Oklahoma students walk out after trans student’s death to protest bullying policies
After the death of Nex Benedict, classmates at Owasso High School say bullying often goes unpunished, causing students to feel like there’s no point asking for help.
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Bullying goes unpunished everywhere. We had to take my daughter out of school here in Indiana and put her in online school because she was being bullied by virtually every kid in the school. The bullied kids were bullying here. The school did nothing despite our pleas. Once, she was doxxed by a couple of sisters on Discord who also prank called her a whole bunch of times. The school made both the sisters and my daughter apologize to each other. Online school requires one parent as a "learning coach" (i.e. I have to make sure she stays on track all day), which meant going down to one income. I'm not sure what other choice we had since she started having self-harm thoughts.
And maybe a month later, one of her few friends, who basically became her replacement at that school when my daughter left, got pulled out by her parents and put in online school.
I mentioned this in another thread- my daughter has another friend in that school who is trans. Not only does the school deadname him despite his parents' pleas and force him to use the girls' bathroom and locker room, but the other day, a girl was being a bigot against him and he slapped her. He got out-of-school suspension. Nothing happened to the girl.
If you face harassment on the job you can sue for millions of dollars. If schoolkids could do the same up to age 25 for school bullying I bet we'd see less of it
I would have loved to have sued that fucking school. Not that I could afford a lawyer. Maybe I'd start a GoFundMe.
HR isn't your friend but when I had a lead harass me on the job last year they delt with it because of they didn't I could sue. An email with the subject line "hostile work environment complaint" told them my problem was now legally their problem. Give kids those smart rights and make school administration have the legal duty to protect students and failure to do so causes personal liability
If you want HR on your side, frame the issue as one that will leave a company liable or put them in legal jeopardy.
HR may not be your friend, but they aren't your direct enemy, either.
HR exists to protect the company, but a good head of HR knows the easiest way to do that is to treat your employees well.
Hell, the HR people I know spend most of their time stopping the company from doing illegal bullshit.
HR can be made to do what's right if you notify them that not doing so exposes the company to a lawsuit
maybe find a lawyer that works on contingency
I guarantee you that here in Indiana, the school didn't do anything I could sue them for.
That's awful. And one of my biggest fears. Are there any anti bullying advocacy groups that would be willing to help fund your case? A good court victory does wonders for the cause.
I feel like the monkey's paw outcome here is public schools closing because no one (read: conservatives) wants to pay for it, or change the schools to be better about the underlying problems.
Bullying goes unpunished everywhere, but especially after Trump's presidency, and now the problem is becoming systemic.
Dude it's been this way since the 90's, at least. It has been turbocharged due to technology is the main difference. Ask me how I know.
American culture is abusive in general, it's not shocking that abusive behavior has become the norm.
In societies where the law has broken down and failed to make an orderly society, people turn to mob mentality to "punish" those they see as in need of punishment.
In American society law has been broken since at least the Reagan era, and we're seeing the societal effects in real time. The people doing the bullying are just as under the thumb of America as anyone else, but like classic mob mentality, they've simply chosen people they don't like to abuse as opposed to real criminality. Why? Because most humans are stupid, base motherfuckers, and they always assume that they are a "good" person, and by extension their friends are "good" people so why should they do any introspection, it means that the other people are "bad" people. It's the same tribal fucking bullshit it has always been and this is exactly why we started trying to build orderly societies with law enforcement and justice you could count on. Now that that's squarely out of the fucking window, you have a society that is all too ready to dole out mob violence which rarely equates to "justice." The worst is that the mob is often in the wrong and also in the majority as evidenced by the above anecdote.
When justice fails, when justice is delayed, when justice is deferred, when the cops have special rights to brutalize you but are not held to the same standards and are allowed to break the law, this is what you fucking end up with. A society ready to fucking eat itself alive. It's not fucking rocket science (although it is social science).
Dude it’s been this way since the 90’s, at least. It has been turbocharged due to technology is the main difference.
I am SO FUCKING GLAD I graduated high school before the internet became a thing. My heart goes out to these poor kids who can be bullied on blast 24/7 now.
Bullying goes unpunished even outside of Trump’s sphere of influence.
I am curious about the parenting techniques and philosophies and social views of the parents of the bullies
I'm guessing a lot of abuse and neglect. And/or evangelical Christianity in the case of the people bullying her trans friend. But clearly they have had it pushed into their brains that anyone who isn't "normal" needs to have "normal" beaten into them.
My daughter's friend for obvious reasons. My daughter because she likes dressing like a punk rocker and they decided she's a furry because she wears leather collars. Then we made the terrible mistake of allowing her go as the anime catgirl character she wanted to dress up as for Halloween. My wife, who is great at this stuff, made a costume that was exactly like the picture my daughter showed us. She went to school that morning and an eighth grader asked to take a picture with her... which she then put on Tiktok with some nasty messages and shared with the entire school. We didn't even wait for the administration to make her apologize again. That was the end of her time in school.
And honestly, if I could, I'd pull her friend out of that school, pick him up every day and put him in online school with my daughter. My wife joked that I'd start a school here for queer kids (my daughter is also queer, but that wasn't the bullying that bothered her, it was the furry stuff). Honestly, if I could, I would.
Bullies come from all walks of life...
Mean as shit. I've actually met the parents of two different guys that bullied me. They were poor white trash that smoked and drank and gave you that sense of fight or flight that usually only kicks in when a goddamn bear attacks you.
I suppose it's easy to ignore any signs of it happening from that point of view. Their kids have friends (the clique) who can represent the facade of everything being just fine, which every parent desperately wants to believe in in advance. If they catch a glimpse of it, they'll write it off as the bullied kid being the problem.
And that's best case. In worse cases, the parents will encourage the bullying directly or indirectly and see nothing wrong with it.
It's the same way that things like racism or sexism are taught from one generation to the next. It's not that anyone wants their child to be so, they just don't see it happening themselves.
These kinds of behaviours don't happen because they want to hurt someone. It happens because they want to protect themselves (even if it's at the cost of others) so they can fit in with the popular people. The desire to fit in comes from fear (or acknowledgement) of not being able to solve stuff on their own. So instead of teaching their children algebra or whatever is necessary to perform, they teach them to fit in at all cost, because that's what worked for themselves.
So in short, it's ignorance paired with herd mentality.
TBF, it's very common for boys to get punished for getting in fights with girls while the girls do not. So in that sense, it's gender validation.
