The whole point of using the phrase real world is (usually) to encourage acceptance of various aspects of the status quo. You know what you shouldn’t try to change because you’re told, and that is (or should be) that.
I was bullied sometimes in school. Not systematically or severely, but I did have some problems in most of my schools. The last time I had a serious problem was when I was a freshman. Three older guys about a head taller than me chased me down the hallway and tried to beat the crap out of me when they caught me. Even looking back on the situation I can’t see why they went about it the way they did. I can see why they picked me as a target, but I don’t know why they were so intent on actually trying to hurt me — so intent that they stupidly and publicly attacked me in a situation where they were sure to get caught.
It’s not “blaming the victim” to say that you sometimes know what makes you a target. I was socially backward, partly because I was naturally one of those people who hangs back and studies situations before participating, and partly because of an unusual upbringing, which included moving several times. It didn’t help that I was smart and often had more interests in common with adults than with kids my age.
I acted weird. Some of it I probably couldn’t help, but some of my behavior could have been changed if I really wanted to. By the time I was in my second year of high school, I had in fact already started to change my behavior. I didn’t always share the same interests as other kids, but I did try at least to adopt protective camouflage.
I was also pretty small until growth spurts during puberty finally put me into the normal range. I spent most of my childhood being one of the smaller kids in my age bracket, which I think also had some psychological effects for years after I got most of my full growth.
Things that helped ameliorate the potential for being abused were that even though I was small, I was fast and tough from growing up in the country and being very active. I did gymnastics from age 10, which marked me as weird, but also made me strong as hell for my size, quick, and agile. I was smart enough to figure out situations quickly and find ways to fix or route around problems. And after a certain amount of negative attention, I learned that when you can’t either defuse or outrun a situation, you damn well better be able to fight. No, one incident won’t change things permanently, but showing that you’re not just going to get beaten up without causing some damage makes the likelihood of violence smaller. Eventually.
I did swimming near the end of my freshman year, and added diving the year after. While those aren’t the manliest of sports, it did help to be a semi-jock. I started training in martial arts when I was sixteen. Between that as a confidence booster, the occasional gymnastics training I kept up with for the help with diving, and the obvious physical change of being average height finally, I didn’t have more than a couple of nasty looks and some shoving at school. I’d changed from being a victim to being a more dangerous target, so the bullies didn’t bother me anymore.
Because of my past, though, I was more than willing to intervene if someone was getting shit from bullies. Later, as an adult, that got me into a few life-threatening situations.
If it had been actual abuse when I was younger, I’m not sure how I would have reacted. I think I would have become violent, not withdrawn. As it is, I think I’m more confrontational than I would have been if I’d been treated normally all the time. I’m tactful when I have to be, but I have no problem telling someone to back the fuck off if they’re being shitty to me. I’m also not all that trusting of authority.
Though my teachers were generally okay, I learned that you can’t really trust anyone to either believe you or respond the way you’d like them to. I ended up in “counseling” because of a story I wrote in 6th grade that had some violent and sexual content. I’d been reading at an adult level since I was about seven or eight, so it’s really no surprise that I wrote similar stuff to what I read.
Their working theory must have been that I was “acting out” because of problems at home, so they kept asking questions about my home life that I didn’t want to answer because — fuck you — my parents and my family are none of your goddamn business. If you wanted to help, you should have kept the small group of violent little shits who used to try to corner me in the playground the hell away from me.
The Real World is the way it is because it benefits and/or amuses those of us who are mature enough to accept it and coerce the rest of you whining infants into silence.
I’m glad people who pushed through the civil rights movement didn’t believe this batshit craziness.
The world is what we will it to be. There are forces that can’t be changed–like hurricanes and floods–but human behavior can be changed. If it couldn’t, people would still be dumping their excrement on the streets. People would still think it was alright to enslave others. Now, the majority of people see a problem with these activities. We’ve decided that those things are indecent ways of behaving.
I have never been harrassed or bullied as an adult, so I’m not sure what I was being prepared for as a youngster. The only positive thing that came from it was that I developed a self-deprecating self of humor. I don’t think I was traumatized (others who know me may disagree). I don’t think I was the most pitiable victim in the world. But it didn’t help me very much in my life. It didn’t make me tough or brave or smarter. Nor did it make me conform either.
I’m feeling ambivalent about this whole anti-bullying stuff (if you’ll read my posts, you’ll see this). But I don’t know how we can possibly expect grown-ass adults to report bad behavior to authority figures, when we don’t teach them this lesson in childhood. It seems to me reporting bullying activity is snipping future criminality in the bud and also empowering people–victims and bystanders–to not be passive about shit going down. AND–here’s the wonderful thing–you can also teach your child to defend themselves, if it comes to that. It’s not an either/or thing.
No, but Emmet Till certainly felt the wrath of those who did.
My point is, don’t expect too much rationality from bullies. They do what they do because it amuses them, it discomfits others, and they don’t fear anyone who’s interested in stopping them. Any plan that doesn’t include a proverbial (and, likely, literal) Big Stick isn’t going to work in the short or long term.
When I was in school (late 70s/early 80s) if you were bullied YOU were the problem because it meant you were weak. You could tell a teacher or principal but nothing was going to happen because it made you a “sissy” and teachers HATED sissies.
Also, a fair amount of verbal bullying was committed by quite a few teachers. Not a majority, but quite a few.
They don’t fear people trying to stop them because there’s generally so little effort. As soon as the authorities do make a serious effort, the bullying stops; which is why you don’t see gangs of bullies roaming around the workplace beating up unpopular coworkers. That’s treated as assault, not “boys will be boys”; so it doesn’t normally happen.
And no, it has little to do with people becoming more mature; when the authorities decide to look the other way on something like gay bashing or when they lose control like in a riot, you can see that the thugs are still there. They are just as adults under more pressure to behave in a civilized fashion; give them permission and they’ll start in with the brutality again.
It sounds like you’re saying that Emmet Till was not a victim of other people’s brutality, but of his own naivety. That because his behavior didn’t conform to the wacked-out rules of that particular time and place, he deserved to die. If that’s not what you’re intimating by bringing up his name, I don’t know what your point is.
I hope my imaginary children would have the guts to be who they are. Whether they stutter, fail to conform perfectly to gender roles, or illicit jealous due to having inherited their mother’s good looks and brains, they would be expected to hold their heads up high and not let other people’s hate bring them down. And if people do harrass them and it upsets them enough, they would be instructed to tell an adult. Just as I would instruct a co-worker to tell the boss about an offensive person in the workplace.
But I can also give my imaginary children full permission to go “cobra” on someone who gets in their face when external back-up is not available. Which was something Emmet Till couldn’t do. There wasn’t anything that Emmet could do to avoid his fate other than turning back the hand of time and acting meek and docile in front of that white woman. Is that what you want our children to do? Turn into meek and docile non-personalities to avoid the harshness of the “real world”? Yeah, those type of people NEVER get the shit kicked out of them.
If you got that out of what I posted, you’re not reading what I’m writing and responding to you is pointless.
It would be nice if you would explain what your point is.
Growing up, tattling was used to mean telling on someone when no one got hurt, and, even then, it was something only thought bad in grade school. I don’t know how much of that is the small town community and thus the social repercussions for bullying and how much of that is because of the bullying enlightenment, but bullying seemed to mostly be something only the violent people experienced. Or football players, as the coach was an asshole.
Anyways, I wonder how much the bullying everyone else has experienced creates a desire not to fight back even in places where you are perfectly safe.
Thought people might like seeing this story about bullies who ended up trying to make amends after they found out how much they had hurt the victim years later:
It’s quite possible that the bullies that you think about now with such anger do feel bad about how they treated you. Sometimes people do change.
Bullys today seem meaner and more violent today than when I grew up in the 70’s. The typical schoolyard fight lasted less than a couple minutes. A few punches and roll around on the ground. It was always one on one. I was always aware in schoolyard fights that I couldn’t go too far. You don’t stomp somebody in the head or face. We knew there were limits in a schoolyard fight.
Youtube videos today are very frightening. Kids getting jumped by three or more people. Kicked and stomped. The level of violence is so far beyond any schoolyard fight that I witnessed.
I can see why bullies today are so much more of a concern.
This cops daughter got jumped by 4 girls.Posted on youtube. What kind of fight is this??? 4 against 1? WTF is wrong with people today?
I can forgive, but the damage is already done, and can’t be taken back. But yeah, they were younger, and I can’t hold a grudge.
In the 70s, I was attacked in groups of 3 or 4, more than once.
I agree 100%. I’m quite sure that the reason I teach Taekwondo and bully prevention today is because I was the class punching bag when I was a kid.
The wounds might heal but the scars stay forever.
Am I alone in thinking that the anti-bullying movement wouldn’t have had a chance in hell in the cultural mainstream if it hadn’t made common cause with the LGBT community?
I used to have a serious mental illness (I haven’t had symptoms in a long time though) and there were times when I would do inappropriate things either because I wasn’t in charge of my faculties or because I was too far gone to understand what was appropriate vs inappropriate. I experienced some pretty bad bullying from that. the sad part is the bullying came from officials, so nobody cared or intervened. You don’t forget being bullied by the police when you are too mentally ill to understand what you did wrong (nothing I did was illegal, just inappropriate). I wish I could let that event go but I can’t. Cops are supposed to protect people who can’t protect themselves. To this day I struggle with a hatred of the police. Fucking painful situation. I really needed to be segregated from society.
What were some of you specific problems? How did the police handle it, and did they know you had problems?
…If not too personal…