Today is the last Thursday Thoughts, so I had to link up!! Thursday Thoughts was the first link-up I ever got to co-host, so I have a special place in my heart for it. Big ups to Jamie and Jaime for hosting for this long.
I mentioned during my Roundup on Friday that Blair had a really interesting post about bullying last week. It really resonated with me, and so the few days following that, I kept up with the comments. (I also had a really great conversation with Blair about it via email.) I'm not going to rehash everything Blair said in her post, but it's something I've been thinking about a lot in the last week - specifically, the things that people have said in response to the question Blair posed: Can adults be bullied?
(Note: this post isn't meant to put any specific person on blast. The comments on Blair's post are things I've been seeing and hearing for years... her post was just the catalyst that got me to put all my thoughts into a post of my own.)
Being in the education world, bullying is something that I care about very, very much. I see it all the time, and it's incredibly hard to watch.
What is equally as hard is seeing all of the misconceptions and misplaced blame that surround bullying, and that's what I'd like to talk about today.
As I discussed yesterday, everyone is entitled to their own opinion. And Blair ended her post with a question - obviously, people are going to respond. But seeing so many people simply say "adults can't be bullied because adults are free to change their environment" is frustrating and discouraging for several reasons.
For one, who has the freedom to simply quit their job and find a new one whenever they want? If you haven't been job searching lately, let me be the first to tell you: job searching SUCKS. The fact that YOU have to go through the entire job search process because someone ELSE is being a jerk is completely backwards, especially if it's a job that (outside of that person) you enjoy. AND all of this is operating under the assumption that you'll even be able to find a new job, which we all know is not a guarantee.
I think it is INCREDIBLY unfair to say to the victim of harassment that they should be the one that has to change. If it's just someone you "hang out with," that's one thing. It's totally different when you can't control that person's presence in your life. You can't tell someone to "just deal with it" or worse, to "grow a pair." It's way deeper than that, and if you think harassment always has a simple solution like that, you have a whole lot to learn about being an adult.
All of these things have one common factor: they place the blame and responsibility on the victim, and not the aggressor. And that, my friends, is completely inexcusable. We don't know what the conditions are in each situation, so we can't make blanket statements like "just ignore it! it'll get better eventually. Because we don't know that. We need to start being proactive. We have to do better.
Ultimately, I think it all boils down to this: when are we going to stop telling people to "have thick skin" and "get over it," and start teaching people to not be jerks? It's something we need to work on, we need to make it a priority, and we HAVE to stop blaming the victims.
And that's all I have to say about that.
