Gravity Doesn’t ‘Card’: Cyber Bullys and the Laws of the Universe
Am I “blaming the victim”?
The fact is, “blame” doesn’t apply to cause and effect and other immutable, impersonal laws of the universe.
Here are the facts:
As Todd said herself in her now-famous video “cry for help,” her fatal downward spiral began in Grade 7, when she “would go with friends on webcam.”
Viewers called her “beautiful, stunning, perfect.”
Then:
“They wanted me to flash. So I did one year later.”
Had Amanda never flashed her breasts on the Internet, is it likely she might still be alive today?
I can hear detractors now. I’m an old fogey. Kids these days live their lives online, and they all do stuff like that.
And why not? That’s how Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian became millionaires many times over.
Besides, parents can’t watch over their kids 24/7, right? Don’t I have any compassion?
Do you mean tossing cheap carnations onto the “makeshft” memorial piled high with teddy bears and balloons, mourning a stranger you’ve never met, and getting (as the Sex Pistols sang) “a cheap holiday on other people’s misery.”
Because that’s what passes for “compassion” these days.
You know I’m right: millions of people out there live for the deaths of all the Amandas (and Princess Dianas and Michael Jacksons).
They get a creepy thrill out of knowing they’re still alive while someone else is dead, especially a lovely young lady who died before her time.
In a society of godless people who’ve purged religion from the public square, everybody’s yawning “God shaped hole” has to get filled up somehow.
Hence the idolatrous “worship” at sidewalk “altars,” and the cheap grace acquired from hitting “Like” on a Facebook “tribute” page.
If that’s compassion, I’m not compassionate.
And gravity remains gravity in the face of mortal lawmaking. The sudden stop can come as an awful surprise to the cloistered when they dare to venture forth.
The point is not to “cloister”, it’s simply to:
a) be a parent to your kids, giving them rules and explaining why they are needed,
and
b) help other people’s kids by encouraging them to protect themselves and discouraging them from doing stupid things.
Not to get all “it takes a village” or anything, but we all do have some responsibility to help and encourage (not force or demand) good behavior and wise decisions in each other. Rules, laws, and anti-bullying “commissions” can’t fix that, just a genuine caring for our fellow man. You want to know what to teach our kids? Teach that.
“Cloistered”? Yeah. Here we go again: “The problem is people trying to instill good judgment and positive morals – they’re the REAL problem. Just surrender to the decadence.”
Sigh.
Cloistered. Adjective, secluded from the world; sheltered.
Amanda Todd’s mother is a teacher. As a university professor I worked with teachers for over 30 years. My experience in talking with them about disciplining students in their classes who act aggressively or in a mean way is that the teachers simply refuse to think about the problem and refuse to do anything about it. Teachers are trained to “value” all students and are quite unable to make any judgments about the students they teach. In practice, what this means is that the meanest student in the classroom rules that room. The teacher simply smiles and refuses to acknowledge that there is any problem for the other students.
Amanda’s mother simply carried her refusal to act in the classroom setting to her own home. Apparently she allowed her daughter to continue frequenting web sites and posting on them. I believe this is what some psychologists have described as a “bystander” phenomenon. People look at evil being done and they do nothing about it. I suspect that the sudden new programs on bullying will have no effect or only a temporary effect because the problem of teachers–persons in authority–is that the teachers refuse to take on responsibility. A refusal to assume responsibility for what is occurring in one’s environment seems to me to be a trait of the generation that Amanda’s mother belongs to. The lack of responsibility and the inaction seem to go together.
Starting years ago, I opened up every music CD my daughters had and read the LYRICS to each song. If I found obscene, violent, or sexually explicit words, I destroyed the CD and gave them money to buy something “more appropriate” to replace it. Even though they assured me they “never listed to that song” or “didn’t know what it said, but just liked the beat” (And I believed then then and now), I EXPLAINED THAT I COULD NOT HAVE FILTH IN MY HOME AND ASK GOD TO PROTECT THEM HER.
It worked. They’re all grown up now. And they monitor their own selection in music, TV, internet usage. THEY SAW THAT MY ACTIVE INVOLVEMENT AROSE FROM MY LOVE FOR THEM AND MY DESIRE FOR THEIR GREATEST HAPPINESS. My “purges” served as opportunities to discuss sensitive issues with them. I love them deeply, and they have NEVER told me I was out of line for intervening in their lives.
The truth is, administrators and parents will not let teachers discipline anymore. If you try, you get called in for meetings where you are chastised. All their trainings are on “positive discipline” which means no consequences allowed — not even leaving a student out of an activity if they disrupt it. What administrators, under the pressure of academics and parents, have done to public schools, is despicable.
Every time I hear about these predictable tragedies I always wait till the also predictable memorials which include teddy bears, flowers and the evening vigil. I often point out that they should get either different colors or larger candles, cause the ones they use, frankly aren’t working.
The rank superstition and irrational sentimentality (not sentimentality per se) that is evident in these displays is sickening.
We have a monument near my house, an actual granite obelisk about 4 feet high. It’s along side a main road, and dedicated to a little girl who was kidnapped, abused, and murdered by some sicko. I’ve lived there 7 years, and pass it most days.
As far as I can tell, the little girl has nothing to do with our community. No connection. She didn’t live there. She wasn’t kidnapped there. She wasn’t killed there. It all happened more than 20 miles away.
As far as I can tell, somebody just read about it and got up a drive to erect a monument. There it sits, often festooned with flowers and stuffed animals. These get replaced with some regularity.
Irrational sentimentality.
shaun, how is it being “cloistered” when for 99.999999% of human history, the internet did not exist and yet somehow billions of people were more than adequately socialized and, arguably, healthier and happier than they are today?
Her mother was a teacher? Good Lord. Where to start???
Robins111 I love your comment about bigger candles. May have to “borrow” that one
“…yet somehow billions of people were more than adequately socialized and, arguably, healthier and happier than they are today?”
Really? Know much history (outside the “mainstream” versions)?
Apparently, she does, and all you know is the leftist revisionist version.
Yes, people were better off in many ways in those horrid Victorian days, and yes, while adultery & fornication happened, they were nowhere near as commonplace as the leftist revisionists pretend.
You have no idea what you’re talking about.
Having a mistress was common for many from the upper working class on up. This was a result of arranged marriage.
Prostitution was rampant and blatant. Whores followed militaries.
While there was no sexting or internet porn, sex was as common as it is today–if not as focussed on photos and video.
Oh the unfathomable ignorance of those who think sex was invented sometime around the same time as color television. One wonders how they explain their own existence.
Kathy Shaidle is right, and the critics jumping on her for not knowing any history are ignoramuses themselves. Certainly she was generalizing, but so are you. Where to begin? How about with the fact that “history” includes an immense range of times, people, classes of people, periods of scarcity and abundance, and vastly different geography and weather? And that these all have their impact on human sexual behavior and morality? Trends in human behavior/morals are not linear or “progressive,” as you seem to imagine. They tend to be cyclical, or circular. See the following regarding one important moral indicator – the change in illegitimacy rates over time:
“Historically the rate of illegitimacy within Britain and Europe has varied enormously. Evidence based on parish registers, collected by the Cambridge Group, reveal circular trends in England in the level of illegitimacy over time. Such that the illegitimacy ratio (i.e. the proportion of births out of wedlock) fell from 4.4% in the 1540 to a low of 1.0% in the mid-seventeenth century rising to 6.0% in the mid nineteenth century (p. 14). In the 20th century the illegitimacy rate has risen from 4.0% (one in every 20 births) to over 30% (one in every three births) today (p 18).” [http://tinyurl.com/8uhl72x]
I think the point is that, yes, in the “old days” all that terrible s**t was going on just like it is today, but it was still possible for responsible parents to shield and protect their children from it. If you didn’t want your daughter to end up sexually humiliated and driven to suicide all you had to do was avoid selling her to a pimp. These days it’s like if parents turn their backs for a second their children can access an entire universe of corruption. And parents’ values were reinforced by the culture, rather than directly opposed like they are today. Parents were not pressured to be their children’s “friends”, and asserted their authority with confidence. Although porn existed, it did not require 24/7 vigilance on the parent of the parents to keep their children away from it.
I’m not saying that Amanda’s mother should not have been much more vigilant, but I can also understand why some parents feel helpless and defeated and instead take refuge in denial,telling themselves their children are far more mature and far more capable of good judgment than they actually are. I am a teacher too, and I have known many teachers like that, who take pride in their non-judgmentalism and keep insisting against all evidence that there is some good in everyone. They fail miserably in their duty to protect.
Kathy Shaidle is right. Left wing “identity politics” too often (as here) relies on comparing apples with Volkswagons. Context is deliberately ignored, and argumentum ad misericordium replaces rationality. The idea is to focus entirely on a particular feeling, and ignore everything else. Any argument can seem logical when it’s reduced to how one person feels, and nothing else matters.
Left wing arguments about “history” (especially “how bad things were” – and its corollary: how great things supposedly are now) invariably avoid comparing a typical middle class child then to a typical middle class child now, because quite frankly it was neither common nor typical for middle class children to be as neglected as this particular child was. Normally, children died from things like contagious diseases – not because their mother didn’t bother protecting them against predator threats.
Mistresses and bastards and prostitutes did not come from the middle class. They came from the lower classes.
There are many things that have changed – some for the better, but not all things are for the better. Parents used to be expected to teach their children appropriate behavior & common sense. Creating a world in which parents can’t or won’t teach their children things the child needs for basic survival is not “progress”.
Yeah, it kills me how kids will talk about how horrible the 50′s were. Look at the Beav or Ozzie and Harriet. For 95% of us, that’s all we knew. For the other 5%, there was help, although it was private and rehab or counselling were not public celebrations, like today. Life was good, very, very good, for most Americans, all the way up to….oh, probably a few decades later.
I look at it as starting with the NWA trial. It was highly publicized — was this vile, misogynistic, racist and profane “art” to be wllowed in public spaces? Why, yes, the academics and critics said, and suddenly women were b****** and h*’s, and the “good life” was that of a pimp or crack dealer. That was a huge defining line in our social and cultural history, and if we’d have used our own judgement instead of relying on “experts” and greed, we wouldn’t be so far down this road today.
Oh yeah the 50′s were great. If your dad was a drunk and beat you your mom would just stay because hey, it’s a family matter. If your neighbor (or your priest) raped you, oh well…everyone minded their own business.
Kathy Shaidle,
I think you miss my point.
It’s never taken the internet to avoid reality. Throughout the totality of human existence every man, woman and child has done so to a lesser or greater extent. And at some point, each of those people — each of us — has had to venture forth and face reality on reality’s terms. The interface between fantasy and reality is always pretty bumpy, whether it’s learning about the easter bunny or finding out that there are, in fact, really bad actors out there. At some point, everybody has to face the “my friend ain’t really got my back” moment, as well as “son-of-a-gun, my parents are HUMAN” moment, and most critically, “OMG, I can do evil things!” moment. It’s wonderful to have great parents and strong role models and see the daily exercise of the best ethics and morals. But the parents and the teachers and the role models are only facilitators. The real teacher is the individual. From birth to death, we’re each of us the only teacher that counts.
Sweet simplicity
I have never understood why parents allow their underage daughters unfettered access to web cams or cell phone cams.
Kathy, there have in fact been cases in the US where underage girls posting naked pictures of themselves have been charged with manufacture and distribution of child porn. I’m not sure that’s the route we want to go…
I’m pretty sick of teenagers playing both sides of the fence. “You can’t stop me from doing whatever I want to do, because I’m all grown up! …Oh, that was child porn? Well… I’m just a teenager!”
Do the crime, do the time.
So you want to put them in prison?
Prison is a very bad idea for all ages.
Flogging gets the point across much better.
It has many additional benefits, too. For example, it doesn’t ruin lives, nor does it foster a Criminality University, like our prisons have become. I could make a longer list.
It’s far more humane than prison.
Yes, I’m serious.
Get over your horror long enough to think it through rationally.
Or simply return to the days when their parents could and would “flog” them without a visit from the nice lesbian social workers.
Yeah! You’ve never heard from that kid (or his family) that got caned a few years back. Seemed to straighten out him but good!
Flogging, really?
Perhaps we should also stone adulteresses.
Depends what you actually mean by “flogging”. Striking someone’s bare skin with a stick or whip hard enough to break the skin – causing bleeding, shock, extreme pain, possible infection (a common cause of death back in the pre-penicillin days), and permanent scarring – is legally defined in most civilized countries as aggravated assualt causing bodily harm or some such thing. There are no legal provisions for parents or teachers to use it, and used by law authorities it would rightly be defined as torture. Yeah, Singapore is a notable exception. I think I would prefer to have my car vandalized once in a while to living in a place where police can legally torture someone for damaging property.
If you’re talking on the other hand simply about spanking, or what parents in the community where I grew up would call “a good lickin’”, then yes, I’m all for it in some cases.
I guarantee you that there’d be a lot less adultery if it carried the death penalty. As long as the law is fairly and evenly applied to both men and women, using the same standards of evidence as any other crime, I have no basis on which to object to the death penalty for adultery. I condemn the Muslims for having corrupt courts and double-standards concerning evidence, not because they stone adulterers and adulteresses.
Yes, Xanthippe, flogging, really. Serious, tie-em-up-to-a-pole-in-the-public-square flogging. For most violent crimes, and a host of others. (Most property crimes should involve restitution to the victim, plus a little more.)
A short mental exercise, if you will:
Put yourself in this position for a moment. You are just barely 18, fresh out of high school. You are a good kid from a good middle class family. But, through some quite understandable poor judgement ONE TIME, you find yourself in a car with the wrong company at the wrong time. A holdup, a shooting, two innocent people die (including a toddler, shot in the face), and you are in the car with the perpetrators wondering what just happened and how did you get mixed up in it.
You are arrested, tried, and convicted of accessory to murder. Appeals fail.
There you are, wrongfully convicted. It happens.
Choose your sentence, Xanthippe. Which would you prefer?
We can put you in the public square and give you twenty or so lashes (under the supervision of a doctor, of course). Yes, your skin is broken, and yes, you will carry the scars for life. Once done, the doctor treats your wounds, you are kept for observation and healing for a day or two, or three, as needed.
Now you are set free. We’re finished. See ya next time, if you are an idiot. Otherwise, get on with your life. Bye.
Done. Back to school, back to real life, wiser and more careful.
OR, we stick you in prison for 3-5. You know what happens there, don’t you Xanthippe? There, you learn the ways of criminality, at the very best. Most likely, you are raped repeatedly, and possibly killed.
Which would you choose for yourself? Which would you choose for your son?
Can you seriously say that prison is better? Is more humane?
Can you set aside your societal programming and emotional reaction enough to THINK this through?
I’ve even had dyed-in-the-wool liberals see the sense of this. Some refuse. Some are permanently stuck on stupid. Our society certainly is.
Prison is a very bad idea, foisted on us by the oh-so-nice Quakers, who wanted people to have time to think and therefore become “penitent”.
That’s why we call them penitentiaries.
Right on the money, Mark V. Except for the tears of sorrow shed by liberals, it would be a plus in all respects: even the offender and his family would benefit- but as always, feelings trump logic in modern Western society, so it will never happen.
Yes. That’s exactly what was said. Sheesh. Are you intentionally dense or just practicing?
“Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be downloads.”
OMG!! Ha. You win the internet today. LOL.
That’s it Ms. Shaidle. Your Take Back the Night lifetime membership has been revoked and you are permanently dis-invited to all future slut walks. Pussy Riot will not play at your funeral, even if you hold it in Hamilton. Madonna will incorporate an obscene and grotesque insult based on you into her next stage act.
Har! I’m unsuccessfully trying to sell my burial plot in Hamilton (my mom bought mine, and hers, 50 years ago for about $50 each) because I don’t want to be buried there
Any takers? I’m serious!
Much as my heart aches for Amanda, I agree with Kathy and Daniel. This whole thing could have been prevented with a little common sense.
I take small issue with the comments above. About 10 percent of me is saying that you’re effectively saying, “don’t wear a short skirt and you won’t get raped.” The other 90 percent of me is saying the reason I haven’t been mugged or attacked is probably because I don’t walk down dark alleys in the middle of the night or engage in other behaviors that makes me a prime candidate for these things.
However, the mother is at fault for putting her daughter in the dark alley with a miniskirt. The girl was 15. There is parental control software. There is taking the modem with you to work. There is having GPS tracking put on you child’s cell phone. Is it Big Brother-eque? Yes. But you end up with less dead children this way. Also, how the hell did the mother not see the self esteem issues and other obvious signs of depression? $5 says because she didn’t want to.
The real answer to not having this happen to kids? Stop being shit parents.
Impressive, Truly touched.
Parents do share some blame for all of this, however, culture has a large share as well. We’ve allowed culture to tell women and especially young girls that their only measure of value is their sex appeal, how far they’ll go and how big of a slut they are. Never mind getting an education: you want attention just howl for free birth control, and if they think you’re “cute” enough, a certain party will pick you up and make you famous. Don’t study, just dance, party, pretend you can sing or act and go for fame. Sure you’ll be the one to get the superstar contract or get on that show to be discovered, but certainly you won’t be the one making cheap, humiliating porn in a cheap hotel or frathouse.
Simply put, too much emphasis has been put on getting attention and getting it in the cheapest way possible: taking their clothes off. This desperate attention seeking isn’t doing our culture any favors.
It is the left that sexualizes everything. Want to reduce sexual abuse?Eliminate liberals.
I think the readership has misinterpreted Mr. Evertson’s comment. “The cloistered” are not those who are told, “Wear high-necked dresses with floor-length skirts and wimples”, but those who are told, “Be as naked and provocative as you like on your phonecams and webcams; it’s all healthy and natural…and nothing could ever go wrong“.
“and nothing could ever go wrong.” That’s a big part of the problem. Kids these days are shielded from consequences these days to a great degree, especially girls. Government schools have done all they can to level the academic field so bad students don’t get their feelings hurt by students getting good grades (but oddly athletic ability is placed on ever higher pedestals), for example.
Girls are being told at school and by the culture that there is no downside to being an attention craving slut. Remember a while back one of the Bratz dolls caused a minor uproar when the packaging said she liked to go on dates with strange men? That’s only one example because the meme is culture wide. Of course the reality is that the majority of girls have serious psychological issues from this behavior and many will not stop because they think that would mean someone was wrong with them AND it would deny them the attention they have been conditioned to crave.
Something can indeed go wrong, but saying that would undermine one of the most successful advertizing/cultural editing campaigns in history.
We live in an upside down world. Stranger danger is so endemic that parents have gotten lectured to for letting their children play out in the yard without an adult hovering over them but society thinks nothing of sending toxic messages in toys marketed to pre teen girls.
What you wrote reminds me of Camille Paglia’s infamous comment many years ago about how ridiculous she found claims of outrage by all the coeds-almost all from privileged backgrounds- who had dressed provocatively, gotten dog drunk and willingly went off alone with someone they had just met at a frat party only to later claim the men had taken advantage of them and what were college authorities going to do about it? These women wanted the thrills that went with being provocative without having to assume any of the risk. Instead of saying ‘Do grow up and accept you were victimize by your own stupidity’ our academic institutions created a system of ever more ridiculous campus behavior codes. The result has been to empower a generation of Blanche DuBois clones who enter adult life under the delusion they can demand the kindness of strangers.
Hadn’t thought about stranger danger. When I was a kid we would play outside all the time without adults hanging around. As a young teen I would take solo hikes out in the woods by myself all the time. Interesting though that the extreme to which it has been taken keeps kids indoors and in front of the propaganda box, exposing them to more of the subversive messages most parents aren’t even aware of.
You’re right about colleges, too. The pinnacle of the “guiltless girl” nonsense is that girls can decide up to 3 days later than what was consensual at the time is now rape because, well, the stars and moon didn’t move for them. It was bad enough when I was in college a while back, but now?
You may be right. Thanks for adding that.
That’s part of the “all or nothing” argument that liberals are so fond of. According to the left, a girl has two choices, wear a burka or let your t**s hang out. Either she gets to do whatever shes wants, or she’s being totally repressed. The concept maybe you could tone it down a bit without dressing like the Amish isn’t allowed as part of the argument because that spoils the narrative regarding personal responsibility.
This is just another example of what happens when a society turns away from God. Those who do not understand what I am saying will respond with something absurd like good Christians want to keep their kids “cloistered”. In reality, the goal is not to shelter people from reality, but to instill in them that they are the creation of a loving God, and that they are too beautiful a creation to diminish with tawdry dress and actions.
Are Christians perfect? Of course not. However, when you step back and look at the big picture, who had the healthier society? The formerly predominately Christian culture of years past, or the current one, perhaps best exemplified by San Fransisco and well documented by Zombie. See her recent post. What will it be? Modestly dressed Christians or naked San Frasciscoans? In which society would you rather have your kids grow up into?
I agree. I am undecided on religion. I consider myself agnostic at this point, yet I would not mind living in the Salt Lake City area because of the strong Mormon influence. At the very least, it could not hurt my children having peers that model modest dress and behavior. I would probably even send my kids to a public school out there. Just because I lived a lot of my life lacking self respect and doing stupid things does not mean that I want to pass it on to my children.
I lived in Salt Lake. It’s got some weird aspects (like Mormon Church news being covered in the press alongside of, and just like, regular national news), but your surmise is correct. It’s a clean place, morally. No, it’s not perfect – far from it – but it’s much cleaner than any other place I’ve lived.
I went to a company party there, with my family, for the first time in my life, because I knew it would be a clean party. It was.
No, you won’t be able to just do a “set it and forget it” with your children – they still need to be monitored, but you WILL have a cleaner environment.
Well, except for the polygamy. It’s alive and well, and it’s NOT confined to some splinter groups in the rural areas. It’s quasi-underground in the mainstream. There are a LOT of duplexes. Also houses next to each other with one fence around both yards. Oh, and a LOT of houses have “mother-in-law” apartments. Wink wink.
The abbreviation “YMMV” may well apply here–”your mileage may vary” = my experience will not necessarily be yours.
I lived in Provo for six years and two degrees. I lived in SLC for more than five years. I never knew of any polygamous activity among any ACTIVE “Mormons” (of which I am one).
The position of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is unwavering:
Fact 1: When Congress prohibited plural marriage; the LDS renounced the practice in October of 1890.
SOURCE 1: https://www.lds.org/scriptures…
FACT 2: Any LDS member advocating child marriage or polygamy will be excommunicated unless s/he renounces the practice, repents, and submits to disciplinary proceedings.
SOURCE 2: http://lds.about.com/od/basics…
Thus,I personally find the “Big Love” story line to be malicious and fraudulent. There is any amount and degree of sexual sin going on everywhere, but do not tell me that any authority or active member of the Mormon Church turns a “blind eye” toward the same.
Yes, this reply is not “on topic” to the cyber-bullies issue, but I WILL NOT ALLOW attacks upon my faith to be made without rebuttal. YMMV, but anyone practicing “polygamy” is not a member in good faith of the Church of Jesus Christ of LDS.
Anyone who wants to take the time can verify the real estate issues and draw their own conclusions.
Either the splinter groups form a large part of the SLC population or it’s going on in the mainstream group with a wink and a nod. One local Mormon radio host said it was an open secret on his show one morning. Wish I could remember his name….
Of course, Mormons that I worked with despised the “polygs”, as they were called, and the tone that went with it made it very clear that it was an epithet. I have no doubt that many, if not most, Mormons abhor the idea.
But it’s there.
However, it’s still a great place to live.
So, what some of you are saying is that “We are ‘agnostic’ because we feel that religion is full of sh*t, but we wish our daughters would behave like to those nice Mormon / Catholic / Christian School girls, because the agnostic ‘culture’ we insist on is overly sexualizing our girls.” Do you realize how irresponsible that is? If the ‘culture” that you yourself spout and support through your own inaction is eroding the moral atmosphere in which you raise your children, then YOU are responsible for changing that environment. Religion is INDISPENSABLE to the moral foundation of children, and yet even though you yourself were shaped by it, you would deny it to your own children because of your “enlightened” agnosticism? What a moral retard you are. This ‘agnosticism’ (or lazyness, or moral laxity, terpitude, what have you) of yours is the problem, it most certainly avails you nothing, it neither gives you any moral compass (other than whatever latent Judeo-Christian morality there exists in your morally barren universe), it gives you no solace, it adds nothing to your human dignity, it adds nothing to your spiritual experience of the universe, it will not even afford you a decent burial. If you want to see why your daughters are living in a brutalized sexual jungle of a world, look in the mirror. The Man Up and get your ass back to Church.
Good thing you’re doing your part to counter the stereotype of the closed-minded, self-righteous religious db.
Well, let me speak to you with the same forthright bluntness you use on others. Your bible is a book that was written and edited by human beings over a thousand years ago. For you to base your life on it makes no more sense than for someone in the year 3512 to worship Spider-Man based on what some archaeologist dug up in my basement. The same thing is true of every other religious text.
Contrary to your irrational belief it is not necessecary to have religion in order to have morality. I’m an athiest and I’m perfectly capable of knowing the difference between right and wrong, not because some anonymous book told me but because I reasoned it out for myself.
And in the mythical, god-fearing past you long for there were too many social ills for me to list here. Entire libraries could be filled with books on the subject.
It’s always infuriating to see people like you insist that some catholic priests raping little boys says nothing about religion as a whole, yet you feel perfectly comfortable assuming everyone who disagrees with you lives in a “moral wasteland”. Here’s an idea, how about you man up and think for yourself.
Jack, where to begin?
If you’re as open minded as you claim* (see below) to be, you should read David Bentley Hart’s “Atheist Delusions.” You don’t have to be a Christian to recognize the tremendous personal and societal benefits of having a little humility when addressing religious believers and biblical religion. Affan’Gul’s response was uncivil, but not closed minded. He was making the obvious point that “Mark v” was free-riding on the social capital created by the religious community he had chosen to live in, but rather than contributing to its upkeep, he was probably undermining it with his skepticism and utilitarianism. Enough Mark v’s and the wonderful environment he describes will not survive beyond his generation because those values will not be considered authoritative and therefore will not be transmitted intact. Your “rationally-derived” morality is mere opinion and is not binding on the thief, murderer or pedophile living next door. The world that preceded the Hebrew and Christian bibles had a rationally based morality that, I guarantee you, you would flee from in horror (if you could). In the ancient world, many did, to Christianity.
(*Nothing personal. It’s just that a lifetime of listening to leftists and atheists (not always the same) “crow” about how open minded they are, and how closed minded those they disagree with are, has convinced me that there is no limit to how people can fool themselves when their identities are at stake).
“not because some anonymous book told me but because I reasoned it out for myself.”
Not likely. You were taught what you believe by parents and the culture around you. Unfortunately for you most of what you consider right and wrong actually came from the Judeo-Christian heritage that you so easily reject. You don’t have to believe in those “sacred” books but you have been shaped by them none the less.
So the fact that thousands of people tried to destroy the Bible and those who believe the Bible and failed means nothing to you? The fact is, the Bible has withstood the test of time. It’s not like it was written centuries ago and forgotten, only to be rediscovered recently. It has been present the whole time.
Hub, you assume much.
I was merely commenting to an agnostic about what it’s like to live in Salt Lake for a non-Mormon. I purposely didn’t say anything in that post about where I stand. I am an evangelical Christian.
I love it when the self-righteous get into a high dander over some other expression of self-righteousness! You go Jack!
Actually Mr. A-hole, I am agnostic because I am undecided as to what I believe. Should I just go blindly join a church without thinking it through? I was pursuing Catholicism, I needed and wanted to go all in, then I sought counsel from my priest and found out he believes in the nuns on the bus version of “Catholicism” (ok with abortions, birthcontrol, homosexuality, and told me that the pope does not have ultimate authority). Since I live in a rural area, there is no other Catholic Church nearby that I can attend. So don’t just make random assumptions. Now I have been exploring Mormonism, but I am not one to jump into things blindly and I still feel in my heart that the Catholic Church is The Church, I just don’t know where to seek counsel from a real priest.
On the other hand, the Mormon Church seems to lack the confusion and contradictions going on in the Catholic Church, so I have not ruled it out. At times I do feel God is leading me in that direction. Learn the difference between atheism and agnosticism. I never said that I had an incontrovertible disbelief.
What was the point of calling him an A-hole? Isn’t that part of the conversation here – how to dress, how to behave, how to speak in a way that isn’t degrading to one’s self, one’s child or other people?
Sometimes the truth is the truth. If he did not want to be called an a- hole, then he shouldn’t act like one. A self righteous A-hole at that.
She said A-hole, holy moly, end of the world, let’s just look past the behavior of the person she offended, because oh my goodness she said a-hole. Stop the world it’s armageddon. I just told you a priest told me it is okay to dismember and suck out the contents of one’s womb, and you are concerned with the fact that I used the word a-hole. Look a distraction, sieze it. Anything to avoid peeling the scales off of the eyes.
Last I checked, swear words don’t cause STDs, pregnancy, or years of psychological anguish as a lack of sexual self respect can. Different levels of importance.
The good news is that the most liberal priest in the world still gives valid sacraments as long as the form and matter are right. If there are no churches that teach sound doctrine, then tune out the sermon, for the rest of the Mass is not within the priest’s discretion to change. Also, report him to the diocesan bishop and let the bishop straighten him out.
I will attend no church that accepts abortion. If that is the case, I prefer remaining agnostic and fighting antinatalism without religious support. In that case, the puritan busybodies have no case trying to get me to shut up like a good little girl.
Different levels, yes, but still, language is not unimportant. The degradation of language has a coarsening effect on our sensibilities, which tends toward the breaking down of moral values. Karl Marx knew that.
Anon, I encourage you to keep searching. God is willing to be found. Do not look for perfection in the members. You will not find it. We are all sinners.
I think your hypocrisy meter was well calibrated when you ran away from the “nuns on the bus” priest. Clearly, you recognize that that particular individual does not even believe in accordance with the position he professed.
And there is a great difference between such hypocrisy and the common failures of all of us to live up to that which we profess to believe. We should expect the latter. It’s all of us.
Look for coherence in doctrine. Truth does not contradict itself. I think you will find tremendous contradictions between historic, orthodox Christianity and Mormonism. They cannot be reconciled.
Within the Christian church, there are many divisions, and many disagreements. This is our failure. However, there is an essential core about the nature of God and the work of Christ that IS consistent among all Christians, and in fact, DEFINES what is Christian and what is not. Roman Catholic and American Evangelical and Southern Baptist and a host of others agree on these essentials.
The Mormon church does not. It uses the same terms, but the meanings are diametrically opposed to historic Christianity. Watch for that sleight-of-hand in your search.
An unfortunate reality is that for decades the bishops have used rural parishes as dumping grounds for bad priests. This is one of the great shames of the modern Church and a large part of the reason that so many Catholics do not treat the pronouncements of Church hierarchy with the respect and moral authority that their positions might seem to command. I have heard horror stories of bad behavior from more than a few people who grew up Catholic in small towns. One account that particularly struck me was when a parish was happy to learn that their new priest was a drunk unlike the predecessor who had been a pervert. I urge you to seek instruction elsewhere, perhaps on line if the local priest is so much at variance with the teachings of the Church.
Affan’Gul , have you read this?
FYI, that’s Ephesians 4:29.
Very good article, Kathy.
One of the bad things that has happened over the last half-century is that our society has developed to one in which our laws are now aimed at protecting the one who wants to do wrong, and our culture is one in which now honors the villain.. The one who wants the divorce holds the cards as does the one who wants the abortion –man or women, boy or girl.
The pornographer is the hero and the one who says “you shouldn’t do that” is the bad guy.
My 23 year old daughter tearfully pleaded for me to help her with a boy that claimed to have a tape of them having sex. Turned out that he was lying, but she learned a good lesson. Don’t sleep with everyone you meet. There are consequences.
“Don’t sleep with everyone you meet. There are consequences.”
Do you know how many husbands posted stills/videos of their former wives on websites?
Try raising kids as something more than simplistic morons caught in ones own Dysfunction Family Values and you might end up with mature, wise and functional offspring that don’t fall apart in their 20s and 30s…
Teach them HOW to think, not WHAT to think (that is, if you know how to do it yourself) and you won’t have offspring that plateau mentally, in their teens and twenties.
“Teach them HOW to think, not WHAT to think”. Teach them they are responsible for their own actions and that there are consequences for those actions. Do something stupid like play the slut and bad things happen.
Now they have a good lesson for how to think.
“Do you know how many husbands posted stills/videos of their former wives on websites?”
Well, either you’re saying that everyone needs to be celebate for the rest of their lives or that they’ll never be able to trust anyone regardless of vows exchanged.
How about you don’t allow yourself to be filmed in any way, shape or form?
I equate giving your children unfettered access to the internet, to dropping them off with $100 bucks on Young Street at 10:00 PM on Friday and telling them to “have a good time”.
I’m still amazed in this day and age where the government requires you to be professionally trained and certified to cut someones hair, that having and raising children can be done by any idiot with sexual organs and obviously is.
Not that I think the government intruding would help in any way, just wondering when some “MADD” like advocacy group is going to start pushing them to get around to it.
Ms. Shaidle – do you know very much about cyberbullying? Because I do. You tend to put the word in quotation marks but to me, it is not an alleged practice – it is very real. I recently completed my Masters degree in Educational Technology, and my thesis focused on cyberbullying. More to the point, making all stakeholders (mostly educators, as they are on the ground) aware of what it is, how it is defined and identified, and the ways in which it manifests.
It is a deeply disturbing practice in our society and not just by pedophiles or teens; it is behavior exhibited by adults – even in these very pages, within comments or articles – because somehow, the Internet has given people permission to behave abusively, hiding behind their computers and their made-up names, accessing targets 24/7 and in front of an audience of millions.
Yes, one of the biggest lessons I teach – I am now a consultant and speaker on the topics of cyberbullying, social media, and the digital generation – is that privacy is not to be had online. It is disturbing, and astounding that even adults don’t seem to grasp that fact. I see people posting intimate photos, details, updates of everything from their family quarrels to their sex lives, and never do I run out of examples to cull for my talks.
Teens are watching. They watch negative ads on TV, they watch objectification of women (and men!), they watch jerks become celebrities and they think all that can be theirs someday (a large percentage of teens believe they will be someday be famous). This is Power. And bullying is about power.
There is a lot of work to be done. But the Internet’s capabilities are being used for ways in which we could never have predicted. You, yourself, have quoted an article in which two of the alleged perpetrators in the Amanda Todd case are NAMED. Vigilante justice makes us no better than they. You link to this article which only re-victimizes Amanda, and while it is important for people to understand what cyberbullying looks like, it is not necessary to glorify those who practice the behavior.
I agree that slacktivism is useless but rampant. However, we tend to talk about cyberbullying only when headlines like these emerge, and that is one of the problems. We talk about politics all the time. We talk about sports all the time. We talk about entertainment all the time. These are water-cooler issues and topics. But why do we only talk about cyberbullying when it happens to hit the news with tragic headlines, and why do people not recognize how dangerous it is?
Parents are a HUGE part of the problem – many don’t understand social media, the internet or their kids’ interactions with them, and many don’t even want to try. I’ll have parents tell me, “I’m so worried about my kid going on Facebook” – when I advise them to show their kids their OWN Facebook accounts and privacy controls, they are not even using the platform. Mitchel44′s analogy is good. My own include giving your child the keys to the car when you don’t know how to drive, as well as dropping off your kid in an unknown, sometimes dangerous neighborhood park, where you know nobody and have no help, and driving away as they go explore. MANY (not all) parents are uneducated where social media is concerned and I’m trying to change that, one school at a time.
But the media needs to help. And that means not boiling cyberbullying down to one incident. Amanda made a mistake but she was a child. Other children picked on her for it, and schools did nothing. Her story is a lot deeper than just having flashed a pedophile. There is a lot more to it, and I hope people will take the time to talk to THEIR kids about the lessons we learn every day from Amanda, and other bullying/cyberbullying stories.
Empathy CAN be taught. In the end, it isn’t about why a person is bullied (whether it was pictures posted, or things said, racial, sexual orientation or gender issues) – it is about the behavior we see and the ways in which we address it.
Thank you for at least getting the conversation going – but please consider removing inflammatory links that will only make things worse.
Alas Lissa, your “credentials” undermine your argument. I put no stock in Masters degrees in anything other than the hard sciences.
Since I spent much of my life correcting the mistakes of my teachers (I mean “educators”) they are especially low on my list of experts.
And you can’t “revictimize” a corpse. That’s just the estrogen talking.
You are on the right track, but your good points are watered down by received feminized wisdom.
I was the shortest girl in every grade. I wore glasses and had crooked teeth. I was painfully shy and even “weird.”
I was never bullied.
The one time someone tried, this happened:
http://takimag.com/article/in_defense_of_bullying/print#axzz2A8DchhM1
Many people out there invite bullying because of the way they carry themselves and the behavior they indulge in, like doing stupid things on the web. And most of them have grown up to be just fine without government or “educators” “helping” them with stupid “programs”.
Those that didn’t turn out fine, well, life is unfair. Man up.
Also: this anti-bullying moral panic is being used as a Trojan Horse to get pro-gay teachings into schools.
http://takimag.com/article/death_by_diva_kathy_shaidle/print#axzz2A8DchhM1
This is a bigger concern to me than kids being called names by other kids, which has always happened.
(Except to me.)
The pushy homosexual agenda and intentional moral inversion are tied into the population control movement, see the eco- facsist textbook “Ecoscience”, coauthored by Scientism czar John Holdren. I nearly had a nervous breakdown when I finally got around to reading that book for myself. I threw it against the wall and tore pages out. Those disgusting authoritarian antinatalists are not getting anywhere near the hearts and minds of my children. They already messed up my life enough. Their goal is to make me into the bully for teaching my children traditional values, the endgame probably taking children away from Christian and other religious families who refuse to teach their children antinatalist propaganda. Seriously, John Holdren should not have a position of power. He made the case for forced abortions for heck’s sake. They try to package this bull up as tolerance and women’s rights, but it is really about population control. Forced abortions are the most anti women act that exists. If I wrote a textbook in my past that said we should hang blacks from trees, would I have a powerful position in the government? Heck no. John Holdren is despicable. He and others who share his beliefs sould be nowhere near the influence of the hearts and minds of children. They can come get me. I WILL NOT BACK DOWN!
Lissa may be either a useful idiot or a player in the authoritarian game.
I will preface my reply by stating that I didn’t cite my degree in order to impress anyone, merely to frame the context of my knowledge and research of cyberbullying.
I had a reply crafted to try and speak on behalf of those kids who are being bullied in very real ways, and those families dealing with the losses of their children to deep depression due to bullying.
But Kathy, your two links have shown me who I was dealing with, and I won’t try to reason with a homophobe who will never know what it’s like to have one’s child so badly harmed – physically and emotionally – and uses the death of a 15-year-old to push her own agenda.
I can see my reason and my stance don’t resonate with your fans, so I won’t bother. But for you “anonymous” posters so proud to call me an idiot, my wish for you the is courage of your own convictions.
Actually IGNORANT Lissa, I am not a homophobe. If you would take the time to actually read the textbook “Ecoscience”, you would see that it actually an antnatalist prescription and it actually does prescribe a homosexual agenda as one form of population control. Read it or accept your ignorance. I could care less if people are gay, but I won’t have an agenda shoved down mine or my children’s throat. It is relevant to this poor girls behavior that led to her bullying. I have made mistakes in my life that could have put me in her shoes and part of the blame is the sexualized culture that the ecofascists prescribed to tranform sex away from being a procreative act to save the Earth from overpopulation. Not everything is about gays. Read the book or remain ignorant.
I have a scientific background. Agenda driven science is bull and so is your one sided antibullying masters degree. You have no concern that the science czar called for forced abortions? That is the ultimate form of bullying. All you are trying to di Lissa, is shut down debate by slapping a bully label on those who disagree with you.
There is just as much bullying of Christians as there is of gays or others, but that is the cool kind of bullying. Like you slandering me as a homophobe because I spoke truth about what was written in a textbook. That is you being a bully.
Tell me wise Lissa, is antinatalism any more humane than homophobia? Is forcing a women to abort her child inhumane? If my words bother you, then why not those of John Holdren? It is okay to bully women who choose to have childrn and force them to teach their children antinatalist views? Please tell me wise one, how is that pro-choice? I spent years being “pro-choice” but personally opposed to abortion. I felt betrayed when I found out that many prominant leaders of the “pro-choice” movement are in fact antinatalist and pro-forced abortion and coerced population control.
A real bully works for our government. He once wrote in a textbook that the government has the right to forcibly murder, dismember, and suck out the unborn child of a woman.
Lissa, the style you choose to write in undermines your arguments as much as your credentials.
Stop writing like you’re trying to either impress your professor or condescend to us lesser beings. Write like you live in the real world, if you want people who do live there to take you seriously.
Speaking of the real world, in the real world, there are consequences for actions, and sometimes the consequences are way out of proportion to the actions. A mature response to that fact acknowledges responsibility on both sides of the equation.
I am as cynical about terms like “cyberbullying” as I am about plain old-fashioned “bullying”. Bullying is a complex human behaviour. It also seems to be something that is hardwired into us,some more than others. Entreating kids to just be nicer never seems to work, whereas punishing bullies and/or giving them a taste of their own medicine usually has the desired effect. I once administered swift justice thoroughly nasty little bully, who had been terrorizing all the other kids at a birthday party, when I was all of 5 years old. He was swinging a fire engine almost as big as he was over his head, about to bash my skull in with it. Within seconds I had football tackled him and was sitting on his chest. The little a**hole broke down in tears in a second. I don’t remember what happened after that, but you can be certain he did no more bullying that day.
As for bullying among older kids and teens, I remember this issue being agonized over in the months following the Columbine massacre. I made the observation then that at least some chronically bullied kids really ask for it. The whole “Goth” culture is a way of aggressively standing out from the norm. When I was in high school I think I just made the wiser choice early on to keep in the background, knowing that, as for many kids, high school was not going to be my time to shine. I knew I would never fit in with the “in” crowd, and joining one of the “out” crowds of losers and misfits just for the sake of belonging seemed pointless to me. As a result, I was rarely bullied. Yeah, it wasn’t the happiest four years of my life, but at least I survived it. But then, there wasn’t this insane live-for-the-moment youth culture there is now. It was easier to believe that there was life after high school, and to look forward to it.
“Yes, one of the biggest lessons I teach – I am now a consultant and speaker on the topics of cyberbullying, social media, and the digital generation – is that privacy is not to be had online. It is disturbing, and astounding that even adults don’t seem to grasp that fact.”
That’s the part that always amazes me. I’ve been using the Internet, in its various forms, since the early 1980s. Even back then, when there were only a few hundred computers and less than 50,000 total users, there was no illusion that anything posted to Usenet (the predecessor technology to today’s Web sites) wouldn’t eventually be seen by the whole ‘Net and others too. And this was back when most people had never heard of the Internet.
You wouldn’t expect to go out and stand next to a major highway and take off your clothes and have nobody notice. And yet lots of people think that they can expose themselves (literally or figuratively) on the Internet and it will somehow magically filter out everyone but the few people that they want to see. I just don’t get that.
Of all the useless degrees, a Masters in “cyber-bullying” might be the funniest. Did you get a scholarship from Obama for that? How does one get a job in cyber-bullying? Seriously, cyber-bullying is a terrible thing and one that parents need to take control of. But I don’t think we need a pointy-headed feminist with a Masters degree in bullying to do it. (If you feel bullied, I apologize, but seriously..a Masters in cyber-bullying?? You had to know you were going to get teased about that.)
Yep. It’s a strange phenomenon, and it’s more so with children. Because teenagers’ brains are incomplete (that’s not a cheap shot – that’s biology), they are deficient in the ability to connect cause and effect, especially when it comes to danger. (That’s why accident rates for boys drop like a rock at 25 – their brains finish developing that area around then.)
This is true even for the highly intelligent. We monitored my teenage daughter’s online activities, and found her chatting with some friends, and making the comment, “Well, there’s nobody here but us. What do you want to talk about?”, and posting a “blog” where she talked (dramatized) about personal issues that had no business being publicized. When I pointed out that a certain young man could very well have read them (and included a likely scenario where he could have had knowledge of her comments), or some guy in New Zealand for all she knew, she was shocked. “I never thought of that! I thought it was private!”
On a public website. [banging head]
If you aren’t monitoring, you are a lousy parent.
I live in South Jersey and just before I came to the PJ site I read about a 13 year old girl who was taken on on Oct 10th and then found, dead in a recycle can. The accompanying picture shows 3 pictures. One is of a 13 year old girls and the other two are of a 13 year old girl made up to look like an 18 year old. We sexualize our children and then are shocked that our children are treated like sexual objects.
Our society is broken. And it was broken on purpose by people who did not want to have their perverted, deviant and aberrant behaviors judged for what they were. So with the help of “Useful Idiots” they brought our society down to the level of a Redlight District and made sure anybody who complained about was shamed and ridiculed.
And in the end The Gods of the Copybook Headings will have their way…
Well said, and you get extra points for the Kipling reference.
What if the photos were taken without consent and posted to the internet without consent, rather than by the individual in the photos. What if a pervert took a photo of your child getting a diaper change? Should they be free to do so and post to the internet? Yes I understand that the diaper change should be done privately, but life is not perfect and kids pee and poop when they have to and there is not always an ideal place to change. Perhaps there should be some level of protection, especially for children. I am not comfortable with strangers taking photos of my children at all. I really think they should have to gain consent.
Gotta take issue with this–
“a healthy society demands that men control their powerful, often irrational sexual urges.”
‘Often irrational’? No.
Let’s write the sentence without demonizing men–
“a healthy society demands that men and women control themselves.”
There you go. What’s better is that it’s factually correct in the context of what you’ve written.
The sheer, massive quantity of porn on the Internet makes me wonder: Are there any women who *don’t* do porn? I mean, is it some sort of socially-acceptable thing, or a rite of passage? Do they consider what they’ll tell their children when Mommy’s sex movie pops up during a Google search one day? Are they stupid?
I think you can rest assured that the vast majority of women of any age do not “do” porn and would not dream of allowing any compromising photos of videos of themselves to be taken, by anyone, let alone posted in a public place. Unfortunately that still allows for a sizable minority without sufficient brains, maturity, or sense. I would however take the exclusive onus off women and ask if there are any men who don’t willingly LOOK at porn.
Another big lie that enables this is that line, “Girls mature faster than boys.”
A lot of girls buy into this and believe they can handle and start doing this ‘adult’ stuff. They can handle it because they’re mature. A lot of crafty men take advantage of that way of thinking.
Girls physically mature faster, but emotionally and intellectually they’re still mental and emotional kids into their early 20s. I say that after growing up with 4 sisters, raising two daughters and observing their behavior and the behavior of their friends.
So are the boys, in most cases.
I think children in general are maturing physically sooner, and emotionally LATER than 100 years ago.
Memory fails me at the moment, but one of our Founding Fathers was appointed Ambassador to France (from one of the colonies) at age 14. He was mature enough to handle that, and that was not unusual in those days.
I liked the reference to modern “compassion”. I remember back in school, when someone (anyone) got hurt, or it was announced that some student had died, there were always 2 or 3 girls who would do the public breakdown. Often these girls had next to no social interaction with the victim, yet would be so distraught that they needed counseling, sent home, super group hugs, etc.
Often the victim’s true friends (most of whom were still functioning despite their grief or worry) would confide in me how much that the displays made them sick or angry. We all saw it as a cry for attention. We hadn’t really glommed onto the concept of drama queens, but we were starting to get the picture.
What an incredibly stupid suggestion. Do people not think through what they say?
If women were to take Ms Shaidle’s ill-advised suggestion as stop posting naked photos of themselves on the Internet — and I cannot believe people don’t spot this problem right off — there won’t be naked photos of women on the Internet! Not enough anyway.
Think, people, think!
“You know I’m right: millions of people out there live for the deaths of all the Amandas (and Princess Dianas and Michael Jacksons)…In a society of godless people who’ve purged religion from the public square, everybody’s yawning “God shaped hole” has to get filled up somehow.”
Since you purport to have your full measure of godliness I have no idea what shape the hole in your heart is. One thing is painfully clear though; you live for these tragedies every bit as much as the people you’re condemning. The difference is that hectoring shrews like use them as an excuse to self-righteously condemn everyone in sight.
To quote the brilliant philosopher Randal Graves: I hope it feels good. There’s nothing more exhilarating than pointing out the shortcomings of others.
“The brilliant philosopher” Randal Graves? You mean Kevin Smith? As in, the creator of “Dogma”?
That is a line from “Clerks”, yes.
So, because I’ve used a line from Kevin Smith, as in, the creator of “Dogma” I assume you’re about to become Dave Swindle, as in, the guy who’s going to dismiss what I say based on an ad hominem without even attempting to address its substance.
What’s there to dismiss? We speak different languages. You think that Kevin Smith is a “brilliant philosopher.” If the writer of “Zack and Miri Make a Porno” qualifies as a “brilliant philosopher” then who are Plato, Maimonides, Aquinas, or Locke?
Really James?
Peter AND Christopher Hitchens both make my identical point in the videos I posted, and Peter expands upon it in his book The Abolition of Britain.
Would you describe both men as “hectoring shrews” as well, or do you simply have a bee in your bonnet about opinionated females?
Yes Kathy, the modern day puritans insist that we opinionated females sit down and shut up like good little girls.
And now we have this:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2221982/Stella-Boonshoft-Size-12-teen-underwear-photo-sparked-body-image-debate-handling-critics.html
Ok. Serious parenting FAIL here. Where did this young woman get the idea that it was ok, right, or acceptable to post a photo like that on a publically available website?? The internet and social websites are not being taken seriously enough by parent.
As a parent (and an observant Jewish one), I do NOT ALLOW the “culture” to dictate what is and what is not acceptable. Our home has no tv access, and I love that (screened dvds only). Mainstream culture is a cesspool. My family deserves better. This young woman deserves better. Just because something is “fashion” or the new fad does NOT make it acceptable. Just as we have really lost the notion/practice of civil discourse, we are also teetering on the brink of complete loss of the separation of the public vs. private spheres.
My kids don’t live in a bubble or “cloistered,” but we DO have standards and *rules* that will be adhered to, for a whole myriad of reasons. Truly grounded and healthy individuals do NOT go around exposing themselves for any reason. Sadly, many parents feel that promoting social popularity is more important than developing independent, self-aware and thinking individuals. The herd is showing us how wrong that is on so many levels.
Kids won’t get bullied if they don’t engage in behaviors that encourage bullying. “Actions have consequences” and the bullying Ms. Todd received was her own fault. Too bad, so sad. Please tell that to Amanda Todd’s parents, I am sure they will feel better.
I disagree with the premise that you wont get bullied if you don’t do anything to attract bullying.
the nature of a bully is to pick on people who do nothing to attract bullying. people who stand their ground are the ones who don’t get bullied …everyone else is at risk.
no amount of school yard rules will stop bullying …only strong teachers and friends and parents can stop bullying.
Kathy,
I have to respectfully ask, is the quoted section below satire?
“The only solution I can come up with targets the source:
Let’s demand that parents monitor their children’s online behavior by fining or jailing them when their underage kids upload photos and videos that make them vulnerable to “bullying.”
I couldn’t find anything indicating satire, as you basically ended the article with that suggestion as your only solution.
Before embarking on a long discussion, I would like to make a simplistic analogy that might resonate with you as a blogger who has been sued. You are proposing imprisonment for parents due to actions of their children that is analogous to bloggers being imprisoned for the comments of visitors to the site message boards.
Here is a summation of what I read in this particular section of your article:
- You are worried and against raising half a million dollars to combat online bullying, because it might hurt _the internet_. (I think it will be wasted money, but won’t hurt the internet unless we let it become a way for the state to control us).
- However you are _in favor_ of allowing the state to fine or _imprison_ parents for what their children do online. You end with no consideration whatsoever about the implications of how this will hurt families, both kids and parents. Solution proposed which perhaps would reduce the likelihood of the specific event analyzed, but no discussion whatsoever of the downstream impact of the solution.
You don’t see any possibility of families being significantly hurt by such a proposal? You don’t see any possibility of an angry teenager taking their cellphone and texting/posting a photo on the internet to get a parent in trouble? Have you tried buying a cellphone _without_ a camera? An iPad? A tablet computer? Even many computers and laptops have them built in. Some schools issue iPads to their students.
Someone suggested taking the modem with them to work. HAHAHA! I can see my neighbors’ wireless networks on my systems. How do you suggest I _force_ them to encrypt them? Have you counted the number of coffee shops, restaurants, and businesses with unrestricted free wi-fi?
How about those digital cameras which can connect to a thumb drive? Even if I 100% lock down all my connected devices, how do I prevent a high school teenager from taking a digital photo on a non-connected device such as a digital camera, transferring it to a thumb drive, and then uploading it while at school as he completes his html web design assignment?
Laptop/tablet/smartphones are the educational, business and technological wave of both present and future, with organizations working to _bring additional wireless access_ to under-developed countries, but you want to have parents be _legally_ responsible for their children’s online actions at every point in their day, because the kids might get hurt?
Ever wondered about the choice a parent makes in deciding to get a cellphone? You balance the access that unsafe friends have to your kid with the fact that they are not always with you, and the cellphone might be their lifeline to you when they are 1) In an unexpected unsafe situation, 2) With a friend who is doing unexpectedly stupid things, 3) at a friend’s house whose parents are doing unexpectedly stupid things, 4) Lost. The cellphone increases their safety in some instances, and increases their exposure to danger in others.
Ever considered that even if you don’t buy your kid a cellphone, that 75-100% of their peers will have them, and your kid can use those phones/iPads/Laptops to be stupid?
Ever considered that blocking software does not exist to give a parent the control you are suggesting over common models of cellphones?
Ever considered that even when researching and using parental controls on cellphones, that they often don’t block photos? You either get to restrict them to calls from contacts only, or outcoming/incoming only, or all texts or no texts. I ought to know. I have two kids and four step-kids ages 14 to 21. My two kids are special needs. My daughter’s ability to use her phone gives her a connection to me that otherwise would be impossible, so that I can be there at any time when necessary. I examined every phone available at Verizon (that was not an Android/iPhone), and the best parental controls that your position would demand are not even available. I don’t know if they are available on Android/iPhones, but I seriously doubt it when every ounce of corporate and social movement seems to be in favor of more connectedness, easier, anywhere, at any time.
Did you know that the parental controls and lock-outs are so difficult to use and find, that not even the tech reps over the phone or at the store could figure out how to enable them after my daughter accidentally messed one up while on a trip to visit her aunt? I got on the phone and tried talking the _tech reps_ through using the menu, and despite working with 3 different people they were unable.
Now that we have briefly discussed just how herculean a task it would be to prevent this proposed law from being broken at the family/parental level, we could write a PhD on the impacts of allowing the state to have such power over parents for actions not their own while their kids are not with them. Ironically I just read “1984” over the weekend in order to discuss it with my son, who just read it for class, and your proposal is a small but important step in that direction.
Kids are hurt far more often by childhood obesity, with significant and lifelong consequences for childhood onset diabetes, than from the high profile and emotionally upsetting instance of Amanda’s tragedy. Junk food is less available than the continuously on, privately accessible through socially acceptable and encouraged venues, wireless internet. Junk food costs money that kids don’t always have, and is only available in the kitchen, at the store, in vending machines, and during school lunch. Kids who eat too much junk food to the point of damaging their health are immediately identifiable by any untrained observer, but kids who access the internet unobserved by parents have no physically identifiable features and can be difficult to detect even by trained psychologists if the child wants to conceal it. You would actually have better justification (and success), under your parameters, of proposing fines or imprisonment of parents whose kids exceed state imposed junk food levels. Are you in favor of that type of law?
Solution: buy a bare bones cell phone. If the cellphone can’t take pictures, it can’t transmit them either.
Myth,
That is a partial solution, which is to say that it leaves the problem unsolved.
More importantly, it doesn’t address the issue of imprisoning parents, which is the primary point of my response.
Parents should also understand basic biology – human females tend to wear more revealing clothing when they are ovulating. Guys are hard-wired to respond to that.
Teach the girls to avoid the metaphorical dark alleys, and they boys to respect others, both girls and boys.
Robert F has summed it up better than he thinks. A society where belief has faded away in a transcendent, all-powerful, all-knowing God, to whom we must all give account of what we do, say, or even think is doomed to destruction. Happily, especially in the English-speaking world, we have been in the past blessed with revivals that have called us back to those foundational truths without which all man-made morality is a sham. To be told(as I was as a 7-year-old) theat God saw all we did, heard all we said, and knew what we were thinking was an awesome thought.
Unhappily, in today’s world we have to face a semi-militant statism which as good as claims proprietorial rights over all children born in its bounds, and an even more militant secularism which makes no bones about its denial of the right of Christian parents to transmit their faith to their children. Public education is the biggest curse, though thankfully you in the USA have taken ample advantage of your right to home school your kids; here in the UK between 60,000 and 80,000 children are home schooled. Unhappily, on the Continent there is strong governmental opposition to this, and many childrne have been taken from their parents.
Back to the narrow picture! Surely iy can’t be too hard to instil in a boy’s mind the duty to respect a girl, and that a girl must dress modestly, remembering that she IS a girl! Bit by bit, the connecting pieces can be introduced.
The “telly”, and with it, the computer screen, is a big obstacle. Here the rule must be to ration their use severely. We have become such unthinmking slaves of the visual image that we forget tha seeing isn’t necessarily believing. It was not without good reason that back in 1992 a law was enacted here outlawing not just real obscene pictures of children but so-called “composite” images, where one person’s head would be superimposed on the body of another. Sadly, in this fallen world, as with all forms of communication, the rise of digital communication has been a blessing and a curse. No wonder that on archaeological digs they use two cameras: a digital one to send images back to the institution, and a film one to show that theire’s been no faking of the reports!
The author nails it! I am sick of this irrational aversion to “blaming” the victim. WE MUST blame the victim if the victim is partially at fault. How can we correct a problem if we refuse to identify the problem? This young girl posted nude pictures of herself- committing VERY SERIOUS federal felony- attempted to “steal” another girl’s boyfriend and then gets all uptight that she is being picked on by that same girl she originally wronged! OK, she made a mistake and the other girl was mean but it just seems to me if you take a punch at somebody you might expect to get your clock cleaned now and then. When it happens you get back up, wipe off the blood and get ready to play. There was no reason for this girl to be on Facebook and relying for her entire self worth and social life on such a superficial context. Pathetic and undeserving of sympathy. Sorry.
Most people seem to have difficulty separating culpability. We want ALL the blame to go to ONE party. When we are involved ourselves, of course we want ALL the blame to go to the OTHER party. We have trouble with the idea that, if we assign ANY blame to Party A, this does NOT mean we are excusing the actions of Party B.
But real life ain’t like that. In many situations, there is culpability on
more side than just one.
Mature people are able to assign culpability where fault actually exists, and not more than is due.
For example, if a woman wears a miniskirt and low cut blouse in a bad area of town, and gets raped, there is NOBODY responsible for that rape but the rapist. The rapist bears FULL culpability for the rape. There is NO excuse for it.
However, the woman is still guilty of being stupid. No, that doesn’t excuse the rapist ONE BIT. The rapist should still be hanged. No plea of provocation should lessen his sentence. He should pay the full price.
The rapist was guilty.
But the woman was stupid.
BOTH are true.
It’s NOT one or the other.
Okay, I really feel like a dinosaur today. We have a couple of soon-to-be-teen-boys. We and they do not do social media. Email is as exotic as it gets. When I read some of what’s out there, I’m pretty sure we’ve lost our minds.
To wit, cyberbullying. Now, when I think of bullying, I think of the kind of “in the flesh” stuff that I went through as a kid, my knees literally knocking with fear (yeah, they actually do that) because I knew what the people around me were capable of and it was my day in the barrel. People who’ve gone through that have a hard time relating to the new stuff that passes for bullying.
So, these people, kids and I guess adults(?), sort of put their souls somewhere other than the fleshy places we used to call our bodies, they put them “out there.” But that, of course, is only half the problem. They bring what’s out there back into their own lives, whether it’s worth having or not, because the only thing worse than being “abused” through the ether, is being ignored? Do I have that right? Can you imagine how happy I would have been as a kid if I could have just not turned on a machine to keep from getting my clock cleaned?
I couldn’t spend a lot of time reading about yet another suicide caused by cyberbullying or bad reviews or what-have-you. I get it. People today are so ill equipped to deal with ANYTHING they’re willing to kill themselves over it. Used to be that we understood suicide only insofar as our helplessness in keeping someone from doing it if they’re of a mind. Now, we think we’re God.
We don’t need another law. For God’s sake, we don’t need another law. We just need sanity.
We should go back to “make our step rare in our neighbor’s house” and cultivate some normal human social interaction. InYourFace Book and all the other invasive elements of modern life are a threat to sanity.
So, I occasionally counsel teens and pre-teens on bullying, both “cyber” and otherwise. It’s a three-point plan:
1. Don’t do stupid things that expose you to bullying.
2. Don’t bully someone else, even if they do something stupid.
3. If you feel like someone is bullying you, tell them to stop. If they don’t stop, ignore them. If they don’t stop and you can’t ignore them, tell an adult you trust about it.
“Had Amanda never flashed her breasts on the Internet, is it likely she might still be alive today?”
Unhappily something finally kills all of us. We leave behind friends and family. Sometimes moms suddenly have an empty bedroom with nobody in it anymore. Friends probably may have deleted old emails and now suddenly there will be no more emails from that friend.
“If they don’t stop, ignore them.” Absolutely! As Mom always said, “Sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me.” That’s all “cyberbullying” is – words. The response is one of common sense – say “stop” and then ignore the speaker. It is a response that can be implemented by anyone and reflects the freedom we all have to control our own destiny.
All these recent initiatives against “bullying” typify the standard left-wing response to any problem: create a large government program and collect our taxes to pay for it. Your plan makes much more sense.
sometimes the brain chemicals just aren’t mixed in the correct proportions.
…like the spoon made me fat or cyber bulling.
step away from the Twinkie or in the case of cyber bullying …unplug that laptop and get a life …or not.
Hmmm… this may seem flippant, but kids might get a little perspective on the price of fame, if they were told fame does not pay the bills. Money does. And money does not grow on the internet, or trees. Just ask Kathy. (!) Fame is a cinch to achieve compared to making money. There are more famous people than there are rich ones. And that was before the internet. Like Andy Warhol said in the sixties, “In the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes”. Well, that future is now. Kids, you can not make enough money to be set for life in just 15 minutes. Can’t be done. Just ask Andy (who’s he? [a stupid painter who was shot by a lesbian mad about his fame]). Fame and money are not the same thing. Most smart rich people try to avoid fame, because they know it will make their lives easier. Just ask Amanda. I am sure mentioning money in this context may seem odd, but ask yourself, why are you trying to get famous? For nothing?
Money does not go hand-in-hand with fame. Before today, I had never hear of Amanda. And when I click “Submit Comment”, it won’t be long before I ever think of her again. Though I do feel bad she got beat up too. That is a felony. You need to be told? And the main guy stalking her knew where she lived, and what school she went to.
And as far as suicide goes, why chance going to hell? When I was a teen atheist, that was the thought that stopped me more than once. What if? What if there is a hell after all? Why chance it? If none of it can be proved, why go Zen, or Hindu? And if there is nothing, why go to oblivion? Isn’t oblivion just another hell? Why chance it?
Oh, Kathy. Thank you for mentioning she should not have posted that stuff online. That is not blaming the victim.
How about a blunt instrument for a new approach? Remember Saddam’s and Uday’s people shredder, like a credit card shredder only man-sized? To get it calibrated right, Gloria Allred and the Supreme Court would make good, er, tuning forks.
Pop one of these modern-day stocks in the town square, or maybe outside the State Dept, and use it wisely and well. As Clint might say, Are you Shredder Ready, punk?
Kathy,
I am disappointed to see that you have not responded to my post #30.
I have great respect for PJMedia, and routinely refer people who get their news from Fox to come here instead. I take that referral seriously. This site leads the way on news of national importance, usually before the major media outlets. It also has significantly better analysis than other media outlets, and an impressive line-up of Contributors.
If PJMedia is going to continue to punch above its weight, its Contributors should be aware of the ongoing burden of excellence that is required. Your article was fantastic, right up until the last six lines. The proposal in those six lines would fundamentally alter the legal basis of our society and the family, and did so without one single line of discussion or analysis. You are better than that. More importantly we need PJMedia to be better than that, because the work that is being done here is driving the national dialogue in a world that desperately needs wise counsel.
Possibly you can gloat and crow over this girls death as well. all in the name of feel good preachy buzz naturally.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2223520/Bullied-15-year-old-jumped-death-train-video-group-sex-footballers-posted-online.html?ICO=most_read_module
Telling girls not to post pictures on the internet is victim blaming!!!!!!! THE BOYS SHOULDN”T BE FORCING THESE POOR INNOCENT GIRLS TO DO THIS! PATRIARCHY!!!!RATWARWAFA
/sarcasm
feminism will be the death of society I swear