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icon9.gif To This Day  [message #67470] Thu, 21 February 2013 14:34 Go to next message
timmy

Has no life at all
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13739



I could not watch it start to finish in one go




Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
Re: To This Day  [message #67471 is a reply to message #67470] Thu, 21 February 2013 16:43 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Kitzyma is currently offline  Kitzyma

Likes it here

Registered: March 2012
Messages: 215



I managed to watch it all in one go, but it was tough going.

My experience of schools is very limited - just one primary school and one secondary school, both in the same area of North West England. My schools were relatively small, with maybe a couple of hundred students in my primary school and fewer than 700 in my secondary school. Therefore, my experience of bullying is certainly not representative. However, I never experienced anything that I'd call bullying and don't really remember seeing it happen to anyone else. One or two of my teachers might have been considered to be bullies, though.

Yes, I was occasionally called 'titch' (I'm short) or four-eyes (I wear specs), but it wasn't often, and it was done in such a way that I felt that they were more like nicknames than insults. And I was quite happy to trade such words with others. Maybe I'm too thick-skinned and insensitive to feel bullied. Maybe there was very little real bullying in my schools. Maybe I was just too unobservant to notice others being bullied. Maybe bullying has got worse since I was at school. Maybe I was just lucky.

Of course, I'm not denying that real, horrific bullying exists and does terrible damage to the victims. Of course, even just one case of bullying should not be tolerated, and we should all do what we can to fight it or, hopefully prevent it.

Some things I wonder, though, and perhaps others here can enlighten me on them... Is it really is so prevalent now or are we just more aware of it? Has it realy got worse, or are communications now so much better that we just hear about it more often? Most of the really bad cases I've heard about seem to be in US High Schools rather than UK schools - is that a real difference or just related to a smaller polulation in the UK? If a real difference, is it because of something in US 'High School Culture' that makes it worse?

Re: To This Day  [message #67472 is a reply to message #67471] Thu, 21 February 2013 17:14 Go to previous message
timmy

Has no life at all
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13739



I still have to take the second sitting and finish it. I was bullied. I was a bully.

I am sad about the former and I am ashamed of the latter. Bullied, I almost offered myself to the bullies in order to receive even some small attention from them. They were the school heroes, you see.

Bullying, I homed in on those weaker, even weaker than I was. Because I knew how to be bullied I knew how to bully. I was almost surgically good at it. I stopped when I had a revelation. I was turned upon when we were both 14 and I ought to have grown up by a victim, who beat the shit out of me. I deserved it. I realised it was stupid. A couple of years ago I tried to find him in order to apologise, but I failed. I was not alone in bullying him. Ths school staff did the same.

As you might expect I am, today, a fierce anti-bullying advocate.



Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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