BULLYING AWARENESS PAGE

I. BULLYING, AND THE WIDER SCOPE OF INTERSECTIONALITIES

Many people have said that some of those discriminated against in today's universities are the Closeted, Survivors, the shy, those who think for themselves, people with Aspergers, people with OCD, the suicidal, the bullied, geeks, subculture people, 'unpopular' people, and people perceived as unattractive, as well as the usual list of legally protected minorities and those with social anxiety. Some people don't view any of these things as the same in relation to themself, whereas others e.g. view their shyness as anxiety. They'd like these matters to be taken seriously as things that reps and tutors are trained to deal with, and as matters of intersectionality that can substantially aggravate other kinds of discrimination and hardship. They believe that such views should statable without facing abuse or threats.

Some say that existing 'policies' on bullying has not taken into account the forms that bullying actually takes. For instance, concerning student journalists writing articles about people or societies who do not consent to feature in the student press. Or what to do so as to quite simply be left alone by other students unsolicitedly bothering them about activism or attempted religious conversion. [Further bullying scenarios were mentioned by other people, but we won't repeat them here.] We could easily add another small set of questions on where the bullying is happening and whether students have any faith in the current system's 'procedure for dealing with bullying'.

We consider that bona fide feedback forms about whether bullying has been experienced would contain the following points (among others, no doubt).

Have you been...

1) Bullied in or around classes?

2) Bullied in hall of residence or around college: with some options as to who's doing it as this is more diverse. Neighbours, drinkers, 'popular' individuals, politicians, men, women (tick as many boxes as needs be, plus large blank box to name further).

3) If you are a graduate student, have you been bullied around your department? (By students, by junior staff, by your own supervisor, by bureaucrats, by senior departmental figures, other.)

4) Bullied at society meetings?

5) Bullied in committees, hustings or councils? (society, jcr, departmental, student union based or affiliated)

6) Bullied by people whom one would hope are there to help? (Porters, tutors, counsellors, student reps, other)

7) Bullied by other kinds of college staff? (people who teach you, senior college officials, bureaucrats, other: blank box)

8) Bullied online, by individuals who are (blank box) or you suspect are (blank box), other members of the university? On university, college, departmental or university society websites? (Including the student press, blogs, forums, IRC channels and similar.) On their, or your, or friends' social media?

9) Is any aspect of the bullying you have experienced a hate crime? (blank box for which)

10) Has any aspect of this left you

a) unable to study or work

b) with no friends at or in Cambridge

c) with a mental breakdown

d) with diagnosed mental injuries

e) contemplating suicide.

11) Do you have any faith in the university's procedure for dealing with bullying? (In general, between students, between students and staff.)

Very importantly, such feedback is only credible if one way it can be handed in in person in an area with no CCTV or CCTV leading to it, and where handed-in forms cannot be tampered with by further people (pretending to) hand in forms there.

This is because a large proportion of those who've been bullied are unwilling to hand in feedback about it which is attached to an IP address by being handed in online.

To readers with little background in personal security, a handing-in point of the type described above might look something like an out-of-hours library book return point. Though its internal workings might be different, eg including a 1-way rotary drum to prevent anyone from 'going fishing' in there. It would be expected that many users would send a trusted Ally in their stead with their feedback form.

This general type of method for feedback has also been widely, if entirely privately, stated to increase Survivor and Closeted confidence in feedback procedures.

That feedback on serious enough matters depends strongly on the information security of the feedback channel is something that the world at large prefers not to acknowledge. But it is both highly true by observation in actually operating variable security level feedback procedures, and rings highly true to anyone aware of difficult situations people can find themselves in. Let us end by predicting that this point will still not be acknowledged by 'official' bodies in 2030. Though we won't object if some activistic folks reading this do a great deal to ensure something is done about this well before then. Just kindly don't point to our website in so doing, because we neither wish, nor indeed Consent, to take any credit on any such matter.

0) Bullying as depicted in the 1939 classic `Wizard of Oz' film .

[Several years before writing the above proposed format for a survey that actually stands some chance of uncovering the extent of bullying to be found in a Western university or workplace, we wrote the below. This indicates how we operate: we often start with a story, and then listen to feedback. In a place with no fear, passing from 0) to 1)'s state of knowledge only takes several years.]

The 1939 film is widely taken to portray Gay men in the U.S. while this was still illegal, due to which they are Closeted.

The sepia 'reality' of Kansas is the film's depiction of the then-current 'reality' of Kansas. This features Dorothy's interactions with three farmhands (Hunk, Hickory and Zeke), a travelling fortune-teller, and a legal bully (Ms Gulch). Ms Gulch takes Dorothy's beloved dog Toto away to be destroyed, just because 'the law says she can do so'. At that point in time, 'the law' also criminalized homosexuality, and 'legal bullying' is well-known to be among the very nastiest forms bullying can take.

Dorothy copes with these things first by singing of a more utopian world away from such grim realities "Over the rainbow". More than a few LGBT* rights people have argued that this is the origin of the LGBT* Rainbow Symbol. Secondly, upon Toto escaping from Ms Gulch's bicycle hamper, she runs away from home with him to avoid his recapture. It is in doing so that she meets the travelling magician, who uses rather cheap and dishonest tricks but none the less appears to have her best interests in mind in convincing her to return home. But a tornado is coming and Dorothy's absense from home causes her to be caught just short of the house's shelter hatch. She is hit on the head, and then sees the house has been sent flying by the tornado. Ms Gulch on her bicycle is also airborne and transmutes into a broomstick-riding witch. The house lands with a thud.

Dorothy iconically opens the house door to reveal full colour filming outside (this was the point in history when filming in colour was starting to become possible). The world outside is very brightly coloured, and Dorothy thinks she is no longer in Kansas but on the other side of the Rainbow. The world outside is initially deserted, but once the Good Witch in the North Glinda has determined that Dorothy is also a Good Witch, the local inhabitants - Munchkins - emerge to celebrate. For it appears that Dorothy's house has landed on top of the Wicked Witch of the East, thus freeing the Munchkins from her. Unfortunately, her sister, the Wicked Witch in the West (Ms Gulch in livid-green facepaint) turns up and wants the spoils (the Ruby Slippers, which Glinda ensures stay with Dorothy) and revenge too for good measure: "I'll get you, my pretty, and your little dog too!" Bullies often target perceived weakness, in this case Dorothy's dear little Toto. Moreover, Dorothy still wishes to get back home. Glinda recommends she do so by 'following the Yellow Brick Road' to the Emerald City, where resides the great and powerful Wizard of Oz. He'll know how to get her home!

A Lion is encountered and threatens the Scarecrow and the Tin Man, but when he tries to lay into Toto, Dorothy slaps him and he burst into tears. This 'Cowardly Lion' symbolizes that some bullies are cowards who collapse if challenged. Unfortuantely, some other bullies set out destroy anyone who dares challenge them (Ms Gulch/Wicked Witch of the West), and it is very hard to tell these two types of bully apart beforehand. Having seen him break down in tears, Dorothy accepts him too. At first he doesn't want to be part of the group ('who'd want to be seen associating with a Cowardly Lion?', he asks, in pretty clear parallel to 'who'd want to be seen associating with an LGBT* person?' back in Kansas, where it was at that point 'illegal').

The Wizard of Oz - another bully - decides to pit Dorothy and friends against the Wicked Witch of the West. They will only get their wishes granted if they give him her broomstick, and this will very likely require them to kill her. So off they set, but their party is mobbed by the Wicked Witch's Army of Winged Monkeys. These have since become slang for forced or unwitted flunkies thrown by narcissistic bullies to mob anyone who dares oppose them. They capture Dorothy and Toto. The other three try to rescue her and are also captured. The Wicked Witch then sets the Scarecrow on fire - what he is most afraid of. This is also in accord with who the very nastiest bullies operate. But this is her undoing, since Dorthoty upends a bucket of water to save her friend, and the Wicked Witch is caught in the cross-water (cf cross-fire!) and this turns out to melt her.

II. FOUR LITTLE-COVERED KINDS OF BULLYING

This and the previous term, there was much discussion of bullying.

In particular, of bullying of four not particularly well known kinds.

a) Past bullying of X-Fluid people , including by non-Fluid X's.

The most well-known setting for this was Trans people bullying Genderfluid people in the 1990's, 2000's and 2010's (those being dates that we know about). We are grateful that by now GenderFluid people have received recognition by activist groups, even if not yet by representatives, political groups or the law.

But we ask benevolent readers to gain awareness that there are many other cases of Fluidness, which have led to similar bullying. One example of this is Switches being bullied by just-Dominant and just-Submissive Kinksters. Another is of Questioning people who have been bullied for 'remaining questioning', now not so unlike how some LG people have in the past bullied Bi people.

A somewhat different case is that of AceFluid people, who may go through some years of living asexually and other years of living sexually. The Ace communities, as far as we know, did not bully such people, and were relatively early in recognizing some such as Grey and Demi.

There is one extant issue, however. Some Aces consider Aceness to be innate, whereas some AceFluid people are Traumatic AceFluid. In essence, it is quite common for a Survivor who was sexual before their ordeal to become asexual for a number of years afterward. In some cases, the change may be permanent. In other cases, the person may eventually revert to their pre-ordeal sexuality (or possibly to some other sexuality). While these things conform to many wider descriptions of 'Grey' and 'Demi', some such people did not feel accepted even in the notably accepting Ace communities. As such, AceFluid is not the same as Grey or Demi, and it includes specifically Traumatic AceFluid as a subcase, one, moreover which may not be innate. For sure, one should never assume Aces are Survivors, or that Survivors will necessarily act asexually for a long time after their ordeal. None the less, some people do find themselves on the Ace spectrum (whether permanently or not) as the result of becoming Survivors. These deserve our sympathy, respect and awareness, much as everyone else does :)

Our concept of a Survivor in Transit is a related Fluid notion. Let us start with our well-known position that 85% of Survivors react Avoidantly to 15% reacting Confrontationally, the 85% being largely the same as those who are known to not go to the police about it (but whom we know additionally not to go to doctors, counsellors, tutors... about it either). What we now say is that 2, 5, 10... years down the line, some Survivors transit from Avoidant to Confrontational or vice versa. Some 'become ready' to confront. Others 'cease to be able or willing' to confront. As such, 'historical abuse' dismissals for being 'too long ago' or 'before the law or regulation or H.R. procedure was designed' are inherently unfair. For some Survivors need to wait many years before they can say what happened. This is quite aside from how most Survivors never feel that is a viable way forward for us. By which 'how to support Survivors' in the 'official sector' needs to be rethought entirely since it does not serve 85% of Survivors. (Or slightly less, if a few of these do Transit to becoming Confrontational some years down the line.)

SaxFluid is on a totally different timescale. SAx is href=/Social-Anxiety.html> Social Anxiety , by the way, dear readers. A SAxFluid person is socially anxious in some settings but not in others. As such, they may be Socially Anxious, then not, then again... within the space of an afternoon. This conects to item d) below in some cases, for some people are only not Socially Anxious in GeekSocs, Alternative Subcultures or some subset thereof. Some cases of SAx are moreover underlied by Closetedness, being a Survivor, being bullied, or having Dysphoria. Others are not. Yet others are underlied by diagnosable mental ilnesses, whereas others are not. SAx can be SAx, or a sign of something else. It is generally polite to not enquire into whether there is a why, but some people may tell those they trust some of what may be their whys.

SAxFluid is within the remit of what the Aspergers' communication badge scheme can be generalized to cover. People can e.g. wear red sashes to indicate they are not to be spoken to at all, orange for nobody to initiate conversation with them, or green for accepting conversation. A *SAx* person might say wear the orange sash all day at the Convention like 9 Worlds that wisely and kindly sets things up this way. But a SAxFluid person might keep on changing their sash, as they pass from group to group and activity to activity. Some LARPers, say, are gregarious in character or with the safe weaponry in hand, while would much rather not be spoken to when not in character or thus armed... The large corollary to this, bullying-wise, is that if say a LARP group picks up a bully, that bully's presence may cut off the only place another participant isn't totally shut off from the rest of the world by SAx. As such, toy weapons clubs in particular should be aware that welcoming what turn out to be bullies in their midst may quite literally ruin the only thing in life that some other members have. Similar applies to subcultures such as Goths or Cosplayers. It is particularly unaccepable for any such group or subculture to try to monopolize its activity in a city, say, in the event of it containing bully members. This applies both to actively trying to impose monopoly and to turning a blind eye to bullied-out fledgling societies being left with massively unfairly small resources compared to what the bullies are hogging.

It is quite generally suggested that, in the event of such a society or subculture having a local schism, that all resultant parties have a Fundamental Right to copies of the email lists and webpages involved, so that each lot run their own slightly renamed version henceforth. That members of such communities be receptive to some eras having one club, and others two or more, so as to accommodate all would-be participants, in the event of individuals or groups therein developing irreconcileable differences.

It is a positive feature of the activities and subcultures above that they are largely independent of 'official funding' which is pretty legendary at turning a blind eye to why suddenly there have to be two similar clubs rather than one. When the true 'because', say, is that the president of the existing club raped the person whose Allies are trying to form the fledgling club... Thank goodness, therefore, that one can start many altrnative or lighter-hearted clubs with no money, or the kind of money one has spare, or which one can get with a few days of waiting at tables or a few hours of a graduate offering to supervise an extra course... That way, funding does not KO the fledgling. Having no email lists often does, at least until the societies fair, since that's the only place most such societies get a significant membership from. It would also be kind of great if those running societies fairs *did not* say put their two goth clubs side by side for 'being similar', when in fact one is the society of people bullied out of the other club by some highly unpleasant bully member (or clique).

b) So we are now in full flow of our second 'unusual' case of bullying: people bullied out of other GeekSocs (or Subcultures, or Lighter-Hearted Societies). Some people are only not anxious there, so cutting them off from that is highly nasty (sometimes life-threateningly so). Some people were in fact already bullied in mainstream places, and so took refuge in a GeekSoc, say, only for some bully to come along there to set up court, or some exclusive aesthetically driven clique to take over and cast out the 'undesirables'. In some unis, conventions, careers... there can be enough Geeks that some of them consider some of the other Geeks in a similar manner that Jock-bullies consider Geeks: fair game to harm until they go away and don't come back.

So, even if a community contains a lot of people that have been bullied elsewhere, it may still develop its own bullying epidemic. This is because bullying occurs in all walks of life. Communities that are too immediately accepting of all who wear black eyeliner, or carry a latex sword into battle in a field, can be vulnerable to bullies setting up court there. While some bullies might not consider it worth their time to bully there, sticking to conventionally prestigious settings such as politics, the media, activism, debating or contact sports, other bullies may still aim for a GeekSoc (or settle for one). This may be because they are a Geek or a Goth, or because they like hurting Geeks or Goths to the extent that they are willing to pose as one to get accepted and then become 'untouchable'. It is sometimes also because the person they bullied or raped became a Goth, so the abuser Gothed up to continue to menace her in her new community, so as to drive her away from there too :|

As such, wiser Geek and Alternative communities, and no, not just us, the much larger 9 Worlds UK convention as well, have pubically declared that Geeks are indeed on occasion known to harass and bully other Geeks. This issue admitted, such clubs and conventions can select management that is vouched not to be bullies. And train staff and event organizers to recognize how bullies act. And to exercise the right, when necessary, to firmly require some participant to leave the convention or meeting, so that all others be free of that individual's bullying behaviour.

c) Bullying of people who are particularly badly affected by it on account of what the bullies are targetting being some version of Dysphoria. We cover this elsewhere.

d) Bullying of Closet-Trans* people.

Typical examples include the effect of telling a Closet Trans Woman to 'man up', 'stop mansplaining', or insulting their physical appearance in ways that nobody would dare unto a woman. It being agreed upon that insulting peoples' appearance is unwise, not least because possibly as much as 3% of the student populace is actually Closet-Trans* (broadly defined). And in these cases the amount of hurt caused can be much higher than one might naively think, i.e. life-threateningly dangerous. It also being agreed upon that gendered insults are unacceptable, even in more subtle contexts such as an oppressed group using them toward what they think is an oppressor but is actually a considerably further oppressed member of their own group: a Closet-Trans Lady.

As far as the 'official people go', to date they understand what 'cis-splaining' is... But one really also has to take into account that 'out-splaining' is a thing. Whereby Closet-Trans women, say, are exceedingly unlikely to be willing to defend themselves when subjected to misconceived accusations of 'unwanted manly behaviour'.

In particular, some of the worst abuses historically endured by women are now,at least in the West, mostly only endured by Closet-Trans women. Call them ugly in public to their face, and nobody deigns to defend them, when many would defend a cis woman or an out Trans woman subjected to such abuse. Or call a man 'mad' or 'bad' because he cries in the face of abuse, when in fact what's going on is that somebody is verbally abusing a woman. Who is reacting like many other women would, but who, through being Closet-Trans, is not perceived by abuser or witnesses as being a woman in distress. And is thus being silenced and dehumanized by the same slurs that abusers used to hide and incarcerate inconvenient women in the 1800's or earlier, by dragging them off to an asylum or a nunnery.

III. Some points about Trans* people having been bullied by other Trans* people

At least until quite recently here (and no doubt this is still the case in some other parts of the west), one of the main adversities faced by Transvestite and Genderfluid people was bullying by Transitioning and/or Transitioned Trans* people.

Transitioning and/or Transitioned Trans* people have unfortunately on past occasions personally attacked or ostracized people whose gender and/or gender expression varies in a more complex pattern than the MTF or FTM sigmoid. This has affected some e.g. GenderFluid people, Cross-Dressers and Non-binary people.

But the previous article points out that there is a substantially wider variety of Trans* people. And whether they are Out or not and how they express themselves is a matter partly of personal choice and partly due to immense prejudices in other parts of their life that some so-judging them had no inkling of. So, for now, thankfully, some Trans* people excluding other Trans* people for being different in further ways from them has come to an end around this city, and were any of that to happen again in isolated incidents, it would be inexcusable.

Some context to this is that some Non-Binary, Cross-Dressers and Genderfluid people were called 'fakers' or 'not proper Trans People'- a common occurrence some years ago even in elsewise 'liberal' uni campuses. The big picture is to spot in this case is that this was just another iteration of erasure. Similar has happened many times before. (Gay communities not tolerating Lesbian people especially before the 90's. LG communities not accepting Trans* people to be present in some places prior to 2008, and calling Bi people similar erasive expletives up to a somewhat later date... And further parallels outside of LGBT, e.g. Leather BDSM people ostracizing Switches in the 80's. Grey-Ace erasure. Erasure of the possibility Survivors existed in large numbers at uni or in life in general...) So the big picture is that any kind of erasure is wrong.

So is any kind of monopolistic demand ('we are the only group of this kind allowed, *and* we don't permit *list of subsets of said people, more broadly interpreted*').

Perhaps the main points here should be that "erasure is bad". And that "an existing group might consider leaving itself open to further would-be members being allowed to contribute to the ongoingly defined scope of the group". For, indeed, while many of the above erasures have stopped :) and are widely acknowledged to be wrong, there is little evidence that erasure of hitherto less known groups of people has stopped :|

Our final point is that some of the above erasures (and others) were quite often conducted by activist groups which 'though this was right at the time'. This means that, at least traditionally, there are such things as 'bullied by activist groups on campus' and 'bullied out of activist groups on campus'. Some Anactivists, then, used to be Activists who were bullied out of Activist groups. And are consequently Conscientious Objectors to such as erasue - of any group, regardless of whether it is known yet, let alone 'legally protected'. Some of these, and further of those affected hitherto, have had a long time here, preparing for some future decade, even. In which it would actually be safe to write an internet article about GenderFluid people. Some of those who showed us how to do what we do here were themselves badly affected by erasive bullying for some, or even a significant portion of, of our lives. And today we thank them, for helping us compile these resources here. It ought to now go without saying that erasing people with *any* kind of Dysphoria is a terrible thing, and we here won't condone any such thing within our own safer space turf of CakeFaerie-ville. None the less, we end with a :) , and, for sure, at least those of us dealing with this document forgive they as who harmed us back when they somehow thought 'that was right'.