Bullying, How to Stop It and My Experience

I'm sure that most of us who follow the news are aware of the tragic case of Rebecca Sedwick, the 12-year-old girl who ended her life after months of cyber-bullying, a few months ago. Many of us no doubt are aware of Phoebe Price, who, years ago, also ended her life after an extended period of bullying. The tragic story of Megan Meier, a young girl who killed herself over being bullied over the Internet, had first brought awareness to bullying as a social epidemic that puts children at risk. That was in the 1980s, I believe, when Ms. Meier's story brought bullying to the forefront of public awareness. Such tragic stories make news headlines occasionally, but one such story is one too many! It is sad that bullying is not taken seriously unless a death results. Before these girls and too many children like them, bullying was seen as a "rite of passage" and not a "big deal" and not something that scars children for life.

When I was growing up in St. Louis, Missouri and in the 1970's, bullying was not seen as a school problem. While I had experienced bullying in a local Lutheran school in the 7th and the 8th grades, the bullying I endured got more vicious at a local middle school the following year. I proved an easy target for bullies because I acted differently, which I believe to this day added up to undiagnosed autism that explained very poor social skills. Also, I was physically unco-ordinated and walked differently which were diagnosed as "mild cerebral palsy." My peers took note of all this. I was tormented and called names which aren't fit to be put in print. My lunch money would be stolen, I was tripped, hit, punched and chased home. That school year was a nightmare! I called the school the "nightmare school." Because of my differences and because I wasn't encouraged to enter into extracurricular activities, I had few outlets.

The bullying did not let up that year. One incident was particularly vicious. After school one day, two of my classmates grabbed the books I was walking out of school with and carrying. "We have you this time, ---------!" they taunted. "You are not getting away!" They pushed me and knocked me to the ground. My knees were badly skinned. They kept taunting me, calling me names. I hauled myself up, hoping to get away from them. I'm not sure what happened from there, but somehow I made it home, even with my badly skinned knees. My mom and late stepdad learned about this and took me to the local police station. The officer on duty took my parents' report. However, he said to them, "I discourage you from filing any charges in this case. These two girls have a mom who works as a prostitute for a living; if you only knew what the two of them go through." I was crushed; this was proof to me that bullying was "no big deal" and that my bullies, victims at home, would not be held accountable.

My bullying is just one example of how bullying should not be handled! The following year, I was dismayed to find that I was placed with behaviorally-disordered students in St. Louis County Special School District. I had been placed before in other "special" settings because school did not know what to do with me. But this particular time, when I asked my parents "Why did I get stuck in Special?", they always told me, "The school didn't know how to keep you safe. They didn't have the resources they needed. They tried. We had no other choice but Special School District." I was never satisfied with that explanation and I'm still don't buy it. Oh, my parents no doubt thought they had no options then. This was because bullying awareness didn't exist nor was there awareness of autism spectrum disorders. For the purpose of this article, though, bullying is the focus of the question to be answered: How is bullying to be stopped? How is it therefore to be handled? In my experience, I remained in "special" settings for the rest of my school year. The message sent? You were to blame for being bullied. It was your fault. You are damaged goods. See? You are with social rejects and you are a social reject yourself. Bullying is no big deal.

I entered adulthood still believing these things and, to this day, I struggle with these thoughts and feelings. Bullying is peer abuse, and being abuse, is just as scarring and damaging as any other form of abuse. Today we have much more bullying awareness but it took the suicide of a young girl to make that happen! Since her Megan Meier's tragic story of her "bullycide," more and more of such tragic stories would make the headlines on occasion. But they have happened enough to be a great cause of concern! Young people getting viciously bullied. Developing deep depression. We're believed or the bullying was mishandled. So, in hopelessness and seeing no better days ahead, they ended their lives. This continues to happen though bullying is a hot topic these days. It has taken bullying's migration to cyberspace to bring it awareness where we have several nonprofits formed to end bullying and many schools have instituted "zero tolerance" policies. Despite all this awareness, anti-bullying nonprofits and an unrated Bully movie now shown in many schools and other settings, bullying continues.

What will it to for us to prevent and end bullying? In my humble opinion, the answers are simple though far from easy. What can we parents do? First of all, we should raise our own children to be compassionate and kind. We should hold them accountable if they are found to be bullies. As for protecting children from bullying and from cyber-bullying, we should not let them have smartphones, a favorite hangout for bullies and predators. We should not let them have unlimited or unsupervised access to social networks. Teens love to hang out in cyberspace. So do bullies and predators. They should not walk alone, for children alone are easy targets for bullies and predators. Educators have been getting better about preventing and ending bullying in schools but can do better, as bullying has not stopped in schools. Educators should always believe students who report bullying and respond by protecting the victim, keeping them in their school setting and holding the bullies accountable. Way too often, children are made to feel that they are somehow to blame for "letting themselves get bullied." Other students should be encouraged to stand up for classmates whom to see being bullied and they should be rewarded. It's called peer pressure against bullying.

No, I don't want anyone reading this who has been touched by young people who have lost their lives to "bullycide," to punish themselves for what could have been. For we all make many mistakes. What matters is what we will do now, including about bullying. What will you do?

Photo Courtesy of MorgueFile.com.

Photo by Mensatic.

This photo can be found here.

October Is Anti-Bullying Awareness Month

Often I find it ironic that something that, decades ago, was considered a "rite of passage" and "just part of being a kid" and hence to be tolerated, is now a huge phenomenon and that there are many dollars, time, and resources being poured into raising awareness for it. Many nonprofits have been set up to prevent and end it. Websites, groups and pages are continually set up for it. And now an entire month is being set aside to focus on it. It was a big part of my life the determined, for the worse, what kind of education I would be fast-tracked into and made me feel robeed of a childhood and an education. I'm talking about peer abuse or what is most commonly known as bullying.

Yes, I do not think that bullying would ever come to have been taken so seriously and received so much awareness without the coming of cyberspace and cyberbullying and the high-profile cases of teens being driven to suicide because of bullying they experienced, often online. And the bullying among children is now taking place at younger and younger ages, is now being done to any children, and is being done through texting, emails, social networks, and other digital venues. Awareness does not seem, in my opinion, to be doing much to prevent or end bullying. We still hear the sad stories of bullycides and of bully survivors and their stories abound with tales of adults not taking their bullying seriously until, often, it was too late. Every time I read about or hear about one more story of another teen or even a child, taking their lives because they could not endure one more minute of being bullied, we get deeply concerned and outraged and we ought. We scream about preventing and ending the bullying. "Shame on these adults," we declare, "who do not take bullying seriously! It is THEIR FAULT that these bullycides happen! Shame, shame, shame!" And yet, this bullying does not stop or why or we still calling for more awareness events? And why does it always, without fail, take death and tragedy to get us to care enough about any human problem enough to do something about it?

Here is my bullying experience and even though the school bullying took place decades ago, I can assure you that since it is another word for peer abuse, this bullying left me with many of the same emotional scars that any other kind of abuse would leave. Abuse is abuse, no matter who does the abusing. I was a magnet for my bullies because of my differences. Adults tended to verbally or emotionally abuse me, no doubt in frustration, by making remarks such as: "You just don't want to learn," "You do it on purpose," "You will not make it in life," "You are mentally and physically lazy," "You do not have real problems; you are plain spoiled," and more. A few would lock me in closets to "teach me a lesson." My peers? They took the far more blunt approach. Many noted that in me they had a juicy target. Yes, I'm forever grateful that, along with so many in my generation and even younger, we had missed the digital age and so we did not have to deal with cyberbullying. Yet, and for the very same reason, the lack of awareness of bullying and what causes children to bully and to become the targets of bullying, added to the stress and trauma not only of the bullying itself but how adults handled it and the outcome of that intervention. Especially during my middle school years, my peers viciously bullied me. They called me names like "Retard," "Ugly," "Four-Eyes," "Stupid," Slow," and names not fit to be printed here. I spent one school year enduring this bullying on a daily basis. My peers beat me up, put cigarette lights to my hair, tripped me, grabbed my books and lunch money, and more. This all got so vicious that the educators at the school in question, in an age where there was no awareness of bullying, autism spectrum disorders, learning differences and others factors to cause children to be extra vulnerable, did not know what to do. Their solution? In consulation with my parents, they decided to place me in special classes, which I had already spent much of my childhood. Message to me? You are the problem, you need to be segregated with other problems and there is something SERIOUSLY wrong with you! Twice bullied!

And bullying is not confined, by any means, to schools or to the young. Bullying happens to adults and is done by adults. There is workplace abuse and bullying and a prime example of that is when employers scream at employees and even fire them for inappropriate reasons or the sexual harassment that can take place at the hands of co-workers or employers. I experienced something of this when, many years ago, I worked in a retail store for months and was doing okay there, until a new employer took over. I was certain that he did not like me and this was confirmed when, one day, he cornered me and declared, "Your services are no longer needed." He did give me his phone number so that I could use him as a future reference in a job search, which puzzled me. However, I learned later that most of my co-workers had not been "laid off" as I had and a few others had been. Those of us who had been "laid off" had "special needs" or issues and so I believe that this was discrimination. And cyberbullying happens to people of all ages who use social networks. About two years ago, I had applied to volunteer for an online nonprofit and was almost immediately accepted. I set up an official page for them and, within hours, the page was hacked with questionable material going out to my newly-added contacts in my name, material that I would never have sent anyone. The contacts linked with this nonprofit tried to do "damage control" for me. I made the bad choice of letting a family member get involved concerning how to fix the computer. However, the hacking continued and my rapport with those linked with the nonprofit began to deteriorate as they thought that I should find a way to get my computer fixed faster; then, they decided that I was not qualified to volunteer for them. I was told, "I spoke with the CEO and we have agreed that you will not volunteer for us because we need people who will help our nonprofit, not hinder it." The said family member, seeing that I was shocked and devastated by the nonprofit's (to me) abrupt decision, intervened and expressed anger at the volunteer co-ordinator. After that, a contact with the nonprofit stated that everyone with the nonprofit was ordered to remove me from their official Facebook profiles for the nonprofit. That happened as I saw that my numbers were going down more and more and I also saw that a number of these contacts had blocked me totally. No one had to tell me that some bad-mouthing of me had to have been going on for this all to take place!! On the eve of my birthday two years ago, I had reported an online sex offender who was brought to our attention and, minutes later, i received a friend request from him which I just ignored. That was not wise; I should have blocked him and marked the request as spam. On the morning of my birthday, I logged into facebook and posted my causes on group pages. Then I visited my homepage and was dismayed and anxious when I saw  this warning: "You are being asked to remove pornographic or other materials that are offensive to other users or else your account may be disabled." And I have seen numerous posts by adults in my networks about things that had been done to them online, hacking, impersonation, gossip, hateful comments and more, and have seen numerous hateful posts directed especially at politicians, not to mention hateful pages, websites and causes. Online bullying! It knows no age limit!

It is because of my awareness of bullying and efforts to try to avoid the appearance of bullying, including online bullying, that I get hurt when, especially in connection with my petition campaign and less often, seeking followers for this blogspot, I have been accused of bullying or peer abuse when I have expressed hurt or frustration about lack of support. Related to this, I have heard of accusations of online bullying where it seemed to me that the said individuals were venting frustration or expressing opinions. Bullying or peer abuse, like any form of abuse, actually occurs on a very broad spectrum and often wind up being very gray areas. Take the matter of spanking or any physical punishment, like putting soap in a child's mouth. Many advocates and nonprofits consider these to be a form of child abuse now, when these were very normal and even commended when I was growing up. Sexual harassment and lewd comments, made especially to a child or another vulnerable person, are considered sexual abuse today. Things like this were dismissed almost as "normal" and a "male thing" when I was growing up. I wonder if abuse, especially peer abuse, is so hard to address because often abuse is hard to pin down, define and, especially, to prove.

Then there is the issue of not merely bullying or abuse itself but of the bystander issue and what we do if we witness abuse, including peer abuse and even if, if just to fit in, we may contribute to bullying or abuse. Now, unless I'm missing something, I'm sure that many, even most of you reading this will hotly deny that you have ever been guilty of these things and have ALWAYS stood up to bullies and abusers. And you would NEVER, even to "fit in," ever have contributed to bullying! Not even as a child growing up! But I think that those of us who are more honest will admit that, being human, that there have been times, especially in childhood, that we have been bystanders, watching others being bullied but feeling powerless to stop it and so we did nothing even though we may well have felt sorry for the victim. So much bullying/bystander behavior happens because of insecurity and wanting to "fit in." I must make confessions in this regard concerning my school years. In a Girl Scout troop meeting for a church-based school (BEFORE my vicious public school bullying experience), I found myself in the VERY unusual position of, in the name of "fitting in" and being "cool," adding to the bullying of the girls who had been and who continued to bully me after the said incident. I wrote a poem disparaging the girl in question and, though it ended up in the trash and I don't think she had to see it, I still feel guilt and shame to this very day for my role in her bullying experience. All to "fit in"! And it did not keep me from further bullying by thse girls! An experience as a bystander happened when I was at a camp, possibly even BEFORE this time frame. All of us were in a pavilion doing artwork and then we ate lunch. As I recall it, a camp counselor was yelling at one of the girls and a number of my peers laughed at her. I felt sympathy for this girl but I must confess that I did not speak up in her behalf. After all, I did not even know the story but still, could this girl not have used someone coming to her defense? I still feel guilt about this, even today.

It is never ever pleasant or comfortable to even think that one's beloved, precious child can be a bully. It is bad enough to face the reality that your child may be bullied. But both must be faced as bullying is an epidemic and, at the end of this blog, I will provide the link to the Stomp Out Bullying website. This nonprofit exists to prevent and end peer abuse and the focus is exclusively children and teenagers, 17 and under. All of us who are parents and who have Internet access, would do well to explore this website, educate ourselves about bullying and cyberbullying and about how we can prevent and end it. This all applies to me now as a parent, for, as I write this, I have a daughter who is in middle school and who is vulnerable because she is on the autism spectrum. It is often said that abuse and bullying are best prevented and ended at home, by both modeling and teaching empathy, kindness and compassion. And as for those many of us who have survived or are being bullied or abused right now, there are forums and resources. I will privide a link to a site where bully survivors of any page can share stories of all types of bullying and abuse, find support and inspire others. For one thing about surviving abuse of any kind is that we can share our experiences and help, encourage and inspire others. This is often overlooked as a form of advocacy. But none of our life experiences ever are wasted if recycled to help others.

http://stompoutbullying.com/
This is the website for parents, educators, children and teenagers aged 17 and under. The site provides comprehensive information and many services for children and teenagers, to prevent and end all forms of bullying. They also link to a sister site with the Love Our Children USA and this sister site and nonprofit focuses on other forms of crime and violence against children. Stomp Out Bullying has a hotline and a live chat feature, though limited, where bullying victims can contact this nonprofit. However, when a victim is suicidal, they are directed to a suicide hotline.

http://bullyinglte.wordpress.com/category/personal-bullying
This is a website and forum for people of any age, from the youngest to adults, can share stories of surviving all forms of bullying, find support and support others.

http://www.rachelschallenge.org/
This site was set up by the father of Rachel Scott, the first shooting victim in the Columbine High School shooting in Littleton, Colorado. During the final years of her short life, Rachel expressed her deep Christian faith through living a life full of acts of kindness, compassion and caring, in school and out of it. Her father began this nonpartisan, nonreligious nonprofit, along with family members and others connected with Columbine. They travel all over the US and share Rachel's story in any setting where they are invited, passionately seeking to prevent and end peer abuse by spreading a message of living lives of love, empathy, kindness and compassion.

http://peerabuse.net
This is the one and only website that is devoted to adult survivors of peer abuse.

Abuse By Other Names

     If you have been following the news, I'm sure you are awareness of the firestorm of protests and controversy of a statement that the Rep. Todd Atkin had made, where he stated that women who are "truly raped" will not get pregnant because their bodies "turn on a mechanism" in response to this traumatic experience. And he is not the only "pro-life" person who has made such a remark, I have read similar remarks in life-affirming books to to prop up their case that abortion should not be available to women who get pregnant as a result of rape or incest. This argument does not hold up because many women get pregnant even in situations of great stress or trauma. I will not be getting into any discussion about life/choice arguments here; I only brought this up because of the efforts such statements make of calling abuse or crime another name or redefining it.
     Social networks have proved to be a wonderful networks for many, many people to share their experiences of abuse, crime or trauma and to give and receive support, as well as validation for their perseverence, strength and courage to weather their storms and to emerge as better people. "I am a survivor of abuse," many Facebook users and bloggers and other social networkers proclaim on their profiles. I cannot count all the posts and comments where people have stated, "I have survived abuse" and this simple statement and calling themselves "survivors of abuse" seems to garner support, sympathy, attention and validation for them for what inspirational people they are, to have suffered and to share about their abuse. I know that many people use social networks almost solely to receive support from others and to heal from pasts of abuse or crime, or at least it is clear that they are using social networks for this reason.
     I remember that, on my birthday two years ago, I experienced the shock of getting up, logging into Facebook to post my causes on group pages, when my eyes turned to my home page and I could NOT miss this warning, "Because you have posted pornographic material or other materials that are deemed offensive to other users, you are receiving this warning to immediately remove these offensive materials or your account may be terminated." I was startled! What?! But I knew who was behind this one. The evening before, I had reported a sex offender whose highly offensive profile photo, which was of a sexual organ, was up on his profile and his screenname was so obscene that it is unfit to print here. I felt that it was my moral obligation to report someone who was an obvious danger to the public, certainly to online users, including minors who use our networks! That evening, I received a friend request from the person whom I just reported, which I should have seen as a bright red flag, blocked and reported immediately. Unfortunately, I did not do that. I just ignored the request, hoping it would go away. I went to bed soon after, excited about my birthday but I found that I was in for a very rude awakening when I saw that warning that Facebook sent to me; clearly, this person had tried to add me, only to steal my online identity and report himself as a sex offender, impersonating ME!
     I was so upset that I did not know what to do. I was upset with how Facebook seemed so unresonsive to its users when they have complaint, and legitimate ones. And yet they take this online impersonator's compaint seriously! I posted on a group page about this, hoping to get a sympathetic comment. I visited the page, and soon another person, in response to the page status update about the value of people, said something like, "I don't trust anyone but those in my family. My boyfriend ruined my ability to trust people. He raped me years ago and so, as a result, I AM NOBODYS FOOL." And the person (s) who was running the page at the time, missed my comment about my cyberbullying experience and wrote a long, supportive and validating comment to the person whose comment "trumped" mine and said that their nonprofit would "be there for her" and render her support whenever she needed. I was indeed sorry that this person has experienced the trauma of being raped by a "boyfriend" and, judging from later comments, where she said she had "worked through the rape," she was doing okay and had made the transition from victim to survivor.
     I bring this experience up which I had on my birthday, because it shows that there are one form of abuse, whether it is done in person or online, that is taken less seriously than other forms of abuse and is never called abuse. Instead, it is called bullying and it seems that the very term suggests that it is therefore does not qualify to be called abuse. Was that why the administrator of that page picked up on that user's comments about an experience which everyone would define as abuse, and missed mine in the shuffle because her post was apparently compelled more attention because she was talking about what anyone would call traumatic? You have no doubt guessed that I'm talking about bullying, whether in person or online, being singled out not as abuse but meriting another name. And why? Is it not abuse because the abusive acts are much the same as are other abusve acts. In the case of bullying, whether the acts are being done by children to other children, or by adults to other adults, the acts committed have much the same impact on the victims as do similar acts of abuse committed by non-peers.
     Many years ago, a story of a 15 year old girl's rape was made public because of the controvasy surrounding it. Why the controversy? The rape was commit by her peers! Because it was done to her by some boys and they were claiming that "she had consented," her parents had much trouble getting her rape classified as rape and, with their daughter's brave permission, made this story public because they wanted rape to be trated as that even when it was done by one peer to another. Why does our society minimize abuse and crime when it is done peer to peer? I don't understand. About the only time violent acts by peers against peers seem to be taken seriously, are when people, young or older, react in pent-up rage to past bullying by striking back and "more than leveling the playing field" by taking their peers' lives. I wonder, would thse massacres have happened if someone had taken their concerns about being excluded, rejected and bullied, seriously?
     In my years on social networks, I have read many survivor stories of people have have experienced many different forms of abuse and there are many social networking sites, nonprofits and
websites set up for survivors of all different forms of abuse. Only recently have I seen anything for survivors of peer abuse, and there are far fewer resources for adult survivors of this form of abuse than there are for survivors of any other form of abuse. I think that many people, even now, see bullying as a "phase" and a "part of being a kid" and so it keeps being minimized. And, lest we forget, bullying is NOT just to by children and teens to other children and teens. It is also done by adults to other adults! For example, over two years ago, I experienced what I count to be cyberbullying, pure and simple, though the online bullies would certainly call it anything but! I had signed up to be a volunteer for a respected nonprofit because I had a number of their volunteers and staff members in my social networks already, and a few had taken a real interest in me. For about a week, things were okay, though dealings between this nonprofit, my family and me broke down and became a disaster. This nonprofit dismissed me as a volunteer, which was upsetting enough to me. But, what was much worse, I was told that everyone was under orders to remove me from their social networks on their official pages for the nonprofit. Some of their volunteers went beyond this and blocked me completely from their personal and official Facebook pages. I felt betrayed and deeply hurt and, as this was around the holidays, this saddened my holidays. What was hardest about it all was knowing that this nonprofit KNEW BETTER and, to this day, has many supporters who are in my network.
     I have often recounted my many experiences with peer abuse in my childhood and teen years because of my differences, and my sometimes experiences of emotion, and even physical abuse by adults, also for this same reason. It is said that certain children and teens are prime targets for bullying and they have the same traits of those who are extra vulnerable to other forms of abuse or crime. For thse same reasons and because abuse hurts, including when done peer to peer, it leaves the same type of emotional scars no matter who has done the abuse or no matter what form this abuse takes. Especially if this abuse is done to children or teens with developing self-concepts and growing bodies, it is especially devastating and has the most long-term effects on a person's self-concept and personality. Even today, I am still quite sensitive (many would and have said, "hypersensitive") largely because of my background. No matter what form (s) of abuse one may be a survivor of, one's scars will be much the same.
     There is a rapidly-growing, new Facebook cause called, "Let's Fight Against Peer Abuse," which has the mission of changing the term bullying to what it should be--peer abuse. The fact that this Facebook cause is growing rapidly is the recognition that people have is that abuse is abuse, no matter who does it and who it is done to. Abuse is abuse.
    
    

How Free Should Free Speech Be?

          A few months ago, on Facebook and on both my accounts, I sent many people in my social networks invitations to a Facebook cause called "Join in the Fight to Stop Dishonoring the President." I was gratified to get a good response to this cause, though many simply ignored it. Always, I attached a message with the cause, stressing that it was nonpartisan, not agenda-driven and with a focus to restore honor to the office of the Presidency despite past Presidents' unPresidential conduct that has disgraced the office. However, many still saw this cause as controversial and offensive and let me know it. They sent me messages, telling me angrily, "Don't ever send send this to me again! Don't ask me to support HIM!" or "I'm not about to support this PIG!" One person declared, "This is it! I'm unfriending you now! No Obama supporters will stay on my page!"
          Even more recently, I had posted about a very popular, even "cool" child abuse awareness movement that sponsored many awareness events, complete with a host of festivites during the month of April. Though I, like any person of good will, am gratified when people work to help children in distress and seek to protect all children (I'm a mom, after all), I felt a vague unease about the Founder of this movement and how this Founder was going about it all. Also, the tight financial situations of most of those close to me made fund-raising unrealistic. However, I agreed to raise awareness and was the top recuiter to their cause on the Facebook Causes site, much of because well-meaning people seemed to see adding their names to this cause as somehow the "cool" thing to do to show their support and help abused children. Eventually, on Wednesday, March 21, I published my blog about this movement, targeting those who knew nothing about it and mainly with them in mind. I mentioned my concerns about the cost-effectiveness of all the awareness efforts of this movement and mentioned that the media was "hyping it up." I ended my blog with a challenge to people to not limit their help of abused children to involvement in this movement but to get involved on their own. I had provided the toll-free 24/7 child abuse hotline in conclusion. Proud of my effort, I erred in sending the link to this blog to the Founder as well as to the (now former) Public Relations person. This backfired almost immediately! For the following morning, I was aghast to see that the Public Relations (PR) person, who showed me much support, sent me an angry message, hitting me hard with this person's angry accusations about the blog's unfairness and bias and lack of background research. She referred to a few of my past posts, accusing me of  of "snarky" expressions of "vitriol" toward the Founder. I couldn't send her a reply and saw that she had removed me from her friends list. Apparently, this PR person, in her anger, went back to the Founder, as this person totally blocked me on Facebook so that this Founder became invisible to me. My membership in this movement was abruptly terminated!
          On my end, I have encountered many, many people who, in-person and online, have made it clear that they hold views that strongly oppose my views. Many months ago, I sent invites to many people, inviting them to see a video called "God's Love Letter." A person whom I sent the invite to, sent me a message saying,  "Don't sent me religious stuff anymore. I don't do God." On Facebook, I have seen many posts defending gun ownership rights, especially in the wake of high-profile shootings. Because we are in the time of Presidential campaigns, on both my accounts, more and more people have made it public which Candidate they support or oppose, knowing, I'm sure, that they will offend many with opposing views. Myself, I have never ended relationships becaue of opposing views though I have lost many Facebook "friendships" over mine.
          There is a Facebook cause and there are a few Facebook pages called "Spread the Word to End the Word," meaning stopping the practice of any future use of the word "retarded." "Homophobia" refers to fear and hate of anything in reference to homosexuals and homosexuality, but this word has been extended to saying anything negative about homesexuality and other related sexual orientation issues even out of one's deep religious convictions. Also, to emphasize the wrong of actually hurtful speech, we have coined the term "verbal abuse" and when it's done online, we call it "cyberbullying."
          All of these examples and many more, refer to the question of how many free speech rights we are entitled to until they cross the line into speech that hurts others, even scars them for life. It seems that we all extol the virtues of the First Amendment until others exercise their own free speech to the point of offending us with their opposing views. So many friendships and other relationships have been harmed or severed because of the inability to respect the free speech rights of others or because of confusing free speech with with abusive speech. According to my research, the most common reason for Facebook "unfriendings," especially among women, are posts that they see as offensive, anything ranging from opposing political viewpoints to pornographic photos.
          At home, when we have had our TV on  political programming, frequently members of the opposing political party from the one our family supports, speak on talk shows and in campaign ads. And let me tell you, the name-calling can get heated! When members of the opposing party take opposing postions from those we hold dear, I will keep quiet, knowing these people have the same First Amendment rights that those of my own party do even though I DO NOT LIKE what they are saying. Others, though, seeing these positions as personal attacks on them, will often yell things like "Shut up!" and "We don't want to hear ANYTHING you have to say!" and attack the motives of the opposing party. While I have not indulged in name-calling this opposing party, I have (certainly in my thoughts) and aloud, have accused this party of wrong motives.  But, even though politicians and their outspoken supporters say things that may anger us and offend us, must this always become a hostile shouting match? Even when people say things that offend us, whatever it's about, as long as what they say is respectful and clean, shouldn't it be considered as protected free speech? Yes, there are many times, at home, when we have taken offense when the opposing party has indulged in name-calling and verbally abusing our party, attacking our motives, indulging in hate and mean-spiritedness. Though it's so easy to attack the motives of those who oppose our deeply cherished views, especially in politics and religion, it shouldn't be done, as the opponents' view is just as real to them as ours is to us.
          Then there's the matter of whether people have the right to hold postions on contoversial issues they aren't close to or can't relate to, personally. For example, very recently, in Congress, an all-male panel met to to discuss access to contraception for women vs. religious liberty; this has angered many woman, as no women served on this panel. Also, for months, politicians, all male, have been arguing for the need to limit women's access to contraception. The basis of female anger at all this is because this effort comes across as another effort at male dominance and "men telling women what to do with their bodies." This seems so offensive, in light of the fact that it's women's bodies that get pregnant and women who have to deal with pregnancy's consequences. In untimely pregnancies, it's usually the woman who has to make all the tough decisions (single-parenting, adoption, abortion) and then live with permanent consequences, regardless of the choice made. The arguments men make is that women's choices in contraception and pregnancy do affect them, especially when they learn about aborted children whom they had fathered and saw that they were left out of the decision-making process. Also, many men want to control the size of their families. Along the same lines on another issue, many parents resent advice from those who aren't raising children, forgetting that everyone has once been a child themselves. And so on and on with other issues. Lack of closeness to or experience of an issue doesn't mean that one can't have and express opinions on it, as long as the opinions are expressed with respect and without profanity.
          Returning to the topic of my recent March 21 blog about the popular child abuse awareness movement and the consequences I experienced because of it, the PR person for this movement said that I had no right to opine about a topic that I had not researched. When I was drafting my blog, I searched the Founder's entire website, which I had visited multiple times and saw that it lacked most information needed for accountability and transparency. Over a week later, allegations against this Founder came out that were worse than my suspicions, which were based on this Founder's lack of transparency and accountability and the many posts on this Founder's Facebook page and business page, including personal "glamor shots" and apparent narcissism. The PR person for this movement announced on that person's business page the need to resign involvement in the movement though that person has never reconnected with me. Lesson? When we use free speech we need to be ready to take the consequences, which are often unwanted.
          But many forms of speech clearly cross the line into abuse, because of profanity that distracts others from what we really want to say or or exploits others in the making of it, like pornography or wounds people emotionally. We have heard of many bullycides where kids were so hurt by relentless verbal bullying that they didn't want to live anymore. We have heard of many killers who have, in the past, viewed pornography or other such destructive material. And many break-ups and divorces happen because many partners and spouses are so hurt by chronic verbal abuse that they want out of the relationship. Words can indeed hurt, often for life.
          Want free speech rights? Allow others to exercise theirs and use yours with clean language and with all respect.
         
       

This Week (Nov.14-18) is Anti-Bullying Week

          In honor of the focus of this week being on bullying awareness, this is my current topic. I think that most of us agree that bullying should be prevented and ended. Yet it has, sadly, been high-profile cases of young people who have ended their lives because of cyberbullying (Megen Meier and Phoebe Prince) and extreme bullying violence (Michael Brewer and Josie Ratley), which has brought awareness to this issue. Sadly, I doubt it if computers had not come of age and bullying had not gone high-tech and entered cyberspace, we would be taking it seriously or be talking about it, much less be covering it in the media or proposing legislation to address it. This makes me wonder, why does it so often take tragedies to propel us to outrage, advocacy and action?
           This is my bullying experience: As a child and teen, I was a magnet for bullies because of my differences; I walked, acted and thought differently. Yet, at that time, there were no proper scientific discoveries or autism spectrum diagnostic screenings; the concept of autism spectrum disorders did not exist then; my differences of behavior were assumed to be purely that--behavioral. Thus, adults often got angry and frustrated and they would react to me by verbally abusing me with hurtul remarks such as: "You just don't want to learn," "You do it on purpose," "You are spoiled," and "You are lazy" and "You will not make it in life."  Adults would tell mom things like, "You have the worst-behaved child I ever saw," "What an animal you have raised," "You need to get control of your problem child," and "She needs a good whipping." These remarks would be spoken in my presence or float back to me, and I heard these things so often that I convinced myself that they were true and always would be.
          My peers? Many of them took note of my differences and saw a great target. Yes, I know that when I was growing up, cyberbullying was not yet an issue, as it widespread computer use didn't yet exist. For this I'm certainly grateful, as many of us should be. Yet, the lack of awareness and adult intervention and the silent message that the victim was to blame, brought stress and trauma of their own plus lifelong emotional scars. This has been the case with me and I know it has been also for many others of my generation. In my case, I got the message that I was not only fundamentally bad because of my widespread bullying, but that I wasn't worth adult intervention and involvement. My peers, especially during my middle-school years, bullied me mentally, emotionally, and physically. They called me "Retard," Ugly," "Four-eyes," "Crippled," "Stupid," "Slow," and other labels not fit to be printed. In the 9th grade, I spent the school year suffering bullying on a daily basis. My parents, at one point, brought two of my bullies to the attention of a local law enforcement officer. They were told that, because of these girls' bad home life, he would not hold them accountable or do anything, as he felt sorry for them. Message? I was not worth adult investment. It was my fault. Bullies had all the rights, especially when they had problems of their own.
          The following year, I found myself back in special classes (which I attended often during my childhood), where I remained for the rest of my school years. There, we were taught a watered-down curriculum, and the focus was on reforming our behaviors. I was withdrawn, while most of my peers were aggressive. Message? It was all my fault! My former school, rather than holding my bullies accountable and securing help for them to deal with their anger and other issues, got rid of me, their victim. Therefore, I grew up feeling deprived of much of my childhood or an education. I entered adulthood with feelings of fear, anxiety, shame, low self-worth, petty jealousies, many trust issues and hypersensitivity to any hint of rejection. To some degree, this emotional baggage follows me to this very hour; when I experience depression, relational conflict or encounter drama, this emotional baggage resurfaces.
          And so I can testify from my own experience that bullying, any form of bullying, if sustained and frequent, leaves lifelong emotional scars. Now, I'm aware that teasing and bullying are often described in the same sentence. I know that there is good teasing, done by children or people of any age, that is done because we like each other and feel comfortable with each other. I know there is bad teasing that is done because differences are not tolerated. Good teasing is not bullying. No, I'm talking about any form of behavior that is done out of hate, jealousy or because differences are not tolerated; this IS bullying.
          Cyberbullying? At the risk of being politically incorrect, I see a simple (if not easy) way to prevent and end much cyberbullying: Stay off social networking sites where bullying occurs. Keep children off these networks as long as possible! Of course, I know that many people must use computers for their schoolwork or their jobs or for business reasons. I'm talking about recreational social networking.
          I'm thankful for the awareness, advocacy, and efforts to prevent and end bullying, all forms of bullying. For the sake today's youth and future generations, I can only hope and pray that we will make this happen. And we can do many things to prevent and end bullying. Perform acts of kindness. Be good parents to our children. Teach them to be kind to others. Reach out to bullies and help them deal with their anger and other issues. Embrace and celebrate differences. Speak out against bullying when we see it. You can probably add many other ideas.
          Practice and teach respect for ALL life and for ALL people; this would address what I see as the root cause of bullying.
         
    
http://www.stopbullying.gov/ This is a government-sponsored website full of resources, support and information for how to prevent and end all forms of bullying.

http://bullyinglte.wordpress.com/  This is an anti-bullying blog and forum where readers can submit bullying stories and read about others' experiences.

https://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/In-Loving-Memory-Of-Bullycide-Victims-Everywhere-RIP/168893976491110/ This is a Facebook page set up to show how bullying can kill through keeping alive the memories of those who have taken their lives because of the bullying they had endured, and to give a forum to victims/survivors.