All Posts Tagged as 'Bullying'

Shannon was used to her socially awkward son being bullied by other boys at the private school he attends in Atlanta.

But when she picked him up from school in mid-January and her eighth grader told her he was being called a "simp," Shannon, who's only using her first name to protect her son's identity, didn't know what to think.

"He's telling me this and I'm driving and I'm trying to make sense of it," she said. "I'd never heard the word."
"He told me, 'It basically means that I'm just being nice to girls because I like them,'" she said. "I was like, wait, my kid is being picked on for being nice to girls?"

Her son had told her he'd recently been put in the "friend zone" by one of the girls, who made it clear she wasn't interested in dating him. They had continued to be friendly.

EBT, also known as food stamps or SNAP, is a government-run program that gives individuals with low incomes a small budget every month to buy groceries. And the idea that the government should control what EBT recipients are allowed to buy is a talking point often made by conservatives who would like to see the program either reduced or cut entirely. (Trump, for example, has proposed getting rid of EBT and replacing it with preset boxes of food, in which the recipient has no choice in what they get.)

Suffice to say, Keke was ratioed pretty hard on Twitter for her suggestion — generating a lot more comments than likes.

A Colorado landlord allegedly sent the tenants of his trailer park a letter warning of big rent increases if Joe Biden is elected president.

“Please understand IF Joe Biden is elected as our next President, everything you do and have to pay for will change completely,” the landlord of the Fort Morgan trailer park allegedly wrote, according to a letter obtained by Denver NBC station KUSA. “Everything will be increased. Like paying ALOT more in taxes, utilities, gasoline, groceries, new permits, fees and regulations…everything! This also means YOUR RENT will be increased to cover these expenses. Most likely, rent would DOUBLE in price!”

Even in a community outwardly campaigning for inclusion and acceptance, exclusion and judgement still exist on a personal level. Now, Bright Light Bright Light is shedding a light on his experience with that phenomenon within the LGBTQ community.

“Feeling like I belonged within the gay community I think has been a bit of a struggle," he said. "The LGBTQ+ community is such a vast umbrella; everyone is so different and trying to work out where you belong within that is hard. It kind of presumes that everybody queer gets on with each other, which they don’t, and that everyone is alike, which they’re not.”

Thomas also said that he wasn't considered "body-appropriate" to some in the community, which made him constantly feel like he was an outsider within a space built for him. “It doesn’t matter because those people don’t matter," he explained. "But I found that a huge struggle -- feeling invisible or not welcome in queer spaces -- even more heart-breaking than not being welcome in heterosexual spaces, because these spaces are there for everybody that needs them.”

LGBTQ youth who die by suicide are more likely to have been bullied, according to a new study published in JAMA Pediatrics.

LGBTQ youth are both more likely to be bullied and more likely to report suicidal thoughts and behaviors than cisgender, heterosexual youth. A team of researchers set out to determine if the two high rates are related.

The researchers examined death records for teens from 2003 to 2017, examining both the coroner’s or medical examiner’s report and police reports about the suicides. Since the records don’t always say how a decedent identified, the researchers looked for keywords describing how their families saw them, if they had a same-sex boyfriend or girlfriend, or if they were taking steps toward a transition.

Overall, they counted around 3% of the nearly 10,000 suicide records they had access to as LGBTQ. The researchers note that this is probably an undercount – there may have been LGBTQ youth whose death certificates and police reports didn’t mention their gender identity or sexual orientation in any way.

The woman said she was recently introduced to Stephen’s new boyfriend Adam on a Zoom call, and was shocked when she learned that he is living with HIV.

“My son announced this on the Zoom call (I didn’t have time to process it), and then became irate when I asked some questions to better understand what that means,” she wrote.

“I remember the ’80s, and actually had a close friend die from AIDS,” she continued.

“My son claims I’m being ignorant, but I was alive during that time – he wasn’t!”

I’m not homophobic. I just need some processing time.

Bizarrely, the woman then went on to claim that she is “scared of what will happen if they stay together and have children.”

A Filipino politician reportedly tried to force LGBT+ people to kiss each other and perform a “sexy dance” in front of minors as a punishment for breaking a coronavirus lockdown curfew.

Christopher Bombing Punzalan, captain (elected chairman) of the Pandacaqui barangay (district), posted a series of now-deleted Facebook live videos of him confronting a group breaking the 8pm lockdown curfew.

Life Tabernacle Church was packed for services on Tuesday night after its pastor, Mark Anthony (Tony) Spell, was charged with six misdemeanor counts of disobeying the powers of the governor for defying the state’s ban on public gatherings amid the coronavirus crisis.

“We have a mandate from the word of God. … We have a mandate from God to praise God in his sanctuary. This is the sanctuary,” said Spell.

A group of Maine residents apparently tried to forcibly quarantine their neighbors by cutting down a tree and blocking a roadway out of fear they might have the coronavirus.

A man who lived on Cripple Creek Road in Vinalhaven on an island off Maine left his residence to check on disrupted cable service when he came across a downed tree in the road, according to a Facebook post Saturday from the Knox County Sheriff's Office. He told police that when he got out of his car to inspect the tree, a group of people, some with guns, gathered around him and told him he needed to be quarantined.

"Believing the group may be there to harm him, [he] fled to his residence and told his roommates what he had found," the department said.

Countries around the world have witnessed unprecedented panic buying at supermarkets and pharmacies due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Aisles have been stripped bare every day as many try to get enough food to last them through a two week self-isolation.

However, there have been some people who have been greedier than others.

As a result, loads of shoppers have been left to get whatever is left and, in some cases, leave nearly empty handed with no idea how they'll get their groceries.

That was highlighted in a heartbreaking picture of an elderly woman in Australia standing in front of cleared out shelves that used to hold canned foods.

Channel 9's Seb Costello shared the picture on social media of the devastating reality that is facing many people across Australia and the world.

He reported the woman was left in tears at the bare aisles.

A former gay porn star has told of how he was forced to try to have sex with his father's girlfriend at the age of 12, and was taunted by his father with homophobic insults when he failed.

Israeli Jonathan Agassi, whose real name is Yonatan Langer, burst on to the adult film scene in the late 2000s at the age of 23, after starring in 2009 landmark gay pornographic film 'Men of Israel'.

Filmmaker Tomer Heymann documented the life of the adult star for seven-years, detailing Agassi’s journey from prolific adult superstar to male escort, battling many demons, including drug addiction.

If you’ve ever been bullied, at some point you must have wondered what was going on in the bully’s head to make them do anything from giving atomic wedgies to spreading vicious rumors — how could you not?

"Our findings support the idea that, for the small proportion of individuals with life-course-persistent antisocial behavior, there may be differences in their brain structure that make it difficult for them to develop social skills that prevent them from engaging in antisocial behavior. These people could benefit from more support throughout their lives," Christina Carlisi, of University College London in the UK, said in a press release. She and her colleagues recently published a study in The Lancet.

MRI scans measured the total surface area and thickness of the cerebral cortex, which is the same gray matter you see in zombie movies. The cerebral cortex is the epicenter of higher thought processes that include motivation and decision making — and it might be something lacking here that leads to decisions which are less than stellar.

Much has been written about incels, mainly in the context of toxic masculinity, far-right radicalisation, and mental health. But very little has been written about the tiny proportion of gay men among them, and it’s worth asking: who are they?

This pattern was identified by Reddit user zanmato1109, who also happens to be a PhD candidate, and summarised in a mini-essay: The New Internalised Homophobia, or, Revenge of the Gay Incels.

“Repeated rejection leads some young men to concoct an unflattering, two-dimensional caricature of the group that spurned them, whether it’s women or gays” – @zanmato1109

Although he says he wouldn’t use the term ‘incel’ had he written it again today, the insightful post drew key parallels between the gay and straight men reframing their personal issues through the lens of a broader worldview. He tells me he noticed this happened often in the ‘gaybros’ community, which “started off with an internalised homophobia vibe” – “these posts complaining about the state of the gay community were written by guys who didn’t do well in the bar scene, and whose dates never turned into anything”. He found that their anger turned into a “moralising stance,” which frustrated him. “It was disheartening to read what were essentially homophobic, right-wing talking points repurposed as handful of disaffected gays’ wrongheaded coping mechanisms.”

In the same way that incel forums have become hotbeds of far-right ideology and misogyny, these gay incels often share similarly right-wing views and a hatred towards the potential partners rejecting them. “I don’t think we’re wrong to see some kind of parallel,” he continues. “In both cases, repeated rejection leads some young men to concoct an unflattering, two-dimensional caricature of the group that spurned them, whether it’s women or gays. In both cases, part of their attack is some kind of moralising about sexual promiscuity – particularly in online spaces.”

Jeff Ingold, from LGBT charity Stonewall says it is "crucial" that we see more diverse representations of gay and bisexual men with different body types in the media.

"Not only would this help gay and bi men see themselves reflected in what they watch, it would also help break down harmful stereotypes that affect gay and bi men's body image and self-esteem."

But as it is, Jakeb says he still gets people online telling him they "wouldn't leave the house if they looked like me".

"I didn't go on pride marches and have bricks thrown at me to have the community we've got now," he says.

"We have equality, but we're horrible to each other."