Thursday, January 24, 2008

For all you bullies out there

I don't remember whether I've mentioned it here, but I'm editing a book on sex and porn short stories that have been previously published in skin mags or books of the same kind. I've got quite an impressive list of well-known Finnish authors for this, but I'll get back to the book later, I just want to say something about an affair that I found about while digging for rights to use a story by a writer who died not ten years ago.

I got hold of the writer's widow and asked her for a permission to use a story his late husband had written for a porn mag in the mid-eighties. She said she'd think about it and then she got back and said she'd decided no. It turned out that the writer's teenage daughter had been bullied in school because of his father's sometimes quite controversial novels and other writings. The girl had swapped school and seemed much better now and got new friends. It was only understandable that her mother didn't want to see the porn story getting any publicity. And so it won't be in the anthology, which is a shame in itself, but what's more important is that a young girl's identity has been crushed.

Which makes me want to speak out.

So, all you fucking stupid morons: STOP BULLYING! I mean NOW!

RIGHT FUCKING NOW!

3 comments:

Todd Mason said...

Would that it was that easy, Juri. Of course, most bullies have been bullied, frequently by their families...modeling will out.

Juri said...

Yeah, I know. I was bullied myself in school and only thing that really helped was getting out of there. I know that at least one of the bullies is dead now (from a heroin overdose, or that's what I heard) and two or three are probably in prison. But one of the guys is now doing independent theater here in Turku and I got to talk with him about all this and he said he was sorry and I think he was really honest about it, even though he admitted not realizing that it was bullying, only boys' innocent fun.

I sure know that this didn't help and maybe seemed a bit preposterous.

John McFetridge said...

This is a problem that's really only now getting some publicity, and we're starting to see how much more widespread it is.

After tha fact we have no idea what helps, but we have to try everything. Who knows what's preposterous?