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la_samtyrhttp://kateharding.info/2010/10/06/on-good-kids-and-total-fucking-assholes/
On Good Kids and Total Fucking Assholes
6 Oct 2010
Kate Harding
So, a week later, I’m still stuck on this one point. You know what’s total bullshit? When two legal adults make and distribute a video of two other people engaging in sexual activity, without the knowledge or consent of those two other people, and then everyone falls all over themselves insisting that the first two legal adults are really good kids who would totally never hurt anyone! I mean, it’s not like I’d really expect their lawyers to say anything else, but I’ve also seen lots of quotes to that effect from friends of Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei, and it makes my blood boil every time.
Let me fully spell out what I mentioned last week, which is this: I don’t need to know if Ravi and Wei can be held legally responsible for Tyler Clementi’s death in order to feel perfectly confident saying that they are fucking assholes. I don’t need to know if their motivations were specifically homophobic to feel confident saying they are fucking assholes. I don’t need to ever meet them or speak with them to feel confident saying they are fucking assholes. Because I know they both participated in the filming of two people engaging in sexual activity without those people’s consent, and then invited other people to watch it. And if you do that, YOU ARE A FUCKING ASSHOLE. Always and forever.
Seriously, the legal questions here are indeed thorny and complicated, but it does not follow that the public needs to wait before forming an opinion on the character of these two unbelievable shitheels. Filming people having sex without their consent is not a typical youthful indiscretion or the kind of mistake anyone could make. It is, in fact a crime — and beyond that, it is FUCKING ASSHOLE BEHAVIOR, beyond a shadow of a doubt. And we know, at the very least, that Ravi did it and Wei let him do it in her room. (Her lawyers seem to be planning to argue that she had absolutely nothing to do with it, and I suppose there is an outside chance we might learn she was out of the country at the time and had in fact sent him a registered letter saying she wanted no part of his plan to humiliate his roommate. But until I see that evidence, I really have no problem calling her a bona fide fucking asshole, if perhaps a slightly smaller one than Ravi.)
This idea that the public shouldn’t, you know, jump to conclusions based only on the evidence that Ravi and Wei filmed people having sex without their consent would be laughable if it weren’t so appalling. In case anyone is confused, the court of public opinion is not where people get tried for manslaughter, or where we officially determine whether they deserve to be charged as homophobes — that’s what happens in the court of… court. Law. Whatever. Here in the court of public opinion, we only have to decide whether we have grounds to be utterly disgusted by these people’s behavior — and we have had more than enough evidence to convict on those grounds since the news broke.
If you’re still confused, asking yourself some simple questions might help to clarify things.
Q. If Tyler Clementi were still alive, would Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei still be fucking assholes?
A. Yes! Because they filmed people having sex without their consent and then invited their friends to watch.
Q. If Tyler Clementi were straight, would Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei still be fucking assholes?
A. Yes! Because they filmed people having sex without their consent and then invited their friends to watch.
See how that works? I really don’t care how many friends these two had, how many awards they’d won, how good their grades were, or how much their parents love them, or whatever the fuck their lawyers want me to think about. These are not “wonderful, caring” people. These are not sweet kids who got carried away. These are legal adults who filmed people having sex without their consent and then invited their friends to watch. I have been very young and very stupid and very drunk in my life — sometimes all at the same time! — and still managed to never, ever consider doing anything remotely like that to other human beings, on account of how I am not also a TOTAL FUCKING ASSHOLE.
And of course, whether they go to prison for it or not, a gay teenager’s suicide did come about at least in part as a consequence of Ravi and Wei being total fucking assholes. Well done.
Hey, speaking of which, how ’bout that LGBTQ teen suicide epidemic, which is finally hitting the news? While following that news, I, like probably everyone reading this, have been screaming obscenities, sputtering helplessly, cheering on Dan Savage’s It Gets Better project, and wondering what the hell adults are supposed to do about bullying. I don’t have a lot of coherent thoughts on the matter, but here’s one of them: We need to call bullies what they are — total fucking assholes.
Seriously, half the problem here is the astonishing number of adults willing to come to the defense of the kids who are tormenting their peers, day in and day out. Oh, but they’re good kids! Oh, but they didn’t really mean anything by it! Oh, but that’s just how kids are! Oh, sticks and stones! No. No no no no no.
Maybe it’s true that some youthful bullies just haven’t yet outgrown the natural tendency of children to be basically sociopathic, but A) a lot of them never will outgrow it, and B) even if they will, can we at least stop calling them good kids as a response to hearing that they’re deliberately and consistently making another child’s life hell? Can we do that much? Can we stop making excuses for the bullies and start standing up for the kids they torment?
Also, can we stop telling said tormented kids that the correct response is to ignore the bullies? Has that ever, in the entire history of weirdo kids and the aggressive little shits who enjoy hurting them, actually made a bully stop? Seriously, if I ever have a kid who gets bullied like I did — verbally, daily, constantly — or like Al did — verbally and physically, daily, constantly — my best advice will be this: “You know what, sweetie? That kid is a TOTAL FUCKING ASSHOLE, and you should feel free to say so — scream so — to anyone who will listen. I don’t care if you get punished for it at school, and you won’t get punished for it at home.” Honestly, I don’t think that would do much to stop the bullying, and it might even make things worse. But at least it’s the truth, and it feels good to say it.
I’m sure I will hear (or, well, would hear, if I left the comments open for long) that it’s practically criminal to think of any child, even a hypothetical one, as a “total fucking asshole,” and the fact that I could use such abusive language with regard to a child makes it clear that I don’t have children — which we all know is downright unnatural for a lady of almost 36 — so probably no one should ever listen to me about anything. But you know what? Fuck that.
I don’t know anything about the children who bullied Billy Lucas or Seth Walsh or Justin Aaberg or Asher Brown or Dan Savage or Tim Gunn or so many other kids. But I know about the girls who sat at the lunch table with me in the first half of seventh grade (assigned seats, so I couldn’t just move) and told me every day that no one liked me, that I would never have a boyfriend, that I was repulsively fat, that my acne meant I clearly never bathed, that I must be absolutely mortified by my unemployed father’s “beater” car, blah blah fucking blah, and honestly, if they were as pathetic as me, they’d probably go ahead and kill themselves — all of them laughing hysterically together at every “witty” jab. Every day.
They were only 12 years old, and I doubt that any of them — well, maybe one — have become the kind of adults who get off on making other people feel bad. But well over twenty years later, with the perspective of an adult — a reasonably happy, fulfilled, successful adult, at that — I do not feel even the tiniest twinge of guilt about calling those children total fucking assholes.
I don’t want to hear that they were otherwise good kids, or even “just” kids. I don’t want to hear about how they were too young to know any better — somehow, magically, I wasn’t, and I was just about the youngest in my grade. Those children were hateful. Those children were absolute monsters who made me feel, at eleven years old, like I might just be better off dead. Those children were total fucking assholes, and I will never apologize for saying so.
And I wasn’t even gay, or harassed because anyone thought I was. You know why I know how lucky I was to escape that sort of bullying in particular? Because I know how mortified I would have been to be called a lesbian in seventh grade. It would have been like all those slurs I just mentioned times ten, because that’s how terrible we all agreed it was to be gay. Straight kids of today: Don’t be like me. Don’t sit around secretly thinking there’s nothing wrong with being gay, while also thanking your lucky stars that you aren’t and hoping no one ever gets the wrong impression about you. Don’t think the people yelling “faggot” and “dyke” at your peers are ignorant pricks, yet fail to say so out loud. I wish I’d figured out a lot earlier than I did that the only correct answer to being called gay as an insult is: “So what if I am?” Well, that and, “If you actually think being gay is shameful, you are a total fucking asshole.” Learn those phrases. Use them. Be better than I was, if you can.
But back to grown-up responsibility. I simply can’t understand why so many adults are so eager to dismiss bullying as a childhood inevitability of no real consequence, something on a par with skinned knees, maybe a broken wrist at worst. Something that heals quickly and turns into a distant memory or even a funny story. I can only assume those people were once bullies themselves — perhaps they still are — and are thus loath to acknowledge how much serious, long-lasting damage they might have done.
But frankly, I don’t really give a rat’s ass why they’re like that — I just want them to stop. And I want every adult who has ever minimized the impact of bullying, who has ever made excuses for a bully instead of standing up for a victim, who has ever described a child known to viciously torment other children as “a good kid, really!” to know this: You are a total fucking asshole.
This video’s already made the rounds, but Ellen still said it better than most, and without even using the word “fuck.” Watch it again.
On Good Kids and Total Fucking Assholes
6 Oct 2010
Kate Harding
So, a week later, I’m still stuck on this one point. You know what’s total bullshit? When two legal adults make and distribute a video of two other people engaging in sexual activity, without the knowledge or consent of those two other people, and then everyone falls all over themselves insisting that the first two legal adults are really good kids who would totally never hurt anyone! I mean, it’s not like I’d really expect their lawyers to say anything else, but I’ve also seen lots of quotes to that effect from friends of Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei, and it makes my blood boil every time.
Let me fully spell out what I mentioned last week, which is this: I don’t need to know if Ravi and Wei can be held legally responsible for Tyler Clementi’s death in order to feel perfectly confident saying that they are fucking assholes. I don’t need to know if their motivations were specifically homophobic to feel confident saying they are fucking assholes. I don’t need to ever meet them or speak with them to feel confident saying they are fucking assholes. Because I know they both participated in the filming of two people engaging in sexual activity without those people’s consent, and then invited other people to watch it. And if you do that, YOU ARE A FUCKING ASSHOLE. Always and forever.
Seriously, the legal questions here are indeed thorny and complicated, but it does not follow that the public needs to wait before forming an opinion on the character of these two unbelievable shitheels. Filming people having sex without their consent is not a typical youthful indiscretion or the kind of mistake anyone could make. It is, in fact a crime — and beyond that, it is FUCKING ASSHOLE BEHAVIOR, beyond a shadow of a doubt. And we know, at the very least, that Ravi did it and Wei let him do it in her room. (Her lawyers seem to be planning to argue that she had absolutely nothing to do with it, and I suppose there is an outside chance we might learn she was out of the country at the time and had in fact sent him a registered letter saying she wanted no part of his plan to humiliate his roommate. But until I see that evidence, I really have no problem calling her a bona fide fucking asshole, if perhaps a slightly smaller one than Ravi.)
This idea that the public shouldn’t, you know, jump to conclusions based only on the evidence that Ravi and Wei filmed people having sex without their consent would be laughable if it weren’t so appalling. In case anyone is confused, the court of public opinion is not where people get tried for manslaughter, or where we officially determine whether they deserve to be charged as homophobes — that’s what happens in the court of… court. Law. Whatever. Here in the court of public opinion, we only have to decide whether we have grounds to be utterly disgusted by these people’s behavior — and we have had more than enough evidence to convict on those grounds since the news broke.
If you’re still confused, asking yourself some simple questions might help to clarify things.
Q. If Tyler Clementi were still alive, would Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei still be fucking assholes?
A. Yes! Because they filmed people having sex without their consent and then invited their friends to watch.
Q. If Tyler Clementi were straight, would Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei still be fucking assholes?
A. Yes! Because they filmed people having sex without their consent and then invited their friends to watch.
See how that works? I really don’t care how many friends these two had, how many awards they’d won, how good their grades were, or how much their parents love them, or whatever the fuck their lawyers want me to think about. These are not “wonderful, caring” people. These are not sweet kids who got carried away. These are legal adults who filmed people having sex without their consent and then invited their friends to watch. I have been very young and very stupid and very drunk in my life — sometimes all at the same time! — and still managed to never, ever consider doing anything remotely like that to other human beings, on account of how I am not also a TOTAL FUCKING ASSHOLE.
And of course, whether they go to prison for it or not, a gay teenager’s suicide did come about at least in part as a consequence of Ravi and Wei being total fucking assholes. Well done.
Hey, speaking of which, how ’bout that LGBTQ teen suicide epidemic, which is finally hitting the news? While following that news, I, like probably everyone reading this, have been screaming obscenities, sputtering helplessly, cheering on Dan Savage’s It Gets Better project, and wondering what the hell adults are supposed to do about bullying. I don’t have a lot of coherent thoughts on the matter, but here’s one of them: We need to call bullies what they are — total fucking assholes.
Seriously, half the problem here is the astonishing number of adults willing to come to the defense of the kids who are tormenting their peers, day in and day out. Oh, but they’re good kids! Oh, but they didn’t really mean anything by it! Oh, but that’s just how kids are! Oh, sticks and stones! No. No no no no no.
Maybe it’s true that some youthful bullies just haven’t yet outgrown the natural tendency of children to be basically sociopathic, but A) a lot of them never will outgrow it, and B) even if they will, can we at least stop calling them good kids as a response to hearing that they’re deliberately and consistently making another child’s life hell? Can we do that much? Can we stop making excuses for the bullies and start standing up for the kids they torment?
Also, can we stop telling said tormented kids that the correct response is to ignore the bullies? Has that ever, in the entire history of weirdo kids and the aggressive little shits who enjoy hurting them, actually made a bully stop? Seriously, if I ever have a kid who gets bullied like I did — verbally, daily, constantly — or like Al did — verbally and physically, daily, constantly — my best advice will be this: “You know what, sweetie? That kid is a TOTAL FUCKING ASSHOLE, and you should feel free to say so — scream so — to anyone who will listen. I don’t care if you get punished for it at school, and you won’t get punished for it at home.” Honestly, I don’t think that would do much to stop the bullying, and it might even make things worse. But at least it’s the truth, and it feels good to say it.
I’m sure I will hear (or, well, would hear, if I left the comments open for long) that it’s practically criminal to think of any child, even a hypothetical one, as a “total fucking asshole,” and the fact that I could use such abusive language with regard to a child makes it clear that I don’t have children — which we all know is downright unnatural for a lady of almost 36 — so probably no one should ever listen to me about anything. But you know what? Fuck that.
I don’t know anything about the children who bullied Billy Lucas or Seth Walsh or Justin Aaberg or Asher Brown or Dan Savage or Tim Gunn or so many other kids. But I know about the girls who sat at the lunch table with me in the first half of seventh grade (assigned seats, so I couldn’t just move) and told me every day that no one liked me, that I would never have a boyfriend, that I was repulsively fat, that my acne meant I clearly never bathed, that I must be absolutely mortified by my unemployed father’s “beater” car, blah blah fucking blah, and honestly, if they were as pathetic as me, they’d probably go ahead and kill themselves — all of them laughing hysterically together at every “witty” jab. Every day.
They were only 12 years old, and I doubt that any of them — well, maybe one — have become the kind of adults who get off on making other people feel bad. But well over twenty years later, with the perspective of an adult — a reasonably happy, fulfilled, successful adult, at that — I do not feel even the tiniest twinge of guilt about calling those children total fucking assholes.
I don’t want to hear that they were otherwise good kids, or even “just” kids. I don’t want to hear about how they were too young to know any better — somehow, magically, I wasn’t, and I was just about the youngest in my grade. Those children were hateful. Those children were absolute monsters who made me feel, at eleven years old, like I might just be better off dead. Those children were total fucking assholes, and I will never apologize for saying so.
And I wasn’t even gay, or harassed because anyone thought I was. You know why I know how lucky I was to escape that sort of bullying in particular? Because I know how mortified I would have been to be called a lesbian in seventh grade. It would have been like all those slurs I just mentioned times ten, because that’s how terrible we all agreed it was to be gay. Straight kids of today: Don’t be like me. Don’t sit around secretly thinking there’s nothing wrong with being gay, while also thanking your lucky stars that you aren’t and hoping no one ever gets the wrong impression about you. Don’t think the people yelling “faggot” and “dyke” at your peers are ignorant pricks, yet fail to say so out loud. I wish I’d figured out a lot earlier than I did that the only correct answer to being called gay as an insult is: “So what if I am?” Well, that and, “If you actually think being gay is shameful, you are a total fucking asshole.” Learn those phrases. Use them. Be better than I was, if you can.
But back to grown-up responsibility. I simply can’t understand why so many adults are so eager to dismiss bullying as a childhood inevitability of no real consequence, something on a par with skinned knees, maybe a broken wrist at worst. Something that heals quickly and turns into a distant memory or even a funny story. I can only assume those people were once bullies themselves — perhaps they still are — and are thus loath to acknowledge how much serious, long-lasting damage they might have done.
But frankly, I don’t really give a rat’s ass why they’re like that — I just want them to stop. And I want every adult who has ever minimized the impact of bullying, who has ever made excuses for a bully instead of standing up for a victim, who has ever described a child known to viciously torment other children as “a good kid, really!” to know this: You are a total fucking asshole.
This video’s already made the rounds, but Ellen still said it better than most, and without even using the word “fuck.” Watch it again.
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no subject
Date: 2010-10-20 04:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-20 08:35 pm (UTC)Bullying is never acceptable, under any circumstances and it's about time society as a whole did something about it. My kids have been taught to recognize the varying faces of bullying and how to effectively act against it.
Bullying isn't just a kid thing either. I am currently helping a co-worker to put an end to the bullying she has suffered for a number of years. We will win against the bully because I refuse to accept that bullying, once brought to the authorities attention, whether it be the boss or the law, will continue to be ignored.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-21 04:11 am (UTC)