Bullying: Stop the complaining.

[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?

 

[Saviordd1]

I agree mostly Fox, but there does need to be avenues for betterment that aren't ignored (Our school system just loves to ignore bullying).

That said I think that methods to deal with it should be taught, otherwise its learned the hard way

Actually...

Its

snip

There is a difference between a mild teasing and bullying. Look calling someone fat is ok as long as its in good fun and you are not doing it repeatedly. If you get called fat every day for 4 years straight your going to be affected as a person. Thats bullying. Thats what the big deal is.

Yeah, been there, done that, EXACTLY that (except even better because I have the wonderful "disability" of being Bi).

Maybe I'm a jackass but I'm almost glad I went through it, sure, it fucked me up in areas, but on the other side it teaches you things you don't learn when everything is perfect or well protected.

All I know is that I am way more prepared for the world than the thin guys in my school.

 

[LiftYourSkinnyFists]

Is the issue of bullying in the states a serious matter as presented in the media? Should kids learn to stand up for themselves? What are your personal experiences of bullying and how you handled them? What do you think of bulling overall?


(bullies, bully's, having a hard time with the English language.)

Thank you.

I was bullied seriously all through school, took a real big knock to the confidence and as you have said the advice given to talk about it and tell people is in fact asinine, I had my belongings put in toilets the crap kicked out of me I was feeling pretty poor in general, I was never quite weak and I always knew I was able to handle myself, so one day a kid thought "Hey everyone seems to pick on this kid, I better join in", Sadly for him I was at the end of my tether for speaking to people and ignoring it a few hard pokes to the kidneys, pencils/pens at the back of my head I snapped and OH BOY did I just! I must've had him by the throat with his feet about a foot and half off the floor and I just threw him back against the wall and jesus christ did everybody laugh at him.

tl;dr throw kids at walls with the hidden emotional super strength within all of us and you overcome bullying.


Not quite as funny as the time a kid tried to stop me going IN to school... so I just pushed him over down a muddy ass slope because fuck you I wanna learn that's why.

 

[Karhukonna]

Quoted for attenshun

I, uh, actually find myself agreeing with you there. I understand that bullying is a bad thing and all, but it does teach kids to deal with their own problems.

I can speak from experience on this part. I find it easy because I've seen what happens on both sides of the fence. Not bullies, mind. Rather, people who were not bullied. In my group of closest friends, each of us knows what is conflict. Each of us has dealt with the same issue in a variety of ways. We're a tight bunch, and part of that is the way we stand together against the world. We couldn't do this if we hadn't seen the ugly side of life. We've fought and suffered for the right to be normal. To have friends.

Then there's my little brother. He has lived a happy life. He was never bullied, he was allowed into the social circles of his school environment. It's his father that lives with our mother (read: he's always gotten the most attention and leeway). He has many friends, both male and female. And yet, he struggles with growing up, unable to let go of his childish lifestyle of dad-gimme-money. It took him ages to get a decent job, and I fear he'll take his sweet time moving out of the house.

What he has always lacked in life is struggle. Everything has been easy for him. Even as I write this, he is taking the by far easiest route through his military service. I suggested that he try out for NCO school like me, and maybe test his physical limits, but no, he insisted on signing up with the damn logistics branch. Slamming that pedal is about the roughest his service will ever be.

Bullying does a lot of good to certain people. Sometimes, when it goes way too far, or if the bullied is too weak mentally to handle it, these sorts of nasty suicides happen. It's just darwinism at work, folks. It's sad, but it's the way it is.

 

[mjcabooseblu]

snip

Congratulations! You've just declared to the world that you think that your personal experience overrides all the suffering people face due to the social stigma of being bullied. Maybe next time, hold back on the post for a moment and ask yourself, "Is my experience with and approach to bullying really applicable to everyone?"

 

[DarkSpectre]

Some are not strong enough to protect themselves. This is why those of us who are strong must protect them. Violent response to bullies should be the last option but it is still an option. You tell the authorities an incident has happened and they can punish it, but if you see something happening you have a responsibility to intervene. It is your place to protect your fellow man, especially the weak. The is a line between vigilantism and guardianship. We need to teach our children to be guardians of eachother, but not vigilanties