As has often been pointed out, the press sin by omission; they lie by choosing not to emphasize things they should emphasize. You can see it in the story below with some added emphasis from me:
The primary cause of Jamie Hubley's suicide was, in fact, depression. Not depression like you or I feel on a bad day but crushing depression that never goes away; a depression that smothers every chance at hope. The truth finally came out in the press in a quiet little story that few people read two weeks after the initial hoopla.
So why did the press get it so wrong? Mostly because a bunch of their favourite narratives coalesced around this one little nugget. Bullying and gay teens being the most prominent of these. (As an aside, it's rather telling, don't you think, that the media are so terribly interested in the plight of gay teens and girls below the age of consent; the press doesn't take nearly the same voyeuristic interest in the lives of gay seniors or post-menopausal women. Do they not suffer too?)
But let's stop and think about bullying a moment. Were you bullied? I was and particularly so in Grade 7 and then again in Grade 9. Both times, and this is not a coincidence, when I had just moved to a different school and was a vulnerable target as a consequence.
The guy who bullied me in Grade 9 was an older and gay teen (but not openly gay, that would have been suicide at my school) who tried to force me into having sex with him and, painful irony, one of his threats as that he was going to tell others I was gay unless I gave in. It was a serious threat even though I was not gay. Perhaps it was more credible because I wasn't. He didn't, as you've probably guessed, use the word "gay"; his preferred word was "fag"and even by the standards of a high school in a mill town, he managed to get a special degree of hatred into the word.
And he followed through on his threat. And I toughed it out. I tried denying his claims but it did little good. Eventually the other kids forgot about that and moved on to some new humiliation for some other kid. It probably took only weeks but it felt it like it took all year.
Poor George, like a lot of first-class swine he never changed his modus operandi. He did it to others and eventually he got caught and disappeared from school. A little while later I had one of those experiences you never forget when I was home sick on garbage day and the garbage truck came through our neighbourhood and the guy who swung off the back bumper to throw our garbage into the truck was none other than George. At the time I felt it as a powerful incentive to finish school. I also remember feeling very sorry for the guy when I saw that.
In Grade 10 I made the football team. The coach asked me to try out after my gym teacher told him that I had run the second-fastest 100 metres of the boys in my year. I was lousy at catching and handling footballs so they tried me at defensive end. Coaches praised me for being fast that year and by graduation they were praising me for being big and fast.
You might think that bullying stopped then but it didn't. Even now I have to face bullies. There are, in fact, more bullies in the workplace than you find in your average high school. Workplace bullies can actually do you more damage than school bullies can. I worked for a client once whose joy in life was disrupting mine. I think the biggest charge he ever got in his miserable life was the day he spotted a mistake I made that he knew he could really hurt me with. I still remember the gleeful sound of his voice when I took his call.
The difference between being a boy and being a man is not how much the bullies can hurt you but your ability to cope with it.
Bullying is a fact of life. Bullies, because all they care about is wielding power over others, are very good at spotting your vulnerabilities. And they will. Every time.
What bullying is not is an unprecedented evil that has to be fixed right now. It wouldn't be worth fixing even if we had gallons of magical unicorn sweat to do the job with. For that is flip side of the people who tell us that problems must be fixed even though they have nothing better than unicorn sweat to propose as a cure: they bully others into treating the problems they care about as matters of life or death.
An Ottawa city councillor says bullying was part of the reason his 15-year-old son took his own life last Friday.It's pretty obvious, or should be, that the story of Jamie Hubley was a story about mental illness. But that wasn't the story you read about. The story that got played up around the world as the story of a gay teen who committed suicide because he was being bullied for being openly gay. As you can see above, however, his father was very careful not to say that bullying was the prime factor. And he was very careful not to say that because it wasn't true and Allan Hubley is one of those wonderful people who really, really doesn't like to say things he knows not to be true.
Coun. Allan Hubley says in a statement that his son Jamie had been suffering with depression and was receiving care from doctors and counsellors.
Hubley says these professionals, along with family and friends, were trying to help him cope with his depression and his sexuality.
Hubley says his son was a championship figure skater for years and was just beginning to excel as a singer and enjoyed acting.
Hubley also says James was bullied.
The primary cause of Jamie Hubley's suicide was, in fact, depression. Not depression like you or I feel on a bad day but crushing depression that never goes away; a depression that smothers every chance at hope. The truth finally came out in the press in a quiet little story that few people read two weeks after the initial hoopla.
So why did the press get it so wrong? Mostly because a bunch of their favourite narratives coalesced around this one little nugget. Bullying and gay teens being the most prominent of these. (As an aside, it's rather telling, don't you think, that the media are so terribly interested in the plight of gay teens and girls below the age of consent; the press doesn't take nearly the same voyeuristic interest in the lives of gay seniors or post-menopausal women. Do they not suffer too?)
But let's stop and think about bullying a moment. Were you bullied? I was and particularly so in Grade 7 and then again in Grade 9. Both times, and this is not a coincidence, when I had just moved to a different school and was a vulnerable target as a consequence.
The guy who bullied me in Grade 9 was an older and gay teen (but not openly gay, that would have been suicide at my school) who tried to force me into having sex with him and, painful irony, one of his threats as that he was going to tell others I was gay unless I gave in. It was a serious threat even though I was not gay. Perhaps it was more credible because I wasn't. He didn't, as you've probably guessed, use the word "gay"; his preferred word was "fag"and even by the standards of a high school in a mill town, he managed to get a special degree of hatred into the word.
And he followed through on his threat. And I toughed it out. I tried denying his claims but it did little good. Eventually the other kids forgot about that and moved on to some new humiliation for some other kid. It probably took only weeks but it felt it like it took all year.
Poor George, like a lot of first-class swine he never changed his modus operandi. He did it to others and eventually he got caught and disappeared from school. A little while later I had one of those experiences you never forget when I was home sick on garbage day and the garbage truck came through our neighbourhood and the guy who swung off the back bumper to throw our garbage into the truck was none other than George. At the time I felt it as a powerful incentive to finish school. I also remember feeling very sorry for the guy when I saw that.
In Grade 10 I made the football team. The coach asked me to try out after my gym teacher told him that I had run the second-fastest 100 metres of the boys in my year. I was lousy at catching and handling footballs so they tried me at defensive end. Coaches praised me for being fast that year and by graduation they were praising me for being big and fast.
You might think that bullying stopped then but it didn't. Even now I have to face bullies. There are, in fact, more bullies in the workplace than you find in your average high school. Workplace bullies can actually do you more damage than school bullies can. I worked for a client once whose joy in life was disrupting mine. I think the biggest charge he ever got in his miserable life was the day he spotted a mistake I made that he knew he could really hurt me with. I still remember the gleeful sound of his voice when I took his call.
The difference between being a boy and being a man is not how much the bullies can hurt you but your ability to cope with it.
Bullying is a fact of life. Bullies, because all they care about is wielding power over others, are very good at spotting your vulnerabilities. And they will. Every time.
What bullying is not is an unprecedented evil that has to be fixed right now. It wouldn't be worth fixing even if we had gallons of magical unicorn sweat to do the job with. For that is flip side of the people who tell us that problems must be fixed even though they have nothing better than unicorn sweat to propose as a cure: they bully others into treating the problems they care about as matters of life or death.
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