“Bullying: The Hot Topic”
Excerpt from Out of the Fowler’s Snare
Chapter 35 p. 190-191
In recent years bullying has been a very hot topic in the national and world media. Cyberbullying has added new and ugly dimensions to an already serious life-impacting problem. I can’t even imagine how much worse my life could have been had social media been a fact of my teenage life.
Much of the nation’s media attention has focused on teens that have been bullied who have gender identity and sexual preference issues. Lives have been destroyed by cyberbullying on social media. Devastated teens have seen no possible end to their pain except suicide. I totally agree that these happenings are ugly and unacceptable in a supposedly civilized country, but I do not agree that bullying is a gay issue as some would like to claim. It happens every day to students all over the world who are perceived to be different in one way or another. Being gay or having gender identity issues is only one way to be perceived as different from one’s peers. Bullying is not a gay issue or a straight issue. It is a human issue. It impacts most of us in one way or another, and it will take all of us to make things better.
