Alpha-Geek Male in Pink Shirt.
Posted on 09/14/2007 12:25:48 PM PDT by Daffynition
CAMBRIDGE — Two students at Central Kings Rural High School fought back against bullying recently, unleashing a sea of pink after a new student was harassed and threatened when he showed up wearing a pink shirt.
The Grade 9 student arrived for the first day of school last Wednesday and was set upon by a group of six to 10 older students who mocked him, called him a homosexual for wearing pink and threatened to beat him up.
The next day, Grade 12 students David Shepherd and Travis Price decided something had to be done about bullying.
"It’s my last year. I’ve stood around too long and I wanted to do something," said David.
They used the Internet to encourage people to wear pink and bought 75 pink tank tops for male students to wear. They handed out the shirts in the lobby before class last Friday — even the bullied student had one.
"I made sure there was a shirt for him," David said.
They also brought a pink basketball to school as well as pink material for headbands and arm bands. David and Travis figure about half the school’s 830 students wore pink.
It was hard to miss the mass of students in pink milling about in the lobby, especially for the group that had harassed the new Grade 9 student.
"The bullies got angry," said Travis. "One guy was throwing chairs (in the cafeteria). We’re glad we got the response we wanted."
David said one of the bullies angrily asked him whether he knew pink on a male was a symbol of homosexuality.
He told the bully that didn’t matter to him and shouldn’t to anyone.
"Something like the colour of your shirt or pants, that’s ridiculous," he said.
"Our intention was to stand up for this kid so he doesn’t get picked on."
Travis said the bullies "keep giving us dirty looks, but we know we have the support of the whole student body.
"Kids don’t need this in their lives, worrying about what to wear to school. That should be the last thing on their minds."
When the bullied student put on his pink shirt Friday and saw all the other pink in the lobby, "he was all smiles. It was like a big weight had been lifted off is shoulder," David said. No one at the school would reveal the student’s name.
Travis said that growing up, he was often picked on for wearing store-brand clothes instead of designer duds.
The two friends said they didn’t take the action looking for publicity, but rather to show leadership in combating what they say is frequent bullying in schools.
Reminds me of this:
Light in Montana: How One Town Said No to Hate
by Jo Clare Hartsig and Walter Wink
Montana, long known as ?big sky? territory, is vast and beautiful, like all its northwestern neighbors. One might assume that there is room enough for everyone. Yet over the past decade the five-state area of Washington, Oregon, Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana has been designated a ?white homeland? for the Aryan Nation and growing numbers of kindred skinheads, Klan members, and other white supremacists. These groups have targeted nonwhites, Jews, gays, and lesbians for harassment, vandalism, and injury, which in some cases has led to murder.
In Billings, Montana (pop.83,000) there have been a number of hate crimes: desecration of a Jewish cemetery, threatening phone calls to Jewish citizens, swastikas painted on the home of an inter-racial couple. But it was something else that activated the people of faith and goodwill throughout the entire community.
On December 2, 1993, a brick was thrown through 5-year-old Isaac Schnitzer?s bedroom window. The brick and shards of glass were strewn all over the child?s bed. The reason? A menorah and other symbols of Jewish faith were stenciled on the glass as part of the family?s Hanukkah celebration. The account of the incident in the Billings Gazette the next day reported that Isaac?s mother, Tammie Schnitzer, was troubled by the advice she got from the investigating officer. He suggested that she remove the symbols. How would she explain this to her son?
Another mother in Billings was deeply touched by that question. She tried to imagine explaining to her children that they couldn?t have a Christmas tree in the window or a wreath on the door because it wasn?t safe. She remembered what happened when Hitler ordered the king of Denmark to force Danish Jews to wear the Star of David. The order was never carried out because the king himself and many other Danes chose to wear the yellow stars. The Nazis lost the ability to find their ?enemies.?
There are several dozen Jewish families in Billings. This kind of tactic could effectively deter violence if enough people got involved. So Margaret McDonald phoned her pastor, the Rev. Keith Torney at the First Congregational United Church of Christ, and asked what he thought of having Sunday school children make paper cut-out menorahs for their own windows. He got on the phone with his clergy colleagues around town, and the following week menorahs appeared in the windows of hundreds of Christian homes. Asked about the danger of this action, police chief Wayne Inman told callers, ?There?s greater risk in not doing it.?
Five days after the brick was thrown at the Schnitzer home, the Gazette published a full-page drawing of a menorah, along with a general invitation to put it up. By the end of the week at least six thousand homes (some accounts estimate up to ten thousand) were decorated with menorahs.
A sporting goods store got involved by displaying ?Not in our town! No hate. No violence. Peace on earth? on its large billboard. Someone shot at it. Townpeople organized a vigil outside the synagogue during Sabbath services. That same night bricks and bullets shattered windows at Central Catholic High school, where an electric marquee read ?Happy Hanukkah to our Jewish Friends.? The cat of a family with a menorah was killed with an arrow. Windows were broken at a United Methodist Church because of its menorah display. The car and house windows of six non-Jewish families were shattered. A note that said ?Jew lover? was left on a car.
Eventually these incidents waned, but people continued in their efforts to support one another against hate crimes. After being visited at home and threatened by one of the local skinhead leaders, Tammie Schnitzer is now always accompanied by friends when she goes on her morning run. During the Passover holiday the following spring, 250 Christians joined their Jewish brothers and sisters in a traditional Seder meal. New friendships have formed, new traditions have started, and greater mutual understanding and respect have been achieved.
Last winter families all over Billings took out their menorahs to reaffirm their commitment to peace and religious tolerance. The light they shared in the community must be continuously rekindled until hate has been overcome.
http://tech.worlded.org/docs/vera/montana.htm
Most excellent. Thanks for posting this account. ;-)
In the early to mid-80s, men work pink dress shirts (or pink stripes) with white collars and it was fashionable.
Yeah, the sissies did.
It would be amusing to see you tell that to my late 6'3', 210 lb (no fat) former 3rd Army WWII vet brother -- even when he was in his 60s.
Personally, I hate the color, so I user to tell him that -- luckily he never could catch me.
If you’re going to go to the trouble of raising a mob, you may as well enlist it in the beatdown of the bullies and not just in wearing pink.
And get kicked out of school? Not a very good idea. and it would be a big victory for the bully-girls.
Although they richly deserved having the snot kicked out of them.
If the Ladies Home Journal said that in 1918 things must have changed a lot in the next 10 years, because I one of the earliest things I remember (even before starting in the first grade) was the Girls/pink, Boys/blue thing. The reason I remember that is because my mother for some reason thinking of buying me a pink shirt while we were shopping for my first grade clothes, and the first time I ever argued with my mother and got away with it (Dad was on my side) I told her flatly that I wouldn't wear it -- it was for sissies.
***jeeez, I don't think I've thought of that incident more that a dozen times in my life***
Yeah it’s too bad that fashion trends caused so many men like your brother to act like sissies back then.
My sisters and girlfriends tried mightily in those days to get me to wear pink polo shirts and pink neckties. I spent a lot of time in the return lines after Christmas.
I don't think any of that really matters. Even if the kid willingly wore the pink shirt to flaunt his femininity, that doesn't justify threatening him. Teasing, maybe, but threatening violence is definitely out of line.
Of course, in my experience, bullies never took any of those factors into consideration. To them, anything slightly out of the norm = homosexual.
We can all agree that physical violence in this instance is wrong unless it is to defend oneself against physical violence. So take that off the table. Maybe they threatened and maybe they didn’t. There were no punches thrown. I think it is far more likely that this is a trumped up story to push acceptance of homosexuality. But I would need more facts and less spin to say for sure. At this point they prove nothing. But here is the danger. In holding this out as the grand example of both bullies and the defeat of bullies, you risk something that is also dangerous. You risk leaving these teens with the impression that homosexuality is okay. It is not okay. Whatever the facts are and whatever the resolution is, it should end with the kids getting two lessons: Threatening violence is wrong and the immoral act of homosexuality is wrong. All I see this doing is addressing the first wrong, and that is a MAYBE...in that it is highly likely that this was really ONLY teasing. You can debate to what extent teasing is manageable and when it is wrong or right — mocking a kid who succeeds by cheating, for example....right or wrong? — but what you do not want to happen is to leave the impression that a moral wrong is good and right and defendable. The boys need to be taught how to rightly address moral wrongs. They should not be taught to ignore moral wrongs as though they are right. So there is the big dilemma here that no one has the courage to address anymore. How sad!
Only because they want to obsfucate that it is just as, if not more, likely to be a symptom of repressed homosexual childhood sex abuse.
Kids are sinners like everyone else. They need to be trained in the difference between right and wrong, but to a certain extent you just won't fix every flaw or troublesome social interaction they encounter, both give and take. They should be taught values, but I find it highly suspect when all the examples always come up defending homosexuality or gender confusion. That's not addressing bullying at all. That's having a poltiical and social agenda.
I disagree. The facts are pretty vague, but let's think about it for a moment.
Most boys, especially those on the bottom end of the high school totem pole, do not want to stand out as the "weirdo". This is especially true when they run the risk of standing out as a homosexual. Regardless of the increasing acceptance of homosexuality in society, it is still very uncool to be a young gay man. So the teased/bullied kid probably wore the shirt without really thinking about the consequences, and probably was not some prancing ninny trying to provoke a response.
On the other end, what did the "bullies" actually do? At this point, we only have accusations but I suspect it was more than teasing. I doubt you would have seen a community response in the school if it had just been a matter of poking fun at the kid in the pink shirt. And, in my experience at least, teasing on the subject of homosexuality very often leads to physical threats or confrontation.
Is this enough to convict the "bullies" under the law? Of course not. But it does lead me to suspect this was not just a case of mocking a flamboyant sissy.
But here is the danger. In holding this out as the grand example of both bullies and the defeat of bullies, you risk something that is also dangerous. You risk leaving these teens with the impression that homosexuality is okay. It is not okay. Whatever the facts are and whatever the resolution is, it should end with the kids getting two lessons: Threatening violence is wrong and the immoral act of homosexuality is wrong.
Hold on just a second...the victim was just wearing a pink shirt. That doesn't make him a homosexual. Standing up for the poor kid doesn't send the message that being gay is okay, it just means you shouldn't bully someone for stupid reasons.
Threatening violence is wrong and the immoral act of homosexuality is wrong. ...what you do not want to happen is to leave the impression that a moral wrong is good and right and defendable. The boys need to be taught how to rightly address moral wrongs. They should not be taught to ignore moral wrongs as though they are right.
Threatening violence (if it happened) is much worse than homosexuality. Threats of violence deserve a stronger response of disapproval than homosexuality. And we don't even know the sexual orientation of the victim in this story.
Suppose your son was in school with another male student who sometimes wore pink, didn't care much for sports, and didn't talk to girls all that often. What do you think would be the proper way for your son to respond to this kid?
I think we mostly agree on that. Simple teasing is generally a different and less serious matter than bullying. For the most part it doesn't really warrant a response.
I find it highly suspect when all the examples always come up defending homosexuality or gender confusion. That's not addressing bullying at all. That's having a poltiical and social agenda.
Perhaps. I think this case is newsworthy because of the unique and entertaining solution to bullying, not because of the (remote) possibility of homosexuality being involved.
It is important that they never threaten or commit violence. It is also important that they not be forced to grant social approval to homosexuality.
As for which is worse, I wouldn't grade them. Kids should be taught that BOTH are wrong.
You can prize this story if you want to. If you don't want to then just wait, there will be another one spun to say homosexuality doesn't matter just around the corner. They are a dime a dozen. I wonder where the stories are about the teased kids who have physical deformities and things like that. I guess if a child has a speech problem and gets teased all the time it is no big deal.
Tease or not tease? How much should we force kids to overlook?
"Nice ears, bunny boy" would be okay.
"Take those off you fag or I'll break your nose" would not be okay.
What if he wore a white hood like a KKK member. Would a statement like "Take that off you racist bigot or I'll remove it for you," be okay with you? Granted the last part is borderline. Let's say the comment was, "Take that off or I'll break your nose." Even with that statement you would certainly make sure the kids understood that racism was wrong as well as threats of violence. Or I would hope that's what you would do. And I bet you wouldn't rank the wrongs.
“Nice ears, bunny boy” would be okay.
“Take those off you fag or I’ll break your nose” would not be okay.”
I’m with you, it’s a question of degree. It is ridiculous to try to squash all teasing. It’s basic human communication. It is often friendly, helps broach differences, and even serves to correct bad or strange behavior. You just can’t let it go too far. It’s not something you can put in a manual, which is probably why the Public School Authorities have no idea how to handle it.
So if the victim is not a homosexual, just what is it that the kids should care about? What is it the administrators are supposed to do in this situation? Give the kids an anti-gay lecture to reinforce the stupid stereotype that wearing pink makes a person gay?
Those boys have to share the gym locker together. Would you put a boy in the girl's locker room? Of course they care even just on a practical level. But they should care because homosexuality is immoral and should be no pressure on these kids to grant it social approval.
A boy in a girl's locker room could lead to sexual assualt, and thankfully it is pretty easy to prevent. A homosexual just TRYING something in a high school locker room would likely end up in the hospital. And there's not really an effective way to keep gays out. As a man, you have to realize there's always the possibility of a gay man sharing the locker room with you. For me, it's something I got over easily and don't really stress about.
I'm not asking anyone to grant their approval to homosexuality. But you can show disapproval without using threats or cruelty. And you can certainly withhold expressing your disapproval in the absense of evidence that someone is gay.
I wonder where the stories are about the teased kids who have physical deformities and things like that. I guess if a child has a speech problem and gets teased all the time it is no big deal.
I wonder about that too. But at least the problem of bullying is getting some attention, even if it is to advance other agendas.
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