On Personal Tragedy

 

The news seems to unfold like a something slowly falling off a shelf. First it just sort of hangs there, and you aren’t sure what is happening, then it begins to move, and before you know it, the thing hits the floor. That’s how it was with Vylit Vander Giessen.

First, there was a report on Facebook, Thursday afternoon, of something happening at the Lion’s Head apartments, over by the High School. Low rent apartments often mean crime, so it wasn’t a huge surprise. Still, this is a small town, so when the police show up somewhere in numbers, it’s news. By the evening we were hearing that a teenager had passed away. “What could it be?” we wondered. Drugs? Alcohol? A fight? Then someone said a teenager shot another teenager? “What the hell?” we thought. Then on Friday morning we learned the truth: a middle school girl had been found dead in her apartment. Before our kids were off to school we learned that Vylit, a friend of our daughter, and in the same grade (7th), had hanged herself.

I had never met Vylit. She’d never been to the house. She was good friends with girls our daughter is good friends with. Though Moriah and Vylit were not close, the news was devastating for us. We learned that Vylit had struggled with kids teasing her. Some called her “Violent Vylit.” One kid is reported to have told her she should just kill herself. Moriah told us that kids teased her without mercy. Though we don’t know for sure, the general consensus from family and friends is that the bullying and teasing is what led to her decision to end her own life.

This hits close to us because we have been helping Moriah through some bullying at school. We’ve tried to encourage her to ignore the kids who tease her, to remember that all kids in middle school are uncomfortable, and that probably the bullies had first been bullied. It is hard not to imagine Vylit’s fate befalling our little girl.

So, like many other families in our little town, we’ve had to come to grips with this thing. It has been a week, but it still brings many emotions. I write about them here in part to deal with them myself.

I am hurt. I cannot stand the thought of a poor little girl, who barely understands the world around her, feeling so lost and alone that she felt the only way out was death. We were not created to live alone. If only I had known…

I feel guilty. What have I done in my community to reach little girls whose lives are miserable? As I said in our church council meeting on Monday night: “In three years of serving on this council, I have not participated in a single decision, the results of which make it less likely that someone who is lost and hurting will take their own life. Not one. What the hell are we doing here?”

I am angry. Who teased that poor girl? Who the hell do they think they are? Why didn’t her parents do more? Her grandparents? The school? This is irrational, I know. Everyone gets teased in middle school. Suicide almost always happens in the context of deep mental illness, as I am told. So it likely wasn’t just the teasing. But anger is a powerful emotion.

I’m afraid. Have I done enough to protect my daughter? She is at a vulnerable age. She is going though that girlish change (if you know what I mean). Is she at risk? Have I loved her enough? Hugged her enough? Told her I love her, enough? I’m afraid.

More than anything, I feel a call to action. I am a Christian. I am called, first and foremost, to seek the lost, the broken, the hurting, and show them that God loves them. Have I been doing that? Or have I gone the way of the typical American Christian? Wringing my hands about things that don’t matter? I want my life to mean something to the people around me.

I know that good articles are supposed to have a good ending. I don’t have one. There isn’t one to this story, not yet. Our family has not fully processed this terrible tragedy. But we are working on it. If you are a praying person, please pray for us, for our daughter Moriah, and especially for little Vylit, and her family.

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  1. Z in MT Member
    Z in MT
    @ZinMT

    While bullying probably contributed, I don’t think that you can solely put the blame on bullying. We all remember (sometimes personally) kids that were bullied mercilessly, who never the less made it through. My junior year of high school a girl committed suicide, and yet she was one of the popular girls. Rarely can we know the path that leads to a suicide.

    • #61
  2. Kate Braestrup Member
    Kate Braestrup
    @GrannyDude

    Spin (View Comment):

    Ansonia (View Comment):
    they didn’t know what I should do any more than I did.

    I told my daughter to “kick ’em in the balls…” One thing I know for sure is that a “pure bully” doesn’t pick on someone who will fight back.

    I like that, Spin. We (rightly) discourage our kids from acting out of anger, but anger is a potent anxiolytic. When my daughter was bullied in middle school, there came a day when she finally smacked her tormenter in the kisser. Not that she actually intended to, she later confessed—my daughter was a little klutzy, and hadn’t realized this girl, whom I’ll call Fanta,  was quite so close to her fist. Never mind: it had the intended effect.

    I will say that when I talked to the school about it, they wanted to do some kind of mediating group process between the girls,  as if this was a relationship issue.

    I had a different plan: “Haul Fanta into the office and tell her that you’ve received a number of complaints from other kids that she’s making their lives miserable. Tell her: “Listen, Fanta, you’ve got two weeks to clean up your act. At the end of the two weeks, we’re going to ask the other kids how it feels to be in school with you. If their answer is anything other than “Going to school with Fanta is simply delightful,” you will be expelled.” Any kid clever and powerful enough to make other kids feel awful is clever and powerful enough to make everybody feel good.”

     

     

    • #62
  3. Stu In Tokyo Inactive
    Stu In Tokyo
    @StuInTokyo

    Bullying, yeah it’s a real problem here in Japan, my kids having brown hair, being “Half” and having a non-Japanese last name, yes it was a large problem, that we struggled with, but eventually came through it together and intact. Angry is not something that I rise to easily, but when it first happened in grade school I went to the principals office at the school with a baseball bat, I made him understand it if happened again, and nothing was done, I’d be back and I’d be much more angry. I think the poor guy had to change his underwear, but when three boys a year older than my 8 year old daughter taunted and teased her at school for days, in front of teachers and then followed her home actually hitting her, yeah, I got angry. Then in junior high school it got worse with girls her own age, it was heartbreaking to see up close and personal, but at that age I could not do anything directly that would not make matters worse, so we worked it out at home with our daughter. Once she moved to Canada to go to high school there she had no problems at all, thank goodness.

    Bullying is real and it is a lot worse than the crap that kids pull at school, I went through that, bullying that I saw was much worse than that.
    Vylit, rest in peace.

     

    • #63
  4. Christie121 Member
    Christie121
    @Christie121

    @stephen I am so sorry. God bless you.

    • #64
  5. jonb60173 Member
    jonb60173
    @jonb60173

    No doubt this is a tragedy.  But, truth be told, bullies and bullying will always exist, always have and always will be.  So is there some way, any way, that we can bolster our youngsters to accept it for what it is and move on.  If there isn’t, then this becomes a recurring episode.

    • #65
  6. Shoshanna Inactive
    Shoshanna
    @Shoshanna

    Spin: We’ve tried to encourage her to ignore the kids who tease her, to remember that all kids in middle school are uncomfortable, and that probably the bullies had first been bullied. It is hard not to imagine Vylit’s fate befalling our little girl.

    Your emotions are both understandable and justified– but they’re predicated on accepting the unacceptable:  that bullying is an often-unavoidable part of growing up and will continue to be.

    Why should it?

    In the reporting of every instance of a tragedy resulting from bullying, there is found somewhere in it a quote from an official or family member who manages with just a few words to acknowledge, deplore, and then accept as inevitable the prevalence of bullying.

    Why is that?

    It shouldn’t be death, and it certainly isn’t taxes, so why is it inevitable?  Because we allow it to be.  Because there is no real penalty for bullying.  And considering its potential cost, the penalty should be brutal.  First amendment problems?  Possibly so.  But no reasonable person has an objection to denying the right to shout “Fire!” in a crowded theater.

    We don’t shrug our shoulders and dismiss murder as an inevitability.  We don’t consider rape an unfortunate but essentially normal part of growing up.  So why on earth should bullying, with its horrifying and insidious ability to darken the soul, maim the spirit and eventually destroy the body, be written off as regrettable norm?

    How many more victimized kids will have to pay the ultimate price before they’re given some protection?  How many more character-free miscreants will be allowed get away scot-free after making life an intolerable hell for those not strong enough to survive their assaults?

    Bullying should be prosecuted and punished as an assault– or as manslaughter.  And in some cases as murder.  There has to be a price.  A real one.

    I also believe that one of the most effective ways to significantly reduce bullying in the digital age is to knock off this nonsense of being allowed to post anything, about anyone, all the while hiding behind the cloak of anonymity.  Anyone who has something to say about another person should have the guts to attach to the statement his or her true name.  And if he or she is not so inclined– and such individuals almost never are– then the rules of social media need to be changed.

    Additionally, when the perpetrators of bullying are underage, the parents who inflicted them on the world should be called to account– financially and otherwise– for both their incompetence and for the damage done by their atrociously brought-up offspring.

    If bullies and their breeders were to have it brought home to them that the bullying of others would result in their own lives being badly– and permanently– damaged, or even destroyed, I believe that the bullying experience would rather quickly cease to be a tragic-but-inevitable “norm”.

     

    • #66
  7. Hypatia Member
    Hypatia
    @

    jonb60173 (View Comment):
    No doubt this is a tragedy. But, truth be told, bullies and bullying will always exist, always have and always will be. So is there some way, any way, that we can bolster our youngsters to accept it for what it is and move on. If there isn’t, then this becomes a recurring episode.

    Um, yeah.  This is what we call life.  The “some way,  any way” you mention did exist for generations.  Instead of behaving like your child has been singled out for some horrible punishment that no one else ever had to endure, TELL them this–and tell them to fight back, as the OP said.  Hasn’t anybody ever read about what went on after dark in the dorms of the English public schools?

    That said, though, if I felt that one individual in particular was singling out my child in particular, I would contact that young criminal and his parents,  and advise them all that stalking and terroristic threats are crimes in our state, and that we could and would prosecute if the behavior continued.   Let the nasty little bozo try on a juvenile record for size!

    • #67
  8. JLock Inactive
    JLock
    @CrazyHorse

    I’m seeing lots of definitive descriptions on right or wrong ways to handle this — I hope parents reading this know that this behavior and how it affects children, like most things in life, exists on a spectrum. Over-protection and infantilizing are broad terms of denigration — if they mean obsessive worrying and compulsive interference, then yes, those can be harmful as well. But no where near as harmful as repetitive bullying. Realize at a certain point. this qualifies for all criteria in PTSD diagnosis. And telling a kid to just fight back can result in horrific consequences.

    Bullying is still seen generically, as some oaf using brute strength to draw attention to themselves. Understand the behavior can be far more complex: subtle, perverse, verbal, opportune, etc — if play is the developmental work of children, bullying is the work of sociopaths. Don’t count on the classic underdog narrative. The bully may be seen as neutral, even liked by classmates and teachers.

    Really, the best you can do is be attentive, supporting, and listen to your child. Children who have parents that listen and speak directly to them for more than an hour a day mature with greater dopamine receptors and a better ability to process serotonin. Those who don’t develop a slew of all kinds of aberrant, maladaptive behavior.

    Be patient, listen, empathize, and support your kids.

    • #68
  9. Hypatia Member
    Hypatia
    @

    @jlock, your comment 68 is right on point.  If only every parent had the talent to engage at-will.  Sadly, not everybody has it and we don’t miraculously acquire it when we breed.

    Just to be 100% clear, I like and endorse your comment!

    However, I wonder if anyone else has noticed this:

    in a tv sitcom, all the parent has to do is sit the kid down and say, did I ever tell you about the time something like this happened to me?   The little Thespian’s eyes widen in incredulity: “YOU, dad (or mom)?  You, the coolest person in the world, were bullied/ embarrassed/ failing when you were my age?  Reeeely?  Gee, thanks, I feel all better now!” —

    but in real,life, the kid’s reaction is more likely to be: ” Oh, my god!  Not only am I a loser, but I come from a whole LINE of losers!”

    • #69
  10. Spin Inactive
    Spin
    @Spin

    JLock (View Comment):
    Children who have parents that listen and speak directly to them for more than an hour

    The money line…

    • #70
  11. cbc Inactive
    cbc
    @cbc

    Henry and iWe are right.  Rousseau does dominate our culture and he a toxic infection.  He was also one of philosophies most successful bullies.  His bullying had desperately negative impacts on many of those who supported him.

    Rousseau was also the man who invented modern educational theory.  This is a man who purports to know everything about educating the young and who sent all six of his newborn children to the foundling homes where almost all babies died.

    But Rousseau and Hobbes state of nature is not the only one.  They were godless men who imagined atomistic man.  Locke and others understood that society was natural.  Only government was a construct.

     

    cbc

    • #71
  12. cbc Inactive
    cbc
    @cbc

    Tokyo is correct.  There is a great deal to be said for parents showing up in the principal’s office with a baseball bat.  In our state a bill has been introduced to create an administrative office to counter  bullying.

    Government can’t do much, but parents can.  In order for parents to do anything the kids have to be able to go to their parents and they must have loving parents to go to.  Quite apart from all the loving support needed, parents can also use the force of the law.  In our part of rural Oregon one middle school and her parents went to the school principal to ask for some control of the bullies.  The principal blamed the girl (which they often do) and the bullying continued.  The parents sued the school  district and the principal.  The school district paid a great deal of money and canned the principal and the district has been far far more careful about allowing bullying.  In another town four sets of parents finally went to the school administration which had ignored the cyberbullying of the girls, by boys in the school.  The parents brought legal action, got big city publicity, and forced the schools to change the policies. The bullies also paid a price.  The schools need some skin in the game.

    cbc

    • #72
  13. Midget Faded Rattlesnake Member
    Midget Faded Rattlesnake
    @Midge

    JLock (View Comment):
    Really, the best you can do is be attentive, supporting, and listen to your child. Children who have parents that listen and speak directly to them for more than an hour a day mature with greater dopamine receptors and a better ability to process serotonin. Those who don’t develop a slew of all kinds of aberrant, maladaptive behavior.

    Be patient, listen, empathize, and support your kids.

    I realize this thread is getting old. But did anyone else have the experience, as a child, of feeling obligated to protect their own parents from the worst of what was going on?

    Hypatia (View Comment):
    Hasn’t anybody ever read about what went on after dark in the dorms of the English public schools?

    Allusions to it, yes. It was both comforting and chilling. Comforting to know you’re not alone and that the same-old-same-old, or worse, was already happening back in the day when everyone was supposed to be all prim and proper, and youths were supposed to be better-behaved than they are now. But also chilling to know it’s the same-old-same-old – that such evils are so commonplace.

    Mark Regnerus, who has extensively studied adolescent and young-adult sexual practices in the US, points out that, contrary to the scare-stories we hear about the distinction being erased in the minds of today’s young women, it’s very common for young women to have an acute awareness of the difference between unwanted or regrettable sex and rape. Which is, in its own way, reassuring (we don’t have to worry so much about girls not being able to tell the difference, after all), but also not: that’s a whole lotta sex that, while not forced, is also not wanted.

    cbc (View Comment):
    The principal blamed the girl (which they often do) and the bullying continued.

    Yep.

    The parents sued the school district and the principal. The school district paid a great deal of money and canned the principal and the district has been far far more careful about allowing bullying. In another town four sets of parents finally went to the school administration which had ignored the cyberbullying of the girls, by boys in the school. The parents brought legal action, got big city publicity, and forced the schools to change the policies. The bullies also paid a price.

    This can, of course, involve a degree of sacrificing your own child to see that the bullies pay a fair price for what they’ve done. It’s one reason for kids not to tell their parents what’s going on – knowing the likelihood that their parents’ attempts to extract justice might make them even bigger pariahs than they are now. After all, winning in court doesn’t mean the folks around you have stopped blaming you.

    • #73
  14. JLock Inactive
    JLock
    @CrazyHorse

    Midget Faded Rattlesnake (View Comment):

    JLock (View Comment):
    Really, the best you can do is be attentive, supporting, and listen to your child. Children who have parents that listen and speak directly to them for more than an hour a day mature with greater dopamine receptors and a better ability to process serotonin. Those who don’t develop a slew of all kinds of aberrant, maladaptive behavior.

    Be patient, listen, empathize, and support your kids.

    I realize this thread is getting old. But did anyone else have the experience, as a child, of feeling obligated to protect their own parents from the worst of what was going?

    Absolutely. This is an important developmental step and anyone who tells you it should unfold as X, Y, Z are full of it or trying to sell you something. Profane subject matter is the ultimate hurdle in parent/child communication. It can be insanely confusing for all — with biological functions considered taboo in public like bathroom useage fine to speak about with parents but sexual desire and circumstance being disastrously the opposite.

    Thats why developing robust communication before this is important (remember communication comes in more than verbal) — when this terrain comes where no parent who ever lived feels hunky-dorey talking about — it’s important that trust is there so the kid knows that while they may keep some of the gory details to themselves, they know the difference between it and harmful or abusive action and will report it to parents.

     

    • #74
  15. Herbert Member
    Herbert
    @Herbert

    iWe (View Comment):
    Bullying is the natural state in nature. Cchildren instinctively understand this. Every chicken coop has a hierarchy. Chickens in a coop routinely kill off those on the bottom. The lowest hen on the pecking order often peck themselves.

    The Snowflake Culture has really contributed to this: society tells the bullied that their feelings are the most important thing (instead of simply learning defensive techniques to not be so sensitive), and we also tell the bullies that their desires, because they are “natural”, are inherently validated, too. We allow – and even encourage – a pecking order, because it is what children instinctively crave, and we are told that people should get what they want.

    More proof, if it was needed, that morality is not found in a state of nature.

    I found this to be true, it’s like a totem pole.   Has the idea that for example, participation trophy’s are bad, exacerbated the problem?

    • #75
  16. Herbert Member
    Herbert
    @Herbert

    Spin (View Comment):

    Ansonia (View Comment):
    they didn’t know what I should do any more than I did.

    I told my daughter to “kick ’em in the balls…” One thing I know for sure is that a “pure bully” doesn’t pick on someone who will fight back.

    Not sure this is a correct assumption.

    • #76
  17. Spin Inactive
    Spin
    @Spin

    Herbert (View Comment):

    Spin (View Comment):

    Ansonia (View Comment):
    they didn’t know what I should do any more than I did.

    I told my daughter to “kick ’em in the balls…” One thing I know for sure is that a “pure bully” doesn’t pick on someone who will fight back.

    Not sure this is a correct assumption.

    It’s not an assumption.  It is an assertion based upon my own experience being bullied.  The bully finds an easier mark.

    • #77
  18. Herbert Member
    Herbert
    @Herbert

    Spin (View Comment):

    Herbert (View Comment):

    Spin (View Comment):

    Ansonia (View Comment):
    they didn’t know what I should do any more than I did.

    I told my daughter to “kick ’em in the balls…” One thing I know for sure is that a “pure bully” doesn’t pick on someone who will fight back.

    Not sure this is a correct assumption.

    It’s not an assumption. It is an assertion based upon my own experience being bullied. The bully finds an easier mark.

    Perhaps truism would have been a better word than assumption.

    • #78
  19. Midget Faded Rattlesnake Member
    Midget Faded Rattlesnake
    @Midge

    JLock (View Comment):
    — when this terrain comes where no parent who ever lived feels hunky-dorey talking about

    I think all good parents – and conservative parents most emphatically – want to avoid sheltering and babying their children while also helping their kids retain their innocence. Sexuality is a large part of innocence, but not all of it – there’s innocence from other forms of degeneracy, too, even innocence from the bleaker worldviews, like bitter cynicism, Machiavellianism, or hopeless fatalism.

    There’s stuff you can do to lower your kid’s odds of encountering degenerate and innocence-destroying behavior. Send your kid to a good school in a nice neighborhood. Have your kid go to church. Just generally, embed your kid in social networks which do, in fact, reduce their odds of encountering innocence-destroying behavior. Kids may be sick, sick little turds, but these kids are less likely to be sick little turds, for reasons A, B, and C. Astute bullies realize the possibilities good parents’ hope that their kid be neither a sick little turd nor surrounded by sick little turds creates.

    Take a highly reputable environment like a church. Church might be a hospital for sinners, but it’s also supposed to be something of a sanctuary for the innocent, especially for the young. A child reporting innocence-destroying behavior at church reveals that, this time, the odds did not come out in parents’ favor – and the child’s report signals this whether or not the child is telling the truth. If the child is telling the truth, the child witnessed some pretty sick turdery. If the child is lying, embroidering a story from an excess of diseased imagination or revenge or something, the child is the poisoner, rather than the poisonee, but no matter: if even the children here are sick, sick turds, what’s to prevent the children here from spreading sick, sick stories with no truth to them?

    Naturally, those inclined to predatory manipulation can take advantage of this, engaging in sick turdery bizarre enough that, if it were reported, it would be unlikely to be believed, but the one reporting it would seem like the sick one. Or perhaps the manipulation is fabricating a plausible-enough-sounding story of sick turdery that never happened. Or perhaps the children are mutually poisoning each other.

    As problematic as leaving predatory behavior unchecked is, destroying decent people’s hopes that they’ve found a place where this sort of stuff doesn’t happen is also bound to be very upsetting to many more people than just the victim. I’m not surprised that some who witness “something nasty behind the woodshed” decide to “take one for the team” and say nothing about it to the decent people who hope it isn’t happening in the refuge for virtue they hope they’ve created.

    Allegations of bullying and allegations of sexual assault can have a lot in common, no?

    • #79
  20. JLock Inactive
    JLock
    @CrazyHorse

    Sure. All things sexual bleed into each other. Mix in Freudian pseudoscience artifact and even the parental relationship is (horribly and falsely) misconstrued as part sexual.

    My point was even secret keeping is a part of developmental growth. Children will learn there are things they need to keep from friends, bosses, and then their own families that are essential lessons they use in their lives.  Awkwardness and embarrassment, as horrible-feeling and easily obsessed over as they are, still are essential tools and part to learning boundaries. And how to present notions to different types of people. Identifying those types of people and so on.

    Personally, as a non-parent with years of work with at-risk youth — I drew the line of “speaking up” at actions. I didn’t have to hear all the sick crap that runs through our heads, especially as hormonally driven adolescents, but I did need to know the actions made while in this mind frame.

    Ok, Rico — gotta bounce!

    • #80
  21. Judithann Campbell Member
    Judithann Campbell
    @

    I agree with Spin: violence is often very effective when dealing with bullies. I wonder if a big part of the problem is that we don’t teach children acceptable uses of violence, and of course, as far as some are concerned, there is no such thing as an acceptable use of violence. But one punch in the nose can go a long way toward helping a bully to reform himself, or herself.

    The bullies I knew growing up, including myself, never ever initiate violence: we would verbally and psychologically torment our victims. All of us were raised on the adage that we should never throw the first punch; this was problematic, because even after years of being tormented daily, the victims still did not feel justified in throwing the first punch. One girl in our school often offered to fight with her bullies (she was very brave) but she never initiated a fight, and the mean girls would just laugh at her for acting like a boy.

    After I left the mean girl clique, they left me alone in school, but for some reason, they started following me and one of my friends from another school as we were walking home from school. They taunted and harassed us from the other side of the street for several days. Finally, one day, my friend decided that she had had enough. Continued.

    • #81
  22. Hypatia Member
    Hypatia
    @

    @midge, re  your query: did anyone else ever feel,the obligation to protect their own patents from the worst of what was going on–

    i can totally see that! After all, I wanted my parents to be proud of me, not to think they had spawned a loser!

    We had a handyman who would corner me after i reached puberty, strong-arm me up against a wall,  and demand a kiss.

    Now, if I had told my father, he’da   been gone in a minute.

    But I didn’t.

    I was reading DH Lawrence at the time, and when it dawned on me that what I was reading about in “Lady Chatterly’s Lover”  was the same thing this drooling ( he had a speech defect) old  guy was getting at–well, I was suffused with a white-hot shame, that’s  the only word for it, a full-body blush–and I would no more have spoken to my father about it than I would have walked into my parents’ room naked.

    (And I’m glad I didn’t, BTW– no harm done to me, after all, and possible catastrophe to this man had he been fired.  But oh, that white-hot shame.. for my sake and theirs, I couldn’t face my parents!)

    • #82
  23. Judithann Campbell Member
    Judithann Campbell
    @

    She threw her books down, ran to the other side of the street, grabbed the ring leader by the arm, and with one arm, dragged her into the middle of the street, and pinned her down for about 20  or 30 seconds. Then she let her go. That was all, and that was all it took. the ring leaders so called friends did nothing to help her, and those girls never bothered us again. It a highly effective and also a very restrained use of violence; my friends used just the amount of violence that was necessary, and no more. If she had just threatened to use violence, they would have laughed at her. Sometimes, you have to throw the first punch.

    • #83
  24. Herbert Member
    Herbert
    @Herbert

    Hypatia (View Comment):
    (And I’m glad I didn’t, BTW– no harm done to me, after all, and possible catastrophe to this man had he been fired. But oh, that white-hot shame.. for my sake and theirs, I couldn’t face my parents!)

    I think you are unusual,  for most there would be harm.   The guy deserved at a minimum to be fired.

    • #84
  25. Hypatia Member
    Hypatia
    @

    Herbert (View Comment):

    Hypatia (View Comment):
    (And I’m glad I didn’t, BTW– no harm done to me, after all, and possible catastrophe to this man had he been fired. But oh, that white-hot shame.. for my sake and theirs, I couldn’t face my parents!)

    I think you are unusual, for most there would be harm. The guy deserved at a minimum to be fired.

    See, I don’t think so.  The advances were unwelcome, but really–no big deal.  This kinda attraction is what makes the world go ’round, after all.

    I always thought, if my daughter were to have been molested, this is what I would have told her .  It may not be something you want, from a person you want–but perverse?  No.  And is the expression of sexual attraction from someone you wouldn’t want to partner with the end of the world?  Again: No.

    And now she’s 22, an adult, and like all of us, she has to deal with unwanted advances .  I’m glad she doesn’t feel that every leer, every catcall, every unsolicited conversation, is a terrible existential threat.  Cuz, y’know, it just isn’t.  It’s part of being an adult organism in a species composed of males and females for purposes of reproduction.  Live with it!

    • #85
  26. Herbert Member
    Herbert
    @Herbert

    Hypatia (View Comment):
    We had a handyman who would corner me after i reached puberty, strong-arm me up against a wall, and demand a kiss.

    That’s more than leering or unwanted advance,  if a co-worker did this today would you let it slide?  If not, what’s the difference between now and then?

    • #86
  27. Hypatia Member
    Hypatia
    @

    Herbert (View Comment):

    Hypatia (View Comment):
    We had a handyman who would corner me after i reached puberty, strong-arm me up against a wall, and demand a kiss.

    That’s more than leering or unwanted advance, if a co-worker did this today would you let it slide? If not, what’s the difference between now and then?

    I don’t know.  See, I had been taught to be kind, respectful, affectionate and polite to people who worked for us.  So there was that.  The “difference between now and then” was the white-hot shame I mentioned, which had to do with the tumult of puberty.

    Today?  I think it would depend if I felt threatened.  I don’t work for a corporation with a thicket of personnel regulations.  I don’t think I would necessarily insist on getting someone fired if he had given in to a momentary urge, as long as I hadn’t been hurt.

    • #87
  28. Midget Faded Rattlesnake Member
    Midget Faded Rattlesnake
    @Midge

    Herbert (View Comment):

    Hypatia (View Comment):
    (And I’m glad I didn’t, BTW– no harm done to me, after all, and possible catastrophe to this man had he been fired. But oh, that white-hot shame.. for my sake and theirs, I couldn’t face my parents!)

    I think you are unusual, for most there would be harm. The guy deserved at a minimum to be fired.

    Not so unusual, if “no harm” means “not sufficient harm to be worth the accusation” — which is often what it ends up meaning.

    Even when it’s pretty devastating for you, questions like, “Was it devastating enough? Could it have been a tragicomic misunderstanding? Is it likely to happen again?” go into deciding who to tell, and especially for telling on young men who might have been quite befuddled themselves over what they did. When it falls short of forcible penetration, there are any number of reasons to decide it really maybe wasn’t that bad, after all.

    • #88
  29. Hypatia Member
    Hypatia
    @

    Midget Faded Rattlesnake (View Comment):

    Herbert (View Comment):

    Hypatia (View Comment):
    (And I’m glad I didn’t, BTW– no harm done to me, after all, and possible catastrophe to this man had he been fired. But oh, that white-hot shame.. for my sake and theirs, I couldn’t face my parents!)

    I think you are unusual, for most there would be harm. The guy deserved at a minimum to be fired.

    Not so unusual, if “no harm” means “not sufficient harm to be worth the accusation” — which is often what it ends up meaning.

    Even when it’s pretty devastating for you, questions like, “Was it devastating enough? Could it have been a tragicomic misunderstanding? Is it likely to happen again?” go into deciding who to tell, and especially for telling on young men who might have been quite befuddled themselves over what they did. When it falls short of forcible penetration, there are any number of reasons to decide it really maybe wasn’t that bad, after all.

    Yes, and I think this kind of common sense about this entire topic is what’s missing.  Why promulgate the idea that an individual is scarred for life over something like this?  I mean, who is that helping?  More importantly, who is that hurting?

    • #89
  30. Ansonia Member
    Ansonia
    @Ansonia

    Re comment # 89

    Hypatia, how old is “after I reached puberty” ?

     

     

    • #90
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