Noli Irritare Leones

When I was a child, I was bullied from first grade through eighth grade. It’s hard for a child to get across just how bad the bullying really is, and on a couple of those times when I did mention it to an adult, some of them (not my parents) gave me very definite advice.

“Just ignore it.”

and

“He’s just doing that because he likes you.”

In reality, the boys at school liked me the way a cat likes a mouse. They liked that I was nearly the smallest child in my grade, making me an especially convenient target for being pushed during recess, having my skirt flipped up, and all of those other things, big and small, that a group of slightly larger children can inflict on a slightly smaller and weaker one.

Years later, I had occasion to talk about bullying online, in a group that discussed kids and parenting. A lot of us had been bullied as children, and many of us had gotten similar advice from adults. Some of us, mostly boys, but a few girls, had been told to fight back. Others, and actually all of us were girls (though I suppose some boys might get this advice, too), had been told “just ignore it.” Neither of these is a particularly good piece of advice – not, at any rate, as something a child is suppose to apply to all situations. Hitting back does, yes, work for some people – in particular, some boys reported getting a kind of hazing, one on one bullying, which would stop and turn to friendly behavior as soon as the boy proved himself a regular guy by hitting back. And ignoring does sometimes work for minor verbal teasing; the person doing the teasing may move on to another, more sensitive target. But a lot of us had faced bullying by people who had us outnumbered, and neither words, nor trying to ignore it, nor hitting back did us any good.

I grew older, and the boys appeared to mature out of bullying, and finally left me alone. But unfortunately, not all little boys do mature. Some of them just get bigger. And they’re sitll bullies, but now they’re in bigger bodies, and with a viciousness that’s been honed over the years. Jill of Feministe encountered such men, at an online board frequented by fellow students at her law school. Sick stuff – guys posting for months to threads about her – comments about her appearance (because, you know, feminists have got to be ugly, even when they’re young and strikingly good-looking), “Jill sighting” posts and mentions of “tag teaming” her around campus, and some people found Jill threads that mentioned rape and a desire to “hate fuck” her. Creepy stuff.

And what has further creeped me out is seeing people showing up on her blog, to give her the same advice I got as a child. Just ignore it. It will go away if you just ignore it and don’t pay any attention to it. (Never mind that it hadn’t gone away for months while she did ignore it.) And, worst of all, the adult version of “He’s just doing it because he likes you” – someone actually suggested that the “hate fuck” remark was a compliment, because, after all, Jill’s attractive, and the guy was saying he wanted to have sex with her.

Now, I can half forgive the adults who told me that when I was a child. Because little boys do sometimes harrass the little girl they like; they’re still little, and don’t know better. That wasn’t what was happening in my case, and, even if they had “liked” me, screw it, it’s for them to learn to be nice to the girl they like, not for little girls to be taught to take bad treatment from boys because it means they are “liked.” But at least these were little boys, who couldn’t be expected to know better.

But what can I say about someone who thinks fully grown boys don’t know well enough to realize that “I’d like to hate fuck that cunt” isn’t a compliment?

This isn’t just guys messing around; this is harrassment.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 4th, 2006 at 11:03 pm and is filed under Memory. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.