“Don’t be a tattle-tale”
That’s what we tell our precious children. For, it is more important to us that they grow a tough skin than that we become aware of who is being bullying and abusive. And if you can catch a bully at a young age, you are much more likely to prevent them from becoming worse and worse.
But the wounds go deeper. This isn’t just about children in school. Many siblings may remember their older siblings being cruel and sadistic towards them, then telling them not to “tattle,” so their parents never know what’s wrong. What’s worse, some parents punish the younger sibling if they do “tattle,” instead of the older one for being a brat.
Yet even deeper. Truly abusive children and adults alike use this logic because it permeates our society, and any child can be forced to obey it. I am very close to many people who were abused and told not to “tell.” One was molested by their twelve-year-old babysitter, then told not to be a tattle tale. Another by their teacher. Yet another was sexually abused by their grandparents. But it’s a secret. “Our little secret.”
This is a culture of silence. Silence infests our ghettos and Third World countries; silence imprisons the weak and the helpless; silence saturates every crevice, every corner of our society. If you are attacked on a street in broad daylight, chances are nobody will come to your aid. We are the innocent bystanders. Feeling sick yet? If you’re not, perhaps you’re not paying attention.
As a child, I was ridiculed in school. I was treated horribly from age 6 to 13. I had several physical threats during that time. Yet I was never hit or attacked. Why? Because my mother taught me to tell. “If someone is hurting you, either your feelings or your body, tell someone.” I was trained that if one adult wouldn’t listen, to keep telling until somebody did. This helped perpetuate the ridicule to an extent, but really it was my insecure attitude more than anything else. And nobody touched me.
This video was sent to the police, and the bully was arrested. All the more reason to “tattle.”
Language can be used for control through fear, inspiration, anger, and pain. You can hurt somebody with words, even if you’re not looking at them. You can do it through the internet. Most people, however, believe that if you are hurt by somebody’s written verbal abuse, you should DEAL WITH IT. I put that in capitals, because that’s how they’ve said it to me. I’m not talking about someone saying, “you’re an asshole.” That’s just silly. I’m talking about persistent, cruel, sadistic attacks.
Many are unaware of the psychological damage that verbal/written abuse can cause. They should learn a little about sociology, anthropology, and the fact that above all else, humans are social beings. Language is our foundation, and it affects us as profoundly as anything else. It can be used to begin movements, start revolutions, and strike fear into people.
~ by sitakali on 8 December, 2009.
Posted in Social Environmentalist
Tags: anthropology, apathy, compassion, humanity, psychology, society, violence
I agree to an extent but there’s also a very fine line of training children to overly rely on authority rather than learn to deal with their own problems. It’s easy to see what kind of person this leads to, those co-workers who are always reporting activities of the workplace to the boss, those brownosers at any hierarchical situation, those who will always involve the police for the smallest thing.
Furthermore, you also end up with adults who have not learned to deal with their own issues and need to run to someone with more power to help them.
So I think there a delicate balance between never saying anything about bad stuff that happens to you and always running back to the authorities.
Your concerns about dependence on authority make sense coming from an anarchist, but are not justified. I became an anarchist of my own free will, after going through school “telling” on bullies. Children need to feel supported by adults. In a system such as the public schools in the US, where children are encouraged to develop disturbing social norms based on who has the most sociopathic tendencies, the only type of autonomy that is rewarded is the type that turns the victim into a bully herself.
As long as you encourage the silence of the victim, as opposed to putting the focus on the bully, bullying will be indirectly rewarded. I see a great parallel within broader society, where the powerless are pushed aside and only the wealthy are listened to and rewarded.
When I was taken out of school and homeschooled for a year and a half, I learned that a lot of people’s preconceived notions about “human nature” in children were untrue. I was part of a homeschooling community, and I learned that individuality can be respected, unreasonable peer pressure can be nonexistent, and children are perfectly capable of developing their own support systems within groups of friends. Unfortunately, this is impossible in public schools, as that environment isn’t conducive to individuality.