Like most Dopers, when faced with a question to which I don’t really have a clear answer, I’ll fall back on blaming my mother. 
When I was in elementary school, there was this girl who picked on my older sister on the school bus. Eventually, my sister rode a different bus to school than I did, having moved on to junior high. Her bully did too, and the picking on of my sister continued all the way into high school. For some reason I’m still not completely clear on, the little sister of the girl who picked on my sister started picking on me. Sisters talk, so somehow a sort of Hatfields v. McCoys thing started up. IIRC, my sister and I did nothing to these other two girls that was aggressive or mean and we fit in just fine… except we weren’t from rich families like most of the other kids at that school, but not everyone was and we had plenty of friends and got along with most people just fine. Neither of us had a problem at school; it was only just these two sisters on the bus. Maybe our house looked shabby, so we appeared poor, which is of course, a perfectly justifiable reason to pick on anyone. (I’m kidding!)
Where I blame my mother is in how it was handled. My mother is one of the most passive people I’ve ever met. She does not do confrontation, she does not do standing up for herself, and she does not do making major decisions by herself. It’s actually no wonder to me how she was unable to handle being a single mom and we ended up living with my dad.
Anyway, I have no idea why this girl taunted me, threw things, and once even clawed me, every day on the bus. But I do know that when I told my mother about it, her sage advice was “Ignore her and she’ll stop.” My sister and I both tried that and it didn’t work. “Just ignore it. She’s just jealous of you.” That didn’t even make sense, the other girls were richer, prettier, and better dressed. (Looking back, we were wrong. We were both prettier than those two little bitches.) The best answer should have been “Stand up to her even if that means getting in a fight. I’ll drive you to school for a couple weeks if it means you get kicked off the bus for fighting.” She should have asked her BF to teach us how to throw a punch and hold up our guard and then let us have at it. We’d have all learned about how our choices have consequences.
Instead, my bully is still a rich, gorgeous, spoiled, petty, spiteful bitch.
However, I learned to stand up for myself. As I mentioned, we ended up living with my dad. My stepmonster refused to buy us new clothes at the beginning of the school year. I demonstrated that I’d outgrown my clothes, or that they were worn out, and ask to go shopping and she’d direct me to the attic and told me to wear her daughters’ stuff. Her youngest was ten years older than I and in that ten-year span, jeans had gone from hip-hugging bell bottoms to high-waisted tapered legs. So there I was in 7th grade, wearing some hippy dippy, flowing, flower child shirt with low-rise bell bottoms… guess what? Some of the girls wearing Jordache had to pick on me. Eventually, I got tired of it, knew that going to parents or teachers was pointless, so I chased her down the hall with intent to do serious bodily harm. Okay, I was going to kill her. With my bare hands. 
Imagine my shock when my bully ran away from me. She never bothered me again. My BFF took pity on me, claimed her favorite pair of Jordache didn’t fit anymore and got her mother to let her give them to me. (She got a new pair. I was still in hand-me-downs, but at least I wasn’t so horribly different anymore. Thank you, Bestie!) There was another incident in high school, but that was more a boy-with-a-crush-pulling-on-pigtails variety and I threw him off the stage in the auditorium into the orchestra pit and he, too, left me alone. By high school, however, I had a hard time walking the line between assertive and aggressive and crossed over a bit, so I may have had some of that coming.
Had my mother been taught to stand up for herself, or how to assert herself in anyway, she might have taught my sister and I that we deserved to be treated with respect like anyone else–and, more importantly, how to handle it when we weren’t. But when we went to her with these problems, she didn’t step in and help us. Her advice got us nowhere. This reinforced the message that A) We don’t deserve help, B) Nobody will give it even if you ask and C) You shouldn’t stand up for yourself. Just be nice and people will be nice back. Just ignore anything that makes you uncomfortable and that thing will eventually go away. :rolleyes:
So no being asked why doesn’t bother me, because I don’t really know what was the thing that set us apart as different that caused the bullying. I had a revelation while reading this thread, that bullies will pick on everyone and the only thing that makes you a repeat customer is your response, if you shut down, withdraw, cry, or otherwise don’t fight back, that makes you a target. Therefore, it’s my mother’s fault. She failed to teach my sister and I that we had a right to protect ourselves, to assert ourselves, and that we have a right to be treated with respect.
