So did you "like" Blue Pinky Promise on facebook?

Please check out the campaign against bullying, Blue Pinky Promise.

When we teach our children submission we teach fear: Fear of bullying. Fear of social stigma. Fear that begins when we teach them that if they don't immediately comply we will spank them (or as my family often said if a child cried at being stifled, "Be quiet! Or I will give you something to cry for.")  just as the man who taught the little girl who dared say "No" when he placed his hand on her and threatened, "Don't tell me No!" And if she continued in her "No" what had she clearly learned to expect would follow next? I know, spare the rod and spoil the child. But for what? Submission to the bullies of this world?

Yes, I know there were perhaps extenuating circumstances, the man had other children to watch?  He was doing the best he could? We have all been there. I of all people know the guilt of not being the parent I wish I had been. Yet, such time-honored tactics as the man and many of us display  really do condition children to "their place" in the continuum of the gender apartheid. Parents too often teach through bullying.  And as many of us know for those so inclined bullying often culminates in physical and sexual violence. Just this week on Right_This_Minute.com (Fox TV) they showed a video of a girl being seriously beaten up by another girl at school to the point that the police were called and perhaps the video was evidence that "things just went too far." I didn't mean to.. is not a viable excuse. We have long experience with excuses and know that to paraphrase, "the path to hell is paved with excuses proclaiming our good intentions."  

And yet, isn't that what a society says when bullying in general is a societally acceptable means of domination, is in fact the norm? We say"I didn't meant to...  Things just went too far"  Isn't that what we say about date rape? We say that about the gang rape of  the young men targeted at a teen drinking party? (young males self-styled "Masculine" males like Arnold Schwarzenegger persist in referring to as "sissy-boys") And then there is, of course the very recent findings of the NFL investigation
which found that Ignacio and two others did indeed bully and harass Martin. In fact, not only Martin was targeted but another player was harassed with homo-phobic taunts while an assistant coach from another country was treated to racial epithets creating a culture of harassment and bullying. Predictably Ignacio's attorney now tries to blame the victims. He denies and excuses the results of Ignacio's behavior as misinterpreted, as unintended. Suddenly the bully whimpers, claims he is the victim of lies and  unfair bullying! (Shades of the attack on Dylan Farrow's Open Letter.)

From all sides there is great pressure to say some version of  "Boys will be boys!" shrug and then go on with our lives thus teaching our children, both boys and girls, that it is their problem to avoid the bullies, be passive, be submissive and don't put ourselves in harms way (or just learn to be worse bullies and "stand up for yourself." )  It is as though the girl on the video should have fought harder or (better yet) have stayed home from school that day, or every day, or sucked up better, been more submissive because a bully is waiting....for both boys and girls targeted, not in the NFL, but very close to home.

The girl targeted by the bully was afraid. She tried all those submissive things she was taught. In the video she attempted to leave, tried to avoid the confrontation,  (tried all the submissive tactics we teach children to avoid bullying after we have taught them submission by our own female gender conditioning.) but that girl's attempts were all to no avail.

And, what really struck me was that although other students watched, shouted, videoed the entire incident and then up-loaded it onto the internet, none of the girls present stepped forward singularly or en-mass to stand up for the girl who was being beaten up by the bully. Perhaps out of righteous fear that they might be next, they too joined in scapegoating the victim.

How many reading about the difficulties Dylan Farrow experienced just reporting her own experience of sexual assault as a child, or reading about accounts of  the on-going trashing of her mother Mia Farrow, or the denials of the powerful,  felt they too should remain silent, not speak aloud of their own experience as a parent or as a child out of fear? From that how many learned the safer way would be to stand aside? How many learned the lesson that to come forward and self identify as a victim of sexual violence is to invite trashing?

How many people (spouses, children, both boys and girls) whose lives have been seriously harmed by a sex offender never the less feel obligated to remain silent out of fear? How many mothers learned not to stand up against husbands for fear of a beating or a trashing albeit on perhaps a lesser scale in their own homes, at work or at church? And how much of the hurtful trashing comes from other women championing the offender out of the very real possibility that they (like the girls who witnessed the girl being beaten up at school) fear they might be the next  scapegoat targeted?  Just so, learned helplessness makes cowards of us all.

We could counter the teaching of submission to our young children one child at a time just as Evie Pruett vowed in a recent blog right here on Not the Life I Chose. Why not begin at home? The is an anti-bullying program on line, (begun and supported I think by the company that makes Secret, the Deodorant for women.) The recommend the Pinky Swear as a secret sign against bullying. Why not do as their program suggests? Why not choose to paint our own and our child's Pinky Finger Blue as a sign of your solidarity against bullies and bullying? Why not invite OUR own children to join OUR secret club? Why not teach children about the Blue Pinky Swear? For the Blue Pinky Swear empowers each of us as individuals and, in a crisis, a Blue Pinky identifies those around us who support each other against bullying of any kind. 

Seeing our own or someone else's Blue Pinky might even be an on-going reminder to each of us not to threaten our children, not to teach our children automatic submission to us or any adult who might wish to touch them, threaten them sexually or otherwise. It might remind them they can talk to us, might even protect them from someday being threatened into silence. Our actions might protect a child, perhaps even our own child,  from being bullied into submitting to sex (even in some attic with only a little train set as witness, as was the case for Dylan Farrow.). I say, "Valentines to Mia for her courage!"

You may visit Blue Pinky Promise and decide if you want to adapt the program to your own needs, perhaps at home, perhaps with your daycare provider, or perhaps at school.


If you choose to sit down with your children (boys and girls) to paint Pinky Fingers Blue it might just be the first courageous act in a concrete plan to teach our children that we do not stand for bullying, that we are able to protect each other, encourage confidences, let our children know we want to know what happened. But of course then we would have to deal with bullying and bullies in a different way ourselves because we too were taught that to be accepted, we had to "voluntarily submit" to fathers and husbands and boyfriends and coaches and pastors ....  We would first have to stop being passive, have to change our own mind-set for many of us were also taught a required submission, just as we are now teaching submission to our own children as a way to avoid getting hurt...again and again...even more. Like the girl in the video. Like Dylan Farrow. Like Mia...

Why not stand with each other instead of trashing all the other Mia's, mothers who "had to have known?" We could support anti-bullying programs at day-care, at pre-school, at school, and most importantly at home. No matter what happened before, Why not teach our children, male and female that the goal is not to simply become the most dominant Alfa Female or the greediest Alfa Male, not to be the biggest bully at home, in school, in church, in the community, in business or in the military! The goal is to take back our equality, to stand with others and most of all stand with ourselves and our children. So, go research the Blue Pinky Swear and then buy some sparklie blue fingernail polish and sit down with your kids. Let me know what you think. Boys can have blue pinky's too! Boyfriends can join the club as can trustworthy fathers.... and grandfathers all those interested in growing an equal world.   So, do your research, decide and comment, please.


https://www.facebook.com/BluePinkySwearAgainstBullying‎?  Against Bullying  Of all kinds!