You can only take so much shit before you are forced to fight back. That is the worst advice I have heard when it comes to dealing with bullies. Dont fight back because it may make them hit you harder? That is the point at which the victim becomes a coward. You MUST defend yourself frmo physical attack no matter what the age.
I have been there so I can speak from experience.
Beelzebubba, I understand what you’re saying. Let me relate it to the sig first.
Linus, as you may or may not know (can’t see your location from here), is patient, philosophical, accepting, and gentle. Above all, he has a deep faith that sustains him through trials and keeps him from despair. (As long as he has the talisman of his blanket, of course!)
I wish I could remember the context of my quote, but I generally recall that Linus was responding either to Lucy ranting or Charlie Brown wringing his hands over some problem that was beyond the influence of man. Or at least beyond the influence of eight-year-olds. I think the subtext of the question is “How important is it to get worked up over this, if we can do little or nothing? And if we can do something, then let’s do it.”
I love my sig because it’s appropriate to so many posts. For instance, the baby-in-the-car threads. What can we do? Well, as individuals on the scene, we can do what welby1 did: we can intervene. As individuals reading about the hair-salon woman, we can do a great deal less. For the sake of other children, we can plan to intervene if necessary, and vow never to do the same thing, and try to influence others away from such an action. For the sake of Accacia and Adonnis, we can unfortunately do nothing.
Now for my claim.
I did not mean to imply that this system was fair. Hell, I had Gus quoted at me just a few days ago: “The world’s not fair, it’s round.” But if, for instance, one is trying to get high marks and an academic scholarship so one can better oneself and not have to live like a yahoo their whole life, one might choose passivity rather than get a discipline record. That, I think, is a good payoff. It might not kill you to be harassed, but the people who do the harassing often end up living a sixty-year death-in-life.
That’s what I meant. You can’t expect justice. But you can accept injustice without letting it ruin you.
(And, as an individual, you do have the option of fighting back. Still your decision.)
Well, yeah. But little things like that are hardly going to hold back the urge to stampede to rolleyes. (If ever we have a voting thing to vote a smiley away, :rolleyes: gets my vote. They can replace it with all the animated smashies they like.)
Topically, the world would probably be a little better place if less people let themselves be pushed about, if schoolyard bullying wasn’t shrugged at, if lots of things. And I have this weird suspicion that there’s a better middle way between gonzo maiming violence and passive acceptance, call me crazy.
“Fighting back” as lockworthily urged in the original thread, with adults in abusive relationships, is a bit superficial and symptomatic, though. The solution there is for adults not to get into such relationships in the first place, and not to keep repeating them. But only idealists accuse human beings of being thinking creatures.
I am almost sixty (less than three months) and I suspect that some of you who advocate fighting back may not be much younger. I think that because when I was a kid, schoolyard bullies were dealt with by fighting back. If I had gone home crying to my dad to help me he’d have told me to go back and punch the bully in the nose. That’s how it was when he was a kid, and so on into the past.
I started grammar school in about 1948. It was a different world. If a big kid picked on a smaller one, a good punch in the nose might very well end the abuse. But in those days kids didn’t carry weapons, or even think about weapaons in the context of their own lives. Weapons were for Hopalong Cassidy, but a boy worth his salt could defend himself with his fists.
The trouble is that today, if you make a bully mad he may go home and get his dad’s pistol and kill you. The days of punching a bully in the nose and having it end there are long gone. A violent response to bullying nowadays is likely to invite an escalation of the violence, not put an end to it. Our culture of violence is largely responsible for the fact that today, bullies sometimes maim and kill their victims and the victims of bullying sometimes arm themselves and try to kill everybody.
Rant until you’re blue, robertliguori and you’ll probably get lots of support from fellow dopers (including me). We all like to see the bad guy get his comeuppance, if only in fantasy. But fantasy is one thing. Actually advocating violence is just wrong. And it is not appropriate on these boards.
Dang, it’s taken me a while to find this thread again.
Geezer: And, if people don’t find a way to stop bullying, then they may well be the ones bringing guns to school. I have no evidence to support this, but, hey, neither do you.
Note: If you are being bullied, then the enviornment that you are in tolerates violence. It seems to me that if a bully’s not getting written up for hurting you, then you probably won’t for hurting him back.
And, yes, I advocate violence, especially against those deserving of it. And none are more deserving than those who use it.
Also, I’m in my late teens, and said abused friend is in her early twenties. If it worked for me. . .
And biting does so much more than a mere punch on the nose. If a bully is bigger or stronger than you, then they will probably win a straight-out fight. Biting ensures that a) the bully does not want to be near you ever again, and b) the bully has an acceptable excuse if his/her posse tries to provoke a rematch.
Oh, yes, my friend left the relationship ASAP. Still pisses me off, though.
No. I think I’ve told the anecdote about my 7th grade gym teacher ordering me to apologize for nearly scalping one of three girls who had been provoking me. They started out ragging on me, and I took it for a long time until they started dissing my mom. Well, anyway, she made me apologize, and later told me, “I did that to save your skin, because you would not have gotten out of the locker room in one piece.”
It was easier for her to placate them than address the overall problem. Those three girls and their occasional hangers-on were trouble, and they would have given her trouble if she’d tried to discipline them. I, on the other hand, had no one in my corner, so she could pretend the problem began and ended with me.
Regarding my sig: In this case, nothing.
“Not to mention, for the Christians among us, making salvation and eternal life possible where it had not been before.”
I wonder what THAT’S supposed to mean? Because you see, a lot of religions could use a similar argument.
"And I have this weird suspicion that there’s a better middle way between gonzo maiming violence and passive acceptance, call me crazy. "
Well, if you’re crazy, you’re not the only one! 
I’ve been name called and I tended to ignore that. I’m not going to get into a physical fight over words. HOWEVER, when people even touched me, that’s when I generally struck someone. It usually worked to. YMMV though…
It seems to me she was more covering her own ass rather than saving yours. If you hadn’t “gotten out in one piece” she’d have some serious ‘splaining to do: to your parents, to the offenders’ parents, to the school board and maybe to the police. :eek:
Actually, I used to bite my older brother. He was bigger than me, and a boy, and he and I would get into scraps. He of course, would kick my ass - until I started biting and scratching and pulling his hair. He would wimper like a little girl - BWAHAHAHAHA. However, he WAS my brother, and not too likely to kill me, as he would have been in big trouble with my mom.
As to never fighting back, Rilchiam, I have to humbly disagree. In a schoolyard fight, walking away is possibly the best course of action - I don’t know. However, I used to date a guy (a LONG, LONG time ago) who was a big fat jerk. He weighed about 220, and was about 6’2". I was about 110, 5’8". He used to like to get physical. It ended when I kneed him in the crotch as hard as I could and then ran like hell. I had tried to break up with him numerous times, but he would just keep coming around the house. My mom really liked him, despite him punching her daughter in the face (mom and I have had a few discussions about this), and would let him in.
Oddly, after I diminished his chance of ever reproducing by about 50%, he quit coming around. 
Thats my little story - I don’t condone hitting ANYBODY, but sometimes there have got to be exceptions.
That’s what I meant. But I’m not sure I know what you mean: would you have done the same, in her shoes?
I was pointing out that her motives were not completely altruistic. But you already know that I guess.
I’m not sure what I would have done; I probably would have tried to stop the bullying (by the three girls) in the first place. But then I don’t know all the details of the situation, YMMV, etc. 
Bullying made the 11 years (I graduated early) I spent in the US public school system a waking nightmare and contributed greatly to many of the problems I have today. Although I certainly don’t condone the actions of the Columbine shooters, I understand.
Both of my parents used to urge me to fight back; however, my time was different from theirs. When they were in school, fights were strictly one-on-one. By the 60s and 70s, it was a always a pile-on.
Twice in my adult life I’ve had people try to choke me. Once I got free by biting; the second time I put my cigarette out on my attacker’s neck.
I’m not a scared little girl anymore. I’m an adult who is quite capable of being vicious and mean and the childhood bullies and the schoolteachers and administrators who encouraged them can thank themselves for it.