Tag Archives | Bullying

Letter from the Editor: A Note on Stalking, Harassment and Bullying

By Matt Staggs on January 22, 2013 in News 15

It is very important to me that we keep this site a place where everyone feels welcome, and I think that the majority of our readers feel that way. Most of you do a great job in keeping things on-topic and challenging with a minimum of ad hominem attacks in the comments sections of our articles, and I think it’s fantastic. Heck, that’s one of the main reasons I like to wade in and chat: I know that even though we all may have very strong opinions on politics, Forteana, science and more, things usually stay pretty civil.

Unfortunately, with this being the internet, there’s bound to be the occasional problem: spammers, trolls and the seriously unhinged can and do make their way to the site. Most of them can be safely ignored or, in the worst case scenario, blocked. I hate doing the latter, but I’m occasionally forced to do so for the good of the community.… Read the rest

‘Little Baby Faces’ Offers Free Plastic Surgery for Bullied Kids, But Do They Need It?

By Disinformation on July 29, 2012 in News 17

Everyone probably experiences bullying at some time in their lives, and for some it can leave lifelong psychological scarring. For children, the right kind of adult intervention can make all the difference in the world. But what about the wrong kind? One organization, Little Baby Faces, offers free plastic surgery to bullied children, but their services aren’t just aimed at repairing disfigurements of various sorts. In the embedded video from CNN, one girl taunted for her “big ears” goes in for a consultation with Little Baby Faces and leaves with a laundry list of her physical imperfections.

Is it healthy when an adult not only reinforces the specious insults of a bully but then heaps on even more criticism? Does minor physical imperfections warrant plastic surgery? What kind of lesson does this teach to the bullied, and how will this affect their development as human beings?

Tweeter Causes Uproar Over Violent ‘Beat Up Anita Sarkeesian’ Game

By Camron Wiltshire on July 10, 2012 in News 7

Via the Toronto Standard (thanks to Warren Ellis for the tweet):

UPDATE: Stephanie Guthrie received multiple death threats following the publication of this article. Police are now involved and the offending users have been reported to Twitter for account violations.

Women in TO Politics organizer Stephanie Guthrie isn’t known for keeping quiet. When gamer Bendilin Spurr launched the violent and sickening “Beat Up Anita Sarkeesian” game, Guthrie took to the Internet: “So I found the Twitter account of that fuck listed as creator of the ‘punch a woman in the face’ game. Should I sic the internet on him?”

The Internet said ‘yes,’ but not without its own share of misogyny. One user called Guthrie “a cunt.” Trolls tried to scare her. She continues to receive death threats.

But Guthrie wouldn’t be deterred. She called out the Sault Star newspaper, which has since picked up the story (kind of), warned potential employers not to hire Spurr, and sparked enough conversation to further increase her ranking as a prominent local tweeter on politics and feminism.

… Read the rest

Today’s the Worst Day for Mitt Romney’s High School Bullying Story to Come Out

By Good German on May 10, 2012 in News 25

Is this why Obama chose yesterday to publicly support gay marriage? Elspeth Reeve writes at the Atlantic Wire:

What would be the worst possible news for Mitt Romney to have to deal with the day after President Obama announced he supports gay marriage? Romney’s already had a gay staffer resign because social conservatives were outraged he’d hire an openly gay person. And having a hypothetical family member come out as gay would probably help him seem more compassionate.

But one thing that might project an image Romney really wants to avoid — heartless outmoded anti-gay conservative — would be a long profile in The Washington Post about how he bullied a gay kid in high school. At the exact moment Romney doesn’t want to talk about gay stuff, the Post‘s Jason Horowitz reports Romney led a gang of boys who singled out a gay kid, held him down while he cried, and cut off the kid’s offensively un-hetero hair.

… Read the rest

Dan Savage Discusses The Bible At High School Journalism Convention

By JacobSloan on April 30, 2012 in News 13

Celebrated activist and sex columnist Dan Savage is in hot water for this portion of a speech which he gave to Seattle-area high school journalism students as the keynote speaker at a convention called Journalism on the Edge. Fox News, among others, has accused him of bullying Christian teens for saying the following:

Christians Fight for Their Children’s God-Given Right to Bully Gay Kids

By imkaan on April 6, 2012 in News 62

Writes Erin Gloria Ryan on Jezebel:

Despite the fact that there’s scant evidence in the Bible that Jesus was an asshole who commanded his followers to bully gay children to death, a group of American Christian parents seem to think Christ has called upon them to act like jerks. That’s why they’re actively working against the passage of anti-bullying laws at the state level — they believe that by making repeated, ongoing cruelty illegal, lawmakers are interfering with their Jesus loving child’s right to point out that homosexuality is wrong and bad and hellbound.

“Bullying children is wrong and bad” may sound like the most basic tenet of human decency, but if you ask conservative lobbying groups like Concerned Women for America and Focus on the Family, making it a crime to taunt someone until they kill themselves is akin to interfering with religious freedom. According to AlterNet’s Katherine Stewart, conservative groups across the country have opposed various anti-bullying measures because they say outlawing bullying is akin to state endorsement of the homosexual lifestyle.

… Read the rest

Sandusky “Victim One” Pulled From School Due to Bullying and Threats From Students and Staff

By Good German on November 23, 2011 in News 10

Don’t tell me the kind of things that happened in Nazi Germany could never happen in the USA … Ryan D. Buell reports in the Huffington Post:

Court records refer to him simply, as Victim One. Outside of a four-and-a-half page section about him in the grand jury indictment of ex-Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, little else has been discussed about him publicly.

Last week, his mother (whom I will refer to as “Mother One”) removed him from Central Mountain High School in Mill Hall, Pa., where he was a senior and an all-star athlete. In an interview conducted last week, she explained why she pulled him from the school.

“They were not helpful,” Mother One said of the school’s administrators. “They wanted me to go home and forget about it.”

Mother One also alleges that since the Sandusky scandal erupted, fellow students and the high school’s football coach (who also serves as assistant principal) have all targeted her son with verbal attacks and threats of violence.

… Read the rest

On Bullying

By BaphometRex666 on September 8, 2011 in News 72

Bullying is taught in schools, churches and families throughout America. Bullying is a common practice in our military training. An extremely prevalent form of this teaching is “group punishment.” One person or more breaks the rules or is accused of not carrying his or her weight; and everyone is punished for the perpetrators’ infractions or inadequacies simply because they’re in that class or unit.

This incites the group to pressure the perpetrators into working harder or altering their behavior. This form of bullying is also very common in the work place and is an encouraged form of harassment. This pressure is “bullying” and it takes many forms: Beatings, hostile behavior and threats, ostracism, and many other forms of harassment. At Columbine the victims of bullies bullied back and only after that did people speak out against bullying on a nation-wide scale.

They formed organizations to prevent and stop bullying. All of their efforts are in vain until we stop the unjust practice of group punishment.… Read the rest

As More Bullying Victims Commit Suicide, Right-Wing Groups Decry Anti-Bullying Policies As ‘Gay Agenda’ Ploy

By Good German on October 6, 2010 in News 46

As a sort of follow up to my post yesterday, from Think Progress:

Many states across the country are taking laudable steps to enact measures that bolster administrators’ ability to protect students who face such harassment. However, despite the evidence supporting the need, right-wing lawmakers and activists insist that anti-bullying measures are nothing more than insidious tools of the “homosexual agenda”:

The American Family Association of Michigan has spent years decrying a proposed anti-bullying measure as “a Trojan Horse to sneak [homosexual activists'] special rights agenda into law” and to “legitimize homosexual behavior” which is “a practice scientifically proven to result in a dramatically higher incidence of domestic violence, mental illness, illegal drug use, promiscuity, life-threatening disease, and premature death.” The bill “died in 2008 in the state Senate because senators could not agree” on whether to address bullying based on sexual orientation and gender identity in the measure.

… Read the rest

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