By Jessica Wind (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: October 24, 2012
Like a bad car accident, we can’t help but observe the discourse surrounding the suicide of Amanda Todd. On October 10, the Coquitlam teenager took her life after sharing her story on YouTube. Condolences poured onto the memorial page that was launched on Facebook shortly after news broke about her death. For every kind word, there was a post citing misdirected sympathies to counter it. It was nearly impossible to navigate the online and offline media communities without being inundated with the latest update in the Amanda Todd case and the conversation quickly moved away from the details of her death.
A week after the teen’s death, the almost too-convenient-to-be-true “We Day” was held in Vancouver. The event had an anti-bullying theme that has taken over as the perceived key issue surrounding Todd’s death. If it were that simple.
According to her YouTube video, she was cyber bullied into flashing her breasts on webcam, then blackmailed with the photo in an attempt to convince her to go further. Soon the picture was posted online for all to see. After switching schools to escape the reputation that had been given to her, she was once again the victim of bullying. She was beaten by the girlfriend of a boy who cheated with Todd and bullied to the point of attempted suicide. The emotional damage that resulted from these events coupled with repeated bullying and social isolation pushed Todd to suicide.
However the sociological implications surrounding Todd’s story go far beyond bullying in schools. The Vancouver Observer’s Krissy Darch posted, two days after Todd’s death, an inquiry as to why no one was discussing the misogyny in Todd’s death. Somewhere along the construction of gender norms in our society it has become okay for men to solicit these photos from girls online. Todd mentioned in her video that she flashed the camera after she was made to feel beautiful. She was in a place, in grade seven, where affirmation from faceless individuals on the web regarding her self-image was what she needed to feel beautiful. This is not uncommon, and it suggests something about the construction of gender that is at play in this issue. So long as we keep the focus on bullying, the conversation stays safely within the school system.
An article published in The Toronto Sun, a day after Todd’s death, did an excellent job of pointing out the bullying problem in BC youths by quoting UBC professor Jennifer Shapka; “Hopefully this will be a wake-up call that in BC, bullying is a real problem.” The proposed solution—to harness the youth voice in schools and end bullying—falls apart, however, when the real issues are considered.
UFV Sociology professor Dr. Martha Dow suggested that in the hyper-sexualized society that we live in, without taking the time to understand the ramifications of our actions, we will keep seeing situations like Amanda Todd’s. Not all victims of these compounded issues are pushed to the brink of their willingness to survive, but it took another teen suicide to set fire to the conversation. Awareness is not the whole answer, Dow explained. “[Awareness conversations] are not bad conversations, but they become inadequate if that’s where we stay.” Dow implored a need to discuss the strict gender scripts that we operate under in society.
What is happening in a society where a spurned girlfriend seems to victimize her boyfriend for cheating, and instead attacks the girl – in this case, Todd. What is happening when Todd, instead of pressing charges against her assailants, silences the issue and moves away in an attempt to escape? That reflects more upon our society than many are willing to admit.
Elizabeth Plank, in an article for the Huffington Post, spoke to the uniqueness of Todd’s story; “Amanda Todd’s story is not one that could have been told 30 years ago.” From a weakness of identity in young girls, to the threat of the cyber bully, the issues are just that much more complicated. And so because of that, our approach should not be the same tired bullying assembly in high schools, which most bullies are texting through anyways. “It’s time we begin to recognize and condemn the cultural tolerance for the ways in which women and girls are systematically bullied in our society,” Plank concluded.
It would be easy to settle for anti-bullying campaigns and feel as though we are at least making some difference. But it is clear that Todd’s suicide is about much more than bullying in schools, and focusing efforts there will only succeed in band-aiding the issue. It is not simply an issue that goes away once the bullies graduate high school. Before an adequate solution can be implemented, the issue needs to be accurately identified. It doesn’t make much sense to advocate for abolishment of bullying or controls on social media, when the gender scripts that we repeatedly conform to are putting young girls on a path to depression, defamation and suicide.
