Last Friday the Young Women's Leaders Program at UCF hosted 5 elementary schools and three middle schools for a "Leading Out Loud (L.O.L)" workshop that was created to empower middle school girls to help stop bullying in elementary and middle schools. The audience of the workshops consisted of 5 elementary schools (both boys and girls) who participated in activities and games that advocated for school safety and students’ potential to “stomp out school bullying”.
The American Association of University Women awarded UCF's YWLP a grant to create and promote this workshop along with other efforts to help stomp out bullying among young girls and boys. Bullying has evolved in the past 15 years through the development of technologies that makes it easier to do, immediate, and online anonymity absolutely makes bullying more accessible to those who would not normally do it face-to-face or over the phone. "Cyber-bullying" is when a child, preteen or teen is tormented, threatened, harassed, humiliated, embarrassed or otherwise targeted by another child, preteen or teen using the Internet, interactive and digital technologies or mobile phones. (stopcyberbullying.org). This definition necessitates minors instigating against other minors or minors being on both sides of the conflict or otherwise the name of the offense would be cyber-harassment/cyber-stalking. The change in rhetoric based on age places cyber-bullying as a less threatening and less traumatic offense than cyber-stalking even though it may be exponentially worse in practice.
When bullying is accepted as a normal but unfortunate part of school, as it so commonly is, it also dulls its seriousness. This then translates to boys and girls not reporting issues of abuse and bullying to adults or friends. According to the AAUW “Crossing the Line” executive summary, “girls were more likely than boys to talk with parents and other family members and more likely than boys to talk with friends”. This inability of boys to talk about bullying or report is detrimental to all bullying because, as students police other students and therefore reinforce gender stereotypes as puberty progresses, boys would typically be the most able to stop bullying if the threat didn’t loom over their heads that much more. Even though bullying and harassment is more likely to affect girls and be performed by girls, boys are expected to take the path of least resistance in order to not be emasculated.
According to the AAUW “Crossing the Line” executive summary, sexual harassment differs by legal definition but is just as prevalent is middle and high schools. “Sexual harassment by text, e-mail, Facebook, or other electronic means [affect] nearly one-third (30 percent) of students. Interestingly, many of the students who were sexually harassed through cyberspace were also sexually harassed in person” (exec summary). Harassment and bullying are strongly tied to the high school and middle school experience and as technology advances and new outlets are created for virtual communication, harassment takes new and harsher forms. Therefore, efforts to null or stop this destructive behavior need to address both and all avenues. The YWLP LOL workshops taught young students how to spot, speak out against and prevent bullying in their schools. They were taught to find a teacher or an adult or call for help when they witness something or to speak out themselves and not take the path of least resistance. These in-person tools also theoretically translate to online prevention.
The AAUW executive report further explains “girls were more likely than boys to be sexually harassed, by a significant margin (56% vs. 40%). Girls were more likely to be sexually harassed both in person (52% vs. 35%) and via text, e-mail, Facebook, or other electronic means (36% vs. 24%).” According to another AAUW report, girls are more likely than boys to be cyber bullies. This cycle of “girl hate” and trauma experienced by young women disproportionately makes them more vulnerable online and therefore perhaps less likely to explore the boundless possibilities of helpful resources and revolutionary girl-power that may be found in the virtual world.
Throughout the day, the middle school girls were nervous about leading workshops. The middle school girls are “little sisters” in the Young Women’s Leaders Program at UCF and were put in charge of creating their own workshops and creating campaigns at their schools to help stop and prevent school bullying. Due to the dominance of technology, the girls focused a lot on preventing cyber bullying or fighting back against cyber-bullying. This topic of online bullying is hardly ever touched on in traditional anti-bullying lectures regardless of its increasing prevalence. It’s very important to reach these young boys and girls in the terms that they are most familiar with and have the most agency over. If one ignores the internet or technology as a factor in any situation in the coming generations, they are ignoring a crucial aspect of life.
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