cosplay does NOT equal Consent

I think there are a couple of distinctions that I need to make abundantly clear.

Questioning the wisdom of the actions of one person is not equal to condoning the actions of another against said person.

Questioning the same said actions of a victim does not in any way absolve the victimizer.

Yes, they should be punished, and punished severely. One person made have had a lapse in judgement. The other perpetrated a deplorable act.
 
I think there are a couple of distinctions that I need to make abundantly clear.

Questioning the wisdom of the actions of one person is not equal to condoning the actions of another against said person.

Questioning the same said actions of a victim does not in any way absolve the victimizer.

Yes, they should be punished, and punished severely. One person made have had a lapse in judgement. The other perpetrated a deplorable act.
I don't think anybody really thought you were defending the bullies in this story?
 
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The whole "They should know better" or "It's just asking for trouble" just bugs me. There's no reason anyone should be afraid or hesitant to display their passion. I know you don't condone what the bully did, but it adds to the fear or insecurity people may have about themselves and who they are.
 
The whole "They should know better" or "It's just asking for trouble" just bugs me. There's no reason anyone should be afraid or hesitant to display their passion. I know you don't condone what the bully did, but it adds to the fear or insecurity people may have about themselves and who they are.
In a perfect world, I agree with you. Unfortunately, we don't live in a perfect world.
 
Schools should have a zero tolerance to this shit. Initiate a fight unprovoked? Expelled.

Watched this fight happen without intervening? A week suspension.

Caught mocking the situation on social media or elsewhere? 3 day suspension.

Bullying shouldn't be accepted in today's social norm.

Everyone is far too accepting of it and everyone makes the wheel of excuses. Simply put, a person shouldn't be physically attacked for ANY reason on school grounds. If someone sees this happen, they need to be implicated. Standing there and watching it happen is too convenient. And talking shit about it is douche as hell.
 

figmentPez

Staff member
Schools should have a zero tolerance to this shit.
Sadly, they have the wrong type of zero tolerance policies. To the point that students who raise their arms to block punches are considered to have been fighting, and are suspended alongside their attackers.
 
I am basically opposed to zero tolerance anything, because people are too stupid to use it properly.
 
Sadly, they have the wrong type of zero tolerance policies. To the point that students who raise their arms to block punches are considered to have been fighting, and are suspended alongside their attackers.
When I was in high school, this kid in my class came up and sucker punched me and started wailing on me for no reason. I defended myself with minimal damage, but ended up getting suspended for 3 days.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
When I was in high school, this kid in my class came up and sucker punched me and started wailing on me for no reason. I defended myself with minimal damage, but ended up getting suspended for 3 days.
Hrm. You're older than me (not by TOO much), but I got much less punishment for fighting in school, even when I was the obvious aggressor (or at least threw the proverbial first punch). Granted, once I got out of Jr. High there wasn't much fighting going on any more, but I never got suspended or even detention - they did call my parents however, each time.

Funnily enough, the most a school ever punished me was when, in Jr High again, a friend of mine got caught with a Porno VHS and blabbed that he got it from me. All the faculty involved seemed amused (compared to the stern seriousness they displayed when there was fighting) but I got a week of in-school-suspension.
 
Of course, I was really the only one punished. I loved going to school. For him it was 3 days off, for me it was 3 days I hated.
 
I've been in exactly 3 fights during my entire school career.
I started none of them, and was a willing participant in only one of them. I received no discipline for any of them.
However, I did get 3 days off school for hitting a teacher with a paper airplane. That was my only non-attendance-related disciplinary incident.

--Patrick
 
I was in exactly one fight in my high school career. There were a lot of guys who liked picking on the short chubby Asian guy. So one day I grabbed one of them, kneed him in the abdomen, and left him crying on the ground. Got one day of after school detention for it, and no one ever bothered me again.

I don't know why I'm sharing this story, it seems awfully irrelevant to the discussion.
 
haha we all had our moments, mine was in my junior year I cracked a guy right in the throat and collapsed his trachea by accident while he had me in a hanging choke hold against a wall.
 
This is what I hate about our bullying discussions. It always turns into some weird geek-therapy, then it turns into stories about the glory days when you beat up 14 armed men in the hallway after class.
 
the glory days when you beat up 14 armed men in the hallway after class.
Honestly, I relate my experience because I thought of it as atypical. To hear some people talk about their lives, if they didn't get their nose busted at least once a week, it was because they were back in the hospital recovering from surgery to remove the bullets.

--Patrick
 
I had a post on just how much I don't like the argument about "she should have known better, she shouldn't have dressed like that," but there was no way that I could phrase it without comparing Bowie to some unsavory characters, and I like Bowie - he's a cool guy, and could never do that to him.

Suffice it to say that this is complete bullshit, and whether she ought to have kept her head down and below the radar is irrelevant: I have precisely zero time for bullies, for various reasons, and God help the ignorant fuck that I catch bullying ANYONE.

I can bully, too.... just ask Charlie.
 
I had a post on just how much I don't like the argument about "she should have known better, she shouldn't have dressed like that," but there was no way that I could phrase it without comparing Bowie to some unsavory characters, and I like Bowie - he's a cool guy, and could never do that to him.

Suffice it to say that this is complete bullshit, and whether she ought to have kept her head down and below the radar is irrelevant: I have precisely zero time for bullies, for various reasons, and God help the ignorant fuck that I catch bullying ANYONE.

I can bully, too.... just ask Charlie.
Well yeah...you are a cop, the definition of your job is to bully the bullys. ::grin::
 
I had a post on just how much I don't like the argument about "she should have known better, she shouldn't have dressed like that," but there was no way that I could phrase it without comparing Bowie to some unsavory characters, and I like Bowie - he's a cool guy, and could never do that to him.
It's hard to talk about common-sense expectations without getting the blame-the-victim vibe going, even if it's unintentional.

Strong-arm robbery is a crime. If you walk around the inner city in some large metropolitan areas with money hanging out of your pocket, you can expect that you'll get robbed because of it. I could do the same in my current hometown and feel perfectly safe.

Getting beat up on for being different was common in the school systems I grew up in. It's not right, and I'm not trying to lay any blame on the cosplayer in question. But perhaps it's not that surprising, either.

While it would be nice if everyone could go about their lives unmolested by the people around them, reality is a bit less fair. The kind of assholes who rob and beat people tend to care less about social niceties and rules than the majority of us, and it pays to be cautious when you're in an environment were you are likely to run across that type of person.

That said, I fully support laying the harshest appropriate punishments on the attackers.
 
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