Keep posting, bubba. I love revealing your solipsism and prejudices, or rather helping you display them for everyone. Again, your attitude is part of the societal attitude problem portrayed in this heartbreaking article. Your words, to wit:

Not that it's easy or a kid should be expected to magically do this without some support, but yeah, basically. Really, take it out to a more abstract level. If you are facing hostility you can either fight back, or you can fold.

The key is in your first sentence, which pretty much directly contradicts the last one. Do you have a 12 year old facing this shit who you're going to tell to just "toughen up?" You have no fucking idea what you are talking about. "Fight back or you can fold?" This is not the middle ages. You really feel that after-school brawls are the way to settle this sort of stuff? You don't talk much about what you think should happen to the bullies, you just condescention for the child victims. These are children. Thank god you're not running a school system.

You are saying that when gay kids get bullied and kill themselves, it has nothing to do with them being gay, emotional-fortitude-wise. What do you base *that* opinion on?

No. You made the assertion, you back it up. But FWIW I have known plenty of gay people and I have never found them to be any more "sensitive" than anybody else. That is what I base it on, as well as being completely unaware of any scientific documentation for your assertion. Every gay person posting here is calling you out on this. Your prejudices are showing. You haven't the faintest clue of what a gay persons' "emotional fortitutude is".

But it's not surprising that you think some people are so much more "sensitive" than you... you're an insensitive dick who wants 12 year olds - 12 YEAR OLDS - to "man up."

Are gay kids killing themselves in higher proportions than nerds or whatever? If so, I call into question whether it's because they get bullied more than other groups.

You "call into question" and therefore it must be true that they don't get bullied more than other groups. You conflate two issues here, that of being a gay and that of the bullying problem. Focus on the fact that the kid who hanged himself DID NOT IDENTIFY AS GAY. He was 12 years old for chrissakes. The kids who picked on him used homophobia as the method to torment him. That is my experience also... remember the part where I told you that I am not gay either? That is the point of the Day Of Silence.

You don't know whether this child was more "sensitive" than others, you don't know whether he was gay, you just see fit to lecture others about your own half-baked ideas of bullying and "being tough" and the "emotional fortitude" of gay people. Your ignorance and prejudices could not be more obvious.

I at least thank you for reminding me why I joined the Day Of Silence Facebook group. "Man up" to the fact you are talking out of your ass.

Your use of sweeping generalizations is surpassed only by your ignorance. Gay people are more "sensitive" and that's why they are so upset by bullies? Is the corollary that heterosexuals are less sensitive? What is the basis for your assertions?

You don't have to answer. You pulled it all out of your ass. You obviously have no fucking idea what you are talking about, just a bunch of half baked prejudices and theories about what goes "screwy" in the womb to make someone gay. Attitudes like yours are PART OF THE PROBLEM.

For the record, I am not gay, but I was relentlessly bullied and called a fag from 7th grade practically until I graduated high school. I was 12 when the bullying started. I was one of the skinny, unpopular kids who didn't fit in, and I can relate to the kids Ms. Harding is writing about. You're going to sit there and tell me that they just should have been tougher? Fuck you, you have no idea what it's like at an early age when you don't even understand your sexuality to get beaten up and laughed at by ignorant, homophobic jocks.

Yeah I got over it. Not without some scars. Some kids don't get over it. The problem is not with the kids. It's the bullies.

I am father to a young son. I will be damned if I am going to let him inflict that kind of misery on other innocent boys, or tell him just to tough it out if it happens to him. It is not OK, and it has nothing to do with being sensitive, you asshat.

Wow, your posts are so dense with clever epithets, raw contempt, race baiting and fear of the pantheon of conservative enemies with which conservatives always seem to be obsessed that I really can't follow WTF you are talking about.

Are you aware that you come across like a raving, reactionary paranoiac? Or was that your intention? WTF does any of this have to do with the Paglia article? Maybe I should just read more of your incisive wit to find out what set you off. But I'm sure you'll tell us.

Keep posting brother, remind us why the GOP deserved to lose... again and again ha ha :-D