Spread Kindness ♡
I have a complicated relationship with anti-bullying labor. On one hand, I appreciate any effort that is taken to protect kids from being abused and ending up in a situation where I’m in right now; but on the other hand, the vast majority of anti-bullying activism only frustrates me in its insufficiency to actually achieve anything. It relies heavily on campaigns whose sole reason for existing is to offer a counteraction to abuse.
Being kind.
Since daycare, I have always been described as a kind individual. I’m not totally sure how often it’s been a positive factor, but I do know that there have been many instances where the word has been made to come out as something unfortunate. I don’t think it has ever really been portrayed as a straight-up negative quality, but somewhere in the middle. My kindness has been used as a means to justify people abusing and taking advantage of me, because it has made me too susceptible to their heinous acts. I have been told that it is my kindness that has consistently put me in situations of violence. But for some reason, my kindness has also been called an admirable trait to have, something people really like about me.
So I don’t really know how I’m supposed to take it. When you tell me “oh you’re so kind”, are you complimenting me? Or are you saying it with a tinge of pity in your voice? Or are you fucking with my feelings just to later on use them against me and then reveal your true motives? Go figure.
My kindness has never solved any of the problems with those who have abused me. Me being kind to them didn’t do anything to make the violence stop. And with all the justification the adults of my life had been giving me (“you’re way too kind for your own good” and other stellar statements), how am I supposed to believe that it is kindness what will resolve the dilemma of kids abusing other kids? There’s a beautiful Finnish proverb that describes my bafflement here perfectly. “Järki käteen.” It means the same thing as “come to your senses”, but I think you deserve to know the literal translation too. “Have your mind on your hand.”
action for kindness.
You cannot stop people from abusing one another by saying “hey guys, please don’t fight, let’s all be friends! :3 ♡”. It is absolutely ridiculous to me that there are still so many people out there who think kids will stop being pricks to each other if you just tell them they should be kind instead, because bullying is not nice. I’m sorry, but the kids who are already doing it will not stop just because you tell them what they’re doing is wrong. They do not care.
So imagine my frustration when I have to sit there and watch these people have their performative anti-bullying campaigns with phrases like “Action for Kindness”, while deliberately ignoring and silencing the voices of those who have already been victimized. I think it is absolutely diabolical of anyone who claims to care about peer abuse to do that to victims who have already been abused. But for some reason, our stories don’t matter to these people. They don’t care about the real-life consequences of kids abusing each other; they only care about making themselves feel like they have done something good, that they’ve achieved something that will grant them brownie-points from a former teacher or some shit like that.
The reason why I feel so skeptical about anti-bullying labor is that it’s very difficult to tell who is in it for the real reasons. My instinct tells me to always be wary of campaigns like that, because chances are that the organizers of such happenings don’t actually give a single fuck about people like myself, people like so many of you. Because our stories are too much to deal with, because our pain is too real. And people who praise kindness as the only solution to the very abuse that traumatized us think that we’re lost causes, that nothing can be done to help us anymore because being kind to us now would do absolutely nothing. So it’s better to just silence us, pretend as if we’re not even here.
I have experienced that silencing and censorship far too many times to be able to recount them all here. I’ve been denied the right to speak for myself as a victim of severe bullying just because it was TOO SEVERE. Because my problems cannot be solved by kindness and then swept under the rug. Because my wounds will not be healed with performative pop psychology bullshit. And I am sick of it. I am sick of never being listened to and always being ignored instead. Why does the severity of my trauma make me less worthy of your attention in anti-bullying labor?
I don’t know about you all, but to me, that sounds an awful lot like “we don’t actually give a shit about you, but only about the public image we portray for outsiders.”
With duct tape scars,
ichigonya