A bully at a school in Illinois scrawled the word “fag” on the neck of a seventh-grader in permanent marker, forcing him to spend all day tattooed with the slur.
“He was resting his head on his desk and a boy wrote it on his neck,” the boy’s mother told KTVI News. (We’ve chosen not to include the victim’s name.)
“I saw it when he got home and called the school after taking a picture of it. He did not know it was there, but all the kids were laughing at him. It was written in permanent marker.”
How could his classmates have noticed it but teachers and administrators didn’t?
How about we take this to the next level?
Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
The boy was also the victim of an assault in the bathroom, when students kicked in the stall door and kicked the boy in the back. “”Urine got all over him,” says his mother. “It has really changed him into someone who tries to get out of going to school. It is heartbreaking for me.”
School officials at Mason Clark Middle School in East St. Louis, IL, say the incidents were investigated “and the students responsible were immediately disciplined according to district guidelines.” They also promise the victim will be monitored to prevent further acts of harassment.
We know it’s wrong, but we’d love to see some Old Testament justice meted out to the brats responsible: How small would you have to write to get “I am a worthless piece of crap who will peak in high school and go one to live a live of quiet desperation” on the back of someone’s neck?
Scribe38
Best thing my father ever done for me was put me in taekwondo as a first grader. It taught me at an early age how to throw a punch and not to be afraid of getting punched. Even at that age my father realized that I was most likely gay and that there were people who were were going to try to make my life hard because of it. I never sought out fights but if you crossed a line with me I would hurt you and make it public enough to so you never wanted your friends to see you get beat up by a gay-kid again. I feel really bad for what happen to this young man; he has a right to just be himself (gay or not), just wish he had socked the a$hole bully in the nose one good one for the next gay kid.
Scribe38
Btw my nephew is showing some serious hints that he is gay (overheard him telling his cousin he doesn’t have to like girls, because his uncle doesn’t). Other than showing him a successful example of a long term gay relationship, I signed him up for martial art classes. It seems to have given him the same inner strength that it gave me.
Gigi Gee
I used to get bullied when I was a kid. The guy was two years older than me. He’d follow me home from school every day. He’d trip me and push me and call me a fag. One day I saw him waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs that led to the door and I just SNAPPED! I jumped on him, knocked him off balance, threw him onto the floor, and smashed his head on the floor over and over again. A teacher broke it up. Took me to the principal’s office. First and last time. When he asked me what happened I started to cry. Told him about the bullying. Told him I’d had enough. He gave me a pat on the head and told me he understood. The bully got called in and he got the strap. Had to hold out both hands and got thwacked with a leather strap. You could tell it hurt. He cried. Never touched me again.
Tommysole
I was bullied every time we moved to a new town and started a new school………Which was often.
So I had to make an example out of the ass that bullied me. Kick him in the nuts and stomp his face when he rolling around on the floor in pain. Never got bullied again. Suspended yes! Bullied no.
Stache1
Bullies are like animals. They move in packs and look for someone weak (prey) to prove their manhoods.
Bean
I think I must be the only gay kid (fat, too) who wasn’t bullied in school. I had to wait for the adult world for that. Seems kinda backwards…
Ferallove
@Scribe38: I endorse the punch square in the bully’s face and then his mother can give him a whooping as well. Some people don’t learn until they get their ass whooped by the person their bullying.
LaTeesha
Bullies are bullying our kids to death. Literally. It’s time we fought back.
JeffNYC
REPORT IT TO THE POLICE!!!!
Assault and battery are a crime, and this is a number of criminals attacking the same victim.
I personally called the Chief of Police and left a voice mail message.
The number: 618-482-6724.
Let’s use the power of social media to force justice in this case!
Get involved! Remember Matthew Shepard!!!
stfallon1028
How distinctly Babylonian. I’m with the writer of this piece and all for going Hammurabi’s code on this preteen piece of shit and grafting “asshole” or “jerk” on his forehead. Of course, it’s in poor taste to stoop to this slime’s level so I will close this post with a song lyric:
Bullies are people who hate themselves, abused at age six or molested at twelve, so they pick on others isn’t it odd, because their real quarrel is with GOD….
boring
Should have written “I HAVE A VERY DESENSITIZED NECK” on his neck.
I mean, if a breeze hits me the right way, I think it’s a spider and start slapping the tickled area.
JeffNYC
Commenters: do something, the way you say you want to! Call the police and insist that this crime be reported! Number is 618-482-6724, in my original post.
Challenge to you folks commenting: you say you’d do something, so I challenge you to do this.
Throbert McGee
boring: Are you suggesting that the kid wrote it himself? Maybe so.
However, I wouldn’t assume that the kid ISN’T being bullied… sometimes it’s hard to produce evidence of the bullying, so he might’ve been tempted to fake some evidence in order to get help from adults. I know there are cases of adult “activists” spray-painting homophobic slurs on their own property as some sort of pathetic, Munchausen-ish stunt to get sympathy. But I doubt that’s what’s going on in this case.
Anyway, I heartily second Scribe38’s endorsement of martial-arts training. But understand that it’s not always about ACTUALLY punching the bully in the nose while the crowd cheers, and all that Hollywood B.S.
Rather, your self-confidence in your own ability to withstand a punch and strike back with an effective counter-attack can make you carry yourself in a subtly different way — and bullies may be more wary of targeting you in the first place.
MuscleModelBlog.com
How horrible! Like the first poster said, how could the teachers and administrators not notice anything?! That is the most shocking thing. This just shows once again that bullying is a serious problem in schools and needs to be dealt with.
Geoff B
We need to hear about this as horrible as it is. Some of us didn’t have to go through it for various reasons (I was 6ft and 200 lbs by 8th grade and my partner’s family owned their town while he was growing up) so some of us didn’t know this was happening. Thinking back to our younger days in middle and high school 20some years ago, I can’t help but think this went on back then without the benefit of the Internet. I never noticed this going on and am haunted to think this happened back then, but if I’m honest, I’m sure it did. I hope the gay kids I knew back then are okay now and I’m sorry I didn’t know what I know now to try and help them.
Merv
Actually, it says FA, not FAG. It’s probable he was writing FAG, but it could have also been FAT or FAIRY. Or maybe the mom had already washed off the G.
Bean
Oh, well, as long as it was FAT or FAIRY instead of FAG, that’s okay. Totally cool. No more outrage.
wtf?
Also, if you take a fraction of a second to look at the photo’s caption, the news source that the picture came from has obscured part of the word.
Merv
@Bean: Thank you, I missed that part. I guess I take issue with the news source then, first by lessening the impact of the slur by obscuring part of the word, and second for doing it in a way that is not obvious (they could have used a black rectangle instead of a blended skin-colored overlay).