Warning serious thread: Lessons learned from BB

[smoif]

*smoif wanders in, thinks she might start crying if she writes anything in response to this stuff....and wanders back out again to think about it some more*

[bethduckie]

Its the nasty comments on the 'kids' show- BBLB- that bothers me. Brand's show- well you expect it dont you? It bothered me in BB4 when Dermot asked 'Jon Tickle- is the joke over?' because it seemed so unnecessarily nasty for a teatime show. But after that it just seemed Ok for D to say what he liked however unkind/ untrue/ biased/ yada.

agree too the issue of bullying should be tackled. Lesley should have been booted for her treatment of Sam. Shahbaz- I'm in two minds about BUT there was bullying there that went over and above mere exasperation. Sort it out BB.

[ooohchicken]

Good morning all,

I have read this thread, and I totally agree.

The only way to get the message across is to write to LOTS of different people - and in volume. There has to be lots of e mails/ letters on the same subject. The people I suggest who should be contacted are -

OFCOM - they have a specific line for BB, but that is about the complaints of the premium telephone service, so ignore that one.

Bullying Online - e mail [e-mail]

Anti Bullying Alliance - [e-mail]

Your MP - very important - website is WriteToThem.com, you type your post code in and your MP comes up

channel 4 - email addy [e-mail]

Your local newspaper

The OP wrote our concerns very eloquently, so if she is in agreement, use that as the base for your e mail - DON'T COPY IT WORD FOR WORD, otherwise it will be ignored.

Once you have contacted these organisations, if you post on this thread that you have, we can see if how well we are doing numbers wise....

Don't forget to ask your friends to get involved and your kids (if they are old enough)..... my son is 13 so he'll be sending....

[jane72]

Excellent thread, Lyn, and I am in total agreement with you. Some great ideas, ooohchicken, I think those would be the best places to get this issue heard.

[lynw1]

Great replies one and all, thanx . There are one or two points I think we should seriously consider.

BattyBetty - Also, as Ais said herself, they have the right to edit the footage however they like. It's cr*p but I doubt its an avenue that would serve the purpose.
I think that sticking to the whole issue of the hyped up returning of former HM's and the BBBM debacle is the best route to take.

Yes this should be addressed I think, the BBBM show was so blatant, any ‘evidence’ of bullying in the house can be glossed over, but this cannot be there was clearly intent. It is not even about whether they did actually do anything it is about praising and encouraging the attitude and intent to do harm.

ODM If we are to fight against bullying we need to do so as a group feeling that way as a general whole. Not as a group who felt it for Aisleyne or even just because of Aisleyne. As none of us anyway could ever guarantee any backing from her..we have to be honest about this peeps...though I am sure she is a lovely woman, she may not have the time to consider this..who knows?

I agree to a point here, I don’t think we should pull Aisleyne into it unless she specifically wanted to, perhaps she may some time in the future. I don’t think it would do any harm to mention that we came together because of what we felt about the programme, but I don’t think it should be the driving force.

Oohchicken The only way to get the message across is to write to LOTS of different people - and in volume. There has to be lots of e mails/ letters on the same subject. The people I suggest who should be contacted are -

Bullying Online - e mail [e-mail]

Anti Bullying Alliance - [e-mail]

I think these would be a good way to start the ball rolling. On reflection, I think going to the ofcom, programme makers etc may be met with a great deal of resistance if we do so individually. Maybe we should contact the antibullying organisations Oohchicken suggested and assess what support we are likely to get from there.

DogTired. Maybe we should write an article for the website on bullying and get someone from the Beat Bullying campaign to write something also.

I think this is one of the first steps, maybe it will pull on even more support and gain more credibility and possible interest/publicity.

What does everyone else feel?

[slowie34]

OP, great post. Also battybetty came up with a good idea. I think that Ais doing a campaign against bullying would carry a lot of weight.

[slowie34]

I made complaints to BB, channel 4, and to ofcom about the bullying and incitement of threatened violence on BBBM but I have recieved no reply from any of them. I know that a lot of other people were horrified by this and believe that a high percentage of people who complained to ofcom also complained about this. It is a sorry state of affairs when concerns as serious as these are basically ignored. I am suprised at ofcom for not taking this seriously. The only complaints that they stated were about the voting, but most of us know that this is not the case.

[CazPar]

Count me in on this one. I've never known forums to be as bad as they have been this summer, and I can't help thinking that it is in part because of this glorification of bullying. I will be keeping a serious eye out for it at school when I start in September. Anyone found bullying by me will be told to "know yourself" in no uncertain terms!

I too have been sickened. However, I am not of the opinion that ignoring bullies makes them go away, but that giving them a taste of their own medicine is the best remedy. What a shame we're never allowed to do that.

[CazPar]

slowie34 said:

I made complaints to BB, channel 4, and to ofcom about the bullying and incitement of threatened violence on BBBM but I have recieved no reply from any of them. I know that a lot of other people were horrified by this and believe that a high percentage of people who complained to ofcom also complained about this. It is a sorry state of affairs when concerns as serious as these are basically ignored. I am suprised at ofcom for not taking this seriously. The only complaints that they stated were about the voting, but most of us know that this is not the case.

I'm sorry to say that I'm not surprised at Ofcom. I recently had cause for complaint myself after listening to a radio programme in which the principal of an art college and the interviewer found the stabbing of a science teacher quite funny. Ofcom did reply, but their reply was in favour of the programme as they did not think it was making a joke out of the violence, but out of the situation. Either way, as a teacher myself, I wasn't happy it was being made a joke out of during the school holidays on a programme which was being conducted by a well-known Brit pop icon presumably in an effort by this radio station to attract younger viewers.

I'm afraid that the bullies have it these days.

[beajie]

Sorry - long post, but it may help. I've posted some of this before. It's an extract from my book on female bullying. Again, soz about the length!


"Bitching. It’s such a shrug-off word. What’s our response to it? ‘Oh, ignore her. She can be such a bi@tch!’ “She’s a right cow, don’t let her get to you!’ ‘You’ll get over it!’ We say, ‘Girls will be girls!’ When our daughters come home from school and say that their friend isn’t speaking to them, again, or doesn’t want to be friends any more, again, or has found another best friend and they won’t play, the solution most parents resort to is distraction, a gentle shrug, a quiet word about getting another best friend, maybe, and meanwhile how about getting a DVD tonight?

But if we called it bullying, maybe that would change the perception? Bullying, sadly, is something we associate with physical injury, gang warfare, boys’ stuff, and the word itself is often defined as ‘picking on someone weaker’, something boys do in order to show off their prowess. But unlike boys, girl bullies rarely use physical violence. The method they use to establish their superiority is more brutal, because it’s furtive, concealed behind masks of friendship, as they whisper and scheme, spread lies and rumours, refuse to communicate with the outcast, and finally separate her from the social order. This is the psychological damage they’ve been taught to inflict. Withdrawal of approval.

Indirect aggression (hurting someone behind their back rather than openly), social exclusion (leaving someone out of a group of friends or refusing to speak to them), relational aggression (spreading lies and rumours to destroy their target’s relationship with others) – these tactics are difficult to identify and present an impossible task to those who may be more familiar with dealing with the kind of bullying which is physical, open and all too obvious. Boy bullies bluster, brag and lash out. Girl bullies plot and plan and sneak and whisper. This is a covert operation which proceeds by stealthy manipulation, but although this type of female bullying takes more time, it’s far more effective than a fist-fight. The target is left friendless and ostracised. And because the target is always a girl, and because girls value relationships above all else, the entire belief system of that girl is crushed and her self-esteem plummets.

From their earliest years, girls are more socially aware than boys. They develop patterns of compliant behaviour which earns them friends, with whom they gossip and share secrets. Nurturing relationships, making friends, rallying round to show support, caring for others as a way of showing emotional strength is what girls are trained to do, and their entire reason for living is to get on with others, and to have from others the support they give to you. But if your social network is destroyed by secret bullying and no one likes you, can you like yourself? Or do you begin to question your own worth, and go on questioning it day after day as the rumour mill grinds and more and more of your old friends turn their back on you? Bullying of this kind is slow, relentless, and horrifyingly cruel.

So who could do this to another girl? Psychologists tell us that the female brain is hard-wired for empathy, understanding how someone else feels, and actually feeling it yourself, deep down, like Shakespeare’s Miranda, the all-round uncontaminated female. ‘I have suffered with those I saw suffer’ said that empathizer. If this is so, and if psychologists are also right in saying that being empathic means that you can’t hurt someone else because you know exactly the kind of pain you could inflict and can’t bear to do it, the only way a girl could bully another girl would be if an emotion like fear or anger blocked her empathy, temporarily, then passed, leaving her with overwhelming feelings of remorse.

This doesn’t add up. Emotions like fear and anger are by their very nature temporary, aren’t they? Once the emotion has passed, then regret should follow. Yet the female bully can, and does, use her empathy to understand how to inflict emotional pain, and continues to inflict pain. Could it be, then, that female bullies habitually over-ride their fellow-feeling, because they’re continually in the grip of suppressed fear or anger? This question of empathy was the key to the first stage of an answer. If the female bully could shelve her empathy in a sustained attack on another female’s social and relational status, then the bully has to be so overwhelmed by fear, anger, hatred or jealousy, that she feels threatened by life in general, most of the time.

The common belief is that girls are bullied because of some vulnerability, because of some obvious ‘difference’ from the herd. They may be more shy than average, more bookish, larger or smaller than the norm, have some mild disability, be of a different race, religion or nationality, or wear unfashionable clothes. But when I started investigating this theory, experts in the field told me that many of the girls who were bullied had no discernable vulnerability, nothing that would mark them out as those who could be manipulated by the kind of secret aggression which girls and women use. There was no pattern in the type of target chosen by the bully. Therefore, there was little point in investigating bullying through trying to find similarities and patterns in the girls who were bullied.

But what if we’ve been investigating female bullying wrongly, trying to make it fit into the male pattern of stronger versus weaker, and therefore classifying the target as the one who is in some way vulnerable, out of step with the herd?

I’d come to a different conclusion all together. If female bullying consists of trying to destroy another girl’s treasured relationships, and if highly-developed empathy is the defining factor of being female, then it’s the female bully herself who is the odd one out, isn’t it? The female bully, for reasons known only to herself, feels vulnerable, afraid. And it’s that, and that alone, which makes her act as she does. "