Monday, November 07, 2011

Blaming The Victims! It's All The Rage!

While in Essex, Vermont [see previous post] they're working to combat bullying, it is now being alleged that some teachers in Essex County, England, told bullied LGBT students that they could prevent further bullying by looking, acting and dressing "less gay."
Oh, yes they did.
Some of these students, in fact, say the teachers blame them for becoming the targets of bullies because of their appearance and affectations. As well as criticizing their supposed sexuality, teachers ALLEGEDLY also told some students to “wear their hair differently” if they wanted to avoid trouble.
How can we teach young LGBTQ youth to come out and accept themselves, and love themselves, if they are being blamed for the fact that they are bullied? Why is it that we seem so content to blame the victim for the behavior of the aggressor?
Luckily, these students chose to speak up for themselevs, and thei story, first of being bullied by fellow students, and then, in effect, being bullied a second time by their teachers, has come out. The students spoke at a meeting of more than 250 children and teachers from schools across the county, hosted bu the county council, to tacjkle the issue of bullying.
 Of course, in an effort to protect themselves from accusations of insensitivity for the bullied students, the teachers then blamed the administrators for the fact that they had received "very little" training in how to deal with bullies.
Well, here's your straining: Stop it! If you conmtinue to harass and bully any other student for any reason you will be permananetly removed from the school. And then the teachers call that bully's parents and report the situation. It seems pretty cut-and-dry to me. Stand up, and say "Stop!"
I mean, we all know it isn't just LGBTQ youth who are subject to buyllying. But would a teacher tell a large child to lose wereight so people wouldn't taunt them? Would their tell a girl with red hair and freckles to dye her hair and cover her skin? Would they tell someone with a birtjmark to 'cover it up'? Why did these teachers think that hsaming the LGBTQ students would stop the bullying? It doesn't.
You have to stop the "bully".

source

4 comments:

  1. Bob for president! Where may I sign up?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Totally agree. This is ridiculous! It's the same sort of argument that says women who are raped asked for it because of the way they dressed (we actually had a judge in Canada say that once . . . I mean ex-judge).

    ReplyDelete

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