Of Course this is 100% blaming the victim. [del]But Minions and Toadies have to justify who they are when the chips are down somehow…[/del] Objective answers are best asked of those not directly involved.
For myself, I’ve always assumed that there is a basic social herd mentality which never quite goes away. When the herd feels it is in danger or under stress, it separates out the members which it feels as a group are different. The idea is that predators will feed on these while the herd trundles along to the next water hole and survives. Its also how herd dominants deal with those who refuse to be dominated or conform as Minions / Toadies or accept their assigned pecking order: cut them out of the herd.
Rachel, cool off please. You’re being insulting and inappropriate. Your anger may be justified, but if you’re inclined to express it in this manner, you’ll have to do it in the Pit, not IMHO.
Say I tell someone that I was a victim of racial violence. I’m on a message board, so no one knows what I look like. I am the one who has decided to broach the topic in this personal way.
Is it blaming the victim for someone to ask me why I was targeted?
I don’t know why you would even include this statement. Do you think people who have responded to the “why” inquiry–including most posters in this thread–are minions and toadies?
Right. Which is why I thought the filmmaker’s getting huffy was a poor response to the ignorance and rudeness demonstrated.
Can I answer the question for myself? I am not sure. Sure I had different interests than much of the crowd did, but so did other kids who were not bullied. (Sure some of them were the ones smart enough that could have the nerdy interests and still also be able to talk sports with skill.) It wasn’t that I didn’t fight back, my Dad had been a boxer and I was taught to take no shit, actually had a bit of a temper problem back then … if anything that encouraged it because it was a provokable reaction. Small set of allies? Maybe. Dressed different … a bit. I was a fifth kid in hand me downs and I did not even realize that embroidery on the jeans meant they had been my older sisters’ and not my brothers, or that shirts buttoning the other way meant the same thing. I also stood up against bullies when others were being picked on, which likely marked me as well.*
But again, I was not bullied because I was a bit of a poor fit for my peer group and had few allies. I was not bullied because I reacted to teasing. I was bullied because the group dynamic, the culture of the school yard, facilitated the creation of bullies and victims.
*True story that I think illustrates something about bullying: A new kid to the school recognized one of the odder kids as someone he had known from his old neighborhood. Insecure himself I think he started picking on him as a means to establish himself as higher than someone in the new pecking order. I stood up for the odd kid and the new kid and I went behind the school to fight. Another kid “referreed.” Some dirt swallowed by both of us we each acknowledged that the other “fought good” and ended up as best friends for most of grade school and High School and he was not a bully after that. Not sure what it illustrates mind you, but it says something I think!
Interesting aside - does this board have an over-representation of the bullied or are the former bullies either not aware that that is what they were (like Penny’s realization on BBT) or are even less comfortable owning up to their past?
I’ve never wondered why I was bullied because I never took it personally.
Some people are dicks + wrong place, wrong time = People are dicks to others at the wrong place/time.
It’s not really rocket surgery.
And no, I wouldn’t get offended by the question, just…baffled.
I personally dont think its victim blaming. I think it prompts the victim to speculate on their bullies motives. Bullying is a major problem, but another issue is reactive bullying- we are very quick to disregard anything we did on our end that might have contributed. kids who have difficulty picking up on social cues are particularly notorious for this. They see their treatment as completely unwarranted, and refuse to take ownership for anything they might have done on their end- often because they dont even see it. They might have had friends or kind souls point stuff out politely, and it might have gone over their heads or have taken offense. Example:
I was that kid. I was high strung, gullible, talked to loud, acted pervy aroind girls, just generally spergy and creepy. People made fun of me for it; I made myself an easy target. Somebody might lightheartedly joke to me about something, and I would get huffy and butthurt about it, instead of laughing it off or teasing them back. This made me easy to mess with. I got tons of support- friends, family all tried to point out what I was doing. But I would take this as criticism, theyre trying to change me! Why not talk to the people bullying me? But the truth is they did. Looking back, I got a ton of support and protection. But in the end the problem wasnt really the bullies behavior, it was mine.
There is no polite or kind way to say any of those things, because they are incredibly rude and incredibly unkind. All that says is “Unless you like what your peers like and hate what they hate and dress the way they dress and keep your interests to yourself while they get to talk about their interests all they want, you are not worthy to be treated like a human being.” There are at least two people in this thread who, even as adults, seem to believe that they at least partly deserved to be bullied.
It also ignores the fact that every one of the behaviors in that list also shows up in the popular crowd as well. It’s just that the popular kids get praised for being unique and creative, while the unpopular ones get ridiculed for being “weird”, or accused of “trying too hard.”
The thing is, there is a particular type of passive aggressive behavior that relies on the other people being too nice to tell you to fuck off.
Almost every year I have student who basically sees themselves as entitled to be part of some group that they have decided is “cool”. They are a weird mix of bullied and bully: they are desperate to be part of the target group because they have nothing but derision and contempt for any kid who isn’t part of that group, including themselves. Their self-loathing and misery are palatable, but at the same time it’s hard to feel too bad for a kid who goes out of his way to be the most conspicuously repulsed by other “unpopular” kids because he wants to make it clear he Isn’t One Of Them, who rejects the friendly overtures of “losers” but goes out of his way to ingratiate himself with the kids he perceives as “in”. It’s really complicated when a kid is crying because he can’t get a prom date, and he’s willing to go with anyone “white, pretty, popular, and skinny” (that really happened).
This is the kid that “tries to hard”. He pushes himself into social situations where he isn’t invited and, without realizing it, relies on people not wanting to be “incredibly rude” or “incredibly unkind”. If your neighbor that you don’t particularly like comes over every night and knocks on your door and invites himself in, if he tearfully demands an explanation every time you have a friend over and don’t invite him too, if he gives you inappropriately expensive gifts and casually borrows your stuff and rummages through your fridge, and he ignores all the polite requests for more space that you give him . . .at some point you quit feeling sorry for him or flattered by his obvious admiration and at some point you run out of polite or kind options. Adults often struggle with these sort of social situations–why do we expect 14 year olds to handle them gracefully?
This is what Phouka is talking about when she describes “reactive bullying” and it does happen. It’s certainly not the only kind of bullying, or even the most common type. But it does happen, and it would be overly simplistic to say in these cases that it’s 100% the bully’s fault. It’s a more complicated dynamic than that.
Uh, yes? Not only that, but I’d definitely interpret the question as its own kind of hostile, passive aggressive bullying, because the question itself is pointless – the answer is self-evident. Why were you a target of racially-motivated violence? Uhhh, maybe because of racism?? :dubious: What other answer would you expect?
Yup. And I knew people who were like those examples, and even did one or two of those things for a while myself. I can say from experience that geeky folks, especially those who are sometimes bullied or afraid of being bullied, tend to put up with a lot of behavior from friends that others might not, just because they’re afraid to lose friends/allies. I know I read some online article about the kinds of bullshit that geeks put up with from geek friends/communities out of fear of losing allies or being seen as being “bullies” or “exclusionary” when really the other person is the one being outright wrong, but I can’t seem to recall what it was now.
I sucked at putting on makeup. I was trying to cover breakouts and even out my skin tone, and it looked terrible. But I thought buying teen magazines was “beneath” me and anti-feminist, even though it might have given me some decent makeup application pointers. In middle school, I had a nervous tic thing where I picked at acne regardless of who was around. I think it’s appropriate to tell kids to deal with hygiene-related stuff in the bathroom/in private.
I had a friend who was desperate to date and would pull the whole mooning-over, semi-stalker act on each of her new crushes. But even if a guy turned her down nicely, she would freak the fuck out and suddenly he was the Worst Man In the World and none of her friends better give him the time of the day. This escalated as we went through high school, to the point where she was spewing some anti-Semitic comments after a Jewish guy turned her down. I was kind of horrified and backed off her after that. We’ve been out of high school for a couple decades now and I still see the self-pitying “men just can’t deal with my awesomeness/they can’t deal with strong women!” posts. After a while, you are the only common ingredient in a string of relationships. I don’t know if one of us talking to her back in the day would have gotten us anything but bullying back from her, though.
Doug K, I absolutely did not state that one must never reveal unique interests or dress in interesting ways. I did say that if some kids are miserable because few kids really want to deal with them - I saw exclusion or just disinterest way, way more often than overt bullying - then there are things you can do to at least see the world through someone else’s eyes. And even us geeks occasionally want to throttle the hell out of an annoying friend.
I saw some bullying the other day, three kids around 15yrs or so literally pushing another kid around. I didn’t know what I should do about it. I’m not very good at confrontations, and I’m not even sure if I have a right to interfere. And for all I knew they were just a bunch of mates having a laugh, though it really didn’t look like it was.
I’m not sure why you think this is informative. Does it matter that a particular racist only hates blacks but is cool with Asians? (And how often would that be pure speculation on the victim’s part? I doubt that most racially-motivated attackers take the time to announce their reasons before the beatdown.) Or is it more important to try to deal with racism whatever “colors” are involved? Is it more useful to deal with the underlying issues (fear/hatred of the “Other”) or the surface features?
“He was racist because his dad spewed racist crap at the dinner table all during his childhood” would actually be informative and potentially useful, but again, this isn’t something the victim is usually going to be in a position to know.
Honestly. Absent intimate knowledge of the person, his home life, hang-ups, insecurities, etc., the only accurate answer to “Why was that person cruel to you?” is “I don’t know, I can’t read minds.” You want to guess, be my guest, but that guess will have way more to do with how you see yourself than how your attacker did.
I am not saying “why” is the best question in the world. But when adults are talking about how life was when they were kids and the topic of bullying comes up, it is not that big of a deal (IMHO) to ask about the particulars of how a person was singled out. Saying, “I was bullied by a bunch of meanos!” does not provide the same kind of information that “I was bullied for being fat and clumsy and for speaking with a stutter.”
There are proximate and ultimate causes of bullying. The cruelty of human beings, ultimately, is the “why” behind bullying. But that goes without saying.
If someone doesn’t want to get into the particulars, I have no problem with them saying, “The kids were jerks, that’s why.” But I don’t see the question as being one that’s blatantly offensive unless someone is still carrying the heavy emotional scars of their childhoods. And in that case, they would probably do well steering clear of all discussions about bullying and childhood in general.
If someone asked my answer would be “because bullies are sadistic scum, and because the authorities at that age let scum like them run wild”. Note how schoolyard-style bullying vanishes as soon as the authorities start treating it as assault instead of as “boys will be boys”. I don’t believe it had much to do with me; I was just a interchangeable target in their eyes. They didn’t really know who I was; the bullies would occasionally even yell out the wrong name as they came after me.
I expect many are just too arrogant, too self-entitled to ever consider that anything whatsoever they do is wrong. And I would expect most bullies who do realize that they were the bullies to simply lie about it; bullies by nature aren’t going to be very scrupulous people and generally wouldn’t hesitate to lie.
Well, nobody has asked me (until today I guess), but since my biggest bullier happens to have been my mother, I reckon it’s because she’s a mean bitch who lives in a different reality(1), who used to consider that I was “off-spec”(2) and who reckons the main use of daughters is to take care of their mothers (3). But mostly because she’s a mean bitch. Other grownups who bullied me also bullied enough of their other students to have a wide reputation for it; again, the main reason was that they’re mean Bs and children can’t defend themselves as easily as grownups.
My classmates would “poke” at me occasionally when we were little, but it stopped when they saw the way my mother treated me and found out that I wasn’t too stuck up to play with them, I was not allowed to play with them - which is a completely different situation. They weren’t mean people, though, it never got to levels I consider bullying.
1: I’ve met other people who do, they all follow the same pattern but each has his own pocket dimension
2: she wanted to have a bunch of boys, all cloned from my Dad. I’m female, therefore off-spec.
3: except for her, of course
People actually blame the victims? “Kids are cruel,” isn’t enough of an explanation?