My Little Pony is bullying America

A story that has been getting a lot of attention recently is this story of a North Carolina school who told a frequently bullied 9 year old boy to not bring his My Little Pony backpack to school anymore because it was a trigger for bullying. If you know anything about the "brony" culture you will know that My Little Pony is no longer a thing just for little girls. As a matter of fact, the male audience has been responsible for breathing new life into the franchise and is continuing to support it's success. What bothers me most is that our country still doesn't seem to understand that there is no such thing as a trigger for bullying. Let me explain with a personal story.

I was 10 years old with a severe case of social anxiety (which went undiagnosed until my twenties) and all I was looking to do was make friends. One day I had a terrycloth, v-neck, shirt on with a zipper (It was the early 90s, what can I say). While we all were waiting to go into the school, one boy said loudly, "That's a girl's shirt!" I was then ridiculed for it by the other boys. This particular boy was someone who was always looking for ways to start shit with me. If I was wearing a "normal" shirt, he would have criticized my hair, or the way I walked, or the way I talked. The point here is that if a bully wants to bully they will find anything to do so. The problem isn't with my shirt, my haircut, or my walk, the problem is with the bully who thinks it's okay to hurt other people.

Then we have the people who say you just need to stand up for yourself and the bullying will stop. That might work in ABC family dramas but it's not the reality of it. When kids stand up for themselves in the face of a bully the bully then will take that attempt and turn it into a new way to bully. Again, there is no such thing as a trigger for bullying. The switch is already turned to the "on" position in the mind of the person doing the bullying.

What the school in North Carolina should be doing is setting a standard for zero tolerance when it comes to the act of bullying as opposed to zero tolerance for what they deem to be "bullying triggers." This story also comes after the story of Michael Morones, another North Carolina student, who actually attempted to hang himself at 11 years old due to bullying over the same topic of My Little Pony. He is still attempting to recover with severe damage to his brain function due to a lack of oxygen.

What needs to happen is that we need to teach our children that different isn't scary, different isn't threatening, and different isn't bad. We are stuck in the mind frame that "we live right and everything else is wrong" instead of "we live right for us and our needs and everyone else is doing the same." It's my hope that parents of young children will begin to teach them this lesson instead of allowing these sorts of things to continue.

(the backpack being banned from the North Carolina school. This bag is clearly just begging to be bullied.)