I woke up today to see footage of cops beating up, arresting and threatening professors. They've been doing it to students for a few days already. This sickens me, and not just as an anarchist.

This sickens me because I was a smart kid in school. I worked hard (inasmuch as my undiagnosed ADHD allowed), I got very good grades, and I got to go to an excellent university. I enjoyed my academic studies, I genuinely loved my subject, and in the times when I felt the loneliest I clung to that.

I remember the bullies at the back of the class too. I remember them laughing and being disruptive. I remember insults based around intelligence. I remember gendered insults, claims that I wasn't a real man because my grades were too high.

Now I see footage of cops laughing as they harass academics, and it takes me back to those days. The dynamic hasn't changed: the meatheaded anti-intellectual bullies are still there, only this time we've become professors and they've become cops.

We talk about the school-to-prison pipeline: it's very real, it's very harmful, and I don't want to minimise or trivialise it. I think we also need to talk about the back-of-the-schoolroom-to-black-uniform pipeline.

@passenger fwiw "nerd bullying" is almost unheard of in France. In fact, there's no word or slur that matches "nerd" in meaning and breadth of usage.