<p>I think he should fight or not fight. Either get in fists beating on the harasser’s head, or do nothing. This just sounds too wimpy to be useful at any level:</p>
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<p>I also agree with Missypie: “Well meaning parents don’t ever even mention race, so kids get the idea that it’s a taboo topic when, in reality, race should be talked about.”</p>
<p>My affluent community is an amazing collection of ethnicities and many, many mixed race families (mine being one). I’m also very cognizant of what yabebabe (#54) mentioned about the rampant put downs that youth do for the slightest perceived weaknesses/differences.</p>
<p>I recall watching something on the Cartoon network with my 7 year old. One of the commercials showed a rather buffonish heavier kid flopping around. It really struck me that the entire point of that “humor” was the look of the overweight kid. I immediately asked my daughter what she thought of the commercial. She didn’t understand what I was getting at. I pointed out the fact that the gist of the commercial was making fun of the “fat kid’s” plight. I reminded her that our family doesn’t tolerate belittling others – race, gender, appearance, wealth level, class, disabilities, etc.</p>
<p>Now that she’s 12, she now knows of gay/lesbians around her. The same mantra applies. To her credit, I think she’s been a model of tolerance and inclusiveness. While our family comes from a conservative Christian tradition (where sometimes tolerance isn’t necessarily the everyday thing), we consider ourselves lucky that we’ve been able to impart one of the greatest commandments to her “Love your neighbor as you’d love yourself”.</p>
<p>The discussion w/Europegrad’s attitude is funny. I wonder if Europegrad’s ban on gays’ flirting with non-gays would apply to heteros he doesn’t find mutually attractive. Logic would say that if an “ugly girl” hit on him, his underwear would be in bunches too and he’d shout “HARASSMENT”. But if Pam Anderson came his way, he’d be A-OK.</p>
<p>His attitude is so full of holes, it’s sad and funny at the same time.</p>
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<p>My son is the least judgemental person I know. He has Asperger’s Syndrome. Everyone should know someone with Asperger’s - they would learn a lot. For Son, it’s all about logic. To him, it makes absolutely no sense to choose your friends based on appearance, race, body size, whether they can see or not, whether they can walk or not. The only people he really really cannot stand are those who are cruel to others. I’m not saying he’s a saint - lots of it isn’t intentional. He just doesn’t notice a lot of the differences.</p>
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<p>IMHO, downplaying some subjects or topics is better than ‘raising awareness’. When I’ll have my kids, I would rather ignore “race” as it is irrelevant in Western Democratic Societies, everyone already got same nominal rights. There’s no need to promote the unappealing idea that one’s skin color really matters.</p>
<p>Sex is different, as it deals with people growing up and their maturity (phisically and emotionally).</p>
<p>“Gay talk” will be plain off-limits in my house, at least in the wrong approach of “ok, don’t worry, they’re fine although they look strange”. I want to teach my kids right, high social conservative values when it comes to individual moral standards, then if they deviate form them, the detour will be their own responsibility.</p>
<p>Anyway… race seems to be a quite solved issue. No one honestly and seriously proposes racial segragation, Jim Crown laws, “separate-but-equal” approaches and so on. Only odious racial quotas remain in place here and there, but I hope such discrimination will be called off soon. We’re past that time, for good! Just history.</p>
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Not so long ago this idea was accepted as a given. And the skin color does still matter, unfortunately. Your white privilege just allows you to ignore it. </p>
<p>The idea that sexual orientation really matters is just as unappealing, but you choose to see it differently. Hopefully, by the time your children will be growing up, differences in sexual orientation will be treated the way that racial differences are treated today.</p>
<p>Gay people “look strange,” europegrad?? Oy vey iz mir.</p>
<p>“I want to teach my kids right, high social conservative values when it comes to individual moral standards, then if they deviate form them, the detour will be their own responsibility.”</p>
<p>Hate to break this to you … but being gay is an orientation, not a choice.</p>
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<p>Why do you presume I’m white? Even if I were purely white (if such fiction existed genetically, who’s more white? Dutch? German? English? Wyominites? Bostonians?), why it would be “a privilege”.</p>
<p>Being born with a relatively low quantity of melanine does not make me better person that anyone belse.</p>
<p>I have 3 different ancestry origins, two of them are Portugal and Spain so I’m technically Hispanic. However, I preffer to identify myself as multirracial.</p>
<p>Do Portuguese and Spanish consider themselves of " color"?
[White</a> people - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_people]White”>White people - Wikipedia)
It has been my impression that many Hispanics of just about every nationality except Mexican, consider themselves " White", including those from South America, not just Europe.</p>
<p>I would also agree that skin tone does not determine inherent worth.
However- much baggage and assumptions regarding skin color throughout the world & if you are in a country where you are the same hue as the " dominant" race, then you are unlikely to experience the same expectations as if you were perceived as " other".</p>
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<p>Interesting that this should come up. D is taking Spanish I and they are doing posters/speeches on famous Hispanic folks. D wanted to do Antonio Banderas (who wouldnt?) but the teacher said she couldn’t because he is Spanish, thus European, thus not Hispanic.</p>
<p>“Now that she’s 12, she now knows of gay/lesbians around her.”</p>
<p>Seriously??? Are there gay 12 year olds?? 5 year olds??? 2 year olds??</p>
<p>emeraldkity4, you couldn’t be more right. South Americans of European descent (~ 60% of population), Portuguese and Spaniards cannot understand, at first glance, this “Hispanic” thing. It’s awkard.</p>
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Look at it this way…I’m assuming you’re straight (as am I). Were you a straight 12 year old? I was. In fact, I was a straight 8-year-old. At that point I didn’t have a word for it, and I certainly hadn’t had a chance to do much of anything about it. But I was having serious crushes as far back as third grade, and they weren’t on boys. Being straight is not something that happened to me abruptly when it came time for my first girlfriend; it’s something I gradually became aware of about myself as I grew up. Why should it be different for gay kids? If there can be straight 12 year olds, why not gay 12 year olds?</p>
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The average age for a student to come out is 13.</p>
<p>According to a National Institute of Mental Health study, those teens hear an average of 26 anti-LGBT remarks per day, and 31% of them are physically assaulted per year. :(</p>
<p>You know, I don’t advocate violence and have none in my life today. But I grew up in a working-class neighborhood, and I learned that nothing puts a bully in his place like a good sock in the mouth.</p>
<p>It’s weird for me to think about, because I am now a solidly middle-class, non-violent, politically moderate, educated dude. But the fact is that all of my experiences with bullies have turned out well because I either stood my ground, disarmed them by befriending them, or punched them. Never did I simply walk away, as if their behavior didn’t bother me. That neither changes their behavior nor preserves my dignity. I just don’t see how it helps anyone.</p>
<p>The fact is that a kid who is bullied can punch the bully in the face and suffer no long-term repercussions. What’s a ten-day suspension to a 13-year-old in the grand scheme of things? Nothing. And yet it can ensure that no other bullying will occur the rest of their school days, and it just might make a bully realize that bullying has its consequences. He never expects it, and it shocks him and puts him in his place.</p>
<p>Neither of my kids has ever been in a fight, and I attribute that partly to the fact that I give them explicit permission to fight if necessary. I have always told them that if someone accosts them without justification, threatens them, shoves them, or otherwise treats them in a way that makes them frightened, that they are allowed to punch, kick, or bite that person as necessary to extricate themselves from the situation. That goes equally for child molesters and school bullies.</p>
<p>I really believe that my kids’ knowing that they have the right to defend themselves makes them more confident and therefore discourages bullies from harassing them. Perhaps if the school bully thought that the gay kid just might give him a black eye and a fat lip, gay kids wouldn’t be bullied so much. If my gay kid was suspended for punching a bully who harassed him, he would not get one moments’ grief from me.</p>
<p>^I’m not convinced. I grew up in the same neighborhood. It works in movies, but I recall plenty of targets of bullies fighting back in various ways and getting pummeled (and more victimized later). I think it’s mostly romanticized macho bull poop. Great in memory, good for dad’s ego, but questionable in practice (for the target but also the social collection at large which frankly just advocates violence as a solution and is what is fundamentally wrong with the culture).</p>
<p>Don’t get me wrong, if you are being physical attacked, you probably fight back out of instinct. But retaliation? Or using violence for other than physical attack? No. This idea of fighting back to re-establish your rank is nonsense. These aren’t chickens in a pen.</p>
<p>I never had to tell my kids they had permission to fight back - it would never occur to us we had to discuss it. They too have never been bullied nor expressed a lack of confidence.</p>
<p>I should add that </p>
<p>a) yes, contrary to your middle-class sensibilities, you do advocate violence</p>
<p>and </p>
<p>b) I think walking away is not the point. Calling out the bullying and seeking formal resolution through adults is the appropriate response. This isn’t being passive and turning the other cheek, its using adult solutions in place of violence. </p>
<p>Then again, I also don’t hit my kids nor feel the need to own a handgun nor think someone should be able to shoot someone because they are stealing their stereo (other threads…). I’m the ex-American weirdo, so ignore me.</p>
<p>This is a really interesting thread. There’s another thread around here which is about a group of senior girls bullying some freshman with a ________ list and other things, and there have been incidence of bullying (hazing) in the news lately. I see it as a good thing that these things are coming into our collective awareness. Bullying has long gone under the radar because it can take so many forms, and not all of them can be addressed, and the bullies are not always caught.</p>
<p>It can be such a damaging thing, maybe even more damaging than a flat out fight, just because it goes on so long, or it tends to be along “acceptable” lines. Kids get afraid of kids who are different, or boys like Eurodad have a response to gay guys which scare them and get afraid they might be gay, too, and torture the kid. Nobody says a word. It’s horrendous. I agree with Mantori…people need to talk more about all of it. I mean, who CARES if someone is gay? I know my oldest D has been asked out by girls before and she was just flattered. “I wish I were a lesbian,” she said. “Boys are awful. But I"m not.” End of story. Friend still invited to the sleepovers.</p>
<p>She was bullied at one point, though, and I did encourage her to fight back. Not physically, but I encouraged her to stand up to it. Because, I’d read somewhere that bullies will bully anyone. They just walk around throwin it out there until they find someone they can bully and that is who they focus on. I didn’t want her to leave herself open to that. Girls in 7th grade can just be that way, and you can’t let yourself be the target.</p>
<p>She did get in trouble for throwing food back at a couple of girls who were throwing food at her in the cafeteria, an inschool eating lunch in the office with these same girls. By the end of the week, they were all laughing together about it. I don’t think I’d have wanted her to just walk away. What I did say is that you have to weigh the consequences for defending yourself and sometimes the consequences are worth not being harrassed for the next 6 years. You’ll have to take the punishment. That was as far as I was willing to go, because I didn’t think she was wrong, and I really do believe not defending yourself is what leads to being bullied over the course of a long period of time. So, I wouldn’t have overreacted to my kid throwing a pencil box…either…but I’m really not sure what that had to do with some other kid being gay.</p>
<p>Everyone has their own experiences, mantori.suzuki. I was a well-bullied kid, and at one point I tried the “stand your ground and sock him in the mouth” routine; after all, it worked for the Beaver, didn’t it? </p>
<p>I got the crap beat out of me, and became more of a target than ever. </p>
<p>What <em>did</em> work, in the end, was exactly what you say doesn’t work: ignoring it and walking away. It worked because what the bullies really wanted was the “glory” of the dominance moment. They wanted me in tears, one way or the other. For me to pretend they didn’t exist was the one thing that took the satisfaction out of the experience for them. Within weeks of me adopting this tactic, the bullying stopped for good.</p>
<p>So, different strokes. Certainly anybody has the right to defend themselves, but that doesn’t necessarily mean fighting back is always the smartest thing to do. In my experience, it’s best to avoid it unless you’re either cornerned, and have no choice, or you really soberly believe you’re better at violence than the bully is.</p>
<p>Interesting thread…europegrad would be laughable if I thought that his attitude was uncommon.
Re: the college tour guide who mentioned being 100% intolerant of intolerance. This reminds me of a friend whose S attended a certain LAC in NE. (Think hard here.) He seriously considered transferring because of what he perceived to be the constant in-your-face insistence on embracing not just tolerating all variations of relationships/orientations, etc. Quite frankly, the kid just didn’t care that much and it was a bit much for him to deal with. He tolerated it all- just didn’t want to be told he was a jerk all the time. I guess he felt that the others should be tolerant of his not wanting to carry the banner for everything under the sun.</p>