Bullying sucks

Every so often one of those Facebook status spams annoys me enough that I can't keep ignoring it. Tonight's gripe comes to you courtesy of the spate of anti-bullying sentiment doing the rounds in response to the video of a bullied kid lashing out at his tormentor.

Here's the status spam in question:

The girl you just called fat, she is starving herself and has lost over 15kgs. The boy you just called stupid, he has a learning disability and studies over 4hrs a night. The girl you just called ugly, she spends hours in the mirror putting on makeup hoping people will like her. The boy you just tripped, is abused enough at home. There is more to people than you think. Put this as your status if you're against bullying.

This makes me really uncomfortable because there's an implication that it's the acts of losing weight, of studying many hours, of trying to fit the beauty ideal and of being already abused that make it not ok to bully these people.

No, no, no, a thousand times no. 

It's not ok to bully anyone irrespective of whether they perform conformity or whether they have an otherwise happy existence and it disturbs me to see something like this being posted and reposted without any questioning of the assumptions that lie behind the argument.

We need to do much, much better than this.