{"id":5866,"date":"2010-10-15T13:02:00","date_gmt":"2010-10-15T17:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=5866"},"modified":"2012-06-27T09:09:39","modified_gmt":"2012-06-27T14:09:39","slug":"elie-mystal-on-why-bullying-should-not-be-a-crime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2010\/10\/15\/elie-mystal-on-why-bullying-should-not-be-a-crime\/","title":{"rendered":"Elie Mystal on why bullying should not be a crime"},"content":{"rendered":"

As someone who was bullied in my time, I found Elie Mystal’s story<\/a> resonated for me. I had no real problem with bullies until I was about 10 or 11, when I didn’t grow as fast as the other kids. I was also non-athletic, addicted to books, and had a funny accent — I was probably a gift to the budding thugs in higher grades at school.<\/p>\n

My experience was nowhere near as bad as Elie’s, however:<\/p>\n

\n

It needs to stop. No, not the bullying — which is unavoidable<\/em> when more than one male competes for whatever status\/prestige\/sex is on offer — but the tragic overreactions to the bullying, and the accompanying rush to the courthouse steps.<\/p>\n

I say this not as an alpha-male with a caviler attitude towards the feelings of others. I say this as a former omega-male who got the crap beat out of me like I stole something from the age of 7 through the point I realized that no girl would ever mate with a guy who couldn\u2019t basically stand up for himself\u2026.<\/p>\n

I wasn\u2019t always this big or this strong. As a kid, I was a polite, articulate little boy who did well in school. Or \u201cOreo fa**ot,\u201d as my friends liked to call me. I\u2019ve shared some of my childhood scrapes before — and I still hate Halloween.<\/p>\n

My best story (it\u2019s funny now, I think) involves me trying to walk a girl home from school when I was 12. She was walking, I was walking and rolling my bike, and then the bullies spotted us. As they approached, she said, \u201cIt\u2019s okay, you can run.\u201d And I did — I hopped on my bike and booked out of there. They were on foot, so I easily put some distance between us. I looked back and flipped the head bully (we\u2019ll call him \u201cLewis\u201d because his name is Lewis and he\u2019s in jail now so he can\u2019t read this) the finger. But that took my eyes off the road — and the tree branch in front of me. Bad times. I tumbled, they caught up, and then five kids proceeded to twist my flimsy bike around me. They got both wheels around me, and I had to waddle the rest of the way home. I was a latchkey kid, and I couldn\u2019t reach my keys since my arms were effectively pinned to my body and I couldn\u2019t reach my pockets. I had to sit on my stoop for hours (which felt like days), until my parents came home to let me inside (and take me to the bike shop to free me).<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

H\/T to Walter Olson<\/a> for the link.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As someone who was bullied in my time, I found Elie Mystal’s story resonated for me. I had no real problem with bullies until I was about 10 or 11, when I didn’t grow as fast as the other kids. I was also non-athletic, addicted to books, and had a funny accent — I was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,73],"tags":[828,374,139,504],"class_list":["post-5866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-law","category-randomness","tag-bullying","tag-children","tag-psychology","tag-teenagers"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-1wC","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5866"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5866\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15702,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5866\/revisions\/15702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}