I think it’s fantastic that K.M. Parr and K.C. Neal organized this blog chain against bullying. And when I heard about it, I wanted to take part as well. Please check out K.C.’s blog for a list of participators.
And now I wanted to share my story. When I was in high school, some boys thought it would be funny to call me a whore, slut, harlot (we were studying Chaucer and the 1200s that year)–I hadn’t even kissed anyone yet. I ignored it at first because I knew they were just being stupid. My friends thought it was funny because of my inexperience and told me I shouldn’t care. I didn’t. For a while. But one day, I just broke down crying because it was too much. They stopped, and I let the incidents pass. A few years later, I started college. I was excited to start fresh with new kids who didn’t know me or my small town. I met great people, went to some parties, kissed a few boys at said parties. Apparently, this last thing gave people new ammo. I heard from friends that people from back home had asked them if it was true that I had become easy and a slut. My friends found the whole thing amusing because “it isn’t true, so who cares?” They were only words, right? Why should it matter? But it did. Eventually, other things proved more exciting to gossip about, and eventually, I put all of that to the back of my mind.
In the last few years, however, with bullying–especially digital–on the rise, I thought about this stuff again. I thought about how lucky I was that this was 1990s and not 2011. How lucky I was that the words disappeared after they were uttered instead of living forever in cyberspace or people’s phones. Of traveling by phone or mouth from person to person, instead of to hundreds or more with just one click. That’s sobering, isn’t it? If I was a teen now, all of the above would have been much worse. There would not just be rumors of me kissing boys at parties, there would be photos as “proof” spreading like wildfire, posted on people’s FB pages.
My next novel is called PIECES OF US and will be published by Flux in March, and my experiences and those of other teens were the inspirations. In it, one of the main characters–Katie– is told to perform sexual acts or risk the release of another damning video. Bullies bank on victims’ fears, rely on the victims not telling, not fighting back. Victims think they can’t. They think they CAN’T tell anyone or say no. Or they think they are left without a choice–fight back or have a video/text/sexy pic exposed. It doesn’t have to be either or. There is another MC in the book–Alex. He is a misogynistic, crass, abuser. He is also Katie’s boyfriend. He is the type of guy who puts virgins on a pedestal, who defines worth by what a girl will or will not do. He abuses Katie and she keeps going back to him because she feels she deserves it. He was hard to write, and from what readers said, equally hard to read. So why did I do it? Because there ARE guys like that. I’ve known guys like that. Many women have known guys like that. It is important they don’t stay hidden. It is important people can recognize them and point them out. It is important they are fought.
It is a different world today than in the ’90s, but people are not all that different. Victims need support and need to know people will listen. That no amount of bullying is ok. That nothing is too small. If it hurts you, it’s not OK.
