being publicly humiliated. Unfortunately, social media is doing it's best to ensure everybody knows exactly who you are no matter where you are.

We grown ups blame the victim, because we don’t like to think that kids are rapists

The Rehtaeh tragedy occurred on the heels of the Steubenville rape case in the States. Under similar circumstances, a girl was raped repeatedly. When two of the rapists were convicted, that’s right, rapists, not boys, they received a significant outpouring of support. The arguments ranged from "boys will be boys" to "is it really a crime if the victim was unconscious?" The former says boys will be rapists, the latter says anyone who is unconscious is asking for it. I have nephews. I've been rendered unconscious repeatedly for surgery. These arguments are repugnant beyond measure.

We grown ups blame the victim, because we don’t like people who are different than us

People are indoctrinated in social constructs that create an us-and-them while they are still little children. We give little girls Barbies, and Easy Bake ovens, and dress them in pink. Little boys get GI Joe, trucks, toy guns, and we dress them in blue. We even put them on separate sports teams at an age when running in a straight line is an accomplishment. So at an age when hormonally and physically, the two sexes are as similar as they will ever be, we’re teaching boys and girls that they are completely different. The problem with that is, kids are far more likely to be mean to those that are different.

Most children are raised to follow a religion, of which, all the major ones hold a fundamental belief of being the only one. So before religion, when it may have been gender, or hair colour, skin colour, or brand of sneakers, now kids have faith in which to divide who is like them and who is not. In schools with different faiths, this is an opportunity to harass other faiths, but even within the same faith, we can find the righteous and the wrong. The righteous are rewarded and the sinners are punished. In both the Steubenville case and in Rehtaeh’s case, blame was cast on the girls for being drunk, or for being at the party in the first place. They shouldn’t have been drinking, they shouldn’t have been there, because as the good books say, sinners get what they deserve.

Now I can’t speak to generations earlier than mine, but for those born post 1975, alcohol to excess and parties are a teenage condition. Teenagers are in that awkward stage where they are reasonable facsimiles of adults, but they haven’t been alive long enough to understand consequences. As it is said, good decisions come from experience, and experience comes from bad decisions. I was lucky when I was a teenager, and I had great friends. I know I was in similar states at that age. At some point or another, so was everyone I knew, we just looked out for one another.

The blame these girls received for being drunk at a party is unfounded. They were teens doing what teens do. By placing the blame on them, what society is saying is it is okay to violate and abuse someone if they exercise poor judgement. The problem with that is, if you haven’t noticed, poor judgement is a human condition.

We blame the victim, because it’s easier than doing something about it

According to the school Rehtaeh attended, “School administration was never aware of any act of bullying taking place on school property”. If Rehtaeh had told them, the school said they would have acted on it immediately. So it is all Rehtaeh’s fault for not reporting it. On this, school administrators have to pull their heads out of the sand. There is not a school in this nation where bullying does not occur.

So where do we go from here?

For starters, we lose the rose-coloured glasses about childhood. Just because a belief is pervasive, it doesn’t make it right. They may be adorable, but they can be assholes. Kids need to know that the persecution of people who are different from them is wrong. They also need to know that no one is ever really that different. We're all human beings and we all deserve to be treated humanely.

Then we need to talk frankly to kids about sex. We also need to talk frankly to adults about sex. That there are adults who use arguments like “boys will be boys” to defend rape means some adults aren’t getting it either. The difference consensual and non-consensual sex needs to be clearly understood by all.

After that, society needs to re-examine the sinner-saint complex. To say a teenager who drank too much is asking to be raped is like saying jay-walkers deserve to be mowed down by dump trucks.  

Finally, we’re back where we started, with the fact that kids are mean. School boards and parents need understand that bullying happens day in and day out in every single school. Both school staff and parents need to do more than trot out the same tired “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me” garbage. Because it’s just that, garbage. Broken bones heal. Words kill. Just ask the parents of a dead teenager.