September 22, 2011

Jamey Rodemeyer, Bullying and Lady Gaga

Ugh! Do I have to do this dumb paws up, monster claw thing again!!!

At this point, we all heard about Buffalo teen and little monster Jamey Rodemeyer's suicide.  Its very sad and tragic that a young boy of 14 got to the point where he felt that his only alternative was to end his life.  Rodemeyer has been relentlessly picked on and bullied over his sexuality.   Little monsters have been tweeting like crazy to get the word out to Stefani and she heard them.

Stefani has a dramatic hissy fit over the Jamey's suicide, dramatic Lady Gaga style.   Stefani's tweets:

“The past days I've spent reflecting, crying, and yelling. I have so much anger,”  

“It is hard to feel love when cruelty takes someone’s life.”

“I am meeting with our President. I will not stop fighting. This must end. Our generation has the power to end it. Trend it #MakeALawForJamey.”

Stefani's over dramatic reaction to someone she doesn't even know drew all the attention back to her, just how she likes it.  While I think bullying is wrong and kids tend to take it too far, just how can a law seriously stop this from happening?  I think this is the time for Stefani to take her left foot out of fantasy land and place it back in to reality land where it belongs.

First of all, kids are mean, kids are cruel. We all, at one point or another, experienced being bullied in school.  Some got it worse than others.  Most who got picked on found someone they could pick on.  It's almost part of growing up, however hurtful it is.  Some of this things I got in school were so mean that I remember them to this day.  Here's a few that I heard multiple times, over and over.

1.) Go shave your legs. They're hairier than mine. (when my mom wouldn't let me shave when all the other girls were).

2.) you have chicken legs

3.) you're ugly

4.) you don't need a bra 'cause you have no tits.

5.) You're so skinny you look like an Ethiopian.

6.) You have a big nose.

7.) I've had girls wait for me after school so they could beat me up. I dodged them every time.

That's just a few and all were said during that awkward puberty stage. Yes, it was mean and hurtful but kids are mean.  They all do this.  Every single one of them.  Some kids are just little pricks.  Lucky for me, I don't want any and probably never will.  Putting an end to bullying through the law is like trying to trap air.  It's pointless.  Buy and selling drugs is against the law too and what good is it doing?  Unfortunately bullying is going to happen and if there was a law, just how does Stefani propose these 10-15 year old kids be tried and convicted?  What should their punishment be?  Throw them in jail or juvenile detention?  Forbid them from going to school ever again? Stripping their education away from them?  Is making bullying illegal the solution to eradicate it?  No, it's not. 

I've always believed that that child's self esteem needs to be nurtured from birth.  When that child begins school, there should be programs in our education system to continue that nurturing.  

Instead of having just math, gym, science class, have classes that are geared around self esteem, self assurance, feeling good about yourself, social skills on how to interact with people and how treat yourself with dignity and respect, for example.  These issues are barely touched on in school.  At least not when I was in school and I doubt it's improved all that much.

Feeling good about yourself comes from within, not from other people.  If you're waiting for other people to make you feel good about yourself, you're heading for a massive let down.  Self esteem is built by accomplishing goals.  Give yourself small goals and each time you accomplish it, you'll be building your self esteem one block at a time.  If you're a parent, do this with your child.  Start now. 

This should be a movement, for parents, for kids and for the education system.  It takes a village to raise a child.  


I read this article on Popdust by Katherine St Asaph about Stefani's reaction to Jamey's suicide.  It pretty much sums it up for me. 

                                                                                                                                                                     
BELOW IS THE POP DUST ARTICLE WRITTEN BY KATHERINE ST. ASAPH, NOT BY ME.


Yesterday, Lady Gaga had a well-publicized conniption fit over the suicide of Jamey Rodemeyer, 14, who killed himself after years of bullying about his sexuality. Her outrage launched an avalanche of headlines, all about Lady Gaga. In other words: Gaga, sitting atop her throne of Born This Way albums and wig tassels, learned of one of bullying’s daily casualties. Gaga, who has by this point already singlehandedly ended Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, legalized same-sex marriage throughout the United States and worldwide and persuaded the entire LGBT population to give her endless shoutouts of gratitude, quivered, shook and started talking bullyshit, Now, the power of her words will waft over the Internet transom to Barack Obama, whose immediate priority during the presidential election cycle is what Lady Gaga has to say. He will meet with Lady Gaga, televise the whole thing with copious tweets and namedrops. Then bullying will be over forever. And the world all said: Thank you, Based Gaga!

What actually happened: Lady Gaga posted a few tweets and talked about how upset she was. She said she was going to meet with Obama, a statement the White House could not confirm. And she posted this tweet:
“I am meeting with our President. I will not stop fighting. This must end. Our generation has the power to end it. Trend it #MakeALawForJamey.”
Let’s address these clauses one by one, backward, starting with:

Trend it #MakeALawForJamey: Trending topics are frequently creative, frequently annoying and often the subject of horrific race- and class-based mockery, but above all, they’re completely useless for real change. At 3:25 p.m. on September 22, the worldwide trending topics were, in order: an promoted advertisement for a TV show; a hashtag about The X Factor; “Best Things About Being Single”; “Preguntas Que Incomodan” (translation: Annoying Questions); a birthday wish for the actor who plays Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter films; the airplane flight of the Lost crash; three concatenated characters from Let The Right One In; a slogan for Facebook’s insufferable new profile design; a bit of jargon about the same; Rachel Crow from, again, The X Factor. When you read this, the list will have become a different mix of pop-culture detritus, and it will probably not include #MakeALawForJamey. Some people have argued that Twitter’s actively blocking more salient topics like #wikileaks or, today, #TroyDavis; Twitter explained that they’re not and that trending topics favor novelty, not popularity–what’s popular now, immediately. Either way, such immediate trends produce far less sustained social change than slacktivism.

Our generation has the power to end it. There are two major problems with this statement. First, our generation does not have the power to end anything en masse without either the support of the other generations in the government or far more substantial action than Lady Gaga is calling for. More pertinently, though, calling on “our generation” to end bullying ignores the fact that our generation are the ones bullying people in the first place. Almost everyone who reads this sentence has been bullied at some point, and almost everyone who reads this sentence has bullied somebody. This doesn’t just mean teenagers; many adults bullied people too growing up, and many still do. “Bullying” might be the wrong word; it’s made for TV specials in which kids are stuffed in trash cans and robbed of their peanut-butter sandwiches. Bullying does not mean this. It means anything cruel you’ve said to or about another person. It means every time you’ve used the words “gay,” “retarded,” “lame” or similar as an insult. It means any time you’ve laughed or remained silent when someone who isn’t straight, white, thin or conventionally attractive has been used as a punchline, made invisible, or otherwise mocked for hobbies or inborn traits that don’t involve hurting somebody else. I am not exempt from any of this, and neither are you. You can start to see why bullying won’t become a hate crime soon; it would involve a complete change of how we relate to one another.

I am meeting with our President. I will not stop fighting. Leaving aside the fact that even if Lady Gaga does manage to meet with Obama, she’ll soon learn that the political process is more prone to bickering and deadlock than it’s been in decades, both these sentences have one thing in common: they start with “I.” They are about Lady Gaga, whom Jamey Rodemeyer’s suicide had nothing to do with. Yes, Rodemeyer was a fan. Yes, many people have been helped through difficult situations by music or musicians. Yes, Lady Gaga is an institution with more than 13.5 million Twitter followers, and something she says will reach more people than something you and I say. But you cannot stop bullying solely by being Lady Gaga. You cannot stop bullying by adding another socially responsible slogan to your personal brand. You cannot stop bullying by making it all about yourself.

It’s instructive to note what Gaga didn’t tweet. Anti-bullying organizations to support. (Here’s one.) Shelters for LGBT teens harassed by peers or family. (Depends on your location.) Suicide hotlines (here’s one for the U.S.). In short, resources to use and people to talk to for people in danger, right now, because of bullying. Phone numbers and URLS are easy to fit into 140 characters. They don’t require navigating the labyrinth of Twitter’s trending topic system. They’d be welcome, and they might save lives. We’ll see if any emerge before another fashion video.


                                                                               E.N.D.                                                                        


Dear Gaga,

Please do shut up.  Thank you.

Sincerely,
All Non Monsters

And then read THIS and then maybe THAT