March Blog Post

Taylor Reeves

March 31st, 2017

Comm 160

March Blog Post

The reading that I enjoyed the most this month was the one we just read for Thursday's class, 'Family Bullies.'

Reading this piece was interesting, because when I think of the stereotypical bully, I think of a bigger kid at school bullying a younger kid. It didn't occur to me think about family bullies, whether it's siblings, cousins, or even parents. In the writing, Victoria wrote that she couldn't escape because she lived with her bully and tried to avoid her at all costs. In our discussion groups on Thursday, there were a couple of students in my group who made good points by saying that it's one thing to be bullied by some random kid at school, but it's a whole other story (and in our groups opinions a worse situation) when  you're being bullied in your own home by people you're related to. Your family and your home, are supposed to be a supportive environment where you can escape whatever's going on in the outside world. In Victoria's case though, she lived with her bully, and it's not like she could use going to school as an escape from her sister because she was home schooled.

I think that being bullied by your own family members can have lasting effects. In Tony's experience, he talked about how his cousin was so awful to him, always beating him up and accusing him of being gay, and his parents, grandparents, aunt and uncle, did nothing to stop it, saying his cousin was just trying to toughen him up, and then briefly mentioned that when he did come out, there were risks with coming out as gay, that he experience from his family. Going through all of this with people who are supposed to always be supportive of him, probably caused him trust and relationship issues with friends or boyfriends in the future because he spent so much of his life trying to hide who he really was for fear of being judged by his own family.