In my mind, there's only one clear choice for President for the 2012-2016 term. Opportunity, Benefits and Advances for Middle class Americans. I've given to his political campaign (and have lent my name to other political causes), so now my inbox is flooded with emails from every moveon.org, change.org, and all their affiliates. Even though I love and support the POTUS, I'm just about ready to stop doing anything that involves putting down my email address (and mind you, I have over a half-dozen email addresses. They're all getting flooded). I got an email this afternoon from a woman whose gay son was denied his Eagle Scout award.
I didn't finish reading it. Nah, I'm nowhere close to homophobic, and I've very publicly disagreed with what I perceive to be the hypocritical homophobia of the black church. This isn't even a religious issue, in my book, and it's not about the child's sexuality. OK, it sorta is. You're coming out at 18? At 18, I was just discovering something called sex; I surely had no idea about anything as rigidly defined as "sexual orientation." But that's another conversation.
Here's my concern. First, every rude, mean, or ignorant person is NOT a bully. Sometimes, they're just rude, mean, and/or ignorant. The fact that they may point out something they don't like about you (which may or may not be something you don't like about yourself) doesn't make them a bully. (I'm thinking of the overweight news reporter who responded to a viewer's concerns about her weight by invoking the bullying clause. Ma'am, with all due respect, you admit to being obese. The viewer expressed a concern about obesity on one's health and messages an obese role model sends to children. While it may have lacked certain social graces, I don't understand how the viewer's expression came anywhere near to being bullying -- you are the one who made the decision to put yourself in the public eye, and YOU ARE THE ONE WHO HAS THE POWER TO VIRALIZE YOUR NEGATIVE OPINION OF THIS ANONYMOUS VIEWER WITHOUT THEIR EVEN BEING ABLE TO RESPOND. I'm sorry, here you seem more like the bully. The fact that someone pointed out that you carry a few extra pounds does not make them a bully.) It makes them an idiot perhaps, but not a bully.
Why do I say this? Because my understanding (and that of "the wikipedia") is that bullying is when we use force or coercion to intimidate others, and it generally has to do with a power imbalance. When I was the little black kid going to the white school and the little white kids called me names, it wasn't bullying, it was racism. And when we fought (well, the one time we fought), it wasn't bullying -- it was a butt-kicking. When they threw rocks at us while we were driving to school, that wasn't bullying, that was kids being mean and racist kids. On the other hand, when the gang of college kids surrounded us, called us the N-word, and asked us where we were going, that was bullying. The elementary school kids didn't have any more physical power than we did (and while they may have thought they had more social power, we thought the same about ourselves), so there was no power imbalance. The college kids, on the other hand, were straight up bullies. Why? Because they were big kids and we were little kids. There was a power imbalance.
So a cool kid calling out a nerd is only bullying if the nerd lives life at the effect of the cool kid. In other words, I was, in retrospect, a little nerdy. I didn't realize it at the time, because in my world, I was cool. So even though the jocks all thought they were cool, I always thought they were poor, dumb jocks. I didn't know I wasn't cool (if, indeed, I wasn't), and if I'd been aware of them making any disparaging comments, I don't think it would have been bullying. Once in prep school, a black girl told another black girl that I listened to "white" music. Perhaps that would have been considered bullying today; at the time, I just told her that I listened to "good" music that wasn't restricted to race.
So back to the point: I'm a lefty. I'm kinda sorta ambidextrous in some things, but strongly lefty in others. For most of my primary education, I had to sit in right-handed desks, use right-handed scissors, and adapt to a right-handed world. That did not diminish nor devalue my left-handedness; it simply was a condition of the world in which I lived. I couldn't choose to be right-handed (I toyed with it for a while, and had I been forced to, could have survived as a righty, but I'm a lefty.
I don't want to make light of the gay kid who can't be an Eagle Scout, but really --
1) an 18-year-old, IMHO, doesn't HAVE to issue a public statement on their sexuality. They probably shouldn't -- I'm thinking their sexuality isn't yet completely defined;
2) if you've been a Boy Scout since you were 6 and you know BSA is homophobic, why would you come out before getting your Eagle Scout badge?
It's sort of like being mad at the world because they're right-handed and I'm left-handed. We are who we are; I've had to sit in some right-handed desks, there is certain sporting equipment that's made for right-handed people; every time I drive a car, I have to use my right hand and foot exclusively (although I tend to steer better with my left hand, so that actually works out ok). It's a right-handed world. What am I gonna do, be mad that they're right-handed? Demand equal rights because I'm left-handed? If I can just sit on the corner at a tight dinner party, so I don't always bump people when I cut my food, I'm good.
Life isn't always what we want it to be. It's not about the hand we're dealt, it's about how we play the hand we're dealt. Increasingly, I see more people complaining either about the hand they're dealt or about how other people are playing. In my mind, it's like giving one's power away.
OK, that's it.
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