Recently on Twitter I
denounced Andrew Bolt as a racist. That’s not a new claim, and one that many
people I know agree with. The documentary evidence is there over a long period
of time, and he has been taken to court more than once – and lost – for his
racially divisive comments. However, one of his Twitter supporters decided to
have me on and called for me to provide “evidence”. I should have realised this
person was a troll – it didn’t matter what I provided, he asked for more and
claimed I had not provided any. That was exactly the tactic Bolt used to deny
Professor Robert Manne had ever answered his “name 10” question, despite
constant and consistent evidence that Professor Manne had done exactly that more
than once.
What Bolt did to Manne,
and what Bolt’s follower did to me on Twitter, is a bullying tactic often used by
media. Deny, continue to deny, and eventually people believe you rather than
the factual evidence. Unfortunately for the whole country, the government is
talking of overturning section 18C of the Race Relations Act, to make racial
vilification no longer a crime. There is, in my opinion, far too much bullying
in our society now. We need less of
it, not more.
Every day there are
stories in social media about bullying, more and more often relating to severe
bullying of children and adolescents who are a lot less able to respond or
defend themselves than adults. Yesterday I read the story of Josh Taylor on the
FB “No Bull” page. Josh committed suicide last year after been severely bullied at school.
Anti-bullying website
NoBullying.com says: “Studies performed by Yale suggest that victims of
bullies are between 2 to 9 times more likely to commit suicide at some point in
their teenage years. In Great Britain, a study performed there went so far as
to suggest that almost half of the suicides committed in that country were
directly related to bullying.”
The following poem is by
a blogger using the pseudonym Icing on
the Cupcake on the teenink.com website:
Monday, they called her fat, stupid, ugly.But words are just words, so they thought. Looking into a mirror, she wept.
Fat, stupid, ugly she thought.
But words are just words, so they thought. Tuesday, they called her freak, slut, retard.
But words are just words, so they thought. Looking into a mirror, she saw herself.
Fat, stupid, ugly freak, slut, retard constantly in her mind.
She cried. The tears came streaming down.
Wednesday, they called her psycho, useless, skank.
But words are just words, so they thought.
But words are just words, so they thought.
She cried. Until tears came no more.
Thursday, they told her to go die.
But words are just words, so they thought.
But words are just words, so they thought.
Friday, they said nothing. For she wasn't there.
But words are just words, so they thought.
A picture of her was shown everywhere.
They soon found out, they had killed her.
But words are just words, they questioned.
They soon found out, they had killed her.
But words are just words, they questioned.
On Twitter I follow a
chap named John McPhilbin (@JohnMcPhilbin) of the Injured Workers Support
Network, who is a tireless advocate for the rights of those bullied in the
workplace. John’s profile notes that “Workplace bullying is a symptom of poor
management and leadership which costs Australian economy between $6-$36 billion
annually and destroys lives of workers”. John has a video on workplace bullying
and is featured in an About The House magazine article in December 2012.
The statistics on both
personal and workplace bullying are horrific and we are right in questioning
what is causing this. A TED blog popped into my FB feed today about how
language can affect the way we think. The writer quoted some examples from Stanford
psychology professor Lera Boroditsky, including, in a section titled Blame and English, “…there’s a
correlation between a focus on agents in English and our criminal-justice bent
toward punishing transgressors rather than restituting victims…”
Social media sites
offer prime examples of language misuse which can be threatening, racist and distressing,
yet are considered by those who repost and share to be humorous. Our language
is filled with terms that are abhorrent when one considers the real meaning of
the words – words like “retard”, “fat”, “bitch”, “mole”, “slag”, “useless”, “thick”.
Our society has normalized gender-provocative terms such as “like a girl” which
are intended as insults to boys but we rarely, if ever, question why being
“like a girl” is, in fact, something to be ashamed of. Distressingly, it is this acceptance of misuse of language that allows not just bullying but also a sexual violence culture to perpetuate.
Well understand this.
I will NOT chill when I hear derogatory comments. I will NOT chill when I see memes
passing across my FB feed that use derogatory, insinuating, sexist, racist or
gender-biased language disguised as humour. I will call them out, and I expect others to call me out if I slip up.
Take a moment to
reflect on what exactly is being said in the poem I quoted above. These are the
terms used, and the dictionary meanings for each term.
Fat - having too much flabby tissue; corpulent; obese
Stupid - lacking ordinary quickness and keenness
of mind; dull
Ugly - very unattractive or unpleasant to look at;
offensive to the sense of beauty; displeasing in appearance
Freak - a person or animal on exhibition as an example
of a strange deviation from nature; monster
Slut - an immoral or dissolute woman; prostitute
Retard - a contemptuous term used to refer to a
person who is cognitively impaired
Psycho - a crazy or mentally unstable person
Useless - not serving
the purpose or any purpose
Skank - a promiscuous
female
This is the abuse that the victims of these words
are being subjected to. Would you want to be called those things every day?
Seriously?
Words can and do have
enormous power. Our language can be subjective – based on opinion – when it
should be objective – based on fact. Bullying is nearly always subjective. We
must turn that around if we are to succeed in combatting bullying.
THINK before you speak. It may not just be someone’s feelings you are playing with – it may be
their life.
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