Tag Archives: children

Bullying as a Social Regulator

Posted on by
2

If only it worked this way.

I came across a post by Tea Party Nation blogger Dr. Rich Swier called “Bullying, Peer Pressure and Gulf Coast Gives.” (You need a TPN account to see it, unfortunately.) I won’t describe the way in which the contents of my stomach forcibly exited my body upon my reading this, and I will also ignore the homophobia in this article because it’s obvious and there’s no need to comment on it. Rather, I’m going to simply explore an interesting idea that Swier brings up.

In this article, Swier is opposing Gulf Coast Gives, a charity foundation that, among many other things, advocates against LGBT-related bullying. He opposes this foundation because he disagrees with its stance on this issue:

This is not bullying. It is peer pressure and is healthy. There are many bad behaviors such as smoking, under age drinking and drug abuse that are behaviors that cannot be condoned. Homosexuality falls into this category. Homosexuality is simply bad behavior that youth see as such and rightly pressure their peers to stop it…

I agree with Gulf Coast Gives that “LGBT youth are up to five times more likely to attempt suicide than their straight counterparts”. Homosexuality, like drugs, harms young people if they experement with it. That is the greatest tragedy.

Again, I’m going to just ignore the self-evident homophobia and dissect Swier’s concept of bullying as some sort of social regulator. He reframes bullying as “peer pressure” and claims that it prevents young people from engaging in unsafe behaviors, in this case, homosexuality.

Leaving aside for now the fact that, unlike the other behaviors listed here, homosexuality is not a choice, I am left to wonder if Swier somehow managed to completely miss the reasoning behind all the anti-drugs and alcohol campaigns that public school kids are subjected to these days. Peer pressure isn’t typically a force that promotes healthy behavior. If it were, we wouldn’t need all these “just say no” lessons to teach kids how to resist it.

It seems that bullying and peer pressure serve more to encourage “normalcy” than anything else. Luckily for Swier’s argument, heterosexuality happens to be normative. But so are underage drinking and, in some circles, smoking and drug use. People don’t get bullied for doing things that are unsafe; they get bullied for doing things that are “weird.” Contrary to Swier’s argument, kids and teens don’t see homosexuality as “bad behavior.” They see it as weird.

Not only do kids not bully each other for doing things that are actually unsafe, but they frequently bully each other for doing things that most adults would see as positive. I’m sure that even social conservatives would agree with me that reading books is good for kids. Yet every avid reader I know, myself included, was made fun of for it in grade school. To quote the great Bill O’Reilly, you can’t explain that.

Of course, norms change. Homosexuality is becoming increasingly accepted in American society, so it’s only a matter of time before that acceptance starts trickling down to kids and teens and Swier’s argument starts falling apart, like all Tea Party arguments inevitably do.

Gender-free Parenting

Posted on by
1

Maybe in the future.

So a couple in Toronto has decided to keep their newborn baby’s sex a secret from friends and family in order to help the child develop free of gender roles. I have so much difficulty deciding what to think of this. Because first of all, it’s nice to see someone trying to raise their children in a way that allows them to express themselves and be free of this typical “boys must not cry” and “girls must be pretty” bullshit.

However, people need to be realistic. As this Thought Catalog post wisely points out, kids in elementary school segregate themselves by gender and choose their friends accordingly. Who will be friends with little Storm?

Furthermore, Storm’s parents aren’t simply allowing him/her/zer to choose an identity–they’re imposing one. It’s one thing to allow your child to experiment and choose how to act, what to wear, and so on. But it’s entirely another to try to force a child to grow up without a gender at all. The idea should be that regardless of what’s in your pants, you should be allowed to express yourself. Hiding basic biological truths from a child’s friends and family is, in my opinion, going overboard.

There’s also the uncomfortable sense that Storm’s parents might be a bit more concerned with making grand political statements than seeing that their child grows up happy. The email they sent to friends and family said, “We’ve decided not to share Storm’s sex for now — a tribute to freedom and choice in place of limitation, a stand up to what the world could become in Storm’s lifetime…”

But the thing is, what the world could become in Storm’s lifetime just isn’t what it is right now. A responsible parent raises children with a healthy balance of realism and idealism–not one rather than the other. For instance, I’m sure my parents wish that someday I could walk down the street alone at night in a miniskirt and face no threat of sexual assault. But right now, I can’t do that. So they see to it that I don’t go out dressed like that. I’m sure they also wish that I could freely disclose my diagnosis of depression to whoever I want and face no stigma or prejudice, but that’s not how things are right now. So they tell me to be careful about whom I tell. (Granted, I choose to blog about it anyway, but that’s a choice I’ve consciously made.)

Back to the point. If the intention of Storm’s parents in keeping their child’s biological sex a secret was simply to prevent friends and family from making gendered remarks (and giving gendered presents)…well, I’d like to think that they respect their friends and family enough to be able to ask them politely to refrain. They could ask for non-gendered gifts. They could suggest ways to play with or compliment their child that don’t include references to gender (for instance, saying “Good job” instead of “Good boy/girl”). Sure, that would be a bit more difficult than simply keeping Storm’s sex a secret, but it would be less ridiculously dramatic, that’s for sure.

I’m not sure I see anything good coming of this. Raising a child who flaunts societal norms is a great thing, but that child should be old enough to understand the consequences that, unfortunately and inevitably, arise. A teenager who decides to (for example) dress androgynously knows that others will inevitably react in a negative way. But a little kid can’t possibly understand that. The thought of Storm coming home every day crying because all the other kids make fun of him/her/zer for no apparent reason makes me really sad, and it makes me wonder why these parents are putting their political beliefs before their child’s happiness.

For another (great) post on this topic that I completely agree with, see “A Child is Not a Billboard” by Clarissa.

Think of the Children

Posted on by
1

Being a 20-year-old college student, I don’t often write about issues relating to children. However, not only do I plan on having kids someday, but I also think that how our society relates to children is often a fascinating subject to study. Furthermore, some things just piss me off.

The subject of this post is both fascinating and infuriating. A blog I follow called Free Range Kids had a post several days ago describing a new law in the works in New Jersey:

We’re getting to the point where ANYTHING having to do with children is so fraught with inflated fears that we are going absolutely crazy. Consider this bill just introduced in the New Jersey state assembly: It would outlaw the photographing or videotaping of kids in situations in which “a reasonable parent or guardian would not expect his child to be the subject of such reproduction.”

According to the post, the reason for this new law is that last summer, a 63-year-old man was caught taking photos of (fully-clothed) girls because, according to him, he finds prepubescent girls “sexy.” While this is, of course, culturally unacceptable (not to mention pretty gross), does it really harm anyone? Is it really that much worse than a camera-less old man simply watching those girls and discreetly masturbating?

Furthermore, as the post mentions, this law would criminalize anyone who takes pictures of their kids in a sports game or at a birthday party, or anyone who takes artistic photographs in public places, which may include children. Since I’m basically my family’s unofficial photographer, I can definitely imagine how frustrating that would be.

I think the question these lawmakers need to ask is, how would this law make children safer? It does nothing to prevent pedophilia or childhood sexual abuse. Someone who has a strong enough sexual urge towards kids to do something like this is unlikely to be restrained by any law, especially when it’s so easy to take photos on the sly.

Ultimately, law-making is about balance. Laws should not cause way more trouble for law-abiding citizens than they’re worth, and this one definitely does.

On Girlcotts

Posted on by
2

The fact that Abercrombie & Fitch tried to market a push-up bikini top for pre-pubescent girls is old news now, but I read an interesting post on Fbomb about it and whether or not a “girlcott” would be effective. This got me thinking about the concept of “girlcotts” and of personal boycotts in general.

[Random aside: How would a push-up top work if there’s nothing there to push up? Anyways.]

The Fbomb post mentions a so-called “girlcott” led by the Women and Girls Association of Pennsylvania against stupid stuff from Abercrombie in the past. Apparently, it turned out to be effective and Abercrombie stopped selling the stupid stuff in question (though, of course, its shelves are still overflowing with various other crap.)

However, egregious overthinker that I am, I naturally have a problem with the term “girlcott” in the first place. Namely–and the people protesting these sort of issues would do well to recognize it–this is not a women’s issue. This is everybody’s issue. It should not be just women boycotting stores that sell products like this. There are men who don’t want to see these things marketed to their daughters and little sisters. There are men who refuse to buy into our society’s fetishization of little girls, who find themselves sexually attracted to women who look like women, not women who look like prepubescent girls. While men obviously wouldn’t be shopping for this stuff, framing this issue as one that only women should and do care about only robs us of potential allies.

Clearly, this neologism is a response to the perceived gender-specificity of the original word, “boycott.” However, some quick Wikipedia research has uncovered the fact that the word actually comes from someone’s name (specifically, that of Captain Charles Boycott) and has nothing to do with boys whatsoever. Furthermore, the solution to gender-specific words is not more gender-specific words, it’s gender-neutral words.

My second issue with this whole concept stems from a point brought up later in the Fbomb post, which discusses the idea of personally choosing not to shop at a certain store in order to make a point. I have mixed feelings about this. If you’re doing it for your own personal comfort and integrity–as in, you’d feel uncomfortable shopping at a store that doesn’t share your values–then sure. But it definitely annoys me when people think that they’re actually going to have an impact on the store itself if they refuse to shop there. If that’s what you want to do, organize a protest.

At any rate, nobody’s going to care that you personally refuse to shop there. At most, you’ll be preventing yourself from owning things you potentially like and making no impact whatsoever. It just doesn’t make sense.