CNN has a news story about Jaylen Arnold, a young person with Tourette's syndrome, which is classified as a neuropsychiatric disease characterized by physical and/or vocal tics. Bullies tease him in school because, according to his mother, “its something different, and nobody likes anything different.” Although I wouldn't dismiss the fact that this particular difference might overstimulate other young people because it presents a young person doing what young people are strictly forbidden from doing: being uncontrollably seen and heard. The obvious biases become evident with Arnold referring to those without Tourette's as "normal people."
Regardless, Arnold has created a website called Jaylen's Challenge, the goal of which is to acquaint people with Tourette's syndrome and also to stop bullying of all kinds. CNN seemed to miss this last point and presents the story as though Jaylen is a hero for individually combating bullies at school. Not exactly, but it is so typical that MSM would turn a very universal issue, bullying, into an individualized issue. The implication is that students have to figure out how to take care of on their own.
This news story made me think of Mean Girls, a movie with the fabulous Lindsay Lohan and well equipped with so so many memorable quotes. Anyhow, Mean Girls similarly enforces the idea that bullying is something that each young person needs to figure out how to deal with on their own, and is possibly even good for them because it will help them grow spiritually. It's a crock of shit, because lots of research demonstrates that bullying negatively impacts self esteem and that the effects are long-term. Bullying is mainly ritualistic public humiliation that functions to institutionalize already existing societal mores. Young people tend to bully women, homosexuals, genderqueer folk, and disabled people because SOCIETY AT LARGE hates women, homosexuals, genderqueer folk, and disabled people, i.e. all those people seen as less than "normal people." The individualized conception is also a crock of shit because it completely takes the onus of bullying off adults. Meanwhile, and I quotes from Safe Youth, “Research has found that bullying is most likely to occur in schools where there is a lack of adult supervision during breaks, where teachers and students are indifferent to or accept bullying behavior, and where rules against bullying are not consistently enforced.”
RSS Feed