‘It Gets Better,’ Except When It Doesn’t and Then Teenagers Commit Suicide
Posted on | September 20, 2011 | 6 Comments
If you haven’t paid much attention to public schools in recent years, you may not realize that “anti-bullying” messages are now ubiquitous, often promoted in the name of “tolerance” for gay youth. And this theme has atracted outspoken support from Hollywood celebrities:
Last September, the “It Gets Better Project” was launched online as a place for adults — including high-profile celebrities — to reassure troubled and potentially suicidal lesbian, gay and bisexual youth that despite the taunting, bullying and physical abuse they face as adolescents and teens, life improves after high school. . . .
This message was posted to YouTube in May as part of the “It Gets Better” campaign:
The kid in that video was 14-year-old Jamey Rodemeyer. He committed suicide Sunday, which would seem to contradict the slogans and Self-Esteem Theory behind the “It Gets Better” campaign.
Perhaps these kids need another message. Pondering the plight of Jamey Rodemeyer, and understanding what teenagers are like, I’m having a hard time imagining an anti-bullying regime rigorous enough to protect kids like Jamey from insults. It’s just unrealistic.
The essential point of “It Gets Better” is correct: High school sucks.
It just does, for the vast majority of kids, without regard to sexuality. There are a relatively small number of popular kids — the jocks and cheerleaders, mainly — for whom high school is the Best Time of Their Lives, but for the rest of us mere mortals, high school was four years of relentless tedium interrupted only by occasional moments of misery and humilation.
How did I cope with that ordeal? Skipping school, hanging out with hoodlums, listening to rock-and-roll music and smoking dope.
While I can’t necessarily recommend that approach as an adolescent coping strategy, I wonder if maybe the Jamey Rodemeyers of the world would be better off if they fired up a bong and chilled with some Zeppelin, rather than being encouraged to participate in silly self-esteem excercises.
Also, you might be surprised how much more popular a teenage loser becomes when it is generally known around school that he’s the dude who can always score some killer weed. Just sayin’ . . .
Juvenile delinquency is a bad thing, but there are times in life when mere survival is a victory, and just about any strategy that enables a kid to survive the Teenage Blues is preferable to the alternative of non-survival.
Maybe some of the parents, teachers and activists trying to help the Jamey Rodmeyers of the world should think about occasionally advising these kids to stop playing by the rules. If playing by the rules means you’re taunted and bullied and called names, what good are the rules to you? If high school is a sort of emotional holocaust for kids like that, how about questioning the legitimacy of compulsory attendance laws that require them to go to schools where they’re miserable?
There are probably a lot of activist types who want to make Jayme Rodmeyer a martyr, to use his story as a sort of morality tale to indict the supposed homophobia of American society. But there are plenty of teenage losers who aren’t gay, struggling every day to cope with whatever special sources of misery dominate their unhappy lives. Trying to turn suicide-prevention into a gay-rights issue ignores the reality of the almost ubiquitous angst of adolescence. The bullies are probably just as miserable as the kids they pick on, and they are thus also fellow sufferers under the Public Education Regime.
“It Gets Better”? Yeah, it does. Because if your high-school experience sucks as bad as mine did, it could scarcely get worse.
In the meantime, kids, chill with some Zep.
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CalMark
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Ben David
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http://twitter.com/_scarymatt_ Matt Lewis
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http://thecampofthesaints.org Bob Belvedere
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http://twitter.com/marriedrambler Andrew Patrick
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http://thepagantemple.blogspot.com/ ThePaganTemple