Bully

[milomorris]

Rather long, but interesting, article, off Huffington Post this morning.
~~~

O'Connell missed. The problem isn't misogyny. Nor is it about the expectations of the gender binary. Its about the dishonorable behavior of people who abuse those that they perceive as being weaker than them. Its about power, not gender.

But I do appreciate the effort.

[serious crayons]

O'Connell missed. The problem isn't misogyny. Nor is it about the expectations of the gender binary. Its about the dishonorable behavior of people who abuse those that they perceive as being weaker than them. Its about power, not gender.

I don't think bullying is entirely about gender, nor that it's exclusively directed at people who deviate from the expectations of the gender binary (great phrase, BTW!).

But clearly that is one massive trigger (among others, such as weight or disability) for dishonorable people to abuse those they perceive as weaker.

[Mandy21]

Trying to stop it before it starts:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-jascz/bullying-why-social-and-e_b_1411306.html

Michael Jascz
Executive Director, The Relationship Foundation

Bullying: Why Social and Emotional Learning in Schools Is Paramount to Prevention
Posted: 04/ 8/2012 5:24 pm

Let's get in before the bullying starts. If that sounds obvious, I'm not talking about just educating children about the damage that bullying causes -- although those teachings have much merit. Rather, I'm suggesting we educate children on the very basics of human relationships -- the stage before thoughts of aggression and conflict and separation develop into bullying.

Because where and when does bullying begin? How does a child reach the point that they become a bully? Could the things our caregivers say and do, while well-intentioned, set the stage for bullying behavior to later surface? Child psychology has emerged in the last few generations to offer some answers, yet social cruelty among adolescents is increasing. Blame is laid at the door of home life, media, video games, peers, etc. The average American child witnesses 8,000 murders on television before they finish elementary school. Other sources say it reaches 16,000 by the time they graduate high school. We cannot control the home life, cultures, friends, media influence of the children in our school systems. Everyone has a different story, and everyone's story is complex. Pointing fingers does not resolve anything.

Let's ask this question: Why do adults bully to a much lesser extent? Have you ever had a friend call you in the morning and say, "I know who I'm going to hurt today"? Yet some of our teenagers are waking with up with a vengeance. Teens resort to bullying because it is a strategy that they believe will meet their needs: social acceptance, self-confidence, respect and security. As many adults remember from their own school days, peers often reward one another's verbal and physical aggression with increased social status and acceptance. Students who have already been victimized by bullies may resort to similar strategies to regain their sense of self-confidence -- thus, a vicious cycle.

Most adults, however, while wanting acceptance, social status and self-confidence generally have different, and more socially acceptable, means for getting these needs met. Adults have opportunities to develop greater understanding of why they have their feelings and recognize the consequences of TV violence. They have more access to books, courses, and materials that help them navigate trying situations, all of which they did not have in school. Over the years we have learned that hurting others has consequences, sometimes dire. If our children can be encouraged from an early age to communicate clearly about what's really going on for them, then they can make better choices -- where better to do this but where they spend most of their day, in schools?

Bullying and other forms of social cruelty in high schools will not end just with anti-bullying campaigns. In order to change a culture of bullying and aggression, schools must implement teachings that provide an alternative. Bullying prevention begins with encouraging students to talk about their feelings in a language that is safe and helpful. Social skills will not come from an occasional assembly or after a bullying case has gained public attention. Social and emotional education should become a learned vocabulary in day-to-day life.

We've found through our work in New York City high schools that encouraging students to communicate their feelings respectfully is not as challenging as it might seem. Students want to talk about relationships. In our classes, students write essays, journal entries, poems and self-evaluations about the subject. Having a space to discuss relationships takes this complex issue into the realm of honest discussion and awareness. One of the questions we ask students at the beginning of our course is how they would feel if made fun of by a friend in front of their peers. Many students are unable to articulate their feelings at first, saying they would "brush it off" or even "hit someone." After a few classes, however, they are able to describe their feelings more clearly as they become empowered with healthy alternatives. In a safe environment where students are encouraged to discuss their emotions and needs, aggression naturally decreases as students are better able to understand themselves and empathize with others.

The majority of schools across the country have not yet prioritized social and emotional learning or are compelled to allocate budgets elsewhere. Without emphasizing social and emotional learning, schools send the message that these skills are not necessary to academic and personal success. As a result, too many students resort to aggression as the expedient strategy to meeting their needs.

A proactive, preventative approach may sound more costly than media attention and celebrity endorsements toward anti-bullying campaigns, but a strategy based on long-term prevention will never be a waste of money.

[milomorris]

Michael Jascz
Executive Director, The Relationship Foundation

Bullying: Why Social and Emotional Learning in Schools Is Paramount to Prevention
Posted: 04/ 8/2012 5:24 pm

I think that a more systemic approach will work. Teach children that there are times, places, and circumstances where aggression is acceptable, and times, places, and circumstances where aggression is unacceptable...and that there are consequences associated with deviating from the prescribed behavioral patterns.

[ifyoucantfixit]

   I am sorry.  But in my opinion.  The only things that kids understand.  And I use the term Kids loosly. Is retribution.  They understand
that they are not allowed to hurt someone, if they are going to get hurt in return.  It also works on adults.  ie traffic tickets, fines for late
payments, and losing your job if you don't do a good job there.  Kids will be more likely to obey the rules of behavior, if they are told that
they are going to suffer from consequences.  From detention, or community service.  Beyond that to even be placed in jail, or rehabilitation.  This is a problem that has to be addressed.  I know that a kid in my grandsons school was jealous of him, and picked on him repeatedly.  The kid was seldom if ever punished and my grandson, was always.. considered the one in the wrong.  I went there and talked to the Principal, and she was obviously in the other kids camp.  She said that Ryan was at fault, he was difficult for the kids to get along with.  That he was not telling the truth, about the problems they were having.
   Coincidentally.. that kid moved.  After he was gone.  My grandson never had any more problems...Of course she was right?  He was the problem, not the other bully..  Who by the way was older and larger than my grandson.  A grade higher.  That witch just didn't like Ryan because he didn't come from a well to do family like the other boy....  He has a single mom.  She was going to college at the time.
   It needs to stop NOW!!!!

[milomorris]

   I am sorry.  But in my opinion.  The only things that kids understand.  And I use the term Kids loosly. Is retribution.  They understand
that they are not allowed to hurt someone, if they are going to get hurt in return.  It also works on adults.  ie traffic tickets, fines for late
payments, and losing your job if you don't do a good job there.  Kids will be more likely to obey the rules of behavior, if they are told that
they are going to suffer from consequences.  From detention, or community service.  Beyond that to even be placed in jail, or rehabilitation.  This is a problem that has to be addressed.  I know that a kid in my grandsons school was jealous of him, and picked on him repeatedly.  The kid was seldom if ever punished and my grandson, was always.. considered the one in the wrong.  I went there and talked to the Principal, and she was obviously in the other kids camp.  She said that Ryan was at fault, he was difficult for the kids to get along with.  That he was not telling the truth, about the problems they were having.
   Coincidentally.. that kid moved.  After he was gone.  My grandson never had any more problems...Of course she was right?  He was the problem, not the other bully..  Who by the way was older and larger than my grandson.  A grade higher.  That witch just didn't like Ryan because he didn't come from a well to do family like the other boy....  He has a single mom.  She was going to college at the time.
   It needs to stop NOW!!!!

I agree on both counts.

1. The bully needs to knjow that there will be some punishment. In this regard, I disagree with what the Department of Education (http://www.stopbullying.gov/respond/support-kids-involved/index.html#address) calls "consequences" in its guidelines for dealing with bullies. Writing stories, reading books, and making posters are not going to perceived as a consequence by any child.

2. Janice, you are right on the money when it comes to some teachers and administrators. Some have their heads in the sand, and are either incapable, or unwilling to see an incident as bullying. Others simply don't want to have to deal with it. They are "busy" enough already. I am reminded of a clip from Bully where an administrator (principal, I think) is talking to a couple of parents. When the parents complain about how rowdy the behavior is on their child's school bus, the administrator says that she's been on that bus, and that the children's behavior was "golden."

Beyond that, I have heard from teachers that the parents of bullies can themselves become hostile when confronted with a report of their child bullying another. They will sometimes turn on the teacher, say s/he is lying, threaten him/her with legal action, or even bodily harm. 

[Mandy21]

Bully": a victory in the ratings war?
By Steve Pond | Reuters – 22 hrs ago

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - "Bully," the Weinstein Co. documentary that has made about $250,000 at the box office and stirred up weeks of controversy as it fought the R rating handed down by the Motion Picture Association of America, is this year's cinematic cause célèbre.

But as a case study, "Bully" might not have the lasting impact its supporters hope.

The controversy drew an enormous amount of attention to a film that deserves to be widely seen. But is "Bully" a great movie? Can it really help launch an uprising that will put an end to something that has been going on for as long as kids have been going to school? And will it have any real impact on the ratings board or the MPAA?

In the end, the film hasn't shaken the ratings system, hasn't broken through at the box office and will set no precedents at the MPAA.

The big controversy, in the end, may be a case of much ado about not enough.

An undeniably powerful look at the abuse endured by a handful of schoolchildren at the hands of aggressive classmates, "Bully" was rated R for a half-dozen uses of the F-word by school bullies. The Lee Hirsch-directed film, which was titled "The Bully Project" when it debuted at Tribeca last year, lost its appeal by one vote, and prompted an online petition that gathered more than half a million signatures.

Adamant that the rating was unfair, Harvey Weinstein released the film unrated, where it has done respectable business in two weeks of very limited release in New York , L.A. and Toronto.

But Weinstein and MPAA chairman Christopher Dodd also crafted a solution that essentially allowed both sides to claim victory. TWC submitted a new version of the film in which some but not all of the offending words were muted; the MPAA rated the new version PG-13, and allowed Weinstein to put it in theaters on Friday, waiving the typical 90-day window required of re-rated films.

Weinstein got to brag about getting a PG-13 without cutting a crucial scene that contained three F-bombs (two more than are typically allowed without triggering an automatic R), while MPAA ratings maven Joan Graves could say that the system worked by pointing to the edits that were made in the film.

He said: "They saved face, and we won."

She said: "The ratings system has worked exactly as it is supposed to."

The film itself, said TheWrap's reviewer Alonso Duralde, is "a missed opportunity."

Duralde faulted Hirsch for not including any statistics about bullying, and called the film's intent and message "unimpeachable" but its editing erratic and execution flawed.

One thing he didn't mention: The film's near-total reliance on the stories of bullying among impoverished and lower-middle-class students in small towns in the South and Midwest.

Set in Georgia, Iowa, Texas, Mississippi and Oklahoma, the film's lack of context outside those settings makes bullying appear to be a rural and lower-class problem.

Is bullying every bit as vicious and damaging in, say, Beverly Hills or the Upper East Side of Manhattan? No doubt it is. But by focusing exclusively on the schools he does, Hirsch is inviting the kind of response the film drew from one acerbic friend, who said he liked the documentary but was disturbed by how it featured "one toothless cracker after another."

To escape small-town bullying, two of the families depicted in the film have since moved to Oklahoma City. As wrenching as "Bully" is at times, the film would be more effective if it pointed out that bullies surely walk the hallways there, too, as well as in other, far more urbane and upscale environs.

As for the impact of the ratings fight, National Assn. of Theater Owners president John Fithian told the New York Times last week that Weinstein's repeated ratings battles, which also included "Blue Valentine" and "The King's Speech," could in the long term "bring down the voluntary rating system."

But given that Weinstein eventually submitted to that system with "Bully," and given the movie industry's decades-long fear of the government regulation that the voluntary ratings are designed to ward off, that possibility seem miniscule.

Even long-term change could be unlikely.

(For the record, Weinstein admitted to the Times that in the past, he has indeed used ratings battle to get attention for his movies - but in this case, he's doing so out of passion and "not for publicity.")

The "Bully" battle could conceivably lead the MPAA to craft compromises more often, while continuing to insist that the system is working. Christopher Dodd was reportedly helpful in obtaining the PG-13 for "Bully," and he could certainly weigh in on behalf of other films in the future.

But the major studios that make up the MPAA - a group that does not include the Weinstein Co. - have shown not the slightest sign of wanting to junk the system. And the MPAA is adamantly sticking to the same old stance: it's what parents want.

In fact, Graves' public comments on the controversy are straight out of the playbook written and executed for decades by Jack Valenti, the longtime MPAA chief who helped institute movie ratings in the 1960s.

Valenti's favorite tactic was to show off a survey that said a large percentage of American parents thought the ratings system did a good job - and Graves did exactly the same thing in the hearing at which Weinstein narrowly lost its appeal.

The difference: Valenti always showed off the exact figures, while Graves referred to a yet-unreleased MPAA survey about foul language in films. Graves said that the results of that study show that parents "overwhelmingly" do not want the ratings board to overlook language, particularly the F-word.

But while those overwhelming results were summarized during the private appeal, they have not been released. An MPAA spokesperson did not respond to TheWrap's request for a timeline on when that might happen.

So while "Bully" might have caused the MPAA to be a little more flexible, it certainly hasn't caused them to be any more transparent.

The PG-13 version of "Bully" will expand from three to 55 markets next week, and to around 100 on April 20.

..

[Mandy21]

I finally saw this today on DVD, from my local library, which only recently stocked it.  I do not see what in the world the big deal was about the ratings chaos.  The cursing is such a minute, unnoteworthy part of the story that is being told.  It was a good film, and would recommend for parents to check their local libraries to view.  It was an eye-opener, for sure.  The bonus features are worth watching too.  The biggest message I took away from it was one for the parents:  if your child mentions to you, even in the slightest passing, that they are being bullied in some way, LISTEN CAREFULLY because it is only the tip of the iceberg.  The children bear the brunt of shame for not being liked, and are often too embarrassed to report it to anyone.  By the time they do, DO SOMETHING about it quickly, or else it may be too late all too soon.