Getting beyond the term bullying
March 26, 2002

The term bullying has recently been used as a blanket term for a variety of acts including harassment of youth at schools. However we need to remember that violence is about power and there has been little analysis of the context in which verbal harassment and other violence occurs. Some types of power imbalances and hatred towards people include poor-bashing, racism, and homophobia. Without looking at these imbalances and how they affect youth we cannot understand bullying. Poor youth are taunted for not owning brand name clothes, First Nations youth are constantly harassed (while incidentally their rights to this land are stolen in reality and in the history books) and gay youth are afraid to come out.

Where is school accountability in all of this? Schools should be confronting harassment of young marginalized people so that it can end. While one young woman tragically committed suicide we await to see if two others will be imprisoned in the name of 'justice". In the mean time schools continue to tolerate violations of girls' basic human rights and by their inaction perpetuate harassment. While the judge pointed to the youths lack of moral strength and courage in not intervening schools seem to suffer from this same lack of courage and are silent when girls are harassed.

Joanne Butowski
Justice for Girls Outreach Society