Self-Defence vs. Empathy.. Wait, Can't We Have Both?

I've seen a few people posting this image lately on the Book of the Face:

Caption reads: We will never get rid of bullying. We should teach kids how to stand up for themselves instead of wearing pink ribbons and passing anti-bullying laws to create a society of victims.

"We will never get rid of bullying."

Well, that seems defeatist. Like, I get that there are always going to be people who are generally assholes and who are going to give others a hard time because some people just love to power-trip, but on the whole, I think most people are generally okay people, and if we all try a bit harder to be okay people and not be assholes, we can probably not obliterate bullying, but at least mitigate some of the damage.

"We should teach kids how to stand up for themselves..."

Yup, okay. Totally with you there. It's super-duper important to be able to stand up for oneself, whether it's setting personal boundaries and enforcing them or holding one's own in an actual physical confrontation.

"...instead of wearing pink ribbons..."

Interesting. Not sure where breast cancer awareness comes into play here.

"...and passing anti-bullying laws..."

Technically, I can kind of stand behind this sentiment, because we shouldn't actually need anti-bullying laws, because there are already laws against assault, laws against harassment, laws against stalking, laws against uttering threats etc etc.

"... to create a society of victims."

Hm.

... and, you lost me.


I mean, why does this have to be an either/or situation? What is wrong with teaching kids to defend themselves, to enforce personal boundaries and stick up for themselves, while still teaching them to be empathetic and how to be kind to others. 

I won't begin to deny the effectiveness that a good, hearty punch in the face can have in getting some asshole kid to leave you alone. Gord knows, just being able to put on an act of being able to fuck someone up got me out of a few jams, even if I was secretly pissing myself in fear of having my bluff called.

But why can't we teach kids to defend themselves, while at the same time taking steps to make sure they won't have to by teaching kids to just be fucking nicer to each other?

I think the problem with a lot of current anti-bullying rhetoric is that it's lazy. "Bullying" is such a weird, vague term that it becomes this abstract concept, a boogeyman. Educators and other child care professionals, as well as parents, rush to label any act of aggression as bullying. Anything done by any kid that makes someone else feel bad is bullying.

Bullying is much more insidious. Bullying is repeated, systematic, physical and/or psychological violence.

It has roots in sexism, racism, classism, homophobia, transphobia, fatphobia, etc.

It is assault. It is stalking. It is the threat of being personally violated.  It is the threat of having your reputation torn to pieces.

It is being told, over and over, that you are worthless, ugly, that nobody likes you and that you should probably just die already.

A kid that pushes another kid and tells them to fuck off because he had a shitty day is not a bully.  They may be reasonably called an asshole, because let's face it, kids can be assholes, but kid-assholery tends to stem from an egocentric tendency to forget that other people are a thing and that other people having feelings and their own shit to deal with is a thing too. 

The difference falls between the active desire to victimize others, and negligence in making an effort to not victimize others.

Current anti-bullying rhetoric does have a horrible tendency to label all aggressive behaviour as "bullying".  There is also a tendency to label the kid and not the behaviour, and a kid that gets labelled a bully tends to hold onto that label. 

I sometimes wish it were more socially acceptable to swear around kids because I feel like being able to say "Jimmy, when you pull Susie's hair, you're being a real asshole," might be an effective deterrent without the same long-term effects of being labelled a bully.

The answer is also not unending positivity and making sure everyone is friends.  Kids, just like adults, are not going to like everybody they meet, and part of standing up for yourself is the ability to set boundaries. It's easier to "just walk away" from an asshole kid if your teacher isn't forcing you to play nice together.  Kids need to be able to enforce their own boundaries.  They also need to be allowed to experience negative emotions, while learning appropriate ways to express those emotions (i.e. don't be an asshole about it).

A quick anectdote:  The street I lived on had a lot of kids within my age range. My best friend lived next door to me, and another girl our age lived a few doors down.  This other girl, was a real, honest-to-gord asshole, as far as eight-year-olds go, and she in particular liked to give us both a hard time.  In fact, she was one of the two girls responsible for the worst year of my childhood.

My friend's mother had told her that she had to be friends with other kids and (through my friends interpretation) that she wasn't allowed to 'hate' other kids.  This kid knew about this rule and would hold it over our heads whenever we would tell her to go away because she was being an asshole and we didn't want to play with her.  She'd threaten to tell my friends mom that we weren't letting her play with us.

(It never occurred to me until over 25 years later that MY mom had no such rule and that I was perfectly within my rights to tell her to fuck right off).

This is a very small example of simplistic ideals made it easier for this little shit to victimize both my friend and I, because we were not able to effectively enforce our own boundaries.

I just wish we could teach kids not to be assholes.

Don't want to play with Johnny? Cool. You don't have to, but don't be an asshole about it. 

Johnny doesn't want to play with you? That sucks, and you're probably sad, and its okay to be sad, but just because you're sad that doesn't mean that Johnny's a bully, it means that you have to find someone else to play with. 

Johnny says that he's going to make sure no one else plays with you ever?  Well, now we have a problem, because Johnny's being an asshole.

I've kind of gone on a tangent here, but I guess what I'm meaning to say is that there is plenty of room to teach kids the following:

- You are allowed to defend yourself.
- You are allowed to assert yourself and enforce boundaries.
- You need to be kind and empathetic towards others.
- You are allowed to have bad days and bad thoughts and bad moods.
- Other people are allowed to have bad days and bad thoughts and bad moods.
- You are allowed to not like some people. You do not have to be friends with everyone, even if they are the nicest, kindest people in the world.
- Other people are allowed to not like you. It does not make you a bad person.  Even if you're an amazing person, nobody is obligated to like you.
- You still have to be fucking nice to people, even if the level of "nice" you can muster consists only of not punching them in the face or not telling them to die in a fire.
- Whenever possible, don't be an asshole.

Some small justice, or, Depressingly, comment sections fail to surprise me. (TW Sexual Assault)

Source

I read a blog post this evening.  It was a post from Dennis Canning, the father of Rehteah Parsons.  You may remember her.  She killed herself two years after some guys she was drinking with raped her, took pictures and circulated them around her school and community.  One of the guys involved recently plead guilty to producing child pornography, as the who took the pictures of Rehtaeh and the catalyst to the images being disseminated

If you click on that link, just don't read the comments.

I read the comments.  I have the rage.  All of the rage, and the anger, and the bilious, spitting, horrible "fuck this world and the people in it" disgust.

Most of the comments were sympathetic.  But who in the bloody-minded hell goes onto the blog of a grieving parent, who sought justice for his daughter and was so utterly failed by the authorities involved as they basically shrugged off a gross violation, who now will share with Rehteah's mother the everlasting grief of losing a child, especially one who could have been saved if only someone, anyone, gave a flying shit... 

What vile creature tells this grieving father that he MUST forgive the boys whose callousness and cruelty cost his daughter her life?

Who tells this family that by seeking justice for these wrongs, they will be ruining a kids life? The kids involved were old enough to know what they did was wrong.  The fallout is theirs to deal with.

What kind of person quibbles over the semantics of saying that Rehtaeh's death was a result of her rape and subsequent humiliation, by pointing out that sometimes people who DON'T have something so horrendous happen to them may also commit suicide? 

If Rehtaeh had mental health issues, I'm sure they were not helped by two years of reoccurring humiliation and a lack of compassion from institutions - the police, her school - that were supposed to help, not turn a blind eye.

And who, I ask, thinks it appropriate to pull out the "Where were this girls PARENTS??" card, when I am sure that Glen Canning and Leah Parsons wonder on a daily basis what THEY could have done different.

I know I would. 

I would bet Vegas odds that the jackass anon who made THAT comment probably lied to their parents at some point in their life.  Probably drank before they were legal age as well.

There but for the grace of something, go you, anon.

I'm a parent of two girls on the cusp of adolescence.  If this was one of my children it would take everything in me not to want to track down these kids and tear them apart with my bare hands.

I cannot fathom what a bitter victory this guilty plea must seem.  Small consolation for a family that will never have their daughter back. 

I don't know cars but I can read an invoice, or, Why I Won't go to Pro Oil Change again

I'm really starting to wonder how I keep running into service companies that don't seem to understand that if you give someone a price on something, that should actually be what they pay.  Hell, just being relatively accurate would be great.   In the general ballpark, even. Whatever.

So, in preparation for an upcoming big-ass road trip, and in the name of general automotive maintenance, I decided to get my car's oil changed on my lunch break.  I've had friends offer to do my oil changes and sometimes I take them up on that but mostly I get lazy and impatient and end up going to a 10-min oil change place.  Usually Midas, but they are admittedly a bit pricey, especially when you start treating your motor-baby to synthetic oils.  Generally in the $90 range for a full-synthetic package.

So I decided to try a different place this time.  Pro Oil Change opened a franchaise near downtown about a year ago and lo and behold, they also had a ten-dollar-off coupon on their website and a claim to a 12-minute drive-through service, which seemed handy considering I get a half an hour for lunch.

Ka-ching.

Lunch time rolled around and I drove down to see what the pricing was like.  I asked the senior mechanic guy about pricing and if they did synthetic and he told me a full-synthetic oil change was 60 bucks plus tax.  I asked if the coupon was valid with that package and he said sure so I gave him my keys and hunkered down with one of the limited magazine offerings.

On a side note:  How much sense does it really make to have hot rod and other automotive magazines in a 10-minute oil change place?  Anyone interested enough in cars to want to read about them in magazines are probably doing their own oil changes.

But I digress.

Gripe Number One:  I waited a lot longer than twelve minutes.  I guess they were short-staffed, but I still feel the need to include that to give the fullest picture of my overall shitty experience dealing with this particular company.

Gripe Number Two:  My air filter needs changing, apparently.  I was offered a new one for 29.99 installed.  Now, I could be mistaken, but I have bought one of these before and I don't remember it being near thirty bucks.  And I don't know if you've ever seen where the air filter on a PT Cruiser sits, but a monkey could probably change it.  Hell, I'm fairly confident I could change it, and I'm sure there are monkeys with better automotive knowledge than I have.

Now, these first two gripes, I would let slide.  People get swamped, and understaffed.  Shit happens.  People are in the business to make money so they are going to try and upsell.  And honestly, my air filter DOES need changing.

However...

Gripe Number Three:  When I got the invoice, I saw that I had been charged 38.99 plus tax for service and 37.00 for the oil filter and about 5 liters of synthetic oil. 5W-30.

All told it comes to about $85 bucks after the tax.  After I had been told $60+

(for those unfamiliar with HST, the Ontario rate is 13% so after my coupon was applied, I should have been looking at about $58 bucks total)

I pointed out the discrepancy and was told that ".. that's how the computer rings it up.. you see, it's this much for the service and then this much for your oil."

To which I replied "I see that, but you told me it would be sixty dollars, not over seventy-five."  To which he again said that it was the way it comes up in the computer.

Once again, I reiterated that I was told $60 and that the price card I was shown when I came in also said $60 for the package.  If it comes up as over $75 on the computer, then that is what it should say on the price card.  That is what I *should* have been told when I asked about pricing.

I was also told that I needed to account for the tax.  Which pissed me off, because - as I pointed out on the computer screen - the price BEFORE tax was still fifteen bucks more than the price I was told.

The guy apologizes and says that he's run into this problem before and has told his boss about it a couple of times now.  I told him I'm not surprised he's had problems with customers over it because it's a shitty, dishonest way to do business.

I also told him that as a first-time customer this was a crappy first impression and that I felt I had been ripped off.  I agreed to let them do the oil change under false pretences, believing that I would be paying one price, and then being charged more after the fact.

He then apologized and offered to knock 15 bucks off the price, without the coupon.  He gave me the coupon back and said I could use it again the next time I was in.  I scoffed and told him to keep the coupon as I would not be returning.  I also suggested that he pass that message along to the company owner, once again expressing my opinion that theirs was a shitty, crooked way of doing business.

So yeah.  Will not be going back there.  I had full intention of going in this morning and speaking to the manager face to face, but... life.

For now, this will need to serve as my strongly worded letter and my warning to others who may be tempted as I was.. don't bother.  

Rock 'n roll and comic books and bubble gum..

So last night me and my friend Amber got all gussied up and headed to Barrie to catch a show from the Headstones who, much to the delight of many a 90s Can-Rock fan, starting touring again a year or so ago.  Helluva a show, y'all.  Helluva show.

Before leaving the house, of course I had to make at least one trip back inside to actually retrieve the tickets, because it's me and it's probably nothing short of a miracle that I didn't leave them at work.  So I freaked out a bit when we got down to Barrie and I couldn't bloody find them!  Fack! We searched the car up and down and finally located them in the visor where I never put anything ever.

Getting inside we pretty much got a drink and then moved as close to the stage as we could get without my claustrophobia kicking in.  We arrived a few songs before the end of the opening act, a band by the name of Riding Shotgun, who didn't impress me greatly at first but earned a number of cool points by pulling out a pretty nifty cover of Nazareth's "This Flight Tonight" which is, I might add, my favourite Nazareth tune.

Within minutes of finding out place we were approached by a couple of vaguely older dudes, early 40s I'd guess.  Poor Amber.  As my oldest and dearest friend, I can say that she has the unfortunate trouble of being Douchebait for idiot guys with no concept of boundaries.  I have to say that in my old age and since hooking up with The Well Travelled One, I've never been so appreciative that drunken assholes tend to leave me alone out in public.

Some of us are not so lucky, which is how I found myself trying to defend my friend from Grabby McGropeyHands, to no avail.  This guy was with his brother, who was decent and fairly respectful, but not quite cool enough to tell his brother to keeps his hands off this obviously uncomfortable girl who is opening cringing each time he tries to put his arm around her.  

So I offered my services to play angry c*ckblocking friend, but this guy was oblivious enough that even telling him to fuck right off didn't get the message across.  So, the best choice seemed to be to abandon our post at stage right and head for one of The Ranch's Go-Go cages.  At previous shows, I've found them handy for getting a good view of the stage while catering to my claustrophobic tendencies.  It's also a good place to inadvertently injure yourself or flash hundreds of people at a time,but those are stories for another day.

We made our way over and started climbing and THAT'S WHEN THE COOLEST THING HAPPENED, YOU GUYS!

As I was struggling to get through the floor of the cage without strangling myself with my purse, which did not want to fit through the trapdoor with me, I hear Hugh Dillon himself, from the stage say "What's this fucking chick doing?? She's going to fall and break her fucking ass!!"

You guys, that was me! I was going to fall and break my ass!  I didn't, but holy hell was I ever stoked!  I got called out in the middle of the show.  And we escaped the category five clinger, to boot!  A song or two later Hugh pointed back up to our cage and said something to the effect of "You two look good up there!"  At least that's what Amber told me.. I couldn't quite make it out, my ears were ringing and I was too busy grinning ear-to-ear.

Near the end of the show, we decided to climb back down and try to get right up in front for the encore but sure enough as so as we hit the ground running, Grabby McGrabass was back and at it again.  Amber and I rolled our eyes at each other and tried to get deep enough into the crowd that he couldn't follow us but this was one determined and like I said, oblivious dude.  At one point I made like I was all dancing wildly and pushed him off balance, "accidentally".  It made no impression on the guy and I gave amber a "I'm trying, friend, I really am" and she kind of shrugged helplessly at me.  Meanwhile a guy behind who had seen what happened, tapped me on the shoulder and high-fived me.

The band played a good mixed of new and old stuff and it was, overall, a highly energetic and entertaining show.  We left during the third encore, a rendition of Three Angels because I had to work this morning and it's a bit of a drive.  

Did I mention they covered ABBA? I shit you not.  ABBA.  be still my 70's cheese-loving heart.  

An open letter to the guy who insulted me as I went for breakfast.

Dear Asshole,

Today I got up and went for breakfast. The man friend was not up for it, so I decided to take a book for company instead. Seeing as it was a lovely, sunny, brisk morning I decided to walk to the restaurant. It seemed like it could shape up to be a decent day.

Thanks and a hearty "Fuck You" for ruining it.

As I was entering the front door of our local dining establishment, you and your probably equally douchey friend were coming out. I guess my appearance caught you eye because you felt compelled to exclaim "Wow! Holy fucking teeth!" at me.

For those who may not have seen pictures, I have prominent front teeth and a bit of an overbite. I know this, because assholes and dentists have insisted on pointing this out to me pretty much since my adult teeth came in. I'm 32 years old. It's nothing I haven't heard before. Doesn't mean it doesn't feel just as shitty now as it did when I was a kid.

So, thanks a lot for reducing me to feeling a goddamned awkward twelve-year-old and making me feel ugly and insecure once what you had said registered.

And then.. And THEN, you had the audacity to look outraged when, realizing that I had just been insulted to my fucking FACE, I turned around and told you to fuck off. Like I was the asshole here.

My apologies to any diners who were within earshot of that, by the way.

Believe me, that was the least you deserved for not keeping your bloody comments to yourself. A full-on public shaming would have been fitting so you could have felt as humiliated as I did at that moment, but unfortunately I'm not verbally eloquent when I'm upset. Hence why I blog.

So fuck you for making me feel like shit about myself when I was just minding my own business, enjoying my Saturday. Fuck you for the fact that I was just a little scared about walking home after breakfast, in case you and your friend decided I needed to be put in my place for speaking up. And fuck you for the good possibility that had the man friend been with me, you probably wouldn't have said shit because I'm pretty sure that's precisely the kind of cowardly piece of excrement you are.

I hope a large piece of frozen airplane toilet water crushes you from a great height.

people suck balls. part 3

I had to take my pics of the girls down from here [MySpace] because some guy in the L&R forum made a comment and incorporate Tee's pic into it. It wasn't horribly creepy, just mildly insulting, but still, it's my fucking kid.

Say whatever you want about me, but leave my children out of it. I reported the guy to the mods, hopefully they will delete that thread, and his profile. I also checked the tags to make the image link didn't come from something like Photobucket or that shit. 

Assignment crunch time. the stress caffeine and lack of sleep have been getting to me. I'm fucking wired.

People SUCK balls. part 2.

Yup. Nothing like harassment from your ex's ex and her bratty kid. This is turning out to be a banner fucking week.

People SUCK balls.

Note to folks everywhere:

It is in REALLY bad form to badmouth a colleague to a higher-up when said colleague is not present to defend herself. That includes university professors.

Those that do need to contract a nasty case of chlamydia.