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.
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.
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.
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.