Facets of Our Lives

CNN recently aired a special by Anderson Cooper, Bullying: It Stops Here . Despite all the attention paid to the subject in the last year, bullying continues to be a major issue for US schoolchildren. But this special was excellent, and provided a lot of new information in the form of a study they performed using high school students at a particular school on Long Island in New York. I highly recommend you take the time to watch if/when it airs again. One of the key concepts to come from the study were the categories kids fall into: aggressors, victims, and interveners. The first two are self-explanatory, but the last category, interveners, represent bystanders who choose not to be bystanders, and work to diffuse the situation by defending the victim(s) and/or shaming the aggressor(s), among other methods. This topic hits close to home both because of what I went through in school, but because of my teenaged niece and nephew, who are living in the high school environment right now...

I debated whether I would write this article. I have been inspired by the actions of Dan Savage and his husband-in-Canada/boyfriend-in-the-US, Terry Miller. I find myself wanting to speak up every time I hear either of them speak about the It Gets Better Project . I feel the tears come when Dan talks about the bullying his brother suffered, and his brother replying that at least he had the support of their parents, while Dan had to suffer alone. What is bullying? This is a question that has bothered me of late. It is very difficult to define. Is it harassment? Is it a demonstration of free speech? Is it an assault, or does it depend on the emotions of the recipient? When does it cross the line from teasing to bullying? The thing about bullying is that we all know it if we see it or are ourselves the target. It's about humiliation. It's about making another person feel that they are not only less important, but less of a person. It can be verbal, social, physical, or in this...