No, We Won’t Calm Down – Tone Policing Is Just Another Way to Protect Privilege

[hunter]

150. I quit high school because the bullies had taken to calling me queerbait in middle school...

... and jamming my head into toilets and such, and it never got better.

The few adults who were aware of the abuse told me to "be a man."

Yeah, right, I was a skinny, squeaky, highly reactive kid. A chew toy for bullies. We did wrestling in P.E. and I was in the lowest weight class. There were just two of us, me and a kid who had worse endocrine and mental health issues than I did, plus he wore very thick glasses.

A circus geek act for everyone watching!

College was awesome. Adults who beat up minors face serious legal consequences. Nobody physically abused me. But there were a few professors, especially in field classes, who clearly felt it in imposition upon them that they had to be chaperons. They needn't have worried. My parents are artists, I'd seen people of all ages skinny dipping and otherwise being silly in the wilderness

I was still such a clueless screw-up in college that I was "asked" to leave twice (the implied threat being permanent expulsion), but I did eventually manage to graduate, nine years to get a four year degree, but starting kindergarten as a four year old who could already read, and quitting high school for college, I did have a head start.

Curiously, among my big-catholic-family siblings, it's my sister and I who both quit high school for similar reasons, who have the university degrees and beyond. Our other siblings who were much happier in high school, graduated and did well enough in the business world that once they had mostly night school two year community college associate degrees they never went back to school, and have no regrets.

My oldest kid has graduated from college and is making good money, talks about graduate school sometimes, but we'll see.

My wife and I met as big city public school science teachers. That was a very rough job, especially for me. I couldn't "read" the kids as my wife does so I had to be a hard-ass disciplinarian to keep my classes in control, which is not my nature. I was hoping to be some kind of Welcome Back Kotter teacher. I was not. When my wife was accepted to graduate school in another state, I joyfully followed her.