I agree. In a situation like the one you described, when it’s possible to deal with your harassers directly, that’s probably the best thing to do. If there are in fact other options in a given situation, then consider those too, and if a cost/benefit analysis shows them to be better than either changing your own behavior or accepting harassment, then run with them. But that’s not always a possibility.
Based on my reading of this thread, it looks like everyone thinks that’s what you’re saying. That’s what’s made them upset. If you find yourself being so grossly misunderstood, you might want to consider the possibility that you’re expressing yourself badly.
Indeed, that’s possible, but I have yet to find a post of mine that could be read that way. I’ve tried to be clear, I’ve taken every opportunity to correct people who seem to have the wrong impression, yet it keeps happening.
As far as I can tell, people just have strong emotions on this subject, and they’re too quick to jump to conclusions and assume that if I’m not 100% with them, I must be 100% against them.
For me that part isn’t true. I’ve not been a victim of this sort of hassling, and yet I have taken your posts the same way many of the others here have. If that is, we’re still talking of the fact that you think that the victims need to change to stop the harrassment.
Sorry, I didn’t opt out of the thread to ignore your questions, I just got REALLY tired, and though I was interested, the posts were so long I was having trouble reading them (small screen, tiny laptop, old eyes).
So I do apologize. If there was something in particular I didn’t answer that you’d like me to address, please point me back to it.
At any rate, based on your posts, and with no personal angst re: bullying, I was getting that too. Yes, Technically (and only technically) if a person is being harrassed for a specific reason by people whom he sees on a random one time only basis (drivebys), then changing that reason would stop that specific type of bullying.
The thing is, that it should not be that way. And we, even those of us who aren’t bulliers ourselves, shouldn’t think that this is “okay” or an acceptable solution.
Much better to follow the advice and information supplied by [b}FarmWoman** regarding changing the way we socialize kids growing up. And to stop bullying in its tracks when we see it out in public. As someone said, if more people on that bus (even just 2 more) had stood up for that kid, I’ll wager that the little brat that got kicked off, might have really thought twice before the next time.
I’ve been reading this thread a while and waiting for somebody else to say this, but nobody has, so I will.
It’s simple. We’re primates. End of story.
In the rain forests and on the savanna, enforced conformity is a survival imperative. The more you look at how chimps and baboons behave around and treat one another, the more you realize that our much-vaunted intelligence is a thin, thin veneer over a whole pile of hardwired instincts. Some of these are good; some, like the deep need to bully and ostracize anyone seen as different or weak for those reasons alone, are not, at least in our modern world. But again, the more you study the “lower” primates, the more you recognize that we really aren’t that much “higher.”
Knowing our collective tendency toward assholery is basically vestigial and perhaps even obsolete, but that it played an important part in our biological heritage, doesn’t make it any less irritating, I’ll admit. Still, I do find it helps me stay on an even keel when I can look at one of these pricks and know that he doesn’t really know himself why he’s doing what he’s doing: but I do.
The downside of this, naturally, is the understanding that as long as we’re recognizably human, we will have jerks around and among us, and indeed that we have jerkish leanings — i.e. instinctive but socially inappropriate primate responses — inside ourselves against which we must guard. So this post isn’t about advice; I don’t have any better ideas about what to do with these people than anybody else who’s offered suggestions. But maybe the basic information will be helpful to some.
After starting out with the “stop whining” and “pity party” stuff, he now seems to be saying that the harassed should consider changing, to which most will reply, “No shit Sherlock.” They considered it probably 20 seconds after the harassment started. If they rejected the idea of changing, then probably they had a good reason for doing so.
I’d like to backtrack a bit and focus on something that is an important dynamic to this whole subject. From early in the thread:
Bolding mine.
I’ve heard this rationale a few times. “Well, it’s fair game to insult/pester them about their weight/hair/geekiness because they could change and they won’t change.” In other words, the fact that the picked-upon has chosen to not change something about themselves means that it is “fair game” for others. Like, “they’re asking to be pestered/picked on” because they could change, and they won’t.
This logic is basically saying that since the affliction or strangeness is somehow voluntary, then all bets are off—it’s okay to peck away. If their strangeness/differentness was not their fault, then that’s different. It’s morally not okay to pick on someone for being different if it’s out of their control, but it is morally okay to do it if they could change, but simply refuse to. Even though, of course, the “different” thing is in no way harming anyone else, is nobody’s business, etc.
I think that this line of reasoning may sometimes be used with people who would not ordinarily be considered asshole bullies. For instance, a milder form of this might be: “I brought up that she was fat and used it as an insult against her, (even though her fatness really had nothing to do with why I was pissed at her in the first place) because she could be thinner—she eats too much—therefore, bringing up her fatness is fair game.” (This is a paraphrase, and could be applied to many situations.)
It’s like they think it’s a social obligation for these people to change, and in not doing so, others are morally right in pestering them.
Ah yes, you just want people to consider their options. It’s merely your fairminded commitment to the idea of considering all possibilities that makes you keep telling people they should think about changing themselves to avoid harassment.
Oddly enough, I haven’t seen you suggest suicide, which unlike “just changing” would be a relatively quick, easy, and 100% effective solution to the problem of persistent harassment. It’s a solution some people do go for. It’s not one I’d bring up for people to “consider” though, because doing so would be encouraging people to kill themselves to avoid harassment. That is not something I want, so I’m not going to recommend it or even suggest it for “consideration”. To do otherwise would be morally repulsive to me.
Of course, suicide is far more extreme and terrible that “just changing”, and perhaps the worst part about it is that it’s irreversible. I do not mean to imply that losing weight, getting a fashionable haircut, or giving up Star Trek is equivelant to death. My point is that if you bring up an solution for people to “consider”, you are promoting that solution and you have to accept responsibility for that. None of this “I don’t really want people to conform, and I don’t think they should conform, I just want them to be aware that conformity is a possibility!”
Perhaps that is what you really mean, but if so it’s something that should go without saying…unless you genuinely believe overweight/unfashionable/geeky people are so stupid that it never occured to them that being slim/fashionable/cool would end their harassment problem. If you do not wish to encourage conformity as a defense strategy and you do not think that the targets of this kind of harassment are stupid, there’s no reason to bring up conformity as a possibility at all. Plenty of things do get posted on the Internet for no good reason, but it looks like people here have been extending you the benefit of the doubt and assuming that you’ve got some point other than telling them something that’s both blindingly obvious and unhelpful.
Well, look. I’ve made my point. I’ve told you what it is and corrected you time after time. If, after all that, you still think I have some secret agenda, I don’t think anything I can say is going to convince you otherwise.
Yes, you have made the point that it is possible to change characteristics that it is possible to change. This is a phenomenally pointless “point”, and people have been doing you the favor of assuming that you must have meant something else by it because otherwise you’ve been wasting your time and theirs by repeating self-evident and irrelevant redundancies. If you insist upon doing this sort of thing you should expect people to assume you have a secret agenda. If you don’t like that sort of reaction, well…I suppose you could just change.
Huh…
Good points. I never really connected the two for this particular human trait.