Hey there Guys,
today cyber bullying has hit the news again.
I work up this morning to see that one of Australia’s football stars, Robbie Farah, has been the victim of some particularly vile Twitter trolls. It appears that an anonymous tweeter had left a single message that was particularly nasty about his mother who had died in June this year.
This is of course on the background of another Twitter based harassment with TV star Charlotte Dawson being admitted to hospital with severe depression after a gang of tweeters had placed her into their firing line. Their tweets had been relentless and even offered the suggestion to “go hang herself”.
Both of these cases have attracted police attention and it’s great to see that they have been busy tracing IPs and using other forensic internet tools to see if they can find who had done these vile tweets.
Currently in Melbourne Australia legislation has been changed to address cyber bullying with “Brodies Amendment” with jail terms of up to 10 years as well as additional charges of stalking available if the bullying causes physical or mental harm or even the fear that it might.
The irony of this case is that the 4 men who tormented Brodie Panlock to the point that she threw herself off the roof of a parking lot never did a single day of jail time. All four were given jail time with fines ranging from $10,000 to $45,000 and the company that allowed the harassment to occur being fined $200,000 for providing an unsafe work environment.
All this despite actual physical abuse at the hands of the perpetrators, not just via the internet.
So today we have the police pulling out all stops to find a person that sent a single tweet to a Aussie football player.
My question is what happens for the young gay man who is cyber bullied on a daily basis?
Does Cyber Bullying Happen Today?
For shits and giggles I did a twitter search for the term “Faggot”. Why faggot? Well unlike the word “gay”, faggot has no wiggle room. It’s clearly an term of abuse and there is nothing a person using it can say to wiggle out of with a “oh no it doesn’t mean that anymore”. Faggot is offensive in anyone’s language.
“@sleazzyjay: Fuck English 4. ?????????” FUUCCCKKKK English 4 honors, writing SLU class with a faggot teacher ????????
— Savannah (@dearsossamon) September 10, 2012
Hate the Steelers but nothing like the hate I have for Cris Collinsworth #faggot
— Derek Baldwin (@DewAaaa) September 10, 2012
you son of a dickless faggot, i’ll rape your mother with a fork
— Atone The Underdog (@True_Underdog) September 10, 2012
The torrent of abuse is pretty much unstoppable with the word faggot being used in a tweet almost every few seconds.
So if you are a young gay man being forced to view this level of abuse I can understand why gay men and women are at double the risk of suicide, depression and anxiety.
While I think it’s terrible that one footballer got sent one vile tweet, let’s put this in perspective. Young gay men and women are being bombarded with this shit all day long, every few seconds, and that equates to more than 43,000 offensive, cyber bullying tweets a day.
Perhaps in good news one of the AFL’s biggest internet trolls Jason Ackermanis has deleted his twitter account this weekend but not after one final jibe.
I care Jason. I care.
Have you been the victim of cyber bullying or homophobia?
Please feel free to share your thoughts below.
Yours in good health.
Dr George
If you are worried or seeking support and information about suicide you can contact Lifeline on 13 11 14, SANE Helpline on 1800 18 SANE (7263) or beyondblue within Australia.
Richard I went through the same things and found other gay men to be the bullies when it comes to weight issues with bears and cubs often being bullies because we face lots of discrimination. But there also comes a time to start seeing the other person has the problem. On face value though important to work on being healthy you have to see it’s their problem. It’s not your issue and as for someone saying you have a nice face pity about the body pity them,
I have been the victim of cyber bullying in the past, hell I’ve probably even “cyber bullied”. You know what I do, I block the tweet, delete the email, remove the post from Facebook and/or just turn off the computer and walk away from it.
From the moment I was born I was bullied. I was bullied by my own older siblings. When I entered school, I had to put up with the particularly vile taunts about being fat. That continued through school, until my mother died. Then I was teased about her in Year 6 and taunted about her death.
Then when I entered high school, I had to put up with two lots of bullying. One in which I was consistently called “fatty boomsticks” and the second in which they started calling me “fag”. You know what hurt the most? The adults just chose to do nothing about it. In fact, some of them even encouraged it, especially the fag taunts.
When I became an adult, I was still taunted about being a fag and about being fat. Until recently, I was being bullied by a very well known Sydney doctor about being “morbidly obese”. You have no idea how that much hurts when it’s been thrown at you your whole life.
One day, when I was at the Blacktown Haven for HIV+ people, a fellow gay man sat across from me and said “nice face, pity about the body”.
Quite frankly, I have zero sympathy for the likes of Charlotte Dawson. Her and her kind are exactly what fat people like me have had to put up with our whole lives. She’s shallow at the worst extreme.
As for the footballer, yes, it’s awful what happened to him. I had to put up with the same at the age of 10. It’s fucking vile is what it is. I just don’t think making it illegal will do anything. There will still be bullies out there. They will still be hosting next top model or talent shows on TV. They will still be in our militaries and parliaments. They will still be leading our religions. What are you going to do, outlaw everything a bully could hide behind?
I don’t think that legal avenues is going to be the pathway to fix this problem.
Being open and bringing these vile creatures out from behind the computers and into the light normally makes them shrivel up in the light of day.
The more people are able to talk about this the more that individuals are not left to suffer in silence.
Thanks so much for sharing your story mate. I hope you are going ok.
Not really George. Like I said, in the online world, you can literally switch the machine off and walk away. It’s the real life stuff that does the real damage.
I will forever be scarred by the bullying that I’ve had to endure over my lifetime. I will be honest and say that there have been many times where I have been tempted to take my own life.
The gay community is particularly of no real help. They are some of the biggest bullies around.
I will survive though. In part, thanks to the bullying I have had to endure, it has made me a stronger person. Now I just get bitterly disappointed in humanity.
Does it still hurt when someone says something nasty about my weight or my sexuality, absolutely. Do I find it offensive, absolutely. Do you see government ministers rushing to my aide and vowing to end bullying in the real world……absolutely not.
Apparently, you have to be someone in this world in order to get any (I was going to say sympathy, but politicians are incapable of that) assistance.
Before the government tackles online trolling and bullying, I would like to see them rid this country of bullying and trolling in the real world. I want an end to school bullying. I don’t want another child to have to go through what I had to go through. I want an end to the likes of Jim Wallace, Alan Jones and Andrew Bolt being able to treat people with contempt. I want an end to the likes of Charlotte Dawson, Alex Perry, Kyle Sandilands who pick on people to make money and a name for themselves.
Of course, all these people matter because apparently they are “somebodies” and I’m “nobody”. The hypocrisy of it all makes me sick.