“Heroes, Villains, and Me” is a periodic article on Geeky KOOL by Larry Litle about the world of comic books and my reaction to it. “Heroes, Villains, and Me” is not a comic book review article. I will write about current events, speculation and rumors, or my own wacky thoughts about the world of comic books.
Happy New Year 2017! We have transitioned to a new exciting year. I hope to post a “Heroes, Villains, and Me” article weekly during 2017. We will start off this weekly article with my thoughts on Bullying, especially in the geek/comic book community.
Last fall, my 15-year-old daughter was bullied. She was not bullied by the typical mean girls from the movies. My daughter is both a cheerleader and a band geek. On the day of Football homecoming, she was at early morning band practice. Four members of the band ganged up on and through dirt all over her and her light blue cheerleading outfit. They didn’t like her because she is in both the band geek world and the cheerleading world. This devastated my daughter on this important date for her as a cheerleader. She was able to get cleaned up and eventually had a wonderful homecoming. But the pain of being bullied still lingers with her.
My daughter was bullied by kids who typically are the target of bullying. My daughter didn’t use her position of cheerleader to bully others. She is one of these band kids. All that these bullies saw was a cheerleader and not a girl who loves both band and cheerleading.
The geek community, especially comic book geeks, used to be continually bullied. If you were a geek, you tried to keep it on the down low so you wouldn’t get beat up. Carrying a comic book out in public, was a cry for negative attention. Bullies loved to pick up geeks because we were an easy target.
Nowadays the geek community is much more accepted. Being a Geek has almost become a popular thing. In our acceptance, we have developed our own bullies. We have people that want to limit who can be a comic geek or computer nerd or a fan of science fiction or comic movies.
We have seen extreme examples of this in the geek community over the last few years. We had the stupid “Fake Geek Girl” movement where some thought a female needs to prove their geek cred. Things became much worse with “Gamer-Gate” when female programmers lives were threatened.
We just got out of a campaign season where bullying by candidates and their supporters was way too frequent. We have seen tons of examples after the election. People on both sides calling names and trying to intimidate others. Some have gotten physically attacked for being a supporter of that candidate (seen examples of both sides).
It is time for us to commit to stopping the bullying. We have to stop it in our circles first. We must commit to calling out our fellow geeks when they begin to intimidate and bully others. We cannot allow bullying and intimidating to become normal and accept part of our life. Join with me and stand against bullying.
Stay Geeky My Friends!
