Phoebe and Tyler

 

I've been thinking about Phoebe Prince and Megan Meier a lot lately. At one time – in Phoebe's case, a mere 10 months ago – their names were every bit the buzz word, topic du jour that Tyler Clementi is now. They were young and beautiful and they killed themselves after being bullied.

Apparently, the "problem" with Phoebe was that she was able to attract boys. Big deal, right? But in high school, everything is a big deal. Most adolescents don't yet know how to place things into proper context. Some kids teased her because she was an immigrant with a thick accent (she was from Ireland). Some were jealous that she fit in apparently so easily with so many diverse kids. After she had relationships (at least one a sexual one) with two popular boys, and befriended another boy who had a girlfriend, she was warned to "stay away from other people's men." (I've always wondered why girls don't threaten said "men" to stay faithful, but I see the whole "stay away from my man" thing so very often.) Phoebe was called a slut and a whore, both behind her back and to her face. Often, the slur of choice was "Irish whore," as thought that was somehow better or worse than an American or Brazilian or Sudanese whore.

Megan thought she'd met a great boy online. He was good looking, funny and a good listener. She was probably just starting to think of him as a current or potential boyfriend when he became very different, saying hurtful things that culminated in, "The world would be better off without you." She hung herself before finding out that her "friend" named "Josh" was actually the middle aged mother of a classmate. She never meant for anything bad to happen, this duplicitous woman swore.

I can see their faces in my head, snapshots that their families shared after their deaths. The girls are smiling, mugging and laughing. Megan had a tendency to make the ridiculous "kissy face" that two of my nieces often do when being photographed. Phoebe liked eyeliner and scarves.

There's other young, beautiful, dead people I never met taking up room in my brain. Hope Witsell was 13 and in junior high. With the poor judgment common to kids her age, she sent topless photos to a boy she was attracted to. She hoped he'd be impressed enough to become her boyfriend. Instead, he shared the photos, and his friends shared the photos, and THEIR friends shared the photos, and Hope found herself ridiculed by hundreds of kids from not only her own school, but also the local high school. She too was called a slut and a whore. "I can't be a whore," she wrote in her journal. "I'm too inexperienced." She, too, killed herself.

Jesse Logan was 18, five years older than Hope. She was a stunning blonde, about to go off to college and adult life. She'd been through middle school and high school, but she was still a teen. She, too, had the bad judgment to send topless photos of herself to a boy who shared them. Of course, you can see a pattern here and guess what happened – the name calling, the humiliation, the tears and the self inflicted death. She was not a whore, but she'd become convinced that that was all anyone would ever think of her.

Sladjana Vidovic was the 4^th teenager in her community to commit suicide in a period of just over 2 years. All had been bullied. Sladjana was called "Slutty Jana" and "Slutty Jana Vagina;" just like calling Phoebe an "Irish whore," this name calling denigrated her heritage as well as humiliated her personally. She and another teen suicide from her community, Jennifer Eyring, were heterosexual. Two others, Eric Mohat and Meredith Rezak, were at least rumored to be homosexual.

When I heard about Tyler Clementi, the fact that the infamous footage shot by his roommate and sent out over the Internet showed him with another man seemed to be the smallest piece of the puzzle, to me. I've heard many people speculate that being "outed" as being gay is what caused him such despair that he killed himself. I read one opinion that speculated that, "in his mind, it was better to be dead than to be gay." It's impossible to say what Tyler was thinking, since we can't ask him, but I think that assumption is faulty.

I remember being nineteen, Tyler's age, even though it was more than half my lifetime ago. I was no longer in a high school environment, where everything is washed in insecurity and hormones, but I wasn't that far removed from it, either. If someone had taken video of me in an intimate situation, including making out, with my boyfriend, and had shown that video to others, I would have been shatteringly, deeply humiliated and angry. The Internet didn't exist in 1985, so there would have been no chance of thousands or millions of people seeing the video, and I still would have been so mortified that I would have been unable to move about in public, or even with my friends, for fear of someone saying something hurtful. I would have cried for hours at a time and been inconsolable. I would have severed friendships, unable to comprehend how friends could do something so hurtful. I quite probably would have at least considered breaking up with my boyfriend, as though that would help. I can't say with any certainty that I wouldn't have felt suicidal. My entire world would have caved in.

I married the man who was my boyfriend at age 19, so I would not have been embarrassed to be seen with him, or to have anyone know that we were dating. I absolutely would not be feeling ashamed of being heterosexual. I wouldn't have been doing anything unheard of or illegal or even odd. Yet I know that if I was away at college, I would almost certainly have dropped out, unable to function on campus or return to my classes. If I thought the video would follow me home, the chance of my feeling suicidal would have increased tremendously. I would not have been able to imagine getting over or working through the pain and fury. Betrayal of any kind pushes my emotional buttons, so I would have been crushed. I would have been unable to function normally in any way.

After Tyler found out that his roommate was taping him and transmitting it, he wrote that he was "kinda pissed," and he also said that his roomie was "a pretty decent roommate." Not exactly heated language, under the circumstances. It was also a full day after those comments that he took his life. If I were to guess, I would say that whoever he was dating broke off the relationship, or at least suggested that they shouldn't see each other for a while. I'm also guessing that Tyler expected mostly sympathy from others - "Dude, I can't believe your roommate would do that!" - and was horrified to discover that even his friends were laughing about the incident, laughing at him. Some may have even urged him to join in the laughter - "C'mon, you gotta admit it's funny!" - and some probably avoided meeting his eye. That's conjecture, of course, but based on what you know of human nature, it sounds pretty plausible, doesn't it? Here's what also seems likely to me: Each incident over that 24 hours piled on top of the others, until Tyler felt that he would never, ever be able to get out from under the mountain of humiliation and pain. The aftermath was worse than the original betrayal of trust. He couldn't ignore or compartmentalize the incident, the usual male reaction to stress. I think the fact that he'd been with another man is the smallest component of the puzzle. Many straight kids have felt similar despair in similar circumstances. Some of them have also taken their own lives. I can't imagine that they thought being straight was worse than being dead.

The very thing that makes these kinds of incidents so common in kids and young adults (as opposed to, say, those in their 40s) is the very thing that devastates the victims so: immaturity and inexperience. I've heard bullies or other perpetrators express astonishment that their behavior was that harmful. They can't imagine why the victim didn't just shrug it off. S/he was too sensitive, they say. They feel that their behavior is "normal," and can't imagine being devastated by it. The victims, meanwhile, cannot imagine a reality in which they could shrug it off. They cannot imagine anything that would feel worse, and they can't imagine getting over or getting past it.

Sometimes, others make it worse by saying things like, "This is nothing. When you get older, you'll go through things that make this seem like a walk in the park." Hurting kids think, oh my gosh, why would I want to stick around if I'm just going to experience things worse than this? That sounds unimaginable and horrifying. What well meaning folks, usually older adults, mean when they give advice like this is, "Your current reaction is all out of proportion. In a few years, you'll see that it really wasn't the end of the world," but they often phrase it badly or are dismissive. They also fail to remember that often, this truly is the worst thing these kids have ever experienced or can imagine.

Think about a hungry infant. The child truly cannot imagine anything worse than what's happening right now. S/he is hungry! It's awful! They wail, they howl, and when the food comes, every fiber of their being relaxes. When the same child gets a little older, the wailing and howling is gone. The child has realized that the hunger doesn't last forever. Maybe they get moody or grumpy, but they don't shriek. By the time they're adults, they could be famished, but they'll be able to stand around a party making chit chat while they wait. They've learned that hunger is temporary and really not that difficult to cope with.

Teens and young adults sometimes can't see past what they're feeling right at the moment. Everything is magnified. Every pain feels like the end of the world.

I have little patience with people who tell me that adolescence itself, or the exclusion, teasing and outright rudeness that comes with it, is harder for gay kids. True, no one teases heterosexual kids about being heterosexual, but there's plenty of other reasons. Ask the fat kids, the special ed kids, the poor kids, the unattractive kids, the awkward kids.

It's totally socially acceptable to be obnoxious to certain kinds of people. Recently, while spending time with a teenage kid I truly like, one who usually champions the underdog and befriends the friendless, this kid made a surprising remark about a very portly individual who had just gone by. When asked why they thought that particular comment was appropriate, eyes rolled, and the explanation was, "It's not a handicap, it's a lifestyle choice." As a person of considerable mass myself, you don't want to get me started on the variety of ways other people have expressed their opinions about my size, from the outright obnoxious to the supposedly supportive. I'd love to say that behavior was relegated to those who haven't yet reached adulthood, but that would be laughably false. Many otherwise reasonable people see nothing wrong with that, either. They believe that I have chosen to be fat and therefore have chosen to be ridiculed, or they believe that their rude behavior is somehow helpful and motivational, and will cause me to change. After all, "it's a lifestyle choice."

What if something truly is a lifestyle choice? Does that mean that anything goes, behaviorwise?

That same reasoning extends to anyone who looks markedly different than the speaker's preference. I've seen clean cut, wholesome looking folks exhibit vicious behavior toward the dyed, pierced, outlandishly clothed set, and I've seen the outlandish ones heap vicious behavior upon the Cleaver-looking ones. After all, they reason, if you choose to be obviously different than me, it should just be a given that I will not only have a problem with that but that I will express this displeasure freely.

Ask any kid whose family doesn't have money how they're treated in school. For most of my life, I only owned one pair of pants at a time. When I was in 9^th grade, the boy who sat behind me in my science class pointed that fact out, loudly, every day. I was treated to comments like, "Don't those smell?" Gee, thanks, kid. I finally insisted on being taken to buy another pair – no easy feat when your household income consists of your dad's pension and your mom's 20 hour a week job. Hand me downs were OK with my dad, but buying secondhand was not, so new clothes were expensive. I made sure, for the rest of high school, to always own two pairs of pants, and to wear one on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and the other on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Sunday I wore a dress; occasionally I'd wear one to school, just to avoid wearing my pants.

Ask kids for their stories about what it's like if your family's on welfare, lives in a trailer or wears outdated fashions. Again, you'll run into that idea that if the kids don't want to be treated that way, well, their parents should simply make more money. They should also just expect to be teased and excluded – that's "just how things are."

This is not to say that the wealthy kids or popular ones get off scot free. Jealousy causes some truly abhorrent behavior. Ask any kid whose prized 16^th birthday car has been vandalized. Ask a cheerleader who's been the subject of rumors.

Religion is another magnet issue for intolerance and bad behavior. So, unfortunately, are physical handicaps, and mental disabilities often bring out the very worst in those around them. I am sure that everyone can instantly recall instances of mocking aimed at these kids, especially if their speech or movement is affected. Often, this too is seen as "normal" and in "good fun." Develop a tough skin, kids are told when they're hurt. This is just life.

I'm tired of hearing about what is "normal." Cancer is normal. It's afflicted humans (and animals) throughout history. All disease, filth, decay and death is normal. Does that mean that we elevate it to the status of desirable?

Now, in the wake of these recent publicized lost lives, when we should be trying very hard to pull together, I'm hearing and seeing another layer to the divisiveness that I've encountered for years. It infuriates me.

Now it is becoming even more acceptable to attack others based on their religious beliefs, if those beliefs include the tenet that homosexuality is wrong. That covers one heck of a lot of people, belonging to a whole lot of religions. Naturally, it's most prevalent, and most vicious, among kids. "It's the fault of people like YOU that gay kids are killing themselves," kids say to their friends, classmates and acquaintances, even if those kids have never done any bullying.

An LDS (Mormon) leader said, in a televised church meeting, that the church's stance is (and always has been) that homosexual behavior is considered sinful. Since then, things have been more difficult for LDS kids, especially high school students. "It's because of your church that people are committing suicide!" they're told. "Your church leaders are killing kids." "These suicides are your fault."

Wait a minute. Wait, wait, wait. It's OK for YOU to freely express your opinion, on TV, in print, in person, over the Internet, but it's NOT OK for people who disagree with you to do the same? It's not only acceptable, but encouraged, for you to say that being homosexual is acceptable to God, but it ISN'T acceptable for anyone else to say that it's abhorrent to Him? It's OK for you to say that the LDS religion, or any religion, is responsible for personal despair, but it's NOT acceptable for anyone else to say that your philosophy, your beliefs, are wrong?

I cannot tell you how often I pose these questions and people say, "Well, of course it's wrong to bully or attack someone, but I'm just trying to prevent more deaths." Never yet have I found a speaker who's OK being told, "Well, of course it's wrong to bully or attack someone, but I'm just trying to keep souls from going to hell."

If you think I'm kidding, find an LDS teen; ask them what's been said to them, and around them, at school. People are angry, and they want someone to blame.

A gay and lesbian group staged a demonstration, dressed all in black and laying on the sidewalk around LDS Church headquarters, "representing all the gay youth lost to suicide." Church leaders handled it with quiet grace, fully supporting their legal right to assemble. I wonder if a demonstration staged by religious youth, wearing chains and shackles representing sin and condemnation, would be similarly received around the headquarters of any gay and lesbian group.

LISTEN UP. Let us all be perfectly clear. It is not, and should not, be morally or legally wrong to disagree. Societies that forbid dissent or differing opinions are called totalitarian, repressive, dictatorships. WE DO NOT ALL HAVE TO AGREE. THERE IS NOTHING MORALLY OR LEGALLY WRONG WITH DISAGREEMENT. It should be possible to be civil to others, and to support their right to their beliefs and behavior, without sharing them. No one kills themselves simply because others disagree with them, or because others voice an opposing opinion.

It is imperative to a peaceful, productive future that we all get a handle on this simple, basic truth: we just treat those who disagree with us with the same civility and respect we would like to receive for our opinions.

If you can, and should, speak your mind, so should those who disagree with you. Civilly. Without name calling. Without venom.