unfortunately in transformers ’09 they just devoted half the action to megan fox running so all the teen guys could see her cleavage bounce up and down (although being female i didn’t notice this until a male friend pointed it out). plus, i hate movies where they write gibberish on the blackboard that supposedly solves some mystery of the universe

Why do students treat each other in such a terrible manner? The short answer, I think, is that high school is a really messed up social atmosphere. The students don’t really have control over their environment, and so create a status system where at least some get to feel powerful. Being mean to some students can actually help some other students to maintain their popularity, and to avoid getting shut out socially themselves. The jocks and preps don’t even necessarily hate the people they pick on, either. It’s like they’re playing their own game with each other, with the other students as props, trying to avoid losing status.

I think there was a lot going on at Columbine, not just revenge against the “cool kids”—but I also know that those guys acted out a fantasy that was shared by victims of peer harassment around the country. In the long run, though, I think the way victims develop a hatred for jocks isn’t really helping us. It’s bad enough that “the cool kids” use other students like props in some big game, but what does it do to us if we do the same, or worse? I’ve seen people who’ve become so bitter about the way they’ve been treated that they don’t trust men at all, and that they treat women like props or prizes themselves. (Notice that in the examples from the blog post above, a lot of times that geeks lash out at jocks, it’s actually the jocks’ girlfriends who end up getting described as beaten, killed, or won like trophies.) After a while, carrying around all that resentment can give us a messed up sense of what other people are like, and can sometimes make it hard to interact with anybody at all.

I hope I can reassure you a little bit, at least, that things do get better afterward, and that the people who are being so hateful to you now are just people too. College and workplaces just aren’t like high school, and even the people who used to pick on me turned out to be decent folks when they finally got out into the world. One former jock who used to push my friends around and call us “faggots,” for instance, stopped me years later on my college campus just to check in, say hello, and compliment me on the comic I drew the for the school paper. (It was kind of nutty, but nice.) I’m glad he had a chance to turn out to be a pretty decent guy after all.

Not every former jock turned out to be a nice guy, of course, but by the time we get out of school, it doesn’t matter anymore. In the meantime, we lean on our friends, find some fun hobbies, and try to meet people from outside our class.

HATE JOCKS!

In my case, the dislike of jocks is based entirely on stereotypes. Yes, i know that they are often wildly inaccurate, but when you’re a timid home schooler, all you really know about high school culture is what everybody knows. Geeks are smart, jocks are dumb, jocks are bullies, geeks hate jocks. And while cheerleaders are basically female jocks with less brains, they are hot, and thus okay to want.

Looking back, it saddens me how much of that I hold with. Even what I disagree with is because of another stereotype. Drat.