Point is that this is a controlled environment and I know that you're all joking.

If someone made fun of me for my disabilities in public, even if they meant no harm, I'd still feel humiliated.

Well that’s good to know, you vile piece of shit. Nice to see you’re still pouring your worthless opinions out onto this forum instead of going out and getting laid like a normal person, you fucking loser. Guess no girl would touch your rancid penis anyway, though!

Is that “a bit of banter”? Because that’s the kind of bile kids spew at each other these days.

Didn’t mean any of that, by the way. Just using it as a demonstration, sorry if I hurt anyone’s feelings.

For a second I thought I was on /a/

Well *sniff* I don't actually talk like that. I don't think any how.

And that’s exactly the problem. It’s easy to think it’s just a bit of banter, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be really hurtful from someone else’s perspective.

And today we all learned a valuable moral lesson about friendship.

Now let's go bake some muffins!

Why don't you bake some fagles. Cuz you are so gay.

Having Googled "fagles", I'm confused.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Fagles

That was actually far more elaborate than most kids these days can manage.

I've always thought ancient culture was kinda gay

notrly

Which brings us in a big fat flabby arc, gay =/= homosexuality any more so much as gay = being shit. And is that right? Since the whole gay = being shit definition stemmed from the fact that being gay used to = being shit.

'In the shit' would be more accurate.

You're trying to link this back to my 'retard' theory of a few pages back, right? Not going to happen; gay is still a common and socially acceptable word for homosexual men (and, to some extent, women too). Thus we have every right as a group to object to the derogatory usage.


Personally, I've been trying to reclaim the word to its original definition of 'happy'. Not much success so far.

Oh, that's what I sort of think, I don't really like it when people associate bad thing as 'gay' it doesn't happen so much any more now that the people I mull about with are a bit older, but it still persists, amongst girls more than blokes interestingly.

If someone acts like a douchebag in any situation without fail, and has a history with stabbing friends in the back, it's practically required that they're bullied to prevent that behaviour in future.

Also, being bullied is something that people have to learn to deal with one way or another, because in the working world it can get much worse. Not saying that's the way it should be, but how it is.

EDIT: Just remembered an interesting fact - the bullying was more the 'social exclusion' and the occasional verbal abuse than anything physical. He wasn't invited out to things after it was proven you couldn't trust him to not be a dick. We recently gave him a second chance to see if he'd grown up a bit, and invited him to a new years party.

He got drunk and started a physical fight with someone by randomly punching them in the eye, and had to be taken home.

Case closed. Some people just bring it on themselves.

I fucking hate the term banter, it's so over-used and is almost always a way of trying to get away with being a shit to somebody and passing it off as humour.

On the subject of gay being used all the time, I put it down to the fact that the people who throw it around don't know what it means. Not long ago me and a friend came across this rude 11 year old girl who kept calling my friend gay. Granted, he is very camp, but that's not the point. I started shouting over her, asking her what gay even means, and she was unable to tell me the meaning of it. She'd obviously overheard somebody say it and thought it was a good insult. It's ingrained in society as a way of trying to insult somebody, yet has no depth and real meaning.

Ignoring a person and not inviting them to social events isn’t bullying. Either you have your terminology mixed up or you’re being a shit to somebody for no good reason.

It makes be feel stupidly happy whenever I hear some old coot say "Have a gay old time." It's a good word.

The funny thing is, a lot of my friends are cast from a similar mould to me - you know, mature yet wilfully immature and all that shizzle - and they don't use 'gay' as a byword for naff. They still use it a lot, just jokingly calling their friends' sexuality into question. But since a few of our friends are actually homosexuals, they still do that to them, just reverse it. So concerning my GBFF Sam, they'd say something like "You're all a bunch of pansies - except Sam, he's well macho."

Not really going anywhere with this, just an observation.

Macho? Where do you hail from MM? XD

Middle-class utopia.

Government cuts are gonna hit you like a cock to the face. ;)

How relevant.

I tried to work in some homosexuality.

Without spinning wildly off topic, I do think that a lot of prejudice is subjective, so what offends one person won't offend another, and the fact that we live in a democratic society means that eventually someone is going to say something that offends someone else. People can kick and scream and throw a hissy fit about it, or they can take it on the chin and ignore them, especially when a lot of prejudice (e.g. racism) only makes the person speaking it seem thick.

"Bullying behavior may include name calling, verbal or written abuse, exclusion from activities, exclusion from social situations, physical abuse, or coercion." - Wikipedia, from;

Whitted, K.S. & Dupper, D.R. (2005). Best Practices for Preventing or Reducing Bullying in Schools. Children and Schools, Vol. 27, No. 3, July 2005, pp. 167-175(9).

&

Carey, T.A. (2003) Improving the success of anti-bullying intervention programs: A tool for matching programs with purposes. International Journal of Reality Therapy, 23(2), 16-23.

Yes it is.

So, hang on, let me get this straight. Exclusion from social situations is always bullying, all the time? Is this what you’re trying to tell me?

• Okay, so that guy I met one day that I hardly know? Gotta invite him to dinner otherwise bullying.
• A friend of a friend who I meet often but detest? Gotta let him come to the party otherwise abuse.
• That dude who got drunk and smashed my coffee table? Gotta invite him out clubbing next time otherwise infringing on human rights.

I think you’re using a very general description here which doesn’t necessarily apply to all situations. In fact, the idea of ignoring/staying away from people you dislike is generally encouraged as mature behavior.

In your case, not inviting some guy places because he was an absolute nightmare to be around is perfectly reasonable, and I don’t think anyone would really label it as bullying. (the verbal abuse not so much, but I digress.)

To take that incredibly specific example and use it as justification of bullying as being brought on by oneself, and something that should be encouraged is just wrong.

There's a difference between what bullying behaviour is and what bullying itself is.

He used bullet points. Let's beat him up.

From my understanding, it's by definition bullying. Fact is that a bunch of people from my school, including me, got chewed out by the deputy head for taking these actions against this particular person. Because he'd be upset by it, he'd go home and tell his mother, then she'd complain, then we got told off - and none of the staff seemed to understand that the reason we avoided him was because he was a genuinely unpleasant person to be around, and hell knows that the mother would never admit to raising a dipshit.

Also, on your last sentence - I'm not saying all bullying is brought on by the victim, but sometimes it's a case of acting like a dick and being treated like one for it

Sounds like the staff are a bunch of morons.

Sounds like some high school shit that I couldn't care less about.