Gosh, you seem to be remembering my insult with a lot of anger and pain. Maybe you should learn to get over it.
I love the condescension of the violence-is-the-only-effective-response crowd. As if no one who disagrees could possibly have had any relevant life experiences.
Let’s be clear: Restrained violence is sometimes the only available response option. That sort of situation describes a tiny fraction of bully encounters. In no case is unrestrained violence called for, and in all cases violence is for those without other viable options or without the skill to employ them.
Unfortunately the latter group includes most school age kids in the ‘potential victim’ set. That’s slowly changing due to increased awareness of bullying -driven by the way by those education professionals so derided in this thread. There are bully-proofing methods being taught now that weren’t even discussed (outside of individual families) 40 years ago when I went to school.
Doesn’t it make sense to give kids the best skills possible, including but not limited to physical self defense techniques? Everything a kid learns that can be used to deflect and counter bullying builds confidence. And the projection of self confidence -not physical intimidation or belligerence- is their best protection against bullying.
That probably seemed like a clever retort when you were typing it. I’d suggest working on your snark.
Yes, believe it or not I’m aware of how I come across, and have tried to change that (largely unsuccessfully). You are not the first supergenius to point it out to me.
I’m not saying that self defence is never an option. I’m saying it isn’t always an option. I went to karate class, it helped a little bit (although, fun fact, you can be bullied in a karate class too). Its difficult to fight back physically to the “death of a thousand cuts” type bullying, because it will always be an overreaction to the individual incident.
And not all bully’s are the same, not all of them are overcompensating, not all of them are poorly supported by their friends, not all will react the same way to being beaten or humiliated, not all of them are unarmed.
Just because fighting back worked out for you doesn’t mean that it works out for everyone that tried, I didn’t fight back much, I didn’t fight back as much as I should have, but I can tell you that fighting back can sometimes result in being punched over a table and having your head smashed into an ironing board in home economics class in front of a jeering crowd of 15 year old’s and then being sent out by the teacher when she finally turned up for “disrupting the lesson” because, weirdly enough, your version of events didn’t match everyone else’s. I can also tell you that doesn’t work particularly well in making the other kids stop picking on you.
And honestly, I was scared, I didn’t like hurting people, I don’t really see that I should apologise for that.
I’m glad you have such faith that 10 years of daily torture, especially in the environment in which you are supposed to be learning social skills, should have no lasting effect on you.
At this point in my life I essentially have zero social life. I had a lot of opportunities since to address that I wish I had taken, especially at university. It’s difficult to take advantages of those chances when you have just had a decade of not trusting anybody basically being a survival tactic.
In the adult world, though, the battles are different. The kind of stuff that would get your ass thrown in jail – such as throwing things at someone, stealing their property, hitting them or tripping them – are par for the course. A kid in school also generally doesn’t have the choice to walk away; they don’t have freedom to go where they want, or to extract themselves from situations likely to cause future problems. Their schedules and responsibilities are set by others and they have little input.
Gangs of kids will pester one kid endlessly once they’re been picked out for some reason. What does that one kid do? Ignore it, and it goes on or escalates. Fight back, and get punished under ‘zero tolerance’ policies. It’s a tough situation. It’s not like it is as an adult, where the standards of behavior are higher, and there’s generally the individual option to not expose yourself to repeated bullying.
Kids getting bullied doesn’t have an easy solution, but trying to “fix” the victim isn’t it. There will always be a bottom rung in the social ladder no matter what, and kids seem to naturally enforce a pretty rigid pecking order.
If this was aimed at me, I’ve no problem sharing.
Everything from name calling to outright physical beatings. The only thing that didn’t happen was any sort of sexual assault. I had rocks thrown at my head, What little reputation I managed to eke out ruined by rumours of homosexuality, Any chance of interaction with the opposite sex ruined by the same, constant belittling of myself, my family, my ethnicity, Property vandalism, theft, and occasional mugging. The only thing that stopped it was to face up and show that I wasn’t going to take it any longer. Pretty much all that along with constant physical abuse of varying degrees for about 5 years. In my case this was 4th grade through middle school. So basically at the time when I was weakest, very impressionable, and emotionally unsure and unstable, I was effectively emotionally tortured and physically abused.
So yeah, it sticks with you. I’ve forgiven the kids who did it, but it doesn’t change who I am now. I don’t take shit from anyone. I can’t any longer. I either let it go, or fight to win. When you can’t let it go you either fight, or quit, because either way it just HAS TO STOP. I don’t have the tools to process the minor bullying and petty crap that modern adult interaction contains. That has cost me jobs, friendships, and relationships. Even though I’m physically confident in myself now, I have no choice but to avoid physical confrontations at all costs because if I get into one, I play to win, not to make a point. I have been told point blank to walk away at all costs, because the next time it happens, it could well be the time that I kill the guy. As my shrink in the military told me: “nothing much is worth going to jail for life for.” Thankfully in modern society there a few times that someone will get into such an encounter, and we all hope that when it does happen it will be a clear case of aggressor victim. In real life though sometimes that doesn’t happen.
So yeah, It can be a big deal. When you can’t do for yourself, and the rest of the world can’t or won’t help, you either fight or you die and be a victim forever. I took me too long to realize that, and I’ve paid the price for listening to much to those who told me to avoid them, walk away, etc. If I had stopped it earlier, no doubt I wouldn’t be as scarred up as I am. It doesn’t really affect me much now, but it changes the way you see and do everything.
Missed the edit again.
So basically What it has resulted in is a person who appears “laid back” but really I’m nothing more than just coldly, even cruelly at times, logically detached. I just don’t care. When I’m forced to care about something, or it is simply too important to ignore, I fight to the death over it. No middle ground, no shade of gray, it is either unimportant shit, or something worth going to wall over. I don’t care if it hurts someone’s feelings that I don’t seem to care, I don’t care about most people at all.
Calm down. I wasn’t making some direct affront on you. Still, I’d say anything short of what you call “years of daily torture” means you should move on. Yes, I’m an ogre.
I never said it was. My point was never that there was some Magic Bullying Solution, or they fighting back was necessarily effective or ineffective. Hell, I asked earlier what the OP wanted from the school considering how difficult it often is to detect and prevent students from being abused by one another. Shit’s tough. I’m too lazy to go back and find WhyNot’s post to quote (I think it was her), but that was my point. This is not an either/or situation. Your choices aren’t: fix the bully, or fix the victim, and any suggestion that the victim should better defend or prepare himself for tough shit equals letting the bad guys off the hook.
And guess whose problem that is? Not Bosda’s, nor mine.
Long term consequences and “moving on” are not mutually exclusive.
What’s your point? I have neither unfairly treated Bosda due to my problem, nor did I lash out at you. I observed that Bosda was inordinately rude and dismissive to another’s point of view. I’m sorry he’s carrying scars, but I’m not going to pretend his response to mckall was at all appropriate or justified.
I find it interesting that while you have no problem with Bosda’s behavior, you’ve made a point to continue your criticism of mine, going as far as finding one of my flaws you can see I’m sensitive to and picking at it.
Being aware of my own awkward manner does not, as it happens, torment me and is not actually germaine to any argument I’ve made here. So while I’ll congratulate you on your perspicuous presentation of one of my many faults, I’d like us to move on to more productive ground.
Then you need to apply more force; that is what works in the “real world”. That’s most of the reason why you seldom see the same style of bullying among adults; they’d get arrested.
No, sadism and indifference, not money. “Most”, probably not; but I recall plenty of teachers who were indifferent to bullies, or outright on their side.
That’s just silly. People don’t “get over” this sort of thing, it stays with them for life. That’s what years of repeated trauma does to you. Especially when it is applied when you are young and impressionable.
No, but you’re acting like a pretentious piece of putrid porcine pus, and at this point I’m just having some fun.
The armchair psychology going on about other posters’ mental states in this thread is really quite insulting.
And while I am in no position to deny that was the truth to your teenage mind, practical, adult experience tells me that the Truth is not at all how most kids remember school. And that includes me.
In other words, you’re bullying.
Yeah, I thought about that, but I wouldn’t chase him around picking on him. I’ll spar as long as he wants to spar.
For what it’s worth, it doesn’t look like sparring to me. I really don’t think xenophon comes close to deserving the amount of vitriol that people are heaping on him.
I agree: his position seems incredibly moderate to me, and it’s not clear what I am missing. Isn’t he basically saying that while violent response may, at times, be effective, there are many circumstances where it will be counter-productive, if not outright dangerous? That seems like common sense to me.
What initially caused me to call him sanctimonious was this:
It’s right up there with “I’ll pray for you.” I probably chased it more than was necessary, admittedly, and xenophon is free to get the last word in without me continuing it if he chooses, but that doesn’t lessen the initial obnoxiousness of it.
No last jibe at you, Bosstone. While I stand by the point of my comment to Bosda, I admit it was both obnoxious and sanctimonious of me to post it, and it was not my business.