[Mpls] Bullying

[rhalfhill at juno.com]

   Because of a computer virus, I have not had access to my email since the last few days of October.  My computer continued taking messages until November 9 until it was full.  So I don't know how this discussion on school yard bullying has developed since the 9th.  Nevertheless, I have a contribution that may be unique so I am posting it now.
   I wrote a similar letter to the STAR TRIBUNE after last year's school shooting in Minnesota but it was not published.
   As a victim of bullying in both elementary and high school, I can testify that while my tormenters would not have DESERVED to die if I had reacted with deadly violence, THEY WOULD HAVE BROUGHT IT ON THEMSELVES.  During my first semester in the tenth grade, I had been driven to the point by constant insults and assaults by my tormentors that I felt I hated everyone and wanted to destroy the whole world in retaliation!  Of course, it was unlikely I could have carried out such a grandiose revenge but, if I had even carried out part of it, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold at Columbine would have looked like a pair of Mother Theresas in comparison!
   Of course, if I had retaliated with deadly force, I would have been deserving of the legal penalties for multiple murder but, despite Jannifer Rubenzer's comment that such retaliation is never justified, the people who were tormenting me would have brought their fate on themselves.
   I never told anybody what was in my mind but my parents got me transfered to another school for the second semester of the 10th grade.There were problems at the new school but they were not nearly as bad as at the old school.  After about three weeks of no assaults and relative freedom from the constant insults at the new school, I decided that I REALLY didn't want to destroy the WHOLE world and after another three weeks, I decided that I REALLY didn't hate EVERYBODY!
   All this happened during 1956-57 and, since that time, I want to emphasize that I have not had any desire to destroy the world.  In fact, a few years later during my junior year of college, I was even active in the movement against the threat to the human race possed by nuclear weapons.  I have not only never committed any violent crimes against others but I have been active in movements to improve other peoples' lives such as civil rights/antiracism, antiwar and Gay Liberation, etc.
   One of the last points I want to raise about the issue of bullying is the connection to my being Gay.  I had not yet come out while I was in high school but the people who were tormenting me probably picked up subliminally on my sexual orientation.  You are probably not likely to receive the extreme retaliation I THOUGHT ABOUT when you subject Gays to your bullying but, sometimes you settle on heterosexuals to put at the bottom of your school pecking orders and then you get the series of tragedies ranging from Columbine to last year's school shooting in Minnesota.
   I say you are unlikely to bring such extreme retaliation on yourselves from Gays since we lack the heterosexual desire to prove how macho we are by beating up, raping and killing as many people as possible.  Evolution has resulted in male, heterosexual animals winning the greatest success in passing on their genes by beating other heterosexual male animals in the fight for access to females.  They pass on their greater aggressiveness to their larger number of progeny.  The STAR TRIBUNE published an article a few years ago about the hyper aggressiveness among a variety of male animals -- Deer, Elk, Buffalo, etc -- during the mating season.  One elk became so frustrated by the lack of other male elk to fight during the heigth of his rut induced tetosteromania that he resorted to repeating head butting with a male buffalo!  However, this hyperaggressiveness applies not only to male heterosexual animals; female heterosexual animals have shown themselves no less willing to attack animals smaller and weaker than themselves.  In fact, it is only the homoerotic component in animal nature that enables any social unit from animal herds and flocks to humen societies to exist.
   We are speaking in terms of statistics here.  I am aware that not every heterosexual goes around beating up, raping and murdering as many people as he can to prove how macho he is.  In fact, many heterosexuals manage to live quite decent and moral lives!  But the greater stastical likelihood of aggressiveness among heterosexuals leads to not only widespread violence but, as our prehuman ancestors evolved towards intelligence, war, slavery, class societies, racism, sexism, etc followed.  While some individual Gays can be hyperaggressive, the lower incidence of violence among Gays would have made it impossible in a society of Gays for such a spectacle as people gathering in public to watch someone being burned alive as happened during the religious wars a few centuries ago.
   But leaving aside these more general biosocialogical considererations,
my immediate point is that when you provoke lethal violence by putting someone at the bottom of your pecking orders, you may not deserve the conseqences and your victim may not have been justified in retaliating with lethal violence, but you have brought the consequences on yourselves!
     Robert Halfhill    Loring Park
http://halfhillviews.greatnow.com