Callysta wrote:
Anosognosia. You aren't a bad person, you just have a different way of looking at the world.
My mom's friend Jim's son has Aspergers. I tutored him for a while when we were both in school. He was sweet. Weird and misunderstood, but sweet. My 5 year old nephew was just diagnosed. Time will tell if the DX fits or it is just an excuse for his asshole behavior and my sister's shitty parenting.
Then the label is redundant.
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I see the point you are trying to make now. That, if someone is fat, they are made fun because fat isn't the norm (aka different). As a result it appears as though they are being picked on for being fat when it is really that they are different. Flip the script and put a skinny kid in a room full of fatties, the fat kid is no longer different and is no longer made fun of or possibly even the skinny kid is made fun of because he is now different. Is that what you're trying to say?
Going back to this.
In my sophomore year of college I knew a girl who was very attractive in the artistic sense - perfectly balanced features and proportions, extraordinarily graceful. Very intelligent and musically and athletically extremely gifted. Incredible at singing. She had severe depression and was prone to crying fits. She had difficulty maintaining lasting friendships due to low self esteem and a very small comfort zone. She was very, very pale.
When she was in high school in a region of San Jose dominated by blacks, latinos and mulattoes she was bitterly persecuted for her fair appearance, though in reality the issue was probably not so much that as her remarkable personal gifts. She was personally not from a middle-class white family, she was literally trailer trash, as in she lived in an RV. She was also very sensitive about the fact she had never been on an airplane due to penury.
Most people believed we were in a relationship due to the fact we spent so much time together, did relationship-type stuff like going to dinner and movies, and our personal boundaries were vastly enlarged around each other; we both did things we normally would balk at doing (such as working out or taking harsh criticism). Actually, she was involved in a long-distance relationship with a mulatto back in San Jose - she herself said she wanted her children to be darker - but I strongly suspect he was cheating on her.
We had a falling-out during my nervous breakdown. It was actually the only time in my life I ever cried (well, one of two, the other being an incident with my 'mother') over a strictly interpersonal issue. The falling-out still bothers me deeply.
The falling-out and nervous breakdown was complicated by the ambiguous activities of a jealous rival, an girl whom I was acquainted with during my freshman year. This individual was possessed of extraordinary and devious intelligence, an exceptionally charismatic personality, very extreme emotions, burning ambition and an intense need for control. She came from the same very narrow subgroup of Jews to which I belong, Russo-German Jews. I didn't like her because she was shallow and amoral (and somewhat creepy), and she took this rejection very hard.
She made various intrusions into my life through indirect means (such as convincing her friends to jump me with intrusive questions as I went about my daily routine, which I know from experience she carefully worked out, sockpuppeting on my blog, and trying to break relationships by making mutual acquaintances) which left me rattled and together with severe overwork (managing a business, two jobs and two majors) and my unbelievably unsupportive parents contributed to my nervous breakdown.
Even today I still have difficulty working out what was real and what was delusional. For example, her boyfriend, whom she later married and flattered with unrealistic comparisons to me that left even him unsettled, got a job at an obscure store that I was known to frequent that was very very far (a good five miles across town) from the campus and dorm. When we met, he gave me a very neutral, even jaded, impression, and commented that she frequently ranted about me. Coincidence or effort to instigate? It's harder to tell because of some of the other strange things she was known to have done.
Anyway, the point is, yes, anything that makes a child different, no matter how positive or benign or otherwise, will result in bullying. And the danger of letting it work itself out is that it often doesn't.
On a personal level, I have good reasons to identify myself as extraordinary and I often feel this makes me a target for antagonism in all areas of life. Then I get blamed for being unable to equal those who have lesser ability but at least get left alone. I freely admit that on this point I have great bitterness.
