Just the Bullying We Care About
There’s a lot of attention toward school bullying these days. Specifically, it’s the bullying of students by other students. Oftentimes, even more specifically, the student-on-student bullying that is because one student is, or presumably is, homosexual.
These kids are definitely suffering. I’m not going to deny that. I was bullied and taunted constantly from grades six through nine (and it was one of the reasons I ended high school early). Yeah, when you have hair like mine, it’s inevitable! That and in 9th grade when I unwittingly admitted I didn’t know what “giving head” meant when someone used that term, the next several weeks consisted of that group of people asking me on a daily basis “do you give head?”
Here’s the interesting part. I can also think of times I was bullied (albeit differently) by teachers and other staff! In fact, I was more worried about that than anything my fellow students did because the students were not in a position of authority over me or my future. In high school particularly, the teachers were decidedly cold, uncaring, and dismissive. Though it didn’t stop them from being excruciatingly controlling and even willing to give you a lower grade simply because they did not like you.
I’ll bet the last two paragraphs would elicit different reactions from most people. The student bullying paragraph would be “OMG bullying is so horrible!!1!!” The one about teacher bullying? Nope, that would my own fault! The bit about the cold teachers would be (and was) treated with “So what? Welcome to high school! Get over it!” And them being controlling and spiteful? “Oh, that’s ridiculous! Teachers wouldn’t do that. You were probably just a bad student.” That’s even if you consider how little information I even gave about the incident, a verdict based entirely on one being a teacher (adult) and one being a student (teenager).
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