Online Privacy: the Very True Confessions of a Bullied Girl who Escaped the Clutches of Social Media

**At work or kids-near-the-computer profanity warning **

I was sitting at my computer desk staring blankly at Facebook when the word "WHORE!" catches my eye from the side of my screen.  That's right, that annoying little feed to the right-hand side of the Facebook page that lets you know what people are doing on Facebook every minute of every day is suddenly lit up with profanity.  A young family member of mine, being featured in the feed by Facebook, was busy typing to her friends on Facebook and having them type back to her; they were fighting.  "Facebook fighting," they called it.  Someone called someone else a "whore."  Someone else was a "slut."  Someone accused someone else of going some other embarrassing thing.  Someone made jokes about some girl being fat.



I clicked out of Facebook at that point unwilling to see more of the high school fight unfold and I thanked God, I seriously thanked God, that Facebook, blogs, and social media did not exist (especially in this capacity) when I was growing up.  These days it is so easy to make one comment or post one picture and have it spread like wildfire or have someone find it and turn it into an embarrassing situation.  It would have only made it easier for the bullies to bully me when I was growing up.

 I was a bullied girl.

I rarely talk about it and have been trying to type, erase, delete, re-type, re-erase, re-delete this entry for nearly as long as this blog has been going, trying to find the right way to share this part of my narrative in a way that would be most helpful to others.  It's hard to write about because no one wants to admit there was a time in their life when they weren't liked or that something about them was so disliked that their peers made it into a hurtful spectacle.  No one now would believe that bullying ever happened to me, not if you've known me for my teen and adult years.  By the time I was seventeen, I had played soccer and also first base for the softball team.  I did drama and was in vocal ensemble.  I even sang the main solo for the church's Christmas cantata year after year. I was captain of the volleyball team one year until they replaced it with field hockey and then I played for the field hockey team.  I had traveled internationally and made friends far and wide.  I was captain of the basketball team two of the four years that I had played.  I shattered at least four league records, was All-Star, All-Conference, First-String two years in a row.  I was captain of the All-Star team my junior year and lead them to victory scoring into the "triple-doubles" myself with over 20 points, 20 rebounds, and an ungodly amount of blocks.  I had a full-ride scholarship to a college with a top basketball team whose head coach I had trained with during the summers.  I had a tight-knit group of very close friends, there were about ten of us who were "best friends."  I was always dating someone because it proved I was pretty.  I was always working so that I could always have the nicest things.  Name brands, makeup, accessories, gadgets, and perfectly manicured nails.  I was an honor roll student and generally liked by my teachers and peers.  No one who knew me then or has known me now would think that there was a time when I was disliked and teased and that would have been all well and good to me in my high school years because I was bent on making myself as perfect as possible in every single way.

Because I told myself would never, ever let myself be teased like that again.

Ms. Perfect.  Age 17

I had a wonderful experience in elementary school.  Middle school was a different story.  Fourth through sixth grades were like hell to me.  What was I teased for?  For being ugly.  I was so absolutely hideous to everyone around me that not one day in those two years did my appearance escape comment.  Of course, I wasn't actually ugly.  Looking back on my pictures, I was a sweet thing with wide chestnut eyes, golden brown hair that fell into a soft bob around my face, and elusive dimples that marked either side of a shy smile.  But this didn't matter.  It became popular at my school for kids to think I was ugly.  It all started one day when someone was trying to be funny and poke fun at me for no particular reason.  But whatever it was they said was catchy, it had some particular sticking point, and those who overheard thought it was hilarious.  They probably thought my upset reaction was hilarious and well worth their time poking fun at me.

Me, age 9, hideous, right?!

"Oh no, she's looking at me!  Shield your eyes or you'll turn to stone!"

So it continued, for two years.  Two years that escalated into joking far beyond my appearance and into anything that anyone could pick up on and launch an assault.  My intelligence.  My family.  My clothes.  You name it, anything.  I went to a private school and our uniforms were supposed to "level the playing field" between students--but they didn't.  I suppose I didn't get the memo the day that Hush Puppy shoes became popular and I never thought I would live down the ridicule when I stepped on the bus and someone recognized that my shoes were from Payless.  Though I was never tormented specifically because I am adopted, the fact that I am adoptee did not escape their jeers.  One boy called my original mother a "teenage slut" and said I would be "just like her."  Another girl made fun of me for being an "orphan."  In her prejudiced world, it was proof that I was a worthless and uncouth pauper someone was kind enough to rescue economically but could never be redeemed socially.  Teachers weren't much help and the principal was bewildered.  My parents were outraged and did what they could.

I cried a lot.  A whole lot.

The bullying stopped in 7th grade about as abruptly as it started.  It was almost as if those entire two years had never existed and only a few of the people ever came to me and formally apologized--yes, some actually did.  This experience is far, far behind me but the issue of bullying is always near and dear to my heart.  I try to think of what I can do, as a member of society, to help end bullying in schools and help both the bullies (I believe most people who bully others once felt helpless and bullied themselves) and those who were bullied.  As a mother who uses the Internet quite a lot, I keep in mind that what I post on my blog, my networking sites, and write to people in emails is forever.  Does this or that about my child really need to be shared?  And although this is mostly-about-the-adoption-topic blog, this isn't something I am expressly concerned about for adoptive parents, original parents, or even adoptees as parents when it comes to adoption-related narratives and privacy and our children.  This is important for every single parent out there who uses the Internet or whose children may use the Internet some day.

The extent my sons care about this issue right now is my oldest getting irritated when I'm blogging because he wants to use one of his apps or visit one of his preschool websites to watch a 45 second Fireman Sam clip for the 5,000th time.  But I don't think of my adorable little three year old as he is now when I think about what I write on the Internet.  Because, again, what I post here is forever.

I think about when my boys will be seven and nervous that their friends won't think they're cool if they're too scared to stay the whole night, at their very first sleepover.

I think about when they're nine and I'll have to hear for the first time "mom, can you please not kiss me goodbye in front of my friends any more?"

I think about when they're embarking on their teen years and I make the ultimate parent faux pas by accidentally telling someone they're crushing on "sorry, he can't come to the phone right now, he's in the bathroom and is going to be a while," and have to deal with silent treatment for the rest of the evening.

I think about the teen-young-adults they'll be who will roll their eyes, sigh, and say "mooom!" when I bawl at absolutely every single event in their lives: their sixteenth birthdays, their eighteenth, when they get their license, when they get an award, when they go to their first prom, when they graduate, when they go off to college, the entire car ride home from dropping them off at college....

I think about the amazing young men I will have raised who will go out and make their way in the world as interdependent parts of our community and society, who can go back and read every single thing I have ever written about them.

There are things we might think to share that seem reasonable enough.  Like a (to us) no-brainer political or social point of view that we wholeheartedly believe and want to share with others that an experience our children had brought us to accept.  Or, a funny photo or stressful story we'd like to share because we think others will appreciate it and lend us support.  These things seem reasonable.  Like when it seemed reasonable to my mother to shirk off my worries about a outfit she bought me for 5th grade picture day because I just knew the kids would have a field day of joking about it.  The outfit was pretty (OK, even as an adult, it still isn't my taste) and the kids should not have cared that it wasn't the particular fad and instead appreciated it because it looked nice on me.  It was a matching top and skirt in a faded, cotton pink that my mother had purchased from a local boutique.  It had a gentle pattern of small blossoms covering the fabric and a bib-collar of delicate off-white lace that gently graced my shoulders.  My shoulder-length hair was half-down, half pulled back in an understated bow made entirely of off-white, pearly beads.  But the fact of the matter is: they didn't appreciate the outfit.  They didn't care.  Wearing pink was not cool and the lace thing just sent them over the top.  I didn't fit in, I stuck out like a sore thumb in an atmosphere that already wasn't accepting of me.

Me, age 12

Yes, there are things that should seem reasonable to do or share, reasonable to an adult.  But in the end, which was really more important?  The principle of the matter where I should have been proud to have a pretty outfit and the kids were at fault for being so shallow, fickle and cruel?  Or the fact that I was teased over it for probably two weeks after the pictures were taken, for two weeks after the pictures came back in, and then probably again when it was forever immortalized in the yearbook at the close of the school year?  The principle didn't matter.  Me being the "bigger person" and wearing a nice outfit even though it wasn't popular and those kids being the ones "in the wrong" didn't matter.  The outfit mattered.  Being pointed out as different because it was more important for me to wear the skirt and top than just blend in with the crowd mattered.  Being relentlessly (which is no exaggeration) teased is what mattered.  To me.

Now don't say "see, her parents did make all kinds of mistakes!"  First of all, I don't know if I would say the outfit incident was her fault or call it a "mistake."  It just is what it is.  It also wasn't a "mistake" exclusive to adoptive parenting that, if hadn't been made, meant I would have grown up and not developed any of the opinions on adoption that I have now.  This was a "all parents are liable to end up doing something like this" kind of "mistake."

I will never shirk off the issue of bullying the way I see some people do.  "Kids will be kids" is no excuse to allow one child to make another child miserable.  This is not something that is "part of growing up" or something that is acceptable to leave unaddressed.  I will never be age 9 again.  I will never be age 10 or age 11 again.  I will never get to do those years over.  Letting both the bully and the victim persist in pain is unacceptable.  Productively working on the issue of bullying is the responsibility of every single parent.

I wholeheartedly believe that when it comes to issues of the Internet and bullying that children in oppressed and vulnerable populations are even more at risk.  Like the young Black girl who was mocked on her teacher's Facebook page for her hairstyle.  Or the many cases where the Internet has been used for students to bully fellow peers for being gay.  Adoptees too may be vulnerable when it comes to this sort of thing because, you have to remember, there are stereotypes and stigmas associated with being adopted and people are so curious about adoption, our origins, and our stories.  When you share pictures, personal details, and the adoption narrative in a way that is identifying, their peers in the future may see it and find it.  And they may not be kind about it.  While it is important to embrace adoption differences and enter into discussion of adoption, there is a balance.  A healthy balance between being open and making it into something potentially embarrassing.  If my parents had had an adoption blog and shared my conception circumstances in an identifying way, for instance, I would have been mortified.  Had my parents made it sound like my adoption was some God-driven charity project they had embarked on where they "rescued" me from squalor..oh my goodness, oh.my.goodness.  Had my peers found it; I cannot even imagine.  Did I mention I went to a Christian school with Christian peers and teachers?  That I grew up in a predominantly Christian and religious community?  Do not think that being surrounded by people who follow a God who commands them to love and accept means that bullying will never happen.  I learned about contradictions very early.  Like how we all stood there at school chapel services and nodded in agreement that God calls us to love everyone; everyone except Amanda, I guess.


I choose to tell my story now, as well as some of those sensitive circumstances; as an adult because it is my story to tell.  I am aware that people may have obnoxious reactions or say something unkind in return and sharing it and dealing with that reaction is my decision as an adult to make.  It is also my original mother's decision and I do not share anything about her (or my parents) or the parts of our story that combine both of us that I do not think she would want shared.  And yes, my parents and my original mother do share things themselves with others as participants in my adoption narrative with narratives of their own.  I respect their rights to tell their parts of the story and they respect my privacy by not sharing things I do not want shared.  All my parents respect the adult they help shape.

Me, age 5, with my mom.

This post was almost two years in the making and I did not want to post it equally as badly as I did want to post it.  The hesitation wasn't just about being uncomfortable sharing something personal about my life that I am not particularly proud of.  It was because I have a lot of friends, family members, and people I don't know well but generally just like who blog and utilize social media and who include information about their children when they do so.  I like these people; I do not want to hurt their feelings when my definition of what "respecting privacy" means when it comes to sharing online may differ from theirs and I did not want them to think that I am sitting here behind my computer screen on the high horse of judgement.  I'm really not (and none of these people I'm fond of portray their kids as charity projects or share uber-embarassing stuff, in case you're wondering).  I too utilize blogging and social media to help my family keep in touch with people we love and being mindful of what I post and share about my kids is in my consideration daily.  The recent topics on privacy in the bloggosphere, the courage of other bloggers, like Joy, to say how they feel about online privacy even though not everyone agrees or follows the same rules, has turned this post from drafted to published.  I know not everyone will agree with me and I did not write this because I expect everyone to.  But I realize now that my experience can at least be helpful to those willing to read.  Please take from it what helps you.

Warm Regards,

A former bullied girl

PS.  OK, so "WHORE" isn't really profanity.  But I couldn't put "don't read this at work or near your kids because I say 'WHORE' and 'slut' in this post!" in the little warning blurb I gave because it would have defeated the purpose of the warning :-)