Remember when "bullying" entailed physical assault?

[Imp_Emissary]

I'm 22 and no, I've not really ever been physically bullied.

Which is odd because I was for the most part a skinny short kid all my life(childhood/whatever). Not the shortest, but never the tallest, and most of the bullies were bigger than me.

What happened was they would verbally berate and tease me until I eventually lost it and attracted them, quite viciously I might add.
Very poor form on my part.

Then I would be the one getting in trouble because I took it to the physical level (and did the most damage normally) while they mostly got off free.

Rinse and repeat.

Happened less as I got older. For a number of reasons.
So I guess I've been "trained"/"conditioned" more for what SEEMS like the more prevalent type of bullying at the moment.
All I have to say about it is physical or mental, bullying is not acceptable.

Also.

Phil Sarquinnling

Someone has to draw this! It well be the next greatest internet meme!

I can see it now. Phil Fish's face, with Zoe's hair and glasses, dressed in Anita's hoop earrings and flannel.

In the captions write; "The internet is mad? Did Phil Sarquinnling tweet again?"

 

[Zen Bard]

Oh yeah. Totally. I was thrown down a flight of stairs, shoved through a wall, locked in a locker and regularly punched, smacked or pushed. All just for being different.

See, I was born in India and came to the US in the early 70's when there weren't a lot of "brown" people at that time. You were either black, white or "Chinese" (and that referred to any South East Asian nationality...Japanese, Filipino, Cambodian, etc.... 'Merica! Fuck yeah!). So no one knew what to make of me.

And having all the athletic ability of a toddler didn't help either. Because in those days, a "nerd" was just someone who sucked at sports.

Funny thing, maybe it was my upbringing or just my outlook, but I grew up with the attitude that bullying was a Rite of Passage. You were either the bully or the bullied...predator or prey. And likewise, you either submit or overcome.

I overcame.

Bullying helped me develop my sense of humor. One time a bully was about to pummel me and I just kept cracking jokes...making him laugh. He finally let me go and said "I can't hit you! You're too funny!" We became friends after that.

Bullying also got me into working out and martial arts. And it was one of the greatest high school memories when a bully came at me and I beat the shit out of him.

But it's different now. Way more psychological and far reaching. Youtube and Facebook posts can be seen by hundreds or thousands of people in a matter of minutes. It's not just confined to the playground anymore. And it's way more humiliating. Bullies can be more cruel because they can be anonymous. They can do a nasty post and walk away without to look their victims in the eye and see what's happening on the other end.

So yeah...I remember when bullying entailed physical abuse. And it's sad that those were "The Good Old Days".

 

[michael87cn]

Yeah I was on the receiving end of physical abuse as a kid. What I ask you OP is what on earth convinced you that its stopped? It hasn't and never will. Tons of people are being beaten up right as you sip your coffee right now.

Do you really believe the world has 'evolved' to the point where people just call each other nanny boo-boos all day?

Silly.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

Only had one bully in my, a short ginger kid. Im just not a violent person which makes it difficult to deal with a bully who is. Lasted about 2 years, i remember jumping from a 2 story window and diving through a barbed wire fence to get away from him and his friends. It did stop though, i caught him bullying my younger sister and i smashed him in the face with a brick. Stopped the bullying and i got in tons of trouble as i was 12. People should never be forced to that extreme, i only used a brick because it was their and the idea of punching a person (the feeling of my fist hitting their face) was horrible.

 

[Zen Bard]

Only had one bully in my, a short ginger kid...

You know, it's funny. Two of the most prolific bullies in my life were red heads.

Maybe it's true. Gingers have no souls! >

 

[Verlander]

I'm not old (under 30), and no, I don't remember that. For as long as I remember, bullying has been more about the intimidation and threat of violence more than violence itself. I come from a rough area, violence wasn't uncommon (sometimes to extremes), but it was rarely about bullying.

 

[Winthrop]

I'm going to start out saying I'm only 19 and never saw much physical bullying, but I think the question is based on flawed logic (namely that nerds are bullied for liking nerdy things)

I'm a huge nerd, I was in three different school trivia clubs, liked most of the teachers, 4.0 average (actually a bit higher because of AP classes being weighted funny), wore geeky shirts, big glasses, and had bad allergies. But I was never really bullied. I'm the kind of kid who doesn't fight back no matter what. I won't exactly take a beating, I'll talk to them, tell them to stop, and I'm good at making people feel guilty, but I'm a pacifist so fighting back is out of the question.

That said, I was also the kind of kid who loved science and knowledge so much that I would help kids with homework and tutor them when they struggled just because I liked having the ability to share knowledge. As a result, I was friends with a lot of the popular girls and the athletic crowd. Somebody said something fairly mean to me once, can't even recall what it was, and almost immediately got punched in the face by one of the football players whom I tutored in math. I didn't even want the kid to get punched, but I suppose I accidentally built myself an anti-bully armor.

I never really witnessed bullying, certainly no physical bullying, but I did see some people who thought they were being verbally bullied that I don't think were. I had 2 friends, L and A. L was a nerdy girl on one of the trivia teams I was on, A was a popular girl who wasn't very great in school but tried really hard and was very nice to most people. L once told me that A bullied her. I was shocked because it was out of character for her. Next semester, I had a class with the two of them and L would laugh and joke whenever A missed a question. After class L tried to talk to A and A just walked away. L viewed this as A ostracizing her for being smart, not for being a ***** to A. Another friend (though friend is the wrong term, more a friend of all my other friends) named K would constantly make fun of and sexually harass the girls, and couldn't grasp why he was single or disliked by them and seemed to think all the girls had it in for him. Nearly every friend who I had that claimed to be bullied this was the case. They'd do something rude, weird, or nasty to someone else without realizing it and then would see any response as bullying. I can't guarantee that this is always the case, but in my school the victims were almost always the ones who fired the first shot without realizing it. This isn't true for everyone (one kid had serious mental and emotional problems and would punch anyone who walked too close to him) or even for everywhere I imagine, but it certainly was for my school, which, by the way, made national news for being filled with bullying. Mentor High if anyone is curious.

That said, the machinations in play in my school district to allow bullying to continue, in fact to thrive, were ridiculous. You would think it was designed to keep the kids fighting. In my Elementary School, a girl told a teacher that some of the kids were refusing to let a different kid play basketball with them. The girl who reported this was taken to the front of the class, given a costume tail, "The Tattle Tail," and the entire class was told what she did. The fact that the teacher had the costume tail laying around makes me think this was a common occurrence, and the fact that the teachers singled out people who reported bullying to the bullies is horrible. I didn't know anyone involved in the incident (it was a big school) so I don't know what happened.

EDIT: A few exceptions to what I stated: race can single people out without any fault of their own, and parents abusing children, the child is never at fault in my eyes.

 

[Siege_TF]

In my case the bullying went from physical to verbal after I had broken a couple of (other people's) ribs. Funny what you can get away with when you have a black eye while the other person has internal damage; I didn't get additional punishment when one kid who picked a fight wound up pissing blood after we were both sent home.
Those were the da~a~a~a~ays.
Now, I'm not saying violence is the answer for physical bullying, but... violence is the answer for physical bullying. I'm kidding, school policies, particularly zero-tolerance ones aren't the answer; bullies don't care about that sort of thing. Target hardening (as it's called in security circles) is the answer; give the bullies no targets and they'll take their self-loathing out on themselves.
Online bullying is still serious?
I keep forgetting the teenaged brain operates on a series of short-circuits, but because it's before my time I can offer little insight. Is target hardening even possible? I... don't know. How to break someone with words? I've done that a few times in FFXI, but that was all pseudo-politics and online bullying is more like the crap random people spew in League. In those cases I... mute them or insult the virtue of their mothers. :-/

 

[briankoontz]

Target hardening (as it's called in security circles) is the answer; give the bullies no targets and they'll take their self-loathing out on themselves.

That's a terrible solution. Innocent people shouldn't have to defend themselves - they shouldn't be attacked in the first place. There's a large cost to becoming a "hardened target" that society would be a lot better off if nobody had to pay.

There's a more insidious effect as well - someone who's a hardened target is also a hardened targeter - one can decide during training that maybe this training shouldn't be lost strictly on defense. The military is a perfect example of this - people enter with the best of intentions to "defend the country" and end up murdering innocent civilians and sexually assaulting women. The militarized police as well - what used to be "protect and serve" has become with the help of "hardening" "harass, intimidate, and dominate". Power corrupts, and "target hardening" is an increase in power.

I don't feel safer knowing I'm surrounded by "hardened targets", no more so than I feel safer knowing that there are 350 million registered guns in the United States. I feel LESS safe. Just because someone considers themselves strictly a potential victim doesn't mean they won't become a perpetrator. People rarely have complete self-awareness.

Also, your statement is cruel to bullies. Bullying itself is a result of either abuse done to the bully or fear of abuse, so the bully establishes a circle of power and influence around him such that it's less likely he'll be abused. This is one exact definition of cowardice, but it's not helpful to point that out directly to a bully. What's helpful to the bully is to stop abusing him and stopping the threat of him receiving abuse so that he doesn't feel threatened to the point where he becomes a bully.

We need to stop attacks, threats, intimidation, and violence, not "harden" ourselves against their "inevitable" occurrence.

 

[Nanondorf]

Ah yes, the good old times... I remember some of my old classmates being bullied for whatever reason, be it nerdyness, ethnicity or social status. My quiet demeanor and fondness of science also made me a target. I solved this problem by blending in and becoming inconspicuous, a background character, so to speak.

Though in the end, bullies come down to 2 categories. Those who got issues, and those who were taught they are superior than those who are different just because of status or ethnicity. The former group needs understanding and needs to be reasoned with, the latter I could not care less about.

 

[TheRightToArmBears]

I never got bullied too badly, but I did get the crap knocked out of me a few times. Thankfully by the time bullies were big enough to actually beat you up, so were my friends. There were also quite a few of us, I'm very grateful that I have a group of great friends that I've always been able to rely on, I can't imagine how much suckier secondary school would have been without them. Probably much more painful.

 

[verdant monkai]

I wonder how many internet rape threats have actually been carried out.

I've been threatened online but I've never actually met the face/fist behind the threat. I categorise internet threats in the same camp as toddlers telling you their older brother will beat you up.

 

[Master_of_Oldskool]

I'm in my thirties and in my entire life "bullying" has never simply been physical. So no. I can't. Even before the internet, this was a thing. It's like asking "does anyone remember when music was only on CDs?"

Oh, even better, the OP is a teenager. I afforded maybe he was in his forties (a statistical rarity, but not impossible) and maybe remembered a time before I was born. But no. A teenager is trying to insist in a definition that didn't exist during their life.

There's a reason I stressed both age and the quality of the community in my OP. I am, indeed, 19. I also grew up in a rural American town where attitudes regarding bullying were far more lax than the norm for that time. As I've mentioned, I was no stranger to physical bullying during my life, nor were my classmates. Standards may have changed for the majority, but for me, "getting physically beaten up" was a major part (not, mind you, the only part) of bullying.

I also disagree with the notion that bullying needs to be physical to count as bullying. But that might not be what you were getting at. Please tell me if I misunderstood your post.

Not at all. I definitely acknowledge that verbal bullying, isolation, and all the other wonderful little tactics that kids employ to hurt each other are every bit as painful and damaging as physical bullying. But as we grow up, there's this expectation that we're supposed to brush it off and "realize" that it was never significant. "Sticks and stones," grow a thicker skin, all that. It's a wrongheaded attitude that ignores the effects our developmental years can have on our entire lives, but it does exist. Physical assault, however, seems like it should be harder to dismiss, if only for how we're conditioned to think of it as a bigger deal. Yet it seems to me that it gets left out of the discussion entirely these days. Physical altercations are taken a lot more seriously now, which makes them a lot less prevalent, which in turn seems to make them totally unthinkable to a lot of people.

What I'm trying to get across, in my rambling, sleep-deprived way, is that since physical bullying is so much less prevalent (not non-existent, but less prevalent) people seem to have forgotten that it was ever a problem to begin with.

 

[Lieju]

Well I did get beaten up in school.
I don't know if it had as much to do with being nerdy and more that I had no friends and was an easy target.

Online bullying is still serious?
I keep forgetting the teenaged brain operates on a series of short-circuits, but because it's before my time I can offer little insight. Is target hardening even possible? I... don't know. How to break someone with words? I've done that a few times in FFXI, but that was all pseudo-politics and online bullying is more like the crap random people spew in League. In those cases I... mute them or insult the virtue of their mothers. :-/

Except that when we are talking about online-bullying, that kind of stuff is just a part of it.
And ignoring strangers on the Internet is way easier than ignoring stuff that includes people you know in real life.
Online-life is an extension of your regular life for a lot of teenagers.

They make plans on Facebook, share pictures etc.

And bullying there is no different from it happening in 'real life'.
It can be spreading rumors, excluding someone, spreading pictures or things they'd rather not make public... (that last one is a big problem.)

And even if you don't know those people in 'real life', people still form social circles on the net, and again, just ignoring people whose actions directly influence you, and for example your standing in a social group, isn't that easy.

 

[MeatMachine]

I was picked on horribly at the start of middle school. Went on through all of 6th grade and most of 7th. Started off with just name-calling, you know, same shit that everyone goes through. Then this Michael kid shoved me one day. I didn't do anything about it. Guess that started the precident that I was spineless.

Over a 2 week period, Michael got more and more aggressive, from shoves and slaps to actually beating me up. Mostly it made me sad - sad that I had to live with such unfair circumstances; sad that no one cared enough to help me.

One day, I was drinking a Gatorade by my locker while fiddling with the little metal pick that I'd been using in pottery, when Michael came out of nowhere and lifted the bottom of the bottle - I was soaked. Everybody was laughing.

Kind of ironic that the one time where he doesn't directly hurt me was the one time that didn't make me sad - it made me angry. JIHAD angry. I didn't intend to do anything deliberately, it just happened on its own. I think what I MEANT to do was punch him in the face, but instead I kind of did like a weird, half-fist paw swipe instead (I'd never hit anyone in my life at that point, and did so out of reflex), which invariably ended up driving the scalpel thing right through his cheek and into his tongue.

No one ever bothered [or became friends with] me again after that, since I immediately developed the reputation as the crazy face-stabbing kid.

 

[McElroy]

There was a lot of "boys will be boys" -mentality back when I was a kid. I accidentally hit the schoolyard flagpost in a fight once, breaking my finger, and it was mostly a joke to everyone. I had a couple of nicknames I hated, maybe even bullied for some time, but I was never the butt-monkey every class needs. Or maybe for a little while. Anyway, I have a habit of labeling those who have it really bad "black holes of harassment and bullying" or simply whiny liars. Allows me to distance myself from the issue.

The OP may be right about there being more physical bullying in schools in the past, but I barely have anecdotal experiences to speak for me.

 

[Phasmal]

I only got in a few fights in school, so not really. I was teased and that, but I don't see it as a big deal now.

I think it's unfortunate that some people let being a victim of bullying define them. And yes I do know someone with an actual physical reminder of bullying in school (my boyfriend's bent nose from when it was broken)- and he doesn't particularly care much about it. And he does think that most nerds need to get over their bullying.

Maybe it's because we're both older, and school is quite a way behind us.

I understand it happened, but it doesn't really change anything. Everyone has their own shit to deal with.

 

[Shinsei-J]

I used to be beat up on a daily basis in school and I'm only 19. The Australian outback hick culture I guess.
I was a stout kid, not fat but built like a brick shit house and didn't I fit into the usual country town clicks so kids liked to prove themselves by fighting me who didn't fight back. The worst choice I'd ever made. If I had just fought back from the start I wouldn't have been labeled a pushover and been picked on for years to come but I was taught from very young that fighting was bad and even if they try to fight me I should't fight back because I'd hurt them. I later learnt this to be true when I lost it for the first time and cracked a kids head open, with that I was targeted even more and even more scared to fight back. Then one day many years later I lost it again but this time I just kept going. Each time a person would try to beat me up I'd fight back most likely injuring them and this went on until they respected me.
After that I kind of became friends with some of the strongest fighters as they respected me for being the strongest fight in the school.

Then the year after I changed into high school and it happened again, people from all the other schools that had also merged into this high school wanted to prove themselves. This time with warnings from others not to fight me people challenged me and lost.
I had once again been put at the top of the hierarchy but differently from years before I had done it in a matter of months.
After that I only got into a couple of fights as anyone who knew of me knew not to fight me.

It was a fucked up school life and it was only once I had crushed them at their own game that I didn't have to play it.
I have no idea how it would have gone if I was weak or wasn't constantly having full fist fights with my 4 years older brother for the entire time. (Even when I didn't fight back with others I went all out with him learning to give and receive hits everyday for 9 years)
Though I wonder if I would have been targeted as much if I were weaker and wasn't able to take a beating and still be fine.

Well all this bullshit has made me into the person I am and has made me try my best for my dream of doing adolescent psychology to help kids like myself so even if they do have to fight they can still know they're a good person and that I don't regret.

Now, I'm not saying violence is the answer for physical bullying, but... violence is the answer for physical bullying

It really shouldn't be the answer and we do need better solutions to stop bullying but it works and we sure as hell shouldn't tell kids that all violence is wrong and not to defend themselves. That just leads kids to breaking point, feeling no way out and that's when people harm themselves.

We need to stop attacks, threats, intimidation, and violence, not "harden" ourselves against their "inevitable" occurrence.

I agree with you here, we need to stop it at its roots but Brian is going a step in the right direction too. We can only stop so much and kids need to be educated on how to stop bullying with their own power too but what that entails is a matter of opinion at this point, whether it's teaching them how to fight, what to say or who to tell.

[sub]If anything I've written doesn't make sense please excuse me it's 3 am and I haven't slept well in days.[/sub]

 

[Something Amyss]

Standards may have changed for the majority, but for me, "getting physically beaten up" was a major part (not, mind you, the only part) of bullying.

That's the point. I'm like, fifteen years older than you. The standards didn't change for the majority. We had freaking PSAs in the 80s to that end. Bullying has not been strictly defined as having a strong physical element as a necessity. This may be your personal definition or inference, but when you go in and talk about how things used to be, they should be grounded in reality.

I think it's unfortunate that some people let being a victim of bullying define them. And yes I do know someone with an actual physical reminder of bullying in school (my boyfriend's bent nose from when it was broken)- and he doesn't particularly care much about it. And he does think that most nerds need to get over their bullying.

For a lot of people, it doesn't stop at the end of school or whatever. I mean, it's great your boyfriend got over it, but that doesn't sound much different than the usual "gender in games shouldn't matter" stuff we see on here all the time. People react to things differently, and that's the same here is it is with the naysayers of diversity in gaming.

I don't consider myself a "bullying victim," but 20 years of getting the shit kicked out of me has permanently influenced me. It's unlikely to stop, either. Of course, I have more than a bent nose for my trouble, so that might be part of it. Hell, even my back problems hay relate to repeated sustained injuries to the area.

Yes, as I wake up every morning in severe pain, put on my glasses and see slightly off from one side due to an eye that will never quite be perfect again even with corrective lenses or hobble around because even before my back problems I had a wrecked knee, maybe I should just let it go. But I don't know how. And you know what? I sort of resent the notion that people "let" it do anything.

No, I really, really resent it.

 

[Twintix]

What I'm trying to get across, in my rambling, sleep-deprived way, is that since physical bullying is so much less prevalent (not non-existent, but less prevalent) people seem to have forgotten that it was ever a problem to begin with.

Ah, ok. I see. You never meant to undermine verbal bullying and harassment.

It might not be because people have forgotten it exists, but because the ones who are bullied physically don't dare to tell anyone. Kids hate tattletales, after all, and speaking up may ensue in a worse beating. Perhaps with the less prevalent physical abuse, the amount of silent cries have declined as well, making it much harder to detect.
Or maybe some people don't care. The teachers at my middle school sure didn't.

I swear that made more sense in my head, but I hope you understand what I'm trying to say.