Bullying: Stop the complaining.
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Well, with me it eventually came to a fight- obviously I got pummelled by the rugby captain in the lower year who weighed about three times more than me, (I weighed about 7 stone at that time). Personally I think it was a key factor in why I developed epilepsy a couple of months later (Been seizure free for about 2 years tho so happy ending). Teachers never really stepped in, but it pretty much stopped after that, apart from for about six months I was the guy who got beaten up by a kid in the lower year, instead of the guy who got beat up by the rugby captain ¬_¬
Guy got kicked out of the school a couple of years later for using steroids or something though, so I call that a win!
Guy got kicked out of the school a couple of years later for using steroids or something though, so I call that a win!
All kids should just toughen up and stand up for themselves? Generally a bully is going to pick a target who is physically weaker than them so I'd say in a lot of cases this simply isn't an option, considering the bully probably isn't going to listen to reason either and most kids lack the charisma to talk the bully out of it. Also I'd say in quite a lot of cases the bully is backed up by others, leaving the victim isolated and outnumbered.
Bullying is an extremely serious issue that deserves all the attention it gets. Just because you were able to fight your way past your bullies[footnote]Which I doubt were all that bad, given your lack of empathy. [/footnote] doesn't mean this is the optimal solution or that other people should do. Are you really so selfish as to want to leave victims of bullying to fend for themselves just so you don't have to hear bullying uproars on the news all the time? Encouraging more violence is exactly what you don't want to do when handling bullying. You should never be too proud to ask for help, I feel sorry for you that you gain some misguided sense of pride out of being all macho 'fending for yourself'.
Bullying is an extremely serious issue that deserves all the attention it gets. Just because you were able to fight your way past your bullies[footnote]Which I doubt were all that bad, given your lack of empathy. [/footnote] doesn't mean this is the optimal solution or that other people should do. Are you really so selfish as to want to leave victims of bullying to fend for themselves just so you don't have to hear bullying uproars on the news all the time? Encouraging more violence is exactly what you don't want to do when handling bullying. You should never be too proud to ask for help, I feel sorry for you that you gain some misguided sense of pride out of being all macho 'fending for yourself'.
No, you really don't get it. Sure, bullying might just 'suck' for you but to other people, bullying destroys their life, stemming their development as a person and creating deep mental wounds which may haunt them for their entire life. For once this is something the media hasn't blown out of proportion.andrewfox said:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/29/erin-gallagher-irish-teen-commits-suicide-battle-cyberbullying_n_2040850.html
Thought I'd just leave this here. For, you know, reasons.
Thought I'd just leave this here. For, you know, reasons.
Violence, Violence, and more Violence.
I should know. As a former bully victim, every time I snapped and responded with physical violence (effective or not), I was never tormented again by that individual. I know I shouldn't be advocating this, but all the talking and the pleading and the telling teachers/adults/counsellors in the world didn't do crap. A good solid right hook did wonders.
I should know. As a former bully victim, every time I snapped and responded with physical violence (effective or not), I was never tormented again by that individual. I know I shouldn't be advocating this, but all the talking and the pleading and the telling teachers/adults/counsellors in the world didn't do crap. A good solid right hook did wonders.
Meh the fat thing was an example, my issues were more standard "He's a know it all dork with glasses and dresses like shit, lets get him." type of deal. Though I am bi too and never had a problem with it. Though I still lean towards the opposite sex than same sex so its easier to hide.Saviordd1 said:
Hmmmm...andrewfox said:
I think it's safe to say that bullying severely fucked a good hunk of my life. During my time in primary school (Elementary school in the US?) I was picked on by what almost felt like the entire grade. I was quite small, took things far too emotionally and also started a year early so I was younger than everyone. It was only until I was kept back in sixth grade that things started looking up. Until then I had severe learning difficulties (That still affect me), low self esteem and confidence, very few friends, depression with perhaps borderline suicidal tendancies and (apparently I only found out years later) violent waking nightmares. It was the nightmares that actually wound up being a bit of a boon for me because naturally my parents wanted to know who these people I kept screaming about were. They started keeping track of my turns and the names I kept screaming out the most and had a meeting with my teachers to ensure they were kept well away from me at least during class. I also had the great fortune of having the same teacher in both 6 grade and 6 grade repeated, a truly amazing woman who I have much to be thankful for.
After Grade 6 and into Highschool (Junior High and HighSchool are one and the same here in AUS) I had enough emotional maturity to as you say suck it up and get on with my day, however the emotional scarring from my childhood still had hold on me and even now as an adult still haunts me.
To answer your question for the most part I agree with you. However I do think it's about bloody time bullying recieved the attention in so rightly deserves no matter what country your from.
Yes I do agree that children should learn to stand up for themselves. But this is the kicker. It needs to be taught. My teacher from grade 6 was the one who taught me the emotional tools I'd need to help myself. On top of that she was the one who gave me the confidence to stand up on my own. I truly do not know what would have happened to me if I hadn't met that teacher cause in the mental state I was in there was no way I would have been able to help myself.
Here in Australia - At least when I was in Highschool - they started a campaign in schools to educate children about bullying and how to deal with the problem themselves. That is to say identifying, analysing and solving the issues of bullying. This started ensuring that the kids started policing themselves and if there were any problems the kids would take the issue up this the teachers themselves. They also started a mentoring program grouping year 8 kids with two year 12 kids (Highschool in QLD is from years 8 - 12) it was kinda like the 'buddy' system I suppose. The year twelvers would help out and take time out to work with their group and the group would also learn to look out for one another.
Heh... At my High school the anti-bullying campaign was so successful an incident occured that had to be adressed to whole school by the Principal. Apparently a kid in a higher grade started picking on and assaulting one of the Special Ed. kids - Our high school had facilities that catered for all sorts of special issues from blind, deaf, palseys you name it. The students from the victims grade were so infuriated by this they hunted the kid down beat him up and brought him to the principal's office for punishment. The principal appreciated the sentiment but warned against organising armed mobs to deal out lynchings. Me I just smiled.
I don't know Gunsmithkittens story other then what was said, but it's not a huge stretch to see how bullying is related. Bullying is not an act in and of itself, it is the implementation of other actions to degrade another person.generals3 said:
Bullying, by a group of peers, is dangerous because it dehumanizes the victim. The more a group torments the victim, the easier it will be for others to partake and, potentially, result in an escalation in the torment. Left unchecked, a campaign of abuse and aggression like bullying will only escalate. From there things can go to shit real fast... this is the point where suicide can occur (sheer despair on the part of the victim), but also murder/manslaughter (a beating or vicious assault ending badly) and potentially rape (one of the most degrading acts mankind can commit).
What's more, the victim could end up being the perpetrator of violence, as seen in certain school shootings. When you push someone to the breaking point, all bets are off... and it's never a happy ending.
Bullying has 1 goal... to degrade and humiliate. It doesn't require advanced knowledge in social science, psychology or neurology to figure out where that can lead to.
EDIT: It should probably be considered that bullying is not something people actively aim for. People don't go "I don't like that guy so I'm going to bully them". No one see's themselves as the villain in their own story. They find ways to rationalise and even vindicate their abuse towards the victim.
People like the KKK, westboro baptist church, various violent gangs, serial rapists etc. all convince themselves that they are in the right. They are bullies of different degrees, implementing there chose tool (violence, hate speech, rape) in a righteous manner. They aim to dehumanise and humiliate folks who they just don't like, reasons or rationality be damned.
I went through school being picked on a lot. I have a lazy eye, which made me "different", and therefore a target. My bible-bashing mother always insisted I "turn the other cheek", or tell a teacher. The one time when I was very young that I hit back, it was me that got a bollocking for fighting! Going to a teacher of other adult did nothing other than to earn you the label of "grass" ("snitch" for the benefit of the Cousins).
This went on for years, and one day something in my head just quietly went *snap*. I went fucking ballistic at my tormentor of the moment, and came damn near to hospitalising him. After that, things settled down until high school. I didn't put up with it as much there, and got in a few fights, but overall it wasn't as bad as primary school.
The thing is, in later years I've run into my former tormentors from time to time. Most of them ended up being considerably smaller than me in adulthood and almost universally shit themselves when they've realised who the guy eyeing them up from the corner is. One was even hired by the company I worked for at the time, and worked for me. Found a reason to fire him pretty quickly. Revenge really is quite sweet.
Fighting back seems to be pretty much the only thing that works in my experience.
This went on for years, and one day something in my head just quietly went *snap*. I went fucking ballistic at my tormentor of the moment, and came damn near to hospitalising him. After that, things settled down until high school. I didn't put up with it as much there, and got in a few fights, but overall it wasn't as bad as primary school.
The thing is, in later years I've run into my former tormentors from time to time. Most of them ended up being considerably smaller than me in adulthood and almost universally shit themselves when they've realised who the guy eyeing them up from the corner is. One was even hired by the company I worked for at the time, and worked for me. Found a reason to fire him pretty quickly. Revenge really is quite sweet.
Fighting back seems to be pretty much the only thing that works in my experience.
Some very good points here:
I have only had two people "bully" me at school but in different ways one guy I just ignored and eventually he got bored of trying to offend me, although it turned out that he was quite violent just not toward me and would go down the racist insults and threats route. The other was volatile he seemed to hate me for no real reason. He often attacked randomly without provocation and it was only the days I felt like not taking it that we fought until someone interrupted us.
The irony perhaps is that by the time I learned how to defend myself (through Tae Kwon Do and an unconventional instructor) I realised that I didn?t need to hit back. It wasn?t the best option I could defend myself without going on the offensive. Blocking or diverting without attacking lead to him leaving me alone for a long time.
I think the stoic was the best for me approach as violence only ever caused more violence. It was perhaps right for me to have got angry but wrong for me to lash out. The last time he attacked me at school he hit me from behind and broke a bone in his knuckle (that later had to be removed) and I suppose that?s karma. We still weren?t friends but we sort of had an understanding after that to generally leave each over alone after that.
The bad thing was that the fighting was the only reason the issue ever got discussed by our teachers and they were more concerned with stopping the fighting rather than the cause, so whilst it is an important issue and should be taken seriously the media do over do it. I think it is important that children are made aware of it and that they can get help if they need it, I probably should have told someone sooner in both instances before things got to extreme but I think you should try and sort it out without violence yourself first (if it?s not too extreme).
I did okay but I had a little help in the latter instance and first instance I think I was lucky.
I think that I was lucky for a number of reasons this was in Primary School (or what I guess is elementary in the US) not Secondary (High School) where the bullying I saw got much more extreme, calculated and spiteful. I was also lucky because the internet was a thing social networking wasn?t a thing yet I was born in the early 90s. So the whole cyber bulling was something I didn?t have to deal with and still wasn?t really a thing we would have done in primary school. The problem with more modern tech is a lot of bullying things can be uploaded, shared, and archived before the victim even see?s it. Whilst we all have those pictures we wish we weren?t tagged in online sometimes with sarcastic commentary, if you?re not included in the joke and your bullies have shared it without you finding out for a long time the eventual revelation must be terrible feeling.
Part of me thinks the original post is deliberate trolling. I think my experience was so little comparison to other people, as I remember mind wasn?t daily it was every so often so I?m not sure if I should call it bullying but I?ll share it. I think this is going to be a long post so forgive me for thinking as I type.Naeo said:
I have only had two people "bully" me at school but in different ways one guy I just ignored and eventually he got bored of trying to offend me, although it turned out that he was quite violent just not toward me and would go down the racist insults and threats route. The other was volatile he seemed to hate me for no real reason. He often attacked randomly without provocation and it was only the days I felt like not taking it that we fought until someone interrupted us.
The irony perhaps is that by the time I learned how to defend myself (through Tae Kwon Do and an unconventional instructor) I realised that I didn?t need to hit back. It wasn?t the best option I could defend myself without going on the offensive. Blocking or diverting without attacking lead to him leaving me alone for a long time.
I think the stoic was the best for me approach as violence only ever caused more violence. It was perhaps right for me to have got angry but wrong for me to lash out. The last time he attacked me at school he hit me from behind and broke a bone in his knuckle (that later had to be removed) and I suppose that?s karma. We still weren?t friends but we sort of had an understanding after that to generally leave each over alone after that.
The bad thing was that the fighting was the only reason the issue ever got discussed by our teachers and they were more concerned with stopping the fighting rather than the cause, so whilst it is an important issue and should be taken seriously the media do over do it. I think it is important that children are made aware of it and that they can get help if they need it, I probably should have told someone sooner in both instances before things got to extreme but I think you should try and sort it out without violence yourself first (if it?s not too extreme).
I did okay but I had a little help in the latter instance and first instance I think I was lucky.
I think that I was lucky for a number of reasons this was in Primary School (or what I guess is elementary in the US) not Secondary (High School) where the bullying I saw got much more extreme, calculated and spiteful. I was also lucky because the internet was a thing social networking wasn?t a thing yet I was born in the early 90s. So the whole cyber bulling was something I didn?t have to deal with and still wasn?t really a thing we would have done in primary school. The problem with more modern tech is a lot of bullying things can be uploaded, shared, and archived before the victim even see?s it. Whilst we all have those pictures we wish we weren?t tagged in online sometimes with sarcastic commentary, if you?re not included in the joke and your bullies have shared it without you finding out for a long time the eventual revelation must be terrible feeling.
I vaguely remember, when very young, being associated with and possibly having been a bully for a while. Nothing to be proud of, maybe I was acting out, as I said it's a rather vague memory. It may have been in response to being picked on myself, I know as I got older I continued to be a target for some people, but I'm not sure it was ever severe enough to constitute bullying (it's a fuzzy area).
Now, I'm a fairly nice person and relatively stable in my life, but I don't think that makes it ok. I think schools are right to try and reduce that behaviour- I'd like to see someone argue that suicide induced by torture by your peers (who, honestly, at that stage in life, you have little control over who your peers are) is an ok thing. The problem is that schools don't have the knowledge or the system to deal with these issues properly.
I don't fully understand the science of why bullying happens, how to teach kids to both deal with and not be bullies (a lot of places seem to totally skip over the latter thought), but it seems like schools don't fully grasp it either. It's probably more complicated than just child psychology as there seems to be a cultural aspect as well.
There is a more general extrapolation from this- what kind of behaviour is acceptable socially? What are the limits/effectiveness/ethics of social shaping of children? Why are bullying-related suicides less prevalent in adults and are we missing a trick with kids?
Now, I'm a fairly nice person and relatively stable in my life, but I don't think that makes it ok. I think schools are right to try and reduce that behaviour- I'd like to see someone argue that suicide induced by torture by your peers (who, honestly, at that stage in life, you have little control over who your peers are) is an ok thing. The problem is that schools don't have the knowledge or the system to deal with these issues properly.
I don't fully understand the science of why bullying happens, how to teach kids to both deal with and not be bullies (a lot of places seem to totally skip over the latter thought), but it seems like schools don't fully grasp it either. It's probably more complicated than just child psychology as there seems to be a cultural aspect as well.
There is a more general extrapolation from this- what kind of behaviour is acceptable socially? What are the limits/effectiveness/ethics of social shaping of children? Why are bullying-related suicides less prevalent in adults and are we missing a trick with kids?
So nobody sees technology as mostly responsible for the rise in bully chatter? Not just by virtue of electronic communication which is anonymous and impersonal, but I also believe growing up with touch screens and things that do what you want, orderly and predictable, by touching brightly colored pretty buttons is more of a developmental disability when the real world does not behave like iOS or whatever garbage parents give their kids to mollify them because they have to work more hours for pay that stretches far less than it used to.
Twenty years ago we didn't have any of this shit and there were only a few kids who got bullied, and it was mostly physical and violent. The solution was simple enough, hit the weight bench and fight back. By 10th grade I was 5'6", 135lbs and could bench press 270. People continued to pick on me because I was smaller than them, but one day after someone hit me in the face I just wrapped my hands around their throat, lifted them up into the air and squeezed. I looked the kid in the eye, and I told him this was it, this was how he was going to die, how does it feel... his eyes got so big. I let him go after he started looking a little blue and no one ever said a word to me again.
After Columbine in 98', local police detectives came to my house to find out how many fire arms I had in the house, brought me in for questioning after some anonymous tips. People were afraid of me. I got expelled for doodling a gun like a week later. The staff was afraid of me. But before that, I had a nice and quiet year or so where nobody bothered me anymore.
Anyway, I didn't have to fight on social media or worry about my reputation or whatever, and I had no disillusions about the way the world worked brought on the by the bright, clean, and orderly facade of the 2000s. The world was not a friendly place, and it was you against it. After high school was over for me I simply finished my diploma at an adult ed course and then went to work. Rarely saw any of those people ever again.
I will be 31 in May, I have no friends still. Had one for a while I met at a coffee shop but he decided to marry an ex-gf. The girl I'm with now, she's only the second one I've ever been with for more than a year. Still, I endure. Hold a decent job, own a home, pay my mortgage, bills, etc. That's all life is in the end.
Maybe bullying today is different than it was a couple decades back, but the answer to it is likely still the same- nobody else is gonna save you but yourself; it's something I can see the push-button kids easily having a real problem with.
Twenty years ago we didn't have any of this shit and there were only a few kids who got bullied, and it was mostly physical and violent. The solution was simple enough, hit the weight bench and fight back. By 10th grade I was 5'6", 135lbs and could bench press 270. People continued to pick on me because I was smaller than them, but one day after someone hit me in the face I just wrapped my hands around their throat, lifted them up into the air and squeezed. I looked the kid in the eye, and I told him this was it, this was how he was going to die, how does it feel... his eyes got so big. I let him go after he started looking a little blue and no one ever said a word to me again.
After Columbine in 98', local police detectives came to my house to find out how many fire arms I had in the house, brought me in for questioning after some anonymous tips. People were afraid of me. I got expelled for doodling a gun like a week later. The staff was afraid of me. But before that, I had a nice and quiet year or so where nobody bothered me anymore.
Anyway, I didn't have to fight on social media or worry about my reputation or whatever, and I had no disillusions about the way the world worked brought on the by the bright, clean, and orderly facade of the 2000s. The world was not a friendly place, and it was you against it. After high school was over for me I simply finished my diploma at an adult ed course and then went to work. Rarely saw any of those people ever again.
I will be 31 in May, I have no friends still. Had one for a while I met at a coffee shop but he decided to marry an ex-gf. The girl I'm with now, she's only the second one I've ever been with for more than a year. Still, I endure. Hold a decent job, own a home, pay my mortgage, bills, etc. That's all life is in the end.
Maybe bullying today is different than it was a couple decades back, but the answer to it is likely still the same- nobody else is gonna save you but yourself; it's something I can see the push-button kids easily having a real problem with.
i did stand upto a bully and gave him a bloody lip, he left me alone after that. but most of high school i wasent bullied much at all.
I've added emphasis around the part that really shows the problem with escalating to violence.SixWingedAsura said:
While violence has worked wonders for me in the past, punching one guy in the mouth sometimes means four or five guys come back the next day wondering what your next move will be.
Hell, I used to live in a little village where it was a classic case of 'outsiders unwelcome' and I thought that these children would be little pansies who would fall at the first punch. They did. However, you'd then get about two-thirds of the village rise up against you because the 'outsider' is starting fights.
Violence works, yes, but not always.