Blog Post #3

3/21/18
Blog Post #3
Tori Bivens

                     

                  Within Berry and Adam's article, I found a sentence that digs deeper into the issue of bullying. "...bullying is a complex social process that often results in significant and life-shaping consequences." It is not just a simple action of a push or a shove. It is no minor problem that we should only teach about a week in school. Reading this article, I made inferences based on the sister bullying and the cousin. Through childhood, a girl named Victoria was repeatedly abused by Lily. Every day, Lily would push her buttons and find any way to make her angry or hurt her. As they got older and Victoria graduated high school, Lily subsided the bullying. They had a heart to heart conversation and verbally resolved what had been going on.Victoria was Christian and believed that she needed to love her sister despite her wrongdoings. However, she could never fully be the same. Lily's treatment of Victoria was so horrible and repetitive that no apology could fully fix what she had inflicted. This is, like Berry and Adams said, a "life-changing consequence." Another aspect that was interesting was how Victoria admitted faults in her behavior. She said that she was reflecting her behavior on Lily because she hated her. She avoided her at all costs and braced herself before seeing her. Victoria made the realization that her behavior made Lily feel isolated and unworthy at the same time, further provoking her bullying. This shows how complex of a social process bullying really is. It takes maturity to see what Victoria eventually noticed and self-push to fix a broken relationship like theirs.

                This brings me to where we left on in class yesterday. Christina asked if Danny (the cousin) was justified in bullying Tony (the guy who came out to be gay). Obviously, Tony was miserable while Danny forced him to wrestle. In fact, Tony's whole family tried to make him do masculine activities and to like girls. But he just didn't fit; and Danny's bullying didn't help. However, Danny's intentions were to make him a "stronger, more resilient man." The family did not intervene in the wrestling matches very often, showing that they probably wanted Tony to become this way. Based off this information, I believe Danny is not justified. So what the parents approved? They were wrong in their beliefs to let this type of behavior go on. In my opinion, the blame is more on the parents than Danny. He was also young; he didn't know any better than to try and change Tony. No bullying is ever truly justified, no matter how much sense it seems to make.