Elucidating Questions

One of the things that really bothers me that they teach in school

Is that if someone does something to you, you’re not allowed to “retaliate”

Retaliate

It has such a nasty connotation doesn’t it?

Retaliate

Not self defense

Not correcting the behaviour

Retaliate

For instance a boy snaps a girl’s bra and she slaps him

She goes to the principal’s office for “retaliation”

The boy gets a finger waggled at them

I brought a stuffy to school in one of my first years in public school

I really didn’t get it

That public schools were a literal mad house of children exploiting exhausted adults

I didn’t expect the boys would take my stuffy and run with it

And when I chased them to get it back I ended up in the principal’s office for being “aggressive” and told it was my fault for bringing the stuffy in the first place

When I’d been doing home school since grade 2, never went to kindergarten, and had no idea that wasn’t allowed

Retaliate

Against comes next

Against

Right? That’s an aggressive stance

An attack

Not self defense

It’s bad and you shouldn’t do it

They were so wrong

They didn’t teach these children how to retaliate

How to utilise your tools to right wrongs that were done against you

And you know what? If someone is sexually or physically assaulting you physically fighting back is always acceptable

But they didn’t teach that

They taught us to accept the bad things done to us and if we were lucky an adult would come in and help

Without ever warning us that that possible adult would disappear

That when you’re out on your own, at your job, in your life

There’s no teacher and the police will be here in half an hour

They didn’t teach us how to stand up to bullies they told us to ignore them

They didn’t prepare us for a world where we would be able to fight for ourselves

Instead they prepared millions of people who would meekly accept most harassment and bullying because that’s what they’d been told to do

Companies and billionaires can do anything because no one knows how to stand up for the things than matter

They told us protesting was legal

Did they ever teach us how to protest?

Did they ever teach us how to stand up for ourselves?

No, because they wanted cattle, not foxes

They wanted swaths of yes men and push overs

They weren’t preparing children for university.

We had to be retaught how to write an essay in English 101

Most 101 classes were reteaching what primary and secondary school fucked up

And, of course, I now know what they knew but never said outloud

Most of those kids won’t finish secondary school,

They weren’t readying us for higher learning

They were readying us to be good, compliant, minimum wage workers

Your cities are run by kids who were told they were getting more out of life than they did

They were told they would be something and now Donna with the bitch cut tells them their place in society because she feels shitty about her life

It’s that whole sick “turn the other cheek” mentality

All Jesus proved with that is that doing so will result in you being tortured and then put on a cross

Dumbest philosophy in all of fucking history

No, no

If someone pushes you?

You get up and push back.