<p>An interesting article that addresses the question, “Is the notion of being bullied to death valid?”:</p>
<p>"…School bullying can be devastating, but social scientists say it is no more extreme, nor more prevalent, than it was a half century ago. (And it’s even gotten better over the past decade, says Dan Olweus, a leading bullying expert.) Today’s world of cyberbullying is different, yes—far-reaching, more visually potent, and harder to wash away than comments scrawled on a bathroom wall. All of which can make it harder to combat. But it still happens a third less than traditional bullying. And those “mean girls” we keep hearing about? Turns out, boys are still twice as likely to bully as girls.</p>
<p>The reality may be that while the incidence of bullying has remained relatively the same, it’s our reaction to it that’s changed: the helicopter parents who want to protect their kids from every stick and stone, the cable-news commentators who whip them into a frenzy, the insta-vigilantism of the Internet. When it comes down to it, bullying is not just a social ill; it’s a “cottage industry,” says Suffolk Law School’s David Yamada—complete with commentators and prevention experts and a new breed of legal scholars, all preparing to take on an enemy that’s always been there. None of this is to say that bullying is not a serious problem (it is), or that tackling it is not important. But like a stereo with the volume turned too high, all the noise distorts the facts, making it nearly impossible to judge when a case is somehow criminal, or merely cruel…"</p>
<p>I’m going to read the whole article, but there is a kernal of truth to the above. Fortunately, the media “frenzy” dies down before the legal system sorts it all out months later. I find the speculation about whether there is an increase in “bullies” or not interesting.</p>
<p>For those wanting to ‘turn off’ the discussion as far as Ravi’s background, consider this. The point is raised by someone is, though born in the US, is not only from a very homophobic culture but who is also married to someone who is from one of the extreme homophobic areas I mentioned in my original comments. </p>
<p>In my family it was preferable to have cancer than be homosexual. And while DH has overcome many cultural biases and prejudices we view negatively here, it’s a conscious effort. We are both progressive liberals who have had to work to overcome our familial influences and NOT pass them onto our children. </p>
<p>Our kids no know bias or fear of gays because their parents raised them without it. Again, it was a CONSCIOUS effort. If Ravi, or anyone else for that matter, was raised in a similar environment that my husband and I were raised and NOT taught or choose otherwise then it would be EXTREMELY difficult for him to overcome what he’d been exposed to and/or taught in his life. </p>
<p>For many their first exposure to an openly gay person might be in college. If they are coming from a bigoted background, no matter what race, ethnicity, or culture, then it’s recipe for disaster if they are thrown into a situation where they will now be living with a person they’ve been encouraged to fear or loathe.</p>
<p>Again, I don’t know him or his family. But the chances are that he was raised in a matter inconsistent with his culture is probably pretty remote especially if both is parents immigrated from their home country and he is first generation in the US. My kids will be fourth on my side and first on my husbands. It took three generations to break the cycle of homophobia and four to raise kids without it.</p>
<p>denise515 - Homophobia has been the norm even in U.S. culture until very recently. Most U.S. parents in 2010 were reared in households with homophobic parents who would rather have had cancer than a homosexual child. I don’t think such a background is a valid mitigating circumstance for Dharun Ravi or Molly Wei’s behavior.</p>
<p>Edited to add that I’m a first generation American and don’t think cultural differences are ever an acceptable excuse for terrorizing another human being.</p>
<p>I am not making excuses for Ravi’s behavior nor am I trying to defend him. I’m just asking a question about how his upbringing may have played a part in choices.</p>
<p>Our upbringing plays a part in ALL of our choices well into adulthood. To pretend that his may not have is ludicrous. People are so afraid to ask questions today because of ‘the race card’ but the answers to this could go deeper than Ravi being an immature a-hole who played a bad prank on a dude who happened to be gay.</p>
<p>No, his upbringing and cultural influences could have played a part in this. I’ll be very surprised if we find out they didn’t.</p>
<p>^^^^^^Yet there are still many people, who while homophobic and/or morally outraged by homosexual behavior, would still refrain from planning and executing a scheme to film, stream, and advertise a gay roommate’s private moments with a same sex date. I would even go so far as to suggest that it would not even occur to many people who disapprove of homosexuality to film their roommate in this situation, much less stream it to cyberspace.</p>
<p>This goes beyond homophobia. There is an additional element of meanness here. And I find Ravi’s apparent preoccupation with his roommate’s sexuality (whether gay or heterosexual) rather creepy.</p>
<p>It is creepy. IMO, Ravi’s choice of public shaming was an attempt to make HIMSELF the victim by bringing attention to the fact that he was having to share a room with such a ‘freak.’ Others who were equally homophobic might have chosen to try to work behind the scenes to get away from and not broadcast their roommate’s sexual preferences lest it somehow reflect upon them. </p>
<p>Ravi chose to a more painful and public way of making a point about his roommate.</p>
<p>^^I’m not sure that he wouldn’t have done the same thing if his roommate kicked him out of the room for 2 hours to be with a girl. I’ve not read anything factual that says he thought his roommate was a freak. We know nothing about his upbringing other than he was a pretty good high school student. You seem very fixated on this homophobic possibility. Maybe he is Maybe he isn’t.</p>
<p>denise…i read on the gawker site a post made by cit2mo where he stated he was upset that the people twittering back to Ravi, saw him (Ravi) as the victim…ie having to room with a gay person, while he (Tyler) saw himself (rightly so) as the one who was the victim (of the tape) he also said he thought that Ravi was an okay guy</p>
<p>and i tend to agree with momof three sons…i think ravi was as likely to do the same if it had been a girl…because somehow i think he thought it was funny.</p>
<p>As mean and cruel as videotaping this kid was, I really don’t think that the bullies involved could have foreseen that it would lead to Tyler’s suicide. </p>
<p>In an era of cell phone cameras and Girls Gone Wild photos and paparazzi shooting celebrities in compromising positions, it’s actually rather unusual that the victim of an invasion of privacy commits suicide. Even before the internet, boys passed photos of their girlfriends naked around locker rooms and told lies about their sexual conquests of girls and wrote things on the bathroom walls. </p>
<p>This is a tragic, but fortunately very unusual outcome for what is likely a common bullying, invasion of privacy story.</p>
<p>What you are describing, while horrible, still is different. You are describing girls who knowingly allowed someone to photograph them naked and were subsequently betrayed by their beloved. This is not the same-the victim did NOT consent to be photographed-it was done without their knowledge or consent by a third party. I think the sense of violation and betrayal would be even more devastating.</p>
<p>As for Ravi’s homophobia- if he was so homophobic- why didn’t he just ask to change roommates? </p>
<p>He was a cruel voyeur, as was the girl. First of all, what motivates a person to video someone else having sex and then watch it? Voyeurism. What then motivates that individual to spread it around for everyone else to see? Voyeurism and cruelty.</p>
<p>For those who think homophobia somehow runs deeper in other cultures than in America, or is virtually dead, yesterday Senator Jim DeMint was speaking at a rally in South Carolina. He told a group of conservatives that gays, lesbians, and some unmarried women shouldn’t be allowed to teach in public schools. When we have US Senators spewing this kind of garbage, and getting high poll numbers and handily re-elected, it is hard to say that homophobia is not rampant in many areas of the US. When politicians use their office to advocate discrimination against people and restriction of their freedoms, I would say that is just bullying taken to its highest level. No wonder so many kids think it is acceptable behavior when they are face to face with someone who is gay.</p>
<p>And as NYmomof2 pointed out, discrimination against gays is already the official policy of our government in some areas, and there are many politicians (and voters casting ballots for them) that would like even more discrimination. I believe it was spidygirl who said that this is not a “true conservative” viewpoint, but I have never heard Jim DeMint accused of being anything else.</p>
<p>^^^I chose my words carefully. I said Ravi’s preoccupation with his roommate’s sexuality (vs. sexual orientation) was creepy. I think you are kind of one the same wavelength. It’s gross, and not normal. It might well be based in homophobia, or his own latent homosexuality unexpressed, or simple voyeurism. In any case, really revolting.</p>
<p>Int, the day we start executing gays for their sexual preferences is the day I will agree that our nation is on par with other nations in regards to homophobia.</p>
<p>Better yet, the day the government starts paying for men to have sex changes (so they can become woman to have sex with men) like Iran does would be another good measure. How else do you think their moron president can actually claim there are no homosexuals in Iran? The government pays for/forces gay men to become women.</p>
<p>Unless and until that day happens you cannot equate bigotry in the US with oppressive homophobia that happens in other countries.</p>
<p>Somebody is always worse off someplace, no matter what. So what? It doesn’t make the people who suffer from homophobia here in the U.S. – especially kids, for God’s sake – feel the least bit better to be told that they’re “lucky” they’re not living in Iran.</p>
<p>And, yes, Ravi’s interest in watching his gay roommate have sex with a guy is clearly unusual for a straight kid (to say the least). Even if his only conscious motive was that he thought it was “funny,” there’s clearly something going on. It reminds me a little of Pete LaBarbera (I may have the spelling wrong), the Christian right “leader” who seems to spend a remarkable amount of time watching gay porn, and “infiltrating” gay pride celebrations – ostensibly so he can report to his followers about how vile it all is. In lurid detail. To LGBT people, of course, he’s a joke. A dangerous one, though.</p>
<p>D’s college (not Rutgers), sent a long letter home to parents detailing all available resources for kids who might be GLBT, where they can go to find “community” and where they can go for “help,” including numbers for any concerned parent who feels thier child is not reaching out or is becoming isolated.</p>
<p>Nothing has happend on her campus, though they did refer to “recent items in the national news,” but I thought this was a good thing and wanted to report it. I wish it wouldn’t take something like this for these kinds of letters to go out.</p>
<p>Even though I was reluctant to do so because it’s so off-topic, I’ve decided that I do need to respond to the misinformation that denise515 offered (to try to prove whatever point she was making) about gay men in Iran supposedly being “forced” to have what she refers to as sex change operations. Yes, that’s been an oft-repeated meme in the last few years, but there’s no actual evidence (in the form of first person accounts or otherwise) that it’s ever happened. To anyone. Have some people in Iran who identify as gay men decided that it’s a way to try to escape discrimination? No doubt. But the problem is that in all of Iran, a country with a population of about 75 million, there are about 40 such surgeries a year; 450 in the last 12 years. A tiny number. I assure you, it does not represent a significant percentage of the number of gay men in Iran! In any event, from everything I’ve read, most of the people who have the surgery are, in fact, transsexual. And do suffer a great deal of discrimination, both before and after. Iran is not a paradise for trans people by any means.</p>
<p>Anyway, denise515 needn’t worry that the mythical state of affairs in Iran is ever going to happen here. The U.S. government will never be paying for trans people to have genital surgery. In fact, if there’s any group of people the religious right spends more time bashing and vilifying than they do gay people; if there’s any group that gets bullied, and thrown out on the street by their parents, and murdered for being who they are, as much or more than gay people, it’s trans people. (Obviously, there are many trans people who are also gay, and many people who change their identification from gay to trans, or the reverse, at different times in their lives. It isn’t two entirely distinct populations, especially where young people are concerned.)</p>
<p>DonnaL- I don’t think it’s just the religious right that bashes trans folks. I think there are a lot of non-denominational and just plain uninformed that bash what they themselves cannot understand from personal experience. Remember some of the critics on another thread who bashed you terribly, but who were not by any means Christian right. I won’t name names, but I think you’ll probably remember the nba guy of whom I speak. </p>
<p>I also personally think that this Ravi guy and the girl are way f’d up. I can understand not understanding something one has not experienced oneself. I just can’t understand and certainly cannot excuse the cruelty they showed to another human being, regardless of their ability to understand his orientation.</p>
<p>Personally, I think Ravi was probably aware of Tyler’s insecurities about being gay in modern America. It is not inconceivable that Tyler, being a freshman, wanting to get along with his new roommate, would share personal concerns in the attempt to bond. Once aware of this kid’s insecurities, Ravi and the girl went for the kill, emotionally. And actually achieved the kill in reality.</p>
<p>I did no get to read the entire thread, so perhaps someone already made this point. Either way, I think one of the main points being overlooked here is the response from the people who received the first tweed. Why was there no outrage from the friends of Ravi who received this video? Why did they not tweet him back, go to his house and tell him this was outrageous and uncalled for. Immediately defriend him. Show him that HIS behavior was disgusting and that nobody would want to be a friend of him or be his roommate for that matter. Why didn’t one of his study mates, or all of them, go to the President of Rutgers and tell him to throw the bum out.
Did anybody go to Tyler Clementi to tell him Ravi was full of it and an a…hole?<br>
If you see something that is blatantly wrong, act on it. Call people on it. Don’t just stand by. And immediately offer support for the injured party if there is one. It is better to just state your opinion, than pretend it didn’t happen because you do not want to discomfort someone.
Call bullies on their behavior right when you see it, and their parents and friends too. Let them know you do not think they are hip, funny or powerful.</p>