Bullycide of Rutgers Freshman

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When I first read this story, I was just absolutely appalled and horrified. As I read more about it, though, I started to wonder if maybe the victim had some other underlying issues. I am fairly certain that he WAS out, and even had a comment about kissing boys on his facebook profile. I have also read that he was not having sex, he was making out with another guy. While this would unquestionably be a very embarrassing situation, I guess I just don't think it would be QUITE as bad to have a video of making out when everyone knows you are gay anyway. I don't know. That just doesn't seem suicide worthy in my opinion. Now, if no one knew he was gay and all of a sudden he is having gay sex on the internet, THAT I can see an average kid turning to drastic measures because of embarrassment, shame, etc. Not making excuses at all for the Rutgers kids (they sound like scum) but if someone had put a video of me making out with my college bf on the internet, I would not exactly have gone and killed myself. It would have been very upsetting, but not jumping off a bridge upsetting. I do think there was a level of personal responsibility here with the victim in regards to the choice that he made, that has to be addressed.

But this is EXACTLY what we can't expect of bullied children and teenagers. Children and teenagers are not good long-term thinkers. They are impulsive. They are irresponsible. They are not good at thinking "this will blow over and my life will go on, this is only a little incident." This is why bullied gay teenagers tend to kill themselves.

You have no idea what you would have done if this had happened to you as a teenager. You are looking back through the lens of adulthood, with totally different cognitive skills, different values, and different emotions. You are not a teenager.

There is only one person I know who regularly uses the word "lens" in their conversations. In the past this individual has had limited empathy for others unless there was a vested interest involved. Maybe it's only a coincidental use of a common phrase, but OTOH perhaps PP is the same individual and somewhere along the line they have changed. If this is so, they and their entire community will have been enriched.

Most of us at one time or another have met with cruelty and if not us personally, many of our ancestors have been mistreated. Sadly, people seem to have the duel capacities of being able to vividly recall the unfair treatment that they or theirs have endured while at the same time dishing out abuse to others. Or in some instances people can allow themselves to passively standby refusing to intervene while others are abused or belittled.

People are funny like that.

This is a poor attempt at paraphrasing, but anyway. If we observe abuse and we do nothing to stop it, who will stop it when they come for us?

[Anonymous]

http://gawker.com/5651659/is-this-webcam-spying-victim-tyler-clementis-last-call-for-help

I just read the piece on the gawker site where they show comments that Tyler most likely made on a gay site asking for advice on how to handle his roommate. He sounds surprisingly well-grounded about this which makes his suicide so much more mysterious. This just drives home the fact that we can't expect teenagers to act like adults. He sounded like he was handling the situation but he obviously wasn't.

It's not always so obvious that a person is going to commit suicide, especially teenagers. We need to all pay attention.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:One thing that we need to remember, most of the "outings" that I know of were done by other gays, very shameful thing to do either way.

Really? I'm a lesbian and the people I've known that were outed (when they didn't want to be) by their straight friends/family. The only time I've seen outings by a gay/lesbian person, it involved a politician or mega-church leader.

And why does this matter to the conversation?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I hope his roommate does go to jail. In a twist of fate, perhaps he will become "gay for the stay"

Educate yourself about prison rape. Two wrongs don't make a right. I can't stand when people respond to crimes with this sentiment.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:One thing that we need to remember, most of the "outings" that I know of were done by other gays, very shameful thing to do either way.

Huh? Most of the outings that you know of? Are you an expert on the phenomenon of gay teenage outing? I doubt it. There have been four suicides of gay teenagers in the last month, and none of them were outed by their gay peers.

And as another poster pointed out, what relevance does your point have even if true? Even if the two other teens were gay -- which we know they were not -- what does that matter?

[Anonymous]

Haven't read the rest of the posts, but this story is so incredibly sad.

I'm actually a Rutgers alumni, and I can't believe this happened there.