15 March, 2011

The Virtue of Standing Up For Yourself

Up at Salon.com Mary Elizabeth Williams writes about this video:





A thin 13-year old kid is picking on Casey, a 16-year old who is "overweight". It's another act in the long schoolyard drama of picking on the fat kid. Casey takes some shit and a few punches before finally having enough whereupon, to paraphrase H. L. Mencken, he spat upon his hands, hoisted the black flag, and began slitting throats. The bully then gets body slammed onto the concrete and at this point his smack talking comes to an end.

Williams points out some denizens of the Net who are championing Casey as an anti-bullying hero. But she is more circumspect and sees a situation where everyone loses.

But life, especially adolescence, doesn't give satisfying, "Karate Kid" style happy endings. The "little twerp" has had his name and whereabouts revealed multiple times on Facebook and elsewhere. And however despicable his actions toward Heynes may have been, there's zero satisfaction in considering that a 13-year-old is now finding himself the target of harassment, threats, and potentially worse. Frankly, if you truly enjoy watching a scrawny 13-year-old boy getting thrown on the pavement like a rag doll, that 13-year-old bully isn't the only cruel one. And there's no satisfaction whatsoever in wondering what kind of retribution potentially awaits Casey Heynes in the schoolyard. That other kid in the video, the one the girl told to back off? At the end of the clip, he's walking around her right down the same corridor, hot on Casey's heels.

Perhaps it's a glass half-empty vs. half-full thing. Williams sees a 13-year old getting body slammed while I see a fat kid standing up for himself. But we're both only seeing a 40 second clip and don't nothing else about these kids or what happened prior to and after the events that were recorded. Still, I think Williams views this whole thing as children being stupid and needing non-violent conflict resolution classes. To my mind, this incident is surely kids being kids but it's also an analogue to the adult world in that Casey seems to have learned a valuable lesson which eludes Williams. Depending on one's view, this isn't simply about a schoolyard square go, it's about standing up for oneself generally.

I've wondered on occasion what I would say if either of The Dulcinea's kids came to me for advice because they were being bullied at school. While I wouldn't tell them that violence should be their first and only option, I would tell them that, if all other avenues of defusing the situation fail, stick up for yourself and start swinging. If either of my stepkids find themselves being bullied and school officials are unwilling or unable to help, I would tell them that giving their best shot at beating the crap out of the bully is OK and that I would stick up for them. Hell, I'd buy a steak for a black eye.

Standing up for yourself is a good lesson for kids to learn because, generally speaking, out here in the adult world, if you won't do it, no one else will. And I don't mean simply throwing punches but standing up to be counted more generally. It's about asserting your own will instead of letting others walk over you and being at their mercy. Sometimes you can pick your own fights but at other times they are picked for you and I'd offer that virtue lies with standing up for yourself instead of always turning the other cheek.

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