Books, Girls and Bullying.

[gehayi]

I just finished reading a YA book called Freak by Marcella Pixley. (I got a number of YA books out of the library today, because the teen room, unlike every other area containing fiction in the library, is on the first floor and therefore does not require an eternally broken elevator for access.) The book was very good and very painful for three-

Comments

[gehayi]

I bought into that myself, and spent most of my pre-teen and pubesent years believing what everyone else thought about me. Not fun. I used to wish that my bullies would become my friends.

I'm sorry you bought into it, even for a second. They damaged my self-confidence, too.

I just wanted the bullies all to drop dead. Literally. If every one of them had died of a massive coronary simultaneously, I would have cheered and then started singing this:

[terrie01]

Ugh. What a train wreck. I was bullied starting in the 5th grade, and pretty much through the rest of middle and high school. I actually had a couple bullies apologize to me, but only after running into them years later. Sometimes, they do grow up, but it's not a happy ending. (Though one claimed she bullied me because she "didn't have God in [her] life." How pathetic do you have to be to not know it's wrong all on your own?)

The worst moment was when a teacher told me "I'm glad to see you sticking up for yourself, but you can't hit them." And all I could think was "You knew. You knew what they were doing, and you did nothing. You BITCH."

[gehayi]

The worst moment was when a teacher told me "I'm glad to see you sticking up for yourself, but you can't hit them." And all I could think was "You knew. You knew what they were doing, and you did nothing. You BITCH."Bitch is the perfect word, I think. I've never understood how anyone can do such a vile thing

[terrie01]

Oh, I'm sure in the adults' minds I was learning some important "life lesson." What I mainly learned was not to trust adults. This was already after I had learned not to trust my fellow kids, even those I thought were my friends. (A hard learned lesson after a girl invited me to her house for an afternoon with the plan for her and her friends to chase me down on her bike, once she got us out of sight of her mom.)

[gehayi]

Oh, I'm sure in the adults' minds I was learning some important "life lesson." What I mainly learned was not to trust adults. This was already after I had learned not to trust my fellow kids, even those I thought were my friends.

Yes. This. Which is pretty much what you DO learn when you go to school every day wondering if this will be the day that the bullies kill you and pass off your death as an accident. Which I knew they would get away with. Most of the adults in my life were stuck on, "Boys would NEVER hit girls!" or "Now stop telling stories, girls would NEVER be so mean to each other!"

So if someone succeeded in strangling me with a belt--something that a girl-bully tried in ninth grade--or my skull got bashed in with a hockey stick--something a boy tried on me in fifth grade--I knew damned well that it would be passed off as just an unfortunate accident, because no child could intend to kill another! Children were sweet and innocent and were incapable of such things! They simply started playing a little too rough. Just a

[rikibeth]

This is why so many of us have loved Ender's Game, despite all of the problems inherent in the book's structure and despite our opinions of Card's personal views: when it comes to describing bullying, Card doesn't soft-pedal it, AND he shows Ender winning in the only plausible way: causing the bullies grievous bodily harm (even fatal, although Ender doesn't realize that at first), entirely disproportionate to the bullies' immediate actions, but (the important part) hard enough not only to make the bullies abandon their target, but also enough to warn off their companions.

I had to fight back physically before my tormentors stopped. And, like the rest of us, I got in trouble for doing that, and, like a fortunate few of us, my parents raised holy hell with the administration over that.

From DAY ONE, I taught my kid "never start a fight, but ALWAYS finish it," and "we will back you up against school authorities every time for that," and "hit the soft parts with your hand, hit the hard parts with a utensil."

[gehayi]

Card doesn't soft-pedal it, AND he shows Ender winning in the only plausible way: causing the bullies grievous bodily harm (even fatal, although Ender doesn't realize that at first), entirely disproportionate to the bullies' immediate actions, but (the important part) hard enough not only to make the bullies abandon their target, but also enough to warn off their companions.

That really IS the only thing that works. It doesn't do any good to fight back nicely or only within certain parameters. You have to be willing to hurt them as badly, if not worse, than they can hurt you. Card gets serious points for knowing that.

Your parents sound a lot like mine, both in terms of support and battle advice. I wish more parents were that sensible.

[princesselwen]

This is one of the many things I think Lewis' did right in The Silver Chair. There is none of this stuff about how 'they [the bullies at Experiment House] are really nice', or 'they don't mean to be mean.' In fact, that attitude is roundly skewered, in that the teachers let them get away with everything. Because those kids are nasty and mean and awful. And the heroes come back, and--the bullies get to be on the receiving end for once, and some of them get kicked out. That is a more fair portrayal of it, because he never tried to pretend that these kids were really nice and were just bullying because they had a bad home life or something like that. No. Kids can be bad, and you can fight back. And that's not wrong.

[gehayi]

the heroes come back, and--the bullies get to be on the receiving end for once, and some of them get kicked out. That is a more fair portrayal of it, because he never tried to pretend that these kids were really nice and were just bullying because they had a bad home life or something like that.

That's one thing that I always loved about Lewis; he didn't idealize children. He knew that children, no less than adults, could be spiteful, tiresome, greedy and cruel. I admired that when I was little; he was honest in a way that few writers dared to be. And I cheered when the bullies went wailing off, beaten for once, furious, and howling that it wasn't FAIR. That is how a bully would react, and a surprising number of people won't admit that.

Kids can be bad, and you can fight back. And that's not wrong.It definitely isn't. My parents were all about standing up to bullies; they felt that if kids didn't learn to fight them as children, they would just grow up to be crushed Caspar Milquetoast types, mild, meek and forever afraid. Getting

[princesselwen]

Yes, Lewis did a good job of not idealizing children. Edmund in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was a nasty little boy who betrayed his siblings. Eustace whined his way through the first half of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. He didn't view children through rose-colored glasses. And that's why I find them believable characters.