Teen Girls Face Charges After Beating Video Shared Online

in internet on 2014-03-30 19:06 (#3H6)

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) has reported on a potential case of cyber-bullying in Beloiel, Quebec . In a modern twist on high-school interactions, two girls took turns beating and mauling a boy in their school parking lot while the other videotaped the confrontation on a cellphone. The boy chose not to fight back. When posted to Facebook, the video got thousands of views.

Sgt. Harry Wadup of the Richelieu-St-Laurent municipal police force said the girls are facing charges relating to issuing threats, assault and inciting violence.

While bullying does happen in many settings, and bullying in school is something we have all likely witnessed or experienced, what is the motivation for sharing bullying videos on the internet? What can an understanding of the problem do to help potential bullies not go down the "bullying" road?

Devil and the deep blue sea (Score: 5, Insightful)

by danieldvorkin@pipedot.org on 2014-03-30 20:07 (#W1)

Boys in this situation have no good choices. If they fight back, they'll be crucified for "hitting a girl." If they don't, they're wimps who got "beat up by a girl." The main difference between this and the unknown number of similar cases is that the girls were dumb enough to publicize it.

Re: Devil and the deep blue sea (Score: 3, Insightful)

by quadrox@pipedot.org on 2014-03-31 08:38 (#W6)

I realise that there is a lot of truth to what you are saying, but assuming that the boy has the physical ability to fight back, he could do two things:

1) Try to hold them off without actually hitting them.
2) Run away

Of course it depends on the exact situation - but there is a difference between being beaten up by two girls (implying helplessness), and two girls trying to beat up a boy - in the latter case the boy might still be hit/injured, but there is a slight difference.

Not sure what my point is.

Re: Devil and the deep blue sea (Score: 4, Informative)

by vanderhoth@pipedot.org on 2014-03-31 11:24 (#W9)

That's pretty much the same thing. If he touches them, even if it was just to block or restrain them, he's fighting a girl. If he runs away he's a wimp for not standing his ground. I don't know with all the gender equality if it's more acceptable in the younger generation for a boy to fight a girl than it was for my generation, but I remember a fight in junior high where I ran from a girl and was deemed a coward. It would have been an easy win for me, but I was *always* taught not to fight people smaller than me or girls. Personally I think what this boy did was right, he stood his ground and took the beating, which after seeing the video wasn't that bad. Just not fighting back was the best thing he could have done. Had they pulled a weapon on him, which I've seen happen, he'd be well within his rights to beat them to a pulp.

I live on a street behind a high school and see this exact same thing, and much worse, happen at least once a year. I have a security camera pointing to the end of my driveway because my trash had been vandalized so many times. The camera usually shows it being vandalized because someone's being pushed into it and the bags are used as projectiles.

I've seen fights between individual boys, groups of boys on one boy, individual girls, groups of girls on one other girl and, more rarely, groups of girls on one boy. When that happens it's usually a guy hanging around with his friends, smoking, playing hacky-sack, etc... and group of girls surround him, while the other guys just look on. Most of the time the guy does fights back and the fight takes less than a minute. It's almost like young girls have forgotten that boys have a physical advantage, by high school age. Maybe they're counting on that as some kind of a devious plot to get a couple bruise and have him suspended/expelled/arrested.

In some respects it funny to watch a bunch of thug girls think they can take on a boy and act tough until he starts swinging back, then they drop like flies and bawl their heads off. Unfortunately it's never funny to see the results of a serious fight. I have see a girl really badly beaten after pulled a knife on a boy. He spent a good ten minutes just kicking her in the head after she was knocked to the ground. I have a pretty good working relationship with the school administration because of the garbage issue and frequently hand over videos to them when a fight's gone too far.

Re: Devil and the deep blue sea (Score: 3, Informative)

by quadrox@pipedot.org on 2014-03-31 13:29 (#WB)

Ah, I didn't realize the video was available in the article (or at least parts of it). From what I can tell the boy did as I wrote, and he didn't really get beat up as such. Sure he got hurt, but he was clearly able to walk away with no trouble at all (note: I did not watch the entire video).

Re: Devil and the deep blue sea (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-08-12 22:43 (#3TT)

The guy in the video wouldn't have stood a chance against that girl if he had tried to fight back and the girl obviously knew that judging by how confidently she kept walking up on him and pushing him around before she actually started beating him. The girl wouldn't even let him leave. She grabbed him and threw him on the ground. She was clearly stronger than he was, she knew it, and she wanted to humiliate him. That's why she posted the video of her beating him up to facebook. I feel bad for that guy. Something very similar happened to me last year. I drove to a friends school and one of that schools volleyball girls didn't like that I parked where she wanted to park. I knew I was in the right so I didn't move and she proceeded to knock me on the ground and beat me up even after I apologized to her and asked her to just let me leave. I tried getting her off of me and I couldn't. She was a 5'8'' volleyball player who lifted weights. The guy in the video looks like he was pretty much dealing with the same thing.

Re: Devil and the deep blue sea (Score: 2, Interesting)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-03-31 13:41 (#WD)

Been there. The only thing you can do is block and hope they don't get a lucky hit in or escalate. In my case one of the girl's brother came over and tried to kick the crap out of my because his sister and her friend attack me. Right. Attacked me. In front of everyone. Unfortunately for him I put him down hard and fast. Still copped a lot of flack for 'fighting girls'.

Re: Devil and the deep blue sea (Score: 1)

by rocks@pipedot.org on 2014-04-01 01:13 (#WX)

As the rights of women to be strong or masculine rises, at least in some parts of the world, it is interesting to ponder that the rights of men to be weak or feminine has not risen equally. It would seem that changing stereotypes and assumptions is not a zero sum game that is always in some sort of balance.

Re: Devil and the deep blue sea (Score: 2, Interesting)

by vanderhoth@pipedot.org on 2014-04-01 11:08 (#X1)

Actually an overly feminist friend of mine posted a story on my facebook page about how we need to stop telling our boys to "man up". Reading the article was like driving screwdrivers into my eye sockets. The whole premise was we use things like "your such a girl" as an insult thus we're implying that women are weak and a suitable insult, but instead of saying we should expect our girls to be more emotionally stable, intelligent, hard working and strong we should expect our boys to be more like our girls. That's to say we should let our boys to be emotionally vulnerable, tell them it's ok to fail and *require* someone else to help them.

Why The Men's Rights Movement Is Garbage

I'm really not ok with that. I don't understand why instead of expecting *more* from our girls we should be expecting *less* from our boys.

Re: Devil and the deep blue sea (Score: 1)

by rocks@pipedot.org on 2014-04-01 17:30 (#XK)

I like your point, we should expect more from each other, male or female. However, here are two concrete examples from my life which feel more nuanced.

My very young son loves to dance, ideally I would like to put him in dance classes, maybe even ballet to learn the excellent technique. I quite likely won't though because I fear the stigma for a boy in dance classes more.

A husband of a friend is currently under-enemployed. She brings home the money and does most of the domestic stuff. He is deeply embarrassed to not be providing money for his family but is quite hostile to asking for help, especially from his wife, even if it could result in employment. Helping with the domestic stuff may not heal his sense of worth to his family either

There may be more to being a man than current conventions allow. It's not just about allowing weakness in some frail sort of way, I suspect. What do you think?

Re: Devil and the deep blue sea (Score: 2, Informative)

by cubancigar11@pipedot.org on 2014-04-02 07:19 (#Y0)

I find that a broader point about what is feminism - is it a philosophy/way of life, or a result of your genital organs/hormonal differences - is generally missing in these types of discussion. I have found out that a good way to tackle this problem is to understand that feminism (today) is a collection of competing ideologies that sprung up from women suffrage and its precursors.

For example, the identity of men is derived from a lot of... "tropes", shall I say. For example, office politics is said to be a "men's game", often by men. They will ask a phd student to "man up" and accept loss when his professor steals his work. Often it will be women saying "it is a man's world" when they see shitty country level politics. Thus, you get both men and women referring to politicking as a masculine trait. This is gender bias without a doubt, with 'feminism' being defined as a philosophical difference. "An employee is the boss' bitch and the manager is 'The Man'".

Then we have "sexism" where women are considered poor at maths, lack voting rights because 'they are prone to mood swings and irrational behavior', and until very recently lacked the rights to fight for their country because 'they are physically weaker'. Now, women in general ARE physically weaker, but it cannot be a basis for discrimination because of a lot of men are a lot weaker!

The feminist friend of GP was referring to the first type of discrimination. Look here for a TED talk by Tony Porter about it. It is not about 'expecting more' from both men and women, it is about removing this idea that 'delivering less' is girly (which GP possesses, sorry dude!). It is important to accept that a lot of boys DO get beaten up and that there shouldn't be a shame in getting beaten up by girls, there should be pride in standing up to a bully and shame in being the person who beats. Asking a parent/police to intervene shouldn't be talked about as being 'bitchy' and 'complaining like a girl'. That IS the right form of protest.

If you think about it, the philosophical difference is being called 'feminism' purely because your choice of words. If we didn't call politicking a "man's game", we wouldn't be fighting based on sex but we would be fighting over our collective worker's right.

Re: Devil and the deep blue sea (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-08-18 02:47 (#3YE)

I'm a 45 year old man and for most of my life I would have disagreed that a woman could overpower a man until a drunk 21 year old woman at the bar mistook me for someone else and started fighting with me a few months ago. Unfortunately I havn't worked out in years and I forgot how strong 21 year olds can be...needless to say the woman schooled me, owned me, and actually sent me to the ER. We live in a day in age where women, especially young women, workout, a lot. I can attest I learned the hard way that a guy who doesn't work out is going to be weaker than a woman who does. I've since started working out and doing some weight training however I am in no way advocating hiting a woman although I think it's equally wrong for a woman to hit a man assuming he can "take it." In my case the woman pushed me up against a wall and I wasn't physically strong enough to stop her. I could tell by the smile on her face that she even realized this. She even asked me how it felt "to get owned by a girl" once she had me pinned against the wall. Unfortunately she punched me before I could try to talk her out of doing anything more which kind of took me by surprise. I went down with her second punch. Sadly the woman still didn't think that was enough and kicked me in the face when I tried to get up. Fortunately she had barefeet so it wasn't as bad as it could have been, but after that kick, I was out. Not a spot I ever want to be in again. Having been in this spot though, I don't see any problem with a guy reasonably defending himself (if he's able) but only to the point he can get away and prevent a woman from beating him to a pulp.