Bullying: I do not think the problem is what you think it is.

(Princess Bride reference aside, let's call this "Adults and Cowardice.")


Bullying. You've all heard about it recently-- the heartbreaking stories of gay children and teens driven to suicide, and the 14-year-old girl who hanged herself after being bullied for coming out as a rape survivor. Bullying has suddenly become a big deal. Great, you might think, people might actually support anti-bullying programs in schools now that numerous victims have already died. But no. Christian groups like Focus on the Family argue that anti-bullying programs "push the gay agenda." A Michigan high school teacher was suspended for kicking a student out of class who made a homophobic comment. What is this, people? Jezebel has got it totally right: it's time schools quit treating homophobia like it's a valid opinion worth respecting. Homophobic hate speech is no different from racism, and you wouldn't allow that in your schools now, would you?

One recent argument I heard against homosexual couples was that the children that gay couples might adopt would be harmed. A slew of studies have shown that this is not the case. (That article links to several different reports and studies.) As far as studies go, the most recent one was fairly scientifically rigorous: the measurement of social development and psychological health of the children was not based on the opinions of their parents alone but also of outside observers, like teachers and caregivers, and a control group of heterosexual couples was used. The conclusion? Quality of parenting determines the psychological health of the child, not the sexual orientation of the parents. From a policy standpoint, the data provide no justification for denying lesbian and gay adults from adopting children.

But won't children of gay and lesbian parents be bullied in school, you might ask? Yes, there is a high likelihood that they will. However, obese children, ethnic minorities, economically disadvantaged children, even smart children get bullied too. The solution to the bullying problem is to address the bullying, not use it as a reason to prohibit gay couples from adopting children.

When I was in elementary school, I was bullied every day. Sometimes it was for being Asian in a neighborhood of rich white kids; sometimes it was for being a smart girl; but usually it was about my physical appearance. I got picked on for having a "mustache," the unfortunate result of having black hair but light skin. This bullying went on for years and only got worse as the tormentors grew in vocabulary and cleverness. It was a sly comment here, a rude gesture there. All things that might have been caught and reprimanded in kindergarten but ironically were ignored in sixth grade. I cried every day when I came home from school. Finally, I told my parents, and they spoke to my teacher about the bullying.

Her response? "That happened to me growing up too. You can buy products at CVS to bleach that hair."

My parents accepted that as an answer. So did I, at the time. Only after I left for college and had the ability to look back on those years without overwhelming bitterness did I realize how wrong a response that was. Where was the apology for letting this hateful bullying happen right under her nose? More importantly, where was the action in response to it? Even after my parents met with her, she never spoke up or stood up for me against the bullies. They never got in trouble, even though now she couldn't say she didn't know it was happening.

This is the huge problem with bullying nowadays. It is easier for teachers and administrators to coerce the bullied into changing than it is to confront the bullies themselves. Society already does its fair share of looking down upon the marginalized and pressuring them to change their identities; that makes it far too easy for adults to do it under the guise of looking out for the child's best interests when it is in fact a cowardly way of handling the problem.

If gay children are bullied, don't try to change them-- stop the bullying. If children of gay parents are bullied, don't prohibit gay couples from adopting-- stop the bullying. The problem is not why these children are the way they are. The problem lies with the parents, teachers, and administrators who turn a blind eye to the hateful words and actions that shouldn't be tolerated in the first place.

Why is this such a hard concept for policy-makers to understand? It's not like bullying is a valuable skill that children need to learn to grow into healthy, capable adults. (And if it is, well, something is grievously wrong with our society.) Stop bullying. Make sure kids understand that it is wrong, it is hurtful, and it reflects badly on them, not their victims. Give victims support. Stand up and say that bullying will not be tolerated in my classroom/school. And actually follow through with that-- watch for instances of bullying and address it every time it happens, not just when you feel like it.

No one should have to change who they are in order to go to school and not be picked on constantly. It's not about "pushing the gay agenda" or "protecting freedom of speech"; it's about creating a healthy environment for children to learn and grow in. Racism, classism, homophobia, and all other forms of hate speech are not valid opinions to be respected. Period.



On a more heartwarming note, here are two things that refresh my faith in humanity:

A 14-year-old student gave an eloquent speech in defense of the high school teacher that took a stand against homophobia. I was touched.

A mother proudly defended her son's right to wear whatever he wants for Halloween and correctly points to other mothers' judgmental attitudes as the problem. This was an amazing and uplifting piece to read.

Men: Finding Security in Making the Safe Unsafe?

I found a great article with interesting and insightful analysis of the awful but all-too-common chant "No means yes; yes means anal!" (Most recently it was featured in the previously-discussed Yale debacle.)

Slightly pared down, here is what I find to be the choicest bits:

At first, the fraternity issued a cover-your-ass smirking apology for offending people’s feelings (read: you feminists can’t take a joke). Their next apology, a day or so later, was far more abject, and showed they’d put some serious thought into how their actions might have been experienced by others. It seemed sincere enough.

But it lacked historical perspective. In 2006, fraternity guys marched in a sort of picket line outside the Women’s Center on campus, chanting those same phrases. In 2008, members of another fraternity celebrated their love of “Yale sluts” by screaming about it outside that same campus Women’s Center.

What does it mean to chant “No Means Yes” outside the campus Women’s Center, the place that offers a safe space for women who have been assaulted or abused? What does it mean to target the one place where women might actually feel safe enough to find their own voice, feel strong enough to succeed in a world still marred by gender inequality? It’s a reminder that men still rule, that bro’s will always come before “ho’s”. Even the Women’s Center can’t protect you.
That is, it’s a way to make even the safe unsafe.

We could leave it there, and let the campus judiciary and the blogosphere continue to debate about free speech and hostile environments and hate speech. But I think it would miss another, equally important element–the second half of the chant, “Yes Means Anal.”

This chant assumes that anal sex is not pleasurable for women; that if she says yes to intercourse, you have to go further to an activity that you experience as degrading to her, dominating to her, not pleasurable to her. This second chant is a necessary corollary to the first.

Thanks to feminism, women have claimed the ability to say both “no” and “yes.” Not only have women come to believe that “No Means No,” that they have a right to not be assaulted and raped, but also that they have a right to say “yes” to their own desires, their own sexual agency. Feminism enabled women to find their own sexual voice.

Sometimes, as in the case of the now-famous Karen Owen at Duke, they can be as explicitly raunchy as men, and evaluate men’s bodies in exactly the way that men evaluate women’s bodies. (I agree with Ariel Levy that women imitating men’s drinking and sexual predation is a rather impoverished style of liberation.)

This is confusing to many men, who see sex not as mutual pleasuring, but about the “girl hunt,” a chase, a conquest. She says no, he breaks down her resistance. Sex is a zero-sum game. He wins if she puts out; she loses.

That women can like sex, and especially like good sex, and are capable of evaluating their partners changes the landscape. If women say “yes,” where’s the conquest, where’s the chase, where’s the pleasure? And where’s the feeling that your victory is her defeat? What if she is doing the scoring, not you?

Thus the “Yes Means Anal” part of the chant. Sex has become unsafe for men–- women are agentic and evaluate our performances. So if “No Means Yes” attempts to make what is safe for women unsafe, then “Yes Means Anal” makes what is experienced as unsafe for men again safe–back in that comfort zone of conquest and victory. Back to something that is assumed could not possibly be pleasurable for her. It makes the unsafe safe–- for men.

For lack of a better title, My Story

Tonight marks the intersection of several different thoughts. I started typing this post and realized that this thought was going to get buried in my other musings, so I'll pull it out and stick it right here, up front and center. I've decided to link this blog and my Facebook page together, because I have decided to publicly "come out" about my experience as a rape survivor. There are some people who should be ashamed about what happened, but I should not be one of them. So for anyone of you reading this whom I knew in elementary school, middle school, high school, college, who thinks rape is something that doesn't happen to people you know-- well, it does.

The second thought is one I had on the bus home tonight. I spent most of today ruminating on last Wednesday's Yale fraternity pledge incident after I found out about it this morning. It's disgusting, there's no doubt about that. My first thought was "how did anyone with the intelligence to get into Yale ever think this was a good idea?" And then I realized that Dartmouth-- and, I wager, most of the other top-tier schools in the country-- has its own fair share of misogynistic frat boys, and that brought me back to my own experience.

One thing about the Yale incident really stuck with me, though, and that was from this follow-up article:

Yale Dean Mary Miller says any disciplinary action against individual DKE members will be confidential from start to finish, and that such action "is not designed to provide satisfaction to those who might feel aggrieved."

To me, this reeks of institutional neglect. What I see is a university that wants to brush this under the rug as quickly yet inconspicuously as possible. Is this a shameful incident? Of course it is. But the way to handle it is to stand up and take action, not try to cover things up with excuses like confidentiality.

I realize this may be an issue of debate. Should disciplinary action, if it were to take place, be kept confidential? My opinion is this: confidentiality should be to protect victims, not perpetrators-- especially not when the perpetrators went parading around campus openly in the first place. I don't think the frat brothers and pledges involved in this case should have the right to privacy. When someone does something this offensive and hurtful to others, their privacy should be the last concern on people's mind. It should not be a way to hide or lessen the severity or possibility of punishment. Period.

And the other part of Dean Miller's statement, that any disciplinary action "is not designed to provide satisfaction to those who might feel aggrieved." And may I ask, why not? I think Yale does need to take responsibility for the distress people might feel about this event, since it was on their campus and done by some of their students. I'm glad that Yale has chosen to use this incident to spark discussion about sexual assault, but that is not enough. That doesn't help people who might have been triggered by the incident. It's just talk talk talk, which is all that most victims seem to get for compensation these days. All talk, no action. Believe it or not, just discussing how the incident was bad doesn't help a victim feel all that much better. It's easy to say how awful something is and how things should be changed. Hearing that doesn't mean a thing if no action comes of it.

This Yale incident and how it stinks of institutional neglect really hits close to home. I was raped in my fraternity by a fraternity brother, an alumnus who was visiting for the weekend. For the most part, the reaction I got when I told people consisted of hugs and "that is awful" and "let us know what you need and we'll be there for you." Except for one. A few days after I was raped, I was told by a high-ranking elected official of the fraternity to keep quiet about the rape because if word got out, no one would come by the frat anymore and it would get ruined and that would all be my fault. We needed to keep the illusion that we were better than other frats, that rape doesn't happen at Phi Tau, or else.

When I was first told that, for a split second I believed it. It was only through remembering the writing I had found online by other strong, courageous women about how being raped is not your fault and you should not be ashamed that it happened because it was solely and completely the rapist's choice to commit that crime. And then I realized how wrong it was for someone to tell me to keep quiet about what happened in order to preserve my fraternity's reputation. It was wrong, and it made me angry that this so-called brotherhood of mine, my so-called family, would try to brush this all under the carpet.

I went to other brothers of the house and relayed what I had been told. The reaction I got? "Oh, that's awful. You should tell whomever you want." At first I thought that was a good reaction, that it meant people disagreed with the person who told me and would stand up for me and change this attitude. But no-- what it really meant was that words are easy to say, even for cowards. All talk and no action. The official was never reprimanded in any way for his actions, and even more, for all their talk about supporting me, they seemed to agree with his sentiment. I was allowed to tell whomever I wanted, of course, but they tried to do as little as possible about the event, as inconspicuously as possible, despite their promises to stand up and be a model for other frats about integrity and courage.

The man who raped me was banned from returning to the fraternity house. That seems like a pro-active, positive step, you might say. But in truth, he lived in a different state, and was never going to come back anyway because he knew I was pressing charges with the police. Yeah, my fraternity sent him a letter enforcing what he was going to do anyway. Doesn't take that much effort, does it? On the other hand, how about the fact that to this day, he is still considered a brother of Phi Tau? There was talk of editing our Constitution to make it possible to revoke brotherhood, but then two things happened: the undergrads who would have had to do the legwork stopped bothering, and the alumni got freaked out by the possibility of change. I was told by the President of the whole corporation that many alumni would withdraw their support of the House were I to push for any kind of change, and "strongly advised" that I cease and desist. How's that for another version of telling the victim to keep quiet and shoving everything under the rug?

It has been two and a half years since the incident happened my senior spring. After taking a year of medical leave, I did return to classes and receive my degree, finally moving away from Hanover this July. I struggled to make meaning of what happened in the aftermath of the rape, where people whom I thought of as friends-- even family-- failed to support me. Not only did I have to bear the burden of PTSD on my own, but also I wondered why they turned a blind eye, if it was something wrong with me that made them not care, and what that meant about my concept of brotherhood and friendship. There were times when I sat in the social space of my fraternity house and cried, needing a caring word or hug, yet people walked straight past me, carrying on conversations with other, sitting on the other side of the room to play games or read, etc. After the first week, no one bothered to even ask if I was okay when I cried. After a month or two, people started rolling their eyes when I brought up the event to see if anyone was going to push for further measures by the brotherhood. My recovery would have been so much faster and more effective if I had had the support of my fraternity, yet here I am, still struggling with what it means and how it feels to be betrayed.

Surprisingly, what hits hardest is not that the man who raped me is still considered a brother of the house, but that the official who threatened me to keep quiet was never once reprimanded or told that he should not have said what he said. In fact, pretty much everyone is still friends with him. It leads me to wonder about the fragile and fickle nature of friendship. I thought friendship meant standing up for your friend; the enemy of your friend is your enemy as well. I once asked someone how they managed to be friends with both him and me, and why, and the answer I received was that it was too hard to take a stand against someone in their social circle. She nonchalantly agreed that what he said to me was bad, but shrugged it off and continued to try to keep both his and my friendship.

Now that I have moved away from the influence of the house, I have begun to see clearly that that is not real friendship. Anyone can toss words of support out there. It takes a true friend to do something about it. And as an organization, integrity demands action. My fraternity took no action that required any effort on their part, citing excuses some of the time and just remaining silent or looking away the rest of the time. Silence condones the crime. Silence is cowardice and apathy. Silence and passivity tell the victim that s/he is not worth the effort to do what is right.

Although there are, of course, many differences between my story and the Yale pledge incident, I think the common thread is that an institution had the opportunity to stand up, take an appropriate amount of responsibility, and most importantly, take action, yet it is hedging. It's not too late for Yale to openly denounce what happened and push for serious consequences. Confidentiality is not a valid reason to hide any disciplinary action, and I think any action taken should be partly to satisfy anyone who was troubled or hurt by the incident. Yale needs to take notice of its community's distress and address it. Action, not just words and discussion and other passive means of patting victims on the head and turning away.

Choice and Blame

You've probably seen it: "that exam totally raped me," "this monster in (video game) is raping me," ad nauseum. Such careless use of rape as a metaphor for something unpleasant is absolutely acceptable; throwing around the word so blithely demeans survivors of a terrible crime and desensitizes people to an issue already commonly misunderstood or ignored.

I just read this article on how Kristin Stewart, star of that terrible movie Twilight, compared the intrusive nature of the paparazzi to being raped. I of course still think that metaphor is unacceptable, for many reasons, but the article brings up an interesting point. One argument commonly made is that celebrities choose to seek out publicity, so therefore they have a choice, while rape is a violation in which the victim has no choice. However, the end of the article states:

"There are choices when it comes to being an actor, yes, but much less choice when it comes to celebrity, and making that distinction comes really frakking close to blaming rape victims because of what they wear or how they behave."

(Then the article goes on to say that Kristen Stewart took on an "indie movie" and is simply "living up to her contract and suffering through the consequences of a film's publicity, not her own," which I think is a bit of a ridiculous statement, but let's ignore that and return to the original debate about the nature of choice.)

What do you think? Does the above quote make sense? I have to admit that I am still unsure of my own opinion, so I'd love to hear your thoughts.

The Infamous Twilight Series

Sigh. Triggered. By a freaking parody of the Twilight series, no less. The parody claims there is "mouth rape" and "date rape" and pedophilia in it. I've only read Book 1, which was all right, but now I kind of want to see if the rest of them are really as awful as this "review" claims they are. I am slightly disturbed that these books are capturing the attention of pre-teen girls.

Also-- giant meh to dissociation.

My Belated Obligatory Polanski Post

A couple of little posts tonight to make up for the lack of a real big one. I have a major assignment due Friday, so I may not seriously blog until then, unless I get riled up about something and need to.


So, Post One of Tonight's Review of Sayrina's Many Open Google Chrome Tabs That She Meant To Blog About A While Ago:

When the Polanski crapball hit the internet, I didn't blog about it extensively, because I figured that there were so many other bloggers who were doing a better and more comprehensive job than I could. Sure, I had tons of snark and fury about the topic that I unleashed upon unsuspecting people around me, but it just never seemed to make it to my blog.

But I did want to post something I found, one little poem:

What Whoopi Goldberg ('Not a Rape-Rape'), Harvey Weinstein ('So-Called Crime'), et al. Are Saying in Their Outrage Over the Arrest of Roman Polanski

A youthful error? Yes, perhaps.
But he's been punished for this lapse--
For decades exiled from LA
He knows, as he wakes up each day,
He'll miss the movers and the shakers.
He'll never get to see the Lakers.
For just one old and small mischance,
He has to live in Paris, France.
He's suffered slurs and other stuff.
Has he not suffered quite enough?
How can these people get so riled?
He only raped a single child.

Why make him into some Darth Vader
For sodomizing one eighth grader?
This man is brilliant, that's for sure--
Authentically, a film auteur.
He gets awards that are his due.
He knows important people, too--
Important people just like us.
And we know how to make a fuss.
Celebrities would just be fools
To play by little people's rules.
So Roman's banner we unfurl.
He only raped one little girl.

By Calvin Trillin

The Nation

I'm not sure how I feel about the fact that one of next term's film series is Roman Polanski films. On the one hand, I understand that a certain separation must be made between the man and his art, but on the other hand, I think we all should play the Don't Support Rapists game.