I feel like everyone is against bullying until they actually look at the kids who are being bullied.
The cheesy anti-bullying tapes that they show in schools feature these skinny straight white neurotypical kids who get picked on for no reason. Usually the insults are something along the lines of “You’re a loser!” or “Get lost, freak.” All the kids watching immediately feel bad for the victim, and think “Aw! She didn’t deserve that!”Â
Then, ten minutes later, they go pick on some marginalized kid without thinking twice. As an autistic person, I was often this kid. The insults I heard growing up were not “You’re a loser!” or “Get lost, freak.” They were “Don’t let the retard work with us” or “Shouldn’t she be going to the special school?”
The problem is we teach kids that bullying occurs for no other reason other than just to be mean. This could not be further from the truth. Bullying occurs because as a society, we condition kids into hating fat, black, neurodivergent, queer, and disabled people. Kids don’t bully each other just to be mean. They do it because if something’s “wrong” with the person, it’s completely justified.
But of course, we can’t tell kids this kind of stuff. We can’t say, “Hey! Making fun of your gay classmate is bad!”
Because when we do, suddenly the phone calls come pouring in, each with a parent on the other end screaming “You can’t be feeding my son that liberal propaganda!”Â
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