Now just hang on a second...

I promise not to become a one-trick pony, going on and on about bullying in general and my son's (in fact both sons') experience of it in particular. However, there is something I need to get off my chest.

I have received a lot of support via Twitter, Facebook and email regarding the nightmare that is my son's life at the moment. For this I am deeply grateful.

On Twitter, I attracted the attention of Bullying UK, who sent me an email, giving me a list of escalation steps we can take, such as putting things in writing, going to the board of governors, then to the LEA, involving the police if appropriate, etc. All very useful, practical stuff. And it is good to feel that we have support in this. But there was one section in the email which jumped out at me:

See if your son can invite other boys home so that he has the chance to make new friends, once he has other people to go around with at school the bullies may keep their distance.

Maybe I'm reading more into it than is really there, but the phrase 'other boys' would imply to me that the assumption is being made that the perpetrators are boys. In fact, one of the ringleaders in this case is a girl. The alpha female of his cohort.

Did you just have a moment of "Oh, well that's different, then"? Many people would. When I mentioned to a friend recently that my son's chief tormentor was a girl, he was surprised. For a split second his face bore that look of "He's getting beaten up by a girl?" But this is a whole different kind of beating up. One that girls may even do better than boys. The truth of that dawned on my friend, and we discussed the preconceptions that exist.

Let's look at this. We're not talking about 5 year olds, or even 11 year olds, here. We're talking about 17 year olds. At a school with a catchment of high achievers from 'nice' homes. These kids have moved far beyond bloodied noses in the playground. The physical component of their abuse is subtle and deniable. Shoulder barges in the corridor, a bunch of them poking him with their badminton racquets and then saying it's because he doesn't answer when they call him. But they call him over and over and over. Several of them. All at once. In several lessons. All the time. If/when he finally explodes with a "WHAT?!?!" they all pack up laughing. If a teacher says anything encouraging to him, they make sotto voce remarks about how weird he is, or how he isn't actually that clever.

It goes on and on and on... and this kind of stuff is just as much within the reach of girls as boys. One of his teachers assured me that he should simply blank her, that she would get what was coming to her. Not in any vindictive way, but simply in a sense of reaping what she had sown. I don't really draw comfort from that. I'm not looking for revenge. I'm looking for resolution.

To give them their due, none of the teachers have adopted an attitude that this is less serious, less damaging, less hurtful, less anything because one of the chief perpetrators is a girl and the victim is a boy.

Bullying UK has twittered me just this morning to say that in 90% of cases, bullying is a same-gender practice. I wonder whether that's really true or whether boys bullying girls is treated as sexual harassment and girls bullying boys goes unreported because of the greater stigma attached to the acknowledgement.

Drew Buddy (aka Digital Maverick) sent me a link to this video from Digizen. While it addresses cyberbullying, and focuses on slightly younger kids, the story it tells is very much like my son's.

I can't promise that that will be the last mention I make of this situation. But I would like to move off the topic. I feel imprisoned by it, too, and it's twisting my gut.

So, on to other things. Let me see if I can find a Friday smile....