Pheobe Prince's bullies sentenced

Just because people can feel emotionally harmed by any varying amount of stimuli does not mean that it is any less traumatic than physical harm.

I post the link yet again

edited 6th May '11 7:56:47 PM by MrAHR

People who don't have access to legal protection, or at least the protection of some authority are...in an unfortunate situation.

I'd rather risk the possible abuse of that over just wringing my hands at how terrible it is, but denying the purpose of the courts of justice.

The trauma they feel is irrelevant. What matters, to this discussion, is whether you can reasonably hold another individual responsible for it in a legal manner, in which case the wildly inconsistent sensitivity of different people really does matter. No matter who you are, getting hit causes real physical harm, but any given comment may devestate some people while leaving others totally indifferent.

EDIT BECAUSE YOU KEEP NINJA EDITING ON ME: Again, mental effects are not real physical effects, but a product/reaction of the person's own mind.

edited 6th May '11 7:57:57 PM by Wanderhome

But now you're assuming that a case is going to involve an off hand comment taken seriously as the default.

Which is highly unlikely.

Mental effects do not make them any less severe.

Case and point

edited 6th May '11 7:58:27 PM by MrAHR

I just find it deplorable that you can abuse and hurt someone repeatedly and still not be held accountable in any real way for your actions just because you technically never laid a finger on them. How many more generations of kids (not to mention parental, workplace, or domestic emotional abuse) with mental disorders or suicides caused by emotional abuse do we have to go through before we get a clue?

edited 6th May '11 7:58:23 PM by Jeysie

Actually there are tons of different levels of physical injury too.

Judges and juries, for example, have to make such distinctions all the time in personal injury claims.

If you don't think we can at all empathize with another human being's emotional state, and somehow decide what to do about it, then I wonder what you think advertising is about.

I really think you're reasoning from a premise that isn't congruent with either the state of the law, or how others are impacted. Instead, you seem to be taking an absolute hands-off approach that I feel is blinding yourself to the harm that will cause.

edited 6th May '11 8:01:16 PM by blueharp

No I am not. I am saying, as I have said throughout this thread, that verbal "abuse" can be hurtful to some people, but not consistently enough or in a physical manner that would justify legal censure of the act.

edited 6th May '11 7:59:07 PM by Wanderhome

If it's abuse, it's abuse. If it gets reported as abuse, it should be treated just as that. And be it verbal or physical, harrassment is a form of abuse.

I'm not saying there should be laws against it, just that it should be treated the same way physical abuse it, and however you think that should be treated is pretty much up to you, as I have no strong leaning towards one way or the other.

edited 6th May '11 8:00:39 PM by MrAHR

If you make one or two cruel comments, then yeah, you're just being a jerk. But if you go out of your way to try and make someone's life as miserable as you possibly can, and then, surprise, they're miserable and commit self-harm - some of the blame rests on your shoulders. Because you set out to make them miserable.

OK, with the analogy of falling down stairs. Maybe you pushed someone down the stairs because you wanted to hurt and humiliate them in front of their peers. They fall down the stairs, hit their head on concrete and die.

You didn't deliberately kill them. But their death is your fault.

Again, if verbal abuse were a crime, every nation on Earth would be a de facto penal colony.

I intensely dislike bullying, but I dislike authoritarianism just that little bit more.

Verbal abuse, like littering, can be a crime.

It's all a matter of enforcement.

I think you are exaggerating a bit.

I don't particularly know or care how abuse is treated by the legal system. I just think that it should be treated the same whether it is physical or mental.

edited 6th May '11 8:05:26 PM by MrAHR

Well, physical abuse is a crime, thus...

Then so should emotional abuse, especially something of this caliber.

So you are saying there should be laws against it.

I think Loni Jay covered it quite nicely.

I mean, to you folks saying "legislating verbal abuse is bad", I feel like you're not looking at it the right way.

Yes, having it against the law to just tell someone they're a doodiehead would obviously be a bad thing. But then, it's not a question of the sort of isolated incidents that just come with anger or humans being jerks to each other sometimes.

I, at least, am instead talking the sort of systemic, repeated emotional abuse that causes mental disorders or suicide. Where it's pretty clear that there's being a concerted effort made to hurt the person emotionally regularly and badly, even if the abuser isn't consciously thinking "Yeah, I hope Alice kills herself/goes insane!"

No. Just that if they're gonna have laws about abuse, they should make the laws avoid a Double Standard, method-wise.

edited 6th May '11 8:12:03 PM by MrAHR

Still risky. We're still in the "words cause actions" territory, and I know where that leads.

I admire your concern for the vulnerable, but I think your proposed remedy is misguided.

edited 6th May '11 8:24:49 PM by MRDA1981

Well, if there's some other effective remedy for not letting emotional abusers get off with a slap on the wrist, I'm sincerely all ears.

I mean, like I said, I don't want to legislate free speech. But I'm also getting really tired of seeing emotional abuse victims suffer, sometimes even lethally, while their abusers get no real consequences from it. There's gotta be a way to solve the latter problem without infringing on the former.

edited 6th May '11 8:21:04 PM by Jeysie

"And I'm saying I think it's perfectly correct to hold someone responsible for deliberately constantly emotionally abusing someone over a lengthy period of time. And ironically, you're just 100% proving my point why we need to: because people mistakenly think that emotional abuse is something that's no big deal and can never have any profound effects. "

I am not denying that some people overreact to being made fun of, so, no, I am not "100% proving your point." I am saying that if someone says something rude to you, then they're being a rude person, but that's not something that should be legally actionable. If it becomes a consistent pattern and you don't either learn to avoid talking with them or learn to disregard them, then the problem is your own lack of personal fortitude. The other person's still being a dick, but there's no reason you can't get over it.

"Actually there are tons of different levels of physical injury too."

Really, I never would have guessed. The point is that in all of those cases, there is a real, objective, physical detriment to the victim, which can be objectively weighed. That is not the case in emotional reactions.

"If you don't think we can at all empathize with another human being's emotional state, and somehow decide what to do about it, then I wonder what you think advertising is about."

Manipulation of other people emotion's to get them to buy something is not really the same as bullying them. In any case, I never claimed that people cannot empathize with each other's emotional states and react accordingly, but that such reactions and emotions are not of a sufficiently objectively definable and consistent nature that they can be ethically legislated.

"I really think you're reasoning from a premise that isn't congruent with either the state of the law, or how others are impacted. "

Actually, the applicability of laws on emotional "abuse" and the way people are affected by emotional matters are exactly the point I am arguing from.

"Instead, you seem to be taking an absolute hands-off approach that I feel is blinding yourself to the harm that will cause. "

Um, no. I am saying that the law has no place in governing people's words, or legislating penalties for emotional reactions. It is something that should remain on in the personal realm, where people should discourage bullying or rude language.

"I'm not saying there should be laws against it, just that it should be treated the same way physical abuse it, and however you think that should be treated is pretty much up to you, as I have no strong leaning towards one way or the other. "

Except it is not abuse, or at least not clear-cut enough a form of abuse to be legally controlled.

"If you make one or two cruel comments, then yeah, you're just being a jerk. But if you go out of your way to try and make someone's life as miserable as you possibly can, and then, surprise, they're miserable and commit self-harm - some of the blame rests on your shoulders. Because you set out to make them miserable. "

Maybe in some grand moral sense, but not in any really applicable way.

"OK, with the analogy of falling down stairs. Maybe you pushed someone down the stairs because you wanted to hurt and humiliate them in front of their peers. They fall down the stairs, hit their head on concrete and die.

You didn't deliberately kill them. But their death is your fault. "

Yes, because you actually did something to them.' You can tell someone "I really wish you'd fall down the stairs" all day, but that won't do a damn thing, because words cannot cause people physical harm. The person you pushed down the stairs is harmed because you actually, intentionally harmed them in an objectively definable action that you knew would cause them harm.

"I, at least, am instead talking the sort of systemic, repeated emotional abuse that causes mental disorders or suicide. Where it's pretty clear that there's being a concerted effort made to hurt the person emotionally regularly and badly, even if the abuser isn't consciously thinking "Yeah, I hope Alice kills herself/goes insane!" "

Once you get to the point where someone is systematically bullying you verbally, you should know that they are just being hostile to you. If you are so lacking in personal fortitude that you choose to harm yourself over it then it's your own damn fault. The very idea of holding one person responsible for another person choosing to harm themself is ethically and morally reprehensible. You may as well charge razor manufacturers because people cut themselves with their product. Either way, the individual who harmed themself is responsible for their own actions, yet you are punishing another for them.

We're running out of percentages on how you're proving my point regards how ignorant people are about the real effects of emotional abuse and how it actually works.

On this and Loni Jay's note, I think people are underestimating the degree to which bullying can disrupt someone's life. In Phoebe's case, the bullying was a pattern of sustained, pointed harassment, including stalking. It's not a sign of emotional fragility to feel scared and vulnerable in this kind of environment. It's pretty far removed from the occasional teasing or random insults that most high schoolers learn to live with.

So it's okay to rape someone if I don't cause any real bodily harm?

edited 6th May '11 8:33:27 PM by Penguin4Senate

If a parent were to provide for every physical need a child had and never hit them, and yet constantly heap insults and manipulations on them - never hug them, never praise them, always telling them that they're worthless, expect more than is physically possible etc - that child would grow up mentally damaged.

People have emotional needs as well as physical ones.

"And I'm saying I think it's perfectly correct to hold someone responsible for deliberately constantly emotionally abusing someone over a lengthy period of time. And ironically, you're just 100% proving my point why we need to: because people mistakenly think that emotional abuse is something that's no big deal and can never have any profound effects."

I think you're mistakenly equating the advocation of toughening up to dismissing the severity of emotional abuse. Advising someone to work on their insecurities is just as useful and infinitely more proactive for jailing kids who are in all likelihood too emotively immature to understand the full extent of their actions.

"I... dude. Just dude. You just made an entire post saying how you think emotional abuse isn't real abuse because you "didn't do anything to them", and how people who are harmed by emotional abuse are just too weak to suck it up.

We're running out of percentages on how you're proving my point regards how ignorant people are about the real effects of emotional abuse and how it actually works. "

No, you are saying that I am unaware of people deciding to overreact to bullying. I am well aware of that fact. What I am saying that if they fail to either learn to ignore people who they know to be hostile toward them, or at least find some way to get over it, then that's their own damn fault.