When I was in fifth grade, my teacher — a woman I respected and loved dearly — took me out into the hallway and told me that I needed to grow thicker skin. I was being bullied, and I was rather vocal about the mistreatment from my peers, but it’s much easier to deal with a student who is quiet about their suffering than one who isn’t. Boys will be boys, after all.
She would be very proud of just how thick my skin has become. No thanks to her advice, of course, that’s a terrible thing to say to a 10 year old.
A few weeks ago, an anonymous someone wrote “F*CK U, F*G” on the whiteboard I keep on the door of my dorm for self-promotional purposes. Their motive for doing so is unclear to this day, and, all in all, it was truly a baffling move considering Whitman’s policies around discrimination and the fact that my dorm is situated right next to the Resident Director’s.
If their intention was to upset or scare me, they failed spectacularly. Really, the most upsetting part of this is how little “oomph” they put into it. “U” instead of “you” creates a laughably fragile image of nonchalance, completely shattered by the all-caps they wrote it in, and if they really wanted to rattle me, they should have started the sentence with language stronger than the trash talk my friends use when I win a game of Magic: the Gathering.
My pet theory is that someone read an article of mine, and it made them so mad that they had no choice but to look me up in myWhitman and write something mean on my door. It’s rather affirming, as a journalist, to think that a piece of my writing affected someone so deeply that they had no choice but to try to hurt my feelings.
The other theory, though less validating of my skill in the opinion section, was that someone saw the lesbian flag visible from my window and got really mad. They then rushed into my dorm hall, ran to where they assumed my window was, checked to see if I had a whiteboard and pen, and frantically made sure that I knew an anonymous member of the student body is a homophobe.
Either way, all it meant was that I got a new story for my arsenal of anecdotes and a killer article topic.
A huge part of my lack of concern is that I know whoever wrote it would never say anything like it to my face. They were shielded by the power of anonymity. If they’re reading this article, they’re probably telling themselves that I’m just so upset I can’t help but write a whole opinion piece about their insult.
Perhaps I am the fool for feeding the trolls, but I think behavior like this should be called out for how pathetic it is. Calling out incidents like this helps to foster a community that’s pleasant to live in, which helps everyone. Being a bully isn’t acceptable behavior, and the person who called me a slur knows that. That’s why they stayed anonymous and why they didn’t write something worse.
My fifth-grade teacher would probably take me out into the hall again and remind me that I’m getting bullied because my bullies are all hopelessly infatuated with me. That, if I just ignored them, they would leave me alone.
Sucking it up and growing thicker and thicker skin does nothing to stop bullies. They don’t care. They’ll keep picking and picking at the scabs until something bleeds.
It’s embarrassing, as an adult, to get so upset at someone else’s identity that you can’t help but try and hurt their feelings with elementary school name-calling. It’s juvenile behavior that, by now, we should have all grown out of.
