Editor's note: Carrie Goldman is the author of "Bullied: What Every Parent, Teacher, and Kid Needs to Know About Ending the Cycle of Fear." Follow Carrie on Facebook and Twitter.
It was the post that launched a thousand geeks, and then 5,000 tweets.
Over the next weeks and months, I read a near-constant stream of
e-mails, letters and messages from people around the world who wanted to
share their own stories of bullying and peer victimization. The story
touched the collective nerve of a very motivated and tech-savvy group of
people, who took my daughter in as one of their own. My husband and I
like to say that we were the first ones to adopt Katie, and the self-proclaimed geeks and nerds adopted her six years later.
The kindness of strangers
to our family served as the catalyst for my transition to full-time
work as an anti-bullying advocate. After interviewing hundreds of
people, including parents, teachers, kids, bullies, victims, bystanders,
researchers, psychologists, lawmakers, celebrities and social workers, I
wrote a book about why bullying persists in our culture and how we can end the cycle of fear.
Carrie Goldman, center, moderated an anti-bullying panel at San Diego Comic-Con.
But even within geek
culture, there is still a vast amount of peer victimization, harassment
and bullying. The gaming industry has been plagued by a hotbed of
vicious attacks -- male gamers versus female gamers and hardcore gamers
versus casual gamers, with issues of misogyny and homophobia and
discrimination coming to the forefront of our collective consciousness.
Within cosplay, people attack each other over myriad issues: Is the
costume authentic? Does the person have the right body shape or
ethnicity for the chosen costume?
The roles of bullies and
victims can sometimes be blurry, especially when someone who was bullied
as a child grows up to be the aggressor. In a world that likes to
simplify goodies versus baddies, bullying dynamics are not always so
simple to deconstruct.
Comic-Con is widely
revered as the mecca of pop culture conventions, but it had never hosted
a conversation directly about bullying. Just as parents, kids and
communities are talking about social cruelty in schools and online, I
wanted to keep the discussion going among geeks and nerds. We need an
opportunity to reach the content creators and ask: How can we respond to
messages of bullying perpetuated by entertainment media while retaining
dynamic narratives in music, movies, video games and comics?
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Two years ago at the first GeekGirlCon, I met Chase Masterson,
who played Leeta during the final five seasons of "Star Trek: Deep
Space 9." Masterson has mentored kids in gangs for many years, and she
views bullying prevention as a passion project. "There's strength in the
knowledge that countless bullied kids, who have felt so hopeless, have
overcome that pain and have rich, fulfilling lives and relationships.
And people who have been bullied have a unique ability to become
compassionate voices, leaders and champions over oppression; the
potential for healing to conquer injustice is huge," she explained.
At Comic-Con, Masterson and I debuted the newly formed Anti-Bullying Coalition
to lead conversations about a wide range of bullying issues. How can we
get society to stop blaming the victim? How can we create safer spaces
for GLBT kids? How do we empower kids to speak up for others who are
being victimized? How do we raise children who are neither bullies nor
victims?
The questions flew back
and forth, bandied about by Coalition members such as No H8 Campaign,
the United Nations Association, Cartoon Network's Stop Bullying: Speak
Up, the Anti-Defamation League and GLSEN. At one point I stood back and
looked around, equal parts grateful and amazed to be part of the
discussion. Surrounded by people in elaborate costumes, listening to the
noise and excitement, I recalled the moment 32 months ago when I was
just another worried mom, wondering how to help my kid. That moment led
me here.
Comic-Con is serving as a
model for other conventions by addressing the issue of bullying. There
is space for fun and games as well as tackling the more serious issues
that affect convention-goers. Comic conventions provide a common forum
for those with passionate -- even obsessive -- interests, and the same
people who were once taunted for dressing as Superman in school are now
celebrated as cosplayers at a con.
Indeed, some of the strongest voices of support for Katie came from the 501st Legion,
an international charitable organization dedicated to creating exact
costume replications of characters from Star Wars. When Katie mentioned
that she would like to be a Stormtrooper for Halloween last year, the
501st Legion put out a call to action, and members worldwide donated
parts for a miniature set of armor. The Midwest Garrison assembled the
costume and presented it to Katie in a ceremony that ended with her
hugging Darth Vader. After Katie outgrows the armor, we'll donate it
back to the 501st so it can be passed to another child, most likely
through the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
Katie, who is off at sleep-away camp, was unable to attend Comic-Con. But she was with me every step of the way.
Late Sunday afternoon,
in the final hour of the final day of the con, the first-ever
anti-bullying panel took place. From the moment I posed the first
question to writer Jane Espenson
of "Once Upon a Time" and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," to the very last
comments by Masterson, the room was full. Every person stayed. Within
hours of the panel ending, tweets were already coming in from people
asking us to bring anti-bullying panels to other pop culture
conventions. Leaders in the geek community are spreading the word.
I think back to the
first moments of the panel, when I said to the room, "Raise your hand if
you still remember a specific incidence of being taunted from more than
a decade ago." The sheer number of hands in the air served as testimony
to the power of hurt feelings to linger. From now on, Comic-Con
convention-goers will come for cosplay, entertainment, freebies,
autographs -- and healing.
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