As an Australian male, once a bully myself, I’ve been noticing how much the history of human oppression seems to be the story of selfish men.

In the next post, Helena commented that we need better education. Unfortunately I can’t see how education gives us much hope. It was of course those highly educated young men who started that pro-rape group on Facebook.

What I think we’re up against is sheer self-interest. I reckon that men (and women) act like this because they genuinely believe it makes them powerful.

For me, the only ’solution’ has been a spiritual one, in which my own profound self-interest is exposed.

The experiences have made me a bit of an odd person, and funnily enough i recognise that it was my willingness to see the best in others that resulted in me finding myself in this situation again and again. I have come to the conclusion that people will attack those they perceive as different or weak and that groups collude with this behaviour very easily.

One of the benefits of having gone through all of this is that i don’t have a very strong need to be part of the pack – peer pressure has minimal effect on me. So i can stand up for the things that i see as unjust and for others. I believe people don’t do this enough for fear that they will be excluded/marginalised. We have more power to stop these things than we realise – it doesn’t take much. It’s a pity it doesn’t happen nearly often enough.

http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,26692049-952,00.html

This is what her parents said:

“Outside the court, Ms Panlock’s mother Rae, who had been unaware of the bullying, described her daughter as a “beautiful girl who was full of compassion”.

“She was my little ray of sunshine, a very pretty girl, and the things that they said about her … what can you say, it just breaks your heart.

“As far as I’m concerned they drove her to the edge and they pushed her over – as far as I’m concerned they should be in jail.”

Ms Panlock’s father Damien said the law should be changed to include a custodial sentence.

“Change the law,” he told reporters.”

I agree with them completely.

After years of seeing this sort of disrespectful and disgraceful behaviour, I no longer seek to have any kind of relationship with Australian males. In the workplace, unfortunately, I have no choice (however, being fairly senior in the organisation I thankfully do not have to take orders from them as this poor sweet lass did) but on a personal level I try to stay away from them and would now never countenance an intimate relationship with one, simply because of the contemptous pack-mentality attitude they show towards most females. Thankfully my physical appearance doesn’t appeal to them so I don’t have the problem of brushing them off. I do not say that there are not sections in other parts of the world that are not like this also, but in Australia it does seem that a critical majority of the males have some characteristics of these scum in this story.

Brodie’s father’s statement affected me a lot: “As a father, one of my main duties to my family was to protect my wife and children – I feel very upset I couldn’t protect Brodie from what she went through.”

In my opinion the poor man didn’t have any opportunity to protect his daughter. The news.com article spoke of the bullying being systematic, humiliating and relentless. Relentless means pitiless; unremitting. It was like there was no end to her trauma. [How can any man protect a daughter against that?] You would have hoped that he could have relied on her co-workers to do that in his absence. Surely it is not too much to ask that men and women alike can protect and respect each other in the work place? (despite our differences).

And to mock someone for a previous suicide attempt. My goodness do they understand anything about the inner turmoil she must have been in?

It seems they didn’t care.

I do hope others will see this tragedy and change their ways. It’s terrible to consider that her life is a sobering example of the horrific problem of bullying. Let’s hope another life isn’t lost like Brodie’s was.