Bullying: Stop the complaining.

[BloatedGuppy]

Violence is not a universal bully deterrent. Beating up your tormentor does not automatically mean he hands you the All-Valley Karate Championship trophy and tells you you're alright. An act of violence may very well solve your problem, or it may escalate it, or it may land you in trouble with the authorities. That's quite the dice to roll.

Add in the fact that a victim of bullying may be slight of frame, or prone to anxiety, or physically inept, and an attempt to make things physical will most likely result in a swift and violent beating. One bully at my school when I was growing up was a golden gloves boxer. Someone stood up to him, and got his jaw broken in 5 places. Oddly, the bully was not intimidated, and continued menacing people until he was jailed as an adult.

Believe it or not, life is full of problems you will not be able to solve with your fists. It's good that people complain about bullying. The more attention gets paid to it, and the more public outrage and hand wringing it generates, the more being a "bully" becomes socially unacceptable. You'll never get rid of it completely, this isn't smallpox we're talking about, it's human psychology. But you can certainly not ENDORSE it by telling people to "man up" and "stop whining".

 

[Rariow]

So, I wasn't a strong or fast kid in school. Still aren't, really. There was this one kid who would just not stop making fun of me. Guess what, he was popular. So I had to live 6 fucking years of my goddamn life being called "Pedo" (Spanish for fart) because my name is "Pedro". It was NOT a happy time. The only person I could talk to without being mocked was my best friend Diego. I did at various times try to "deal with it". I tried to punch him. He was faster and he would easily dodge. I tried to goad him into fights. He was stronger. And don't go and say "Go train and make yourself stronger and/or faster". I was 6 to 12. How likely was I to go and workout?

So, I spent 6 years of my life deeply miserable because the only person who wouldn't mock me in school was my best (and only) friend. I also learned to fear anyone my age, which is something I still have to really get over, even if I can now actually trust people my age. This guy frickin' ruined great part of my childhood. Sure, it's gotten better and I'm now a regular guy with a bunch of really great friends. But years 6 to 12 of my life are 6 years of my life I spent miserable because people decided that I should "deal with it".

I understand how this is hard to see for someone who could actually stand up to these guys. But I've never enjoyed sport, never been particularly fit (Though I've never been fat either), and I've never been someone who could deal with someone unreasonable and assholish.

During my life, there's been a number of people who've done a number of really bad things to me. I've forgiven all of them for it. All of them but that kid.

 

[Zen Bard]

In all seriousness, MakerofMysteries, thank you for a well-thought, well-reasoned and well articulated post. It was refreshing to read.

And I totally agree with this part:

So; what can YOU do? Not much really, except one thing; bullies bully because they think it's fun. It gives them a sense of power. Why?

Because they can see that you are suffering from their torments, that they're getting to you. Schadenfreude, skadeglädje; happiness derived from others' misery. Your pain gives them joy and a sense of power. So what to do?

Try not show that it affects you. Make it boring to bully you; "That is no fun, it doesn't get to them, let's pick on this kid who goes into a rage, or the one who cries, or the one who curls in a corner, numb from apathy. simply does not give a fuck." They can only hurt you if you care about what they say. Unless they hit you, of course, but then you can always file legal charges.

I remember this one time in ninth grade (not Band Camp) once telling a kid who bullied me daily "Look, can we get this over with? I'm late for class."

Naturally, the kid rammed me into a locker and punched me twice in the stomach. But I got up, thanked him and ran...shaking...to class.

I wasn't in any way, shape or form intentionally trying to be a badass. I simply had so much on my mind, I didn't have time to be scared at that particular moment.

But I noticed he backed off after that. Oh he still teased me...but I no longer seemed to be his primary source of amusement ("abusement"?). Took me years to realize it was because I just wasn't as fun to pick on anymore.

Bullies bully because they're insecure and make themselves feel better by picking on others. When I realized that, I was amazed at how much less scary to me those fuckers became.

 

[Eggsnham]

I'm no stranger to being bullied, but I have to agree with OP, standing up to adversity is much more effective with dealing with the world's many assholes than simply telling somebody else about what's going on in the hopes that they'll fix your problem for you.

Instead of facing the problem, most kids are instead encouraged to be passive aggressive about it, which typically solves nothing and in some cases may even make the problem worse.

You don't even need to fight the person if you go about the situation the right way.

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, etc. etc.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Bullies bully because they're insecure and make themselves feel better by picking on others. When I realized that, I was amazed at how much less scary to me those fuckers became.

People bully for a variety of reasons. Some because of insecurity. Some because of a bad home life/learned abuse. Some because they dislike you and want you to suffer. Some because they think your upset is amusing. Some because everyone else is bullying you too so why not? And on and on.

There is no universal reason why people do anything, let alone something as contentious as bullying. This in turn contributes to there being no one way to deal with them, because not everyone will respond to the same "solution". A punch in the nose might make Bully A back off, and Bully B stab you in an alley.

 

[A Satanic Panda]

The point is that bullying will happen, so people have to learn how to deal with it.

NO NO NO FUCKING NO

You're making the statement that all the good people of the world have to bend to the will of those who would do them harm, No thank you sir.

We do not stand for this behavior anymore.

Ok. So tell me, what can you or anyone else do to erase our psychological traits of asserting dominance?

It's a part of life everyone has to deal with, unfair to some as it is.

 

[generals3]

NO NO NO FUCKING NO

You're making the statement that all the good people of the world have to bend to the will of those who would do them harm, No thank you sir.

We do not stand for this behavior anymore.

You know, this attitude aggravates me. He wasn't claiming people should just bend to the will of those who do them harm. He was just saying that there will always be people out there who will do harm and as such it is more productive to teach people how to deal with that instead of just victimizing victims even more, to the point they are being equated to some helpless little creatures that would make baby darwin cry.

 

[MakerofMysteries]

snip

I remember this one time in ninth grade (not Band Camp) once telling a kid who bullied me daily "Look, can we get this over with? I'm late for class."

Naturally, the kid rammed me into a locker and punched me twice in the stomach. But I got up, thanked him and ran...shaking...to class.

I wasn't in any way, shape or form intentionally trying to be a badass. I simply had so much on my mind, I didn't have time to be scared at that particular moment.

But I noticed he backed off after that. Oh he still teased me...but I no longer seemed to be his primary source of amusement ("abusement"?). Took me years to realize it was because I just wasn't as fun to pick on anymore.

Bullies bully because they're insecure and make themselves feel better by picking on others. When I realized that, I was amazed at how much less scary to me those fuckers became.

Well, thank you, my ego is swelling nicely from your compliments. I also speak from personal experience in this case.

Up until the age of 13/14, I was a fat, short, four-eyed cry-baby who either went into a fit of rage or bawling-mode when bullied, as I quite naturally was. Then in about 3-6 months' time I dropped around 40-50 pounds (20-25 kilos) and became a male anorexic for about a year or two. Fairly stable now, though.

A lot of the bullying stopped when I lost my weight - fat kids are always easy targets, skinny-ish kids are really more normal at that age - but even more so because I actually stopped caring about people's opinions; they may have initially motivated my weight loss and made me start exercising (more than was healthy) and eating less (barely one whole meal per day). However, the driving force for the rest of those two years was my own self-loathing and criticism of my body; some other people occasionally said that I'd started looking a wee bit skinny but the delusions induced by anorexia naturally made me refute such claims.

What that essentially did was to phase out the verbal abuse (violence was rare at our school) until the bullies got the hint that I simply wasn't taking the bite any more. So it stopped. Of course, I still suffered a different kind of bullying and oppression, but that came from within.

Ironic, really. Only by bullying myself was I able to stop being bullied by others. Not a recommended method, of course, but I do encourage people to not give a sodding damn. =)

Now, I've whined enough; escapists above and below, feel free to resume the shit-storm of conflicting ideals. Bon chance.

 

[Faraja]

Maybe I'm old school

Back in your day, and probably mine, too, the bullying only went so far. Yeah, you might have gotten in a punch up after school, but it was a lot harder to actually continue the practice after the bell rang. Even harder after you and said person left that school/job/etc, and went your separate ways. Kids these days have to deal with one thing we didn't: that shit can follow you. In the past, someone could have egged your house, made prank calls, maybe posted some signs. All of those things required time to create, money to acquire, and more time to execute.

Maybe our bullies would be at a popular hangout, where you might have to see them. Even then, once you left, it was pretty much over.

In the digital age, if someone wants to make you feel miserable, it's a lot easier. Let's say a group of people pulled a really embarrassing prank on you that made you feel foolish. In times past, people would have forgotten about it pretty quickly. Now, someone whips out a cellphone, records it, puts it on YouTube and Face Book. From there, it gets liked, favorited, posted and re-posted, commented on, passed around amongst groups of people who all do the same. Suddenly, where only a few dozen people might have laughed at you, it's thousands. To us, digital voices might not mean much, but to a generation that doesn't know a world without these things, and are still developing, it very well might.

The issue only gets worse if you happen to run into someone who saw that video, and recognizes you from it.

It doesn't have to be a video either. Let's say a kid opens up Face Book one day, and sees; "Stacy Thompson is such a <slut, pig, whore, etc>. I saw here doing ." Or, "Jack Horner is such a <queer, homo, etc>. I saw him ." That post gets like, re-posted, maybe tweeted and re-tweeted. It might not even have been true, but that stigma is going to follow you around, possibly forever. And it's not just something that's being whispered in small circles, anymore. It could be right there, staring you in the face, when you open up Face Book. Along with all the likes and comments. What's more, anyone on the planet is going to be able to see it.

Now, that's not saying everyone will, or try, but the possibility is there.

If you want a real-world, extreme, example, just look at that poor Canadian girl who was in the news about a month or so back. She made one bad decision, and it followed her wherever she went. She moved to different cities, went to different schools, and it was always there. The kids in these new areas made sure she knew, too. According to the CNN article, pictures of her were plastered in the school itself. How do you "just deal" with that? Her answer was pretty drastic.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

but NO ONE deserves to be bullied, and somtimes no..YOU CAN;T just "deal with it"

In rare circumstances this is true I suppose. However, I have never observed such a circumstance - I'm only told about it later when someone kills themselves or some-such and that has a tendency to cloud the facts.

I was bullied for a time. In spite of not being a big guy, being bullied eventually resulted in my getting in more than a dozen fights. I won a few, lost most but in the end I never had to fight someone twice. In my experience all it takes to stop bullying is the willingness to stand and fight. I have never seen tattling help - indeed it was my experience (both direct and through observation) that this simply exacerbates the problem.

Personally, it is my experience that most bullies are cowards. Hurt them back and they'll find someone who is content to let other people fight their battles and hassle them.

- Not all bullying can be solved with violence. Not all bullying can be solved fullstop. Not everyone can simply ignore things, not everyone can win that fight, not everyone has somewhere to turn and run.

Demonstrating that there exist extreme circumstances is pointless. You're never going to find a magic bullet answer to any complex problem. What I do know is that most bullying can be solved.

Out of the dozen fights I had in two years of middle school, I only objectively "won" two. Winning didn't matter - the fact that the other ten didn't get away without pain did.

Yes, I recognize violence is not a universal answer but when someone approaches you with violence there is no real benefit to be had running away from it. What matters is that you are willing to defend yourself - with violence if forced, with words and actions if not. Much like violence isn't always the answer you'll find that neither is tattling (that rarely helps), or running away. There is a time and place for each solution.

Fuck anyone who blames the victim.

It took me more than a decade to realize it but you know what? Anyone I know who got bullied including myself was asking for it. That isn't universally true - sometimes people are bullied for things outside your control. But the "victim" doesn't get a free pass just because they're the one that suffers. If you're going to say somehow they are sacrosanct because of their victim status then you fundamentally do not understand how to solve a problem. I got bullied because I was smarter than most and liked to rub faces in that fact. Not directly but in retrospect it was an activity I could easily have stopped. To give this another perspective, if someone had managed to make me realize my actions were causing the bullying I would have needed to fight a dozen people in two years.

Victim status does not mean their actions leading to bullying are right by default. Plenty of the time it simply means they presented a social or physical threat they were not prepared or able to back. Yes, the bully might be a problem. That doesn't mean the victim is always free from blame.

To put it another way, it is similar to the old argument about blaming the rape victim. People get into red faced arguments fueled by barely contained rage over the subject and yet the debate often ignores the reasonable truth: in some cases it was possible to avoid the rape through small change in action on the part of the victim. Pointing out how they could have done differently to avoid such a terrible situation does not mean that their inability to recognize this is tantamount to "asking for it". It simply means that there exist situations and settings that should be avoided in order to mitigate or eliminate a risk.

Never pointing out the obvious correction a victim can make to solve a problem before it becomes a problem just because they're the victim has the hilarious consequence of simply allowing the problem to happen again and again and again.

 

[verdant monkai]

I think the "all life's problems can be solved by kicking them in the face" approach to the problem has been thoroughly discussed enough that I don't really need to dive into it. I wish you luck with that, though.

Calling someone a militant liberal or a bleeding heart teacher is not disagreeing with them, it is just my opinion. Nor is telling someone to grow a f*cking spine, that is a piece of advice.

Fair enough I was rather rude but no one was singled out so no harm done.

This may seem a bit random but you know who Goku is right? My friend who has never heard of him has bet me £6 I cant find 50 people who know who he is, I think I'm on 32 right now.

 

[Kyle Downes]

Personally, I always found that a healthy sense of humour and the ability to not take yourself seriously is the greatest weapon in your arsenal against bullying. Insults are not effective if you just laugh them off, or make them about yourself. People always thought I had low self esteem because I developed a very self-deprecating sense of humour at school, but really all the sarcasm and everything else was the perfect defence. By the time I hit Grade 10, I'd gone from being bullied relentlessly every day by nearly everyone (I was a fat, socially awkward, naive, angry kid with severe acne) to never getting bullied at all.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

Or creates long-term health issues that dog you for the rest of your life.

There are always bullies. Learning to deal with them is a part of living life and eventually you reach a point where no one cares to help.

Can you imagine if this attitude applied to other crimes? "Oh, well, burglary is a problem, but why is everyone going whining to the police? Why don't they just stay home all night to catch them in the act?"

A wide number of reasons mostly related to the fact that bullying is largely an interpersonal phenomena rather than endemic of some greater social trend, public ill or mental illness. One person cannot change how society operates and where problem spots arise - hell, all of the people have never managed to solve that problem. But one person can often resolve an interpersonal conflict.

The reasons that we go to authorities are the reasons that we have authorities - they take time and training, ideally, to deal with situations that the average person does not.

This is true. For example, dealing with bullies is something you'll always have to do. Luckily, you get to train yourself how to do that by dealing with bullies as a child when the stakes are generally low. If your training is to always whine for help (a sometimes necessary tactic), you will find yourself ill prepared to deal with such problems when you reach that point that literally no one in the world cares. It is rare that bullying reaches the level of being a crime in the adult world and generally you'll find that unless that critical threshold is breached the only people who will care aren't in a position to help. Telling your girlfriend about that jerk at work has no effect other than venting about that jerk at work (in other words, it is a coping mechanism for a problem rather than a solution). If that jerk is not in violation of work place policy or local and national laws, your boss isn't likely to care, nor is your bosses boss or human resources or anyone else.

The average person should not have to train to harden themselves against bullying, because not everyone is the same and for a lot of people, that hardening is accompanied by serious emotional problems, which leads on the one hand to depression, ruined lives, or even suicide, and on the other hand to becoming the exact sort of abusive prick that has been picking on them. A huge percentage of bullies are people who had been abused before.

Bullies suck. That is a point that is hardly controversial. But they don't ever go away. You need to learn how to deal with bullies and for most the best time to learn is as a child. If you have no tools to deal with the problem as an adult then the problem is compounded by the inevitable pruning of structures of support.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

edit - double post

 

[Roganzar]

Bullying sucks. Probably Impacted my life more than I care to admit.
My experience with it was constant throughout school and my usual response was to lash out and physically hurt the kids bullying me. I figured out how to throw a mean right hook by the time I was six. There was no "just deal with it," more like grab the kid and smash his face into the stone bench repeatedly. Frequently I got sent to the principle's office. Eventually, I got tired of being sent to the principle's office and developed a new way that worked just as well as beating the bullies up, sarcasm.
I found, don't know if it works or worked for anyone else, that if I criticized their bullying and teasing it took the wind out of their sails. It became less fun for them to try. Eventually, by High School no one bothered anymore.
However, that particular defensive mechanism has become a little bit of its own problem.

Personally, I will teach my son to stand up to bullies. I will try to teach him that if it has to become physical to keep it out of school. Even if he does get into fights with bullies at school I will argue that he has the right to defend himself to any school official. Regardless of if it does any good or not.
Encouraging an awareness of the problem is just fine with me.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

This may seem a bit random but you know who Goku is right? My friend who has never heard of him has bet me £6 I cant find 50 people who know who he is, I think I'm on 32 right now.

Correction: you are on 33.

 

[Troublesome Lagomorph]

I was bullied and had the shit beaten out of me on a daily basis. Teacher would always say that I was the problem and I was "provoking" the bullies, and as such I'd be the only one punished. What did I do about it? Beat my bullies up until they learned to leave me alone.
Bullies are cowards, if you take it they will keep coming, but as soon as you stand up, they'll leave you alone.

 

[Vault101]

[snip.

yes [b/]in your experience[/b]

somtimes violence makes it worse.....

 

[Montezuma's Lawyer]

The point is that bullying will happen, so people have to learn how to deal with it.

NO NO NO FUCKING NO

You're making the statement that all the good people of the world have to bend to the will of those who would do them harm, No thank you sir.

We do not stand for this behavior anymore.

Ok. So tell me, what can you or anyone else do to erase our psychological traits of asserting dominance?

It's a part of life everyone has to deal with, unfair to some as it is.

Bullshit, the bullies are the one who need to change, not the victims.

 

[Vault101]

No I'm just saying, anti-bullying campaigns won't work on bullies because people generally aren't self-aware enough. Everyone believes that everything they do is justified. Everyone believes theyre good people. These campaigns aren't going to stop and make someone examine their behavior to see if they're being a dick or not.

it depends on how thease campaigns handle it...I've somtimes seen emphasis on the bystander effect which is probably a bigger issue than the induvidual themselves, I was in an all girls school so it wasn;t so much the physical bullying but the "pack mentaltiy" bullying and all the other bitchy stuff

Maybe it's just the part of the country I'm in, I've never seen someone get assaulted consistently on a regular basis during my high school tenure. There were fights, sure, but that's different. Two different parties actually in conflict agreeing to mutual combat, and there was always circumstances surrounding it beyond "I'm Sid from Toy Story 1! I'm Going to go beat Andy with a lead pipe and take his toys! *Air Guitar*"

well [i/]whoop-de-fucking-do[/i]...another thing that means nothing at all..

as I said there are different reasons and types of bullying...its not always physical. verbal abuse as well...you can;t tell me this shit doesnt happen because youve never seen it personally, would you like to tell alot of the people here they are just making shit up?