A Spark of Guilt in Everyone
By Andrew Ryan
Bullying
is a problem that has seemingly become more prevalent as of late. Many sources
claim that bullying is a result of our culture, a result of our social
pressures and inability to see depth beyond labels or secondary
characteristics. Many groups, activists, and forms of media have done great
work to try and address the problem of rampant bullying. From hopeful words to
social outcries, and more in-depth research; People are doing their best to
make sure that this problem is known to society. What these people hope to
accomplish is to make the problem well known and allow society to see the ugly
face of its social pressures. We can only hope to institute changes in social
values and norms if we become more educated and see through our flaws in
thinking. Until then, we have people being ridiculed and bullied because of
small aspects of themselves that they should not be held at fault for. A
forward thinker and “biphopbia” educator, Robyn Ochs said, “We are not
responsible for what we do not know that we do not know”. So the first step is to make sure that people
know that they are ill-informed.
Bully
takes us into the life high school students, of varied locations, who are
bullied and relentlessly tormented. It is a documentary, and the footage we see
of the abuse is all real. From the dangerous school bus happenings, to the
oblivious and ill prepared school officials, we get to taste a little bit of
what these kids and families have to go through every day. Michelle Obama is
the first lady of the United States, and has shown through her work that
children are one of her top priorities. Ellen Degeneres was one of the first
celebrities to come out publicly as a homosexual, and she is a very relevant
and popular talk show host to date. Robyn is an esteemed educator, speaker, and
consultant for sexual orientation and identity. Robyn has also experienced these difficulties first hand, declaring herself as bisexual.
Anecdotes
and emotional stories were rampant in the texts that tried to spread awareness
of the problems. The movie Bully showed a school aged boy, Alex, being
punched and stabbed with pencils on the school bus; and the school
administration had the audacity to refer to the school bus as angels when they
were on board. We were also given a glimpse into the lives of parents who had
lost a child to suicide induced by relentless bullying at school. Michelle
Obama and Ellen Degeneres also bring up the subject of suicides afflicting
school aged children, induced by bullying, they are hopeful about the future
and plan to spread awareness and make sure our culture of bullying is changed
for good. Robyn Ochs was able to tell us
about when she came out and what a tough time it was in the nation to come out,
with little resources available and the ones who were, were far away and could
not provide support. She cited that as the reason she wanted to make sure that
others who came out after her had more resources at their disposal, so they
would have a better time of it than her.
Ellen
and Michelle Obama use a very emotional tone when addressing the issue on the
Ellen show, while Bully uses the very same appeal through much of the
movie. There is a very stark difference in the background of these people, yet
they are still able to be bound together by their humanity and how they feel
about the problem. Ellen and Michelle are famous and have wealth and tons of
resources at their disposal, but the families in Bullly have little
wealth and power over the situation that they and their children are in. Kelby,
a young girl who is bullied at high school for being a lesbian, has aspirations
of changing the views of her small town; she wants to persist and show these
people that have wronged her that they are wrong and she does not deserve the
treatment that they have given her. Kelby finally moves at the end of the film
because the town was too overwhelmingly cruel to her, really shaking her faith
in solving the problem. Through this we can see that Kelby’s tone shifts from
defiant and hopeful and near the end of the film her tone transfers to a sad
and broken. These tones do a good job of addressing the issue, because tone can
show that everyone has the ability to empathize with people who are being
mistreated; and in Kelby’s case, can show how a bad situation has affected
someone for better or for worse.
Robyn
had a very approachable use of language and tone. She used common language and
had a very positive and happy tone, regardless of what she was talking about.
She made sure that her audience was very comfortable when she was speaking, and
that they felt comfortable responding to her. In a stark contrast to Robyn’s
tone, the “it doesn’t get better” video has a rather melancholy tone. This
video used pessimism where Robyn used optimism, even though they were trying to
address similar problem of not being accepted into a community. The different
tones used by each source reflect back on what they are hoping to convey. Robyn
is hoping to spread education and awareness of a problem plaguing almost
everyone, unbeknownst to most; while the video “it doesn't get better” by
YouTube user jeffreycraigg is trying to convey that things don’t always get
better even if these people make it through high school.
All
of the language used in these sources has been very approachable language.
Middle school children would probably be able to fully comprehend what was
being said. This really helps the spread of these sources; if a portion of the
population cannot understand what you are trying to say, then how can you hope
to spread your message to these people. An underlying theme in all of these
sources, whether stated or unspoken, is that bullying is a result of not
fitting identities that there are social pressures to uphold; and the more
people that are made aware of this problem, the easier it will be to solve it,
if it can be solved.
Many
of these sources use comparisons and basic reasoning as a great defense of
their argument. They question the values and do not blindly accept what has
been laid out before them. Michelle Obama and Ellen talked about how our
culture is one of bullies, and that children will certainly grow up to bully
people if they are subject to the rampant bullying that we put out in the open
every day. They also point out that
these young people are very valuable to society, and that it is always a
tragedy when we lose one to something as ignorant as bullying. The movie
“Bully” takes us to the school officials who swear that things are alright, but
when they are confronted about the hostile environments or the poorly policed
school busses, they say that there is not much that they have the power to do
and that school busses are notorious for being rampant bullying zones. The show
points out just how silly that this seems to be that they have effectively
given up on doing a good job protecting students on the bus because it’s
accepted that it is hard to accomplish.
Robyn spoke of
how the society that we live in has ambivalence with sexuality. Pointing out
that our values say that women should be attractive and sexy, and that the
genders should follow how their gender is attractive, but then we condemn
sexuality and label women as sluts if they do follow those guidelines of
attractiveness. Robyn’s lecture was full of interesting anecdotes and
analogies. She asked us, “If you were to see me walking down the street by
myself, what would you assume that my sexual preference was?” and most, if not
all people, would have thought her to be a heterosexual. She really pointed out
a flaw in our “Binary Thinking” by asking what she would have to portray for
people to assume that she was bisexual. Robyn showed us that there are entire
spectrums of people who can be erased by binary thinking. One example was, “if
you’re not white you’re ____, if you’re not liberal you’re ____, if you’re not
straight you’re ____.” These comparisons really showed how silly that sort of
binary thought was, while simultaneously showing how easy it is to fall into
that mode of thinking.
The YouTube
video entitled “It Doesn’t Get Better” tries to dispel the ideas that spread a
hopeful message for all those high school children to stick it out after high
school. The speaker in this video says, “I don’t think it gets better, for some
people it gets less bad”, and brings up the struggles that still plague people
after high school has ended. He brings up how, even in the queer community,
there are “systems of difference” and they do not allow a true sense of
community. This is a pretty reasonable argument based on what we see so
widespread in society. Robyn even brought up that a struggle that bisexual
people face is that there is a “one of us or not one of us” mentality in the
gay community, and how hard it seems even from the eyes of someone not in the
community. These are very logical arguments from people who are trying to
spread different messages, in response to what appears to be the same problem.
We
can see that society is fostering bullying; we think that it can be changed if
we get people to be informed and aware of the problems. Our steps are to
educate and make sure that people know that they do not know something, and we
have to insure that we don’t accept or abide by bullying tactics that are in
place in society, like the aggressive political climate. These sources are
hoping to make people aware of the fact that there is a problem affecting us,
and it is as deep as our culture. Through
personal stories, emotions, reasonable arguments, and the endorsements of many
people, celebrity or not, these sources
hope to one day change a culture that has grown a society of normal people and
not normal people. Before one can be educated though, one has to be aware that
something is missing.
Works
Cited
Bully. Dir. Lee Hirsch.
The Weinstein Company, 2011. Film.
"It Doesn’t Get
Better." YouTube. YouTube. 19 Oct. 2010. web. 30 Oct. 2012.
Obama, Michelle. "First Lady Michelle Obama Talks about Bullying"
YouTube. YouTube. 28 Oct. 2010. web. 30 Oct. 2012 (date you accessed it).
Ochs,
Robyn. “Addressing Binaries.” Ohio University. Ellis Hall, Athens, Ohio. 15
Oct. 2012
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