I get it too…

AUDIO RECORDING, PROFESSIONAL ACTOR

I’m persuaded by playwright Joan Macleod’s “The Shape of a Girl” that bullying is connected to our extraordinary, dangerous, spontaneous (but deeply shaped by society), and lightning-fast ability to perceive and rank social status. The central character of that play says she could look at any group of people she’d never met before and instantly tell you what the one that would be bullied. “I get it,” she admits. I get it too—or sort of—and I wish I didn’t. I’d like to work against this impulse to rank and assess social status. Giving people second chances helps; working deliberately against stereotypes does too. But this is hard. It takes consciousness of how we all depend on and swim in hierarchies of status. Let’s hope we get better at not getting it.

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